Translator’s note: Germán Labrador Méndez’s essay was originally published as “La Lengua de la Kloaka: lenguaje, guerra civil, memoria y fármacos en Symbol (1991) de Roger Santiváñez.” Versions were published in Góngora & Argot: Ensayos sobre la poesía de Roger Santiváñez, an anthology edited by Paul Guillén and published in July 2015 by Collages de aleWendorff and in