I the Supreme

Unlike Roa Basto's HIJO DE HOMBRE in which he weaves an enchanting story about everyday Paraguayan life that was true in some parts, and other parts that could have been true, YO EL SUPREMO is based mostly upon the facts surrounding Jose Gaspar Rodriquez de Francia, Paraguay's first dictator, known as "El Supremo". "El Supremo" often stated and wrote, "all non contemporary history is suspect at best". I suddenly met Roa Bastos at an unexpected clandestine discussion before I knew anything about him. After the meeting, I learned he was in exile and illegally entered the country to meet a grad student who had received a one-year scholarship to study him, Roa Bastos, and his works. Shortly before returning to the United States, like in so many of his novels, he suddenly appeared to talk with the grad student for the first time about his books and writing. He sincerely asked the grad student, "What questions do you have of me? I don't have much time here and must leave immediately!" The grad student was so surprised and taken aback by his sudden unannounced appearance that almost no questions came to mind. At the time, I didn't know him, or anything about him. Yet I remember his passion for researching the true history of this book's title. He said he was so involved in getting the correct information in the book that sometimes he felt he and "El Supremo" were the same. Obviously, this fascinating book about the man who so loved the common Paraguayan people and despised and feared them at the same time provides incredible historical insights. Yet the book is tough reading! Whoa, encyclopedias often seem more prosaic! Sometimes the book's historical dryness and minutia leaves one thirsty for a glass of water, or beer, or three. Yet plowing through those tough parts also reveals gems of insight into the man that shaped Paraguay's future. "El Supremo" was so fearful of outside influence, and trade that might leave the country in debt, those entering the country were prohibited from leaving! He ensured foreigners were treated well, mostly, until they tried to leave upon which he would imprison them. Yet when the American Ambassador/Consul was refused exit of the country a U.S. battle ship was sent up river to Paraguay to gain his release. The battleship was also initially held hostage and only after firing its largest gun was the American's release granted. Foreigners, especially Spanish, were prohibited from marrying those of the same background to avoid the development of a special class of citizens. The church was held under his thumb and he was excommunicated by the Pope for that. If you want incredible insight into Paraguayan history, and the background and life of the person who declared himself "Perpetual Dictator", this book is for you. If you want an entertaining book on Paraguay's people and culture, read HIJO DE HOMBRE de Roa Bastos.

When a novel is described as `richly textured' or `multilayered' it is sure to be difficult and I The Supreme is indeed very dense and complex. Founder of the Republic, perpetual dictator, enlightened despot, cruel tyrant, the first leader of the newly independent Paraguay in 1814 known as El Supremo stirred different emotions in different people depending on their personal experiences. He continues to do so even today and Roa Bastos's colossal imaginative reconstruction of his career written in 1974 must surely be one of the definitive meditations on the nature of power, its uses and abuses and inevitable corrosive effects on both wielder(s) and recipient(s) alike. El Supremo, inflated by hubris and consumed by paranoia, rambles and rants about his benevolence and tolerance up to his final breath. Baroque, burlesque and grotesque in turns, I The Supreme is packed with pages of footnotes, extracts, translations, extravagant and experimental use of language and numerous neologisms. I should deduct a star for the magnitude of the literary challenge but it is simply too impressive a work to do so. Nevertheless, it is recommended more to those who are familiar with, and enchanted by, magic realism than with Dan Brown.

This is a wonderful book, by a great writer. The catch is that very often it will be misunderstood, and associated with the group of fantastic south american writers, like Garcia Marquez. Instead the story is basically for real (the story of the last years of Paraguay dictator Gaspar Francia, who ruled the country from 1813 to 1840), and most of the mentioned documents are authentic, or at least plausible. Roa Bastos has played on the borderline between history and fiction, but most readers will not know this, and take for fiction what are very important and interesting historical facts, that would deserve a different approach and attention. This is the only (but rather painful) fault I find in an otherwise beautiful work.

There are three great novels about the Latin American dictator and all of them are very different. Miguel Asturias' Mr. President deals with a backwater banana republic where the president for life's presence itself is minor. What occurs instead is the lethal working out of a hideously unjust system which crushes and destroys all who resist and those who are caught in its clutches. Then there is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The Autumn of the Patriarch, an example of high modernism at its most brilliant. In sentences of increasingly serpentine length (in the end consisting of the final chapter of forty-five pages) Garcia Marquez deals with an aged dictator who has ruled for centuries and is capable of every iniquity (such as serving up a cabinet minister for his treacherous colleagues to eat) while living in a world of pretend power and real submission (he has to sell his country's sea to pay off the Americans). This book is also high modernist, but is very different. Instead of the fantastic elements of the Autumn of the Patriarch we have here the story of the founder of Paraguay, Dr. Francia. Dr. Francia consolidated his country's independence by creating a regime of isolation and absolute power. He expelled the Jesuits and set up his own Catholic Church so it would not be beholden to Rome. He was utterly ruthless and the result, according to E. Bradford Burns was an autarky that probably benefited the masses more in terms of literacy and nutrition than any other Latin American country of the time. Its fate, however, was to be crushed by the surrounding countries in the great war of 1870-73 where the male population was almost literally devastated.No venal tinpot hack, Dr. Francia appears as a man of frightening sincerity, in an account that is of direct revelance to the fate of Castro's Cuba. I, the Supreme begins with a proclamation in which the dicators calls for the decapitation of his corpse and the lynching of all his ministers. It continues with tales of prisoners forced to live in boats travelling down the rivers of Paraguay without ever stopping. We read of Francia's dialogue with a sycophantic Vicar General ("How long did the trial of the infamous traitors to the Fatherland last? As long as it was necessary in order not to rush to judgement. They were granted every right to defend themselves. In the end every recourse was exhausted. It might be said that the case was never closed. It is still open. Not all the guilty parties were sentenced to death and executed."), who then goes on to condemn his priests for siring dozens and hundreds of illegitimate children. Like Lenin and indeed Stalin he rants against the jungle of bureaucracy that he himself has created, he outsmarts the greedy surrounding oligarchies who wish to absorb Paraguay, he reminds his civil servants not to express and exploit the Indian population. We read reports of how school children are indoctrinated to see their great leader ("The Supreme Government

In what has to be a fictional note at the end of the book, the author claims that he is not such, indicating that he merely copied parts of historical documents, writings and tales, thus the real "author" of this book is history itself and not him, who he says is merely the "compiler." The work is indeed true to history; the history about José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, the controversial Dictator of Paraguay between 1814-1840 who used to sign his official decrees not with his name but the sentence that is the title of this book. This is a wonderfully complex book; not easy to read. Sometimes fascinating paragraphs are unexpectedly cut with some note form the "compiler" indicating that the rest is illegible because the page is partly burned, which lets you to think that it was indeed copied from an old document; while at other times you read fascinating dialogs and monologues which you would think had to be fictional; but it is not as simple: You cannot tell truth from fiction because the truth seems fictional and the fiction tells truth. Truth that comes to you in the form of insights about the state of mind of a dictator, about absolute power, and about the soul of a country that owns its independent existence to its first dictator's determination to be its supreme ruler. It is an utterly fascinating book.