"ÉL" (Him)—From Darkness to Light—is a narrative built between the past and the future. It is a story that intertwines the autobiographical novel *ÉL* with the poetic and testimonial work of Mercedes Pinto—texts that travel to our present day, charged with a fierce and harrowing relevance.

It all begins with the echo of a memory breaking into a woman's mind. That echo opens like a fissure, becoming a gateway to the past: a wedding night, a man promising eternity, the radiant illusion of youth. But soon, everything transforms: flowers wither, windows close, and caresses turn into sharp blows that tear the skin.

The narrator splits into spoken word and anguished song, weaving the tale of her descent into a living hell—a journey suspended between reality and fiction. It is not just "Him"; there is also an oppressive society and the history of a country moving against the tide. It takes more than courage to escape an experience as brutal as the one endured by the novel’s protagonist and the writer herself—women who are, ultimately, one and the same. It requires clinging to art and life to transform pain into a message of struggle and hope.

Mercedes Pinto left us not only a poetic and literary body of work of immense value but also an example. A century after the publication of her novel and fifty years after her death, her work stands as a beacon in times of darkness.