The Report is a novel full of twists and provocations. Contrary to what the title suggests, San Martín is a minor character who does not appear until the end of the novel. The protagonist of the book is Alfano, an apprentice historian who witnesses a crime in the middle of the 20th century. Alfano is tasked with writing a report on the Spanish regiment’s stay in Mendoza in the early 19th century. However, his report deviates from the requirements and veers toward a love story between a young woman from a good family in Mendoza and the young Spanish soldier Juan Ordoñez, who was taken prisoner along with his comrades by the liberating army during the Battle of Maipú.

In this novel, Martín Kohan mixes history with fiction to tell his own version of the Andes campaign. At the end of the novel, we learn that everything recounted took place in San Juan and not in Mendoza, a detail that the narrator allows himself as poetic license. It is a novel full of humor with a marked humanization and consequent desacralization of the figure of the hero. The playful dimension of the writing is fundamental. Faced with a universe laden with solemnity and crystallized values, the novel functions as a parody. It also problematizes the issue of credibility in historical institutions and invites readers to ask themselves why they should trust historical discourse when they know nothing about the historian, the conditions of his enunciation, or his practice.