In 1970, during a series of debates between Oscar Collazos, Mario Vargas Llosa and Cortázar on the function of literature and the writer within the socialist revolution, Cortázar wrote: ‘Uno de los más agudos problemas latinoamericanos es que estamos necesitando más que nunca los Che Guevara del lenguaje, los revolucionarios de la literatura, más que los literatos de la revolución.’ With hindsight, and through extensive study of Cortázar's letters and other paratexts, this assertion seems to have been more concerned with rejection of the so-called ‘coleópteros’ and their rigid, inflexible kind of literature, than with working towards a way of writing fiction that would somehow directly contribute to the socialist revolution. Yet, with characteristic ambivalence, Cortázar carefully avoids elucidating precisely what he meant, or how he might have intended to be that Che Guevara of language through his writings. His Papeles inesperados provides a partial explanation, since in one of his ‘Entrevistas ante el espejo’, he claims: