The testimony of the survivor of the Chilean dictatorship, Aníbal Quijada Cerda (Cerco de púas, 1977), was one of those who managed to modulate a type of ambivalent strategy with which, in addition to aligning himself with the political struggle of the moment, he explored and exploited the literary possibilities of that markedly contemporary genre. This article is aimed, therefore, at analyzing the ways in which the Chilean testimonial articulated, in a singular and novel story, the discursive strategies associated with the denunciatory paradigm with the discursive strategies, manifestly rhetorical and poetic, associated with the paradigm of the literary. For this, we propose a rereading and a critical analysis of the text referred to, attending, centrally, to certain formal aspects that account for that double affiliation: discursive strategies, use of literary figures, narrative and scriptural time, tone and structure of the story, processes of subjectivation and fictionalization, among others.