The Feast of the Goat

Mario Varlgas Llosa is easily on my personal list of all-time Great Latin American Authors. I have been an avid fan for quite some time and have read several of his masterpieces: La ciudad y los perros (1960), the novel that launched his literary career and caused a sensation in the literary world when it was published ... and initiated the second phase of the "boom" in Latin American literature; la casa verde (1964); Conversacion en la Catedral (1964); and La verdad de las mentiras (1990). The current THE FEAST OF THE GOAT (La Fiesta del Chivo) is written with an insurmountable rhythm and precision that is classic Vargas Llosa. Those of us who lived during the unbelievably nightmarish Tujillo Era and in the ghoulish shadow of the Dictador under Balaguer (especially the infamous "12 Years") recall all too well the ruthlessness of this beast. The author handles ingeniously the characterizations and events of the period. And therein lies the mastery of this political-socially astute and innovative writer: his expanded concept of reality and his precepts about literature being born of a reality that is actually lived. This story is powerful. In honestly, however, I take serious issue with Vargas Llosa in that he does not give appropriate credit to a few present-day Dominican literary giants like Frank Moya Pons, Bernardo Vega, Roberto Cassa, and Jose Michel Cordero ... for their already published, widely respected historical research [upon which most every writer draws for accurate historical perspective] on the subject. Only a Vargas Llosa, I suppose, has the literary supremacy to pull it off so cleverly. Nevertheless, this is a novel that will enlighten the reader about the last days of the Trujillo Era and the psyche of "el Chivo"...goat. Pay very close attention to the quite, unassuming poet-president. Vargas Llosa is a priceless literary treasure.Alan CambeiraAuthor of AZUCAR! The Story of Sugar (a novel)

Rafael Trujillo ruled the Dominican Republic with an iron hand from 1930 to 1961. His cruelty and brutality could sentence people to disgrace, torture or death on a whim. His lust for power and women was insatiable, and a climate of fear was everywhere. Mario Vargas Llosa, the prize winning Peruvian author knows his subject well. And in this novel, he uses his best storytelling talents to recreate that harsh time in history when ruthlessness ruled. The known facts are all there, re-interpreted by the author to facilitate our understanding of what it must have been like to live through those awful times. And the few fictional characters are there to help tell the story.The story is told through three different viewpoints. The first is set in the present day, when a middle-aged female attorney who has lived in the United States since the age of 14, returns to the Dominican Republic. She's full of anger at her invalid father who was once an official in Trujillo's government, and it is only at the very end of the book that we understand why. But as she meets her relatives and finally lets them hear her personal story, two other compelling narratives are taking place in alternating chapters which are set in 1961.The reader gets a chance to see into the mind's eye of Rafael Trujillo himself. He's 70 years old now. Always immaculately well groomed, he's embarrassed by bouts of incontinence. And he's also finding it difficult to consummate his erotic encounters with young women. He's upset about these matters, but his mind is razor sharp, deeply involved in the political intrigues that are his forte, and able to force his underlings to shiver in terror at the whims of his disfavor.And then there is a group of assassins, who we first meet as they wait in the darkness to ambush his car on a lonely road. Each of these men has a good reason to hate the dictator. Each has a sorrowful story and as each story unfolds, I was able to better understand the vast mosaic of the evil regime and its effects on their lives and those of their relatives. I was horrified at the many acts of cruelty they had to endure. And I found myself worrying about the safety of their families.Then it happens. We all knew it would. After all, it's in all the history books. Rafael Trujillo was assassinated.But this is not a joyful conclusion. The regime didn't fall. And the punishments meted out to the perpetrators by Trujillo's son were the epitome of mercilessness. I wish the story wasn't true. It would be nice if I could think of it as a figment of the author's imagination. But alas, that is not the case.I literally couldn't put the book down and I devoured the author's words, letting them take me to the place he intended. He brought me right into the Dominican Republic during those awful times and into the hearts and minds of the very real human beings who lived through it. It was a voyage into the evil mind of Trujillo. And it also gave me an understanding

If you think a novel about the Trujillo Era (1930-61) in the Dominican Republic would be boring, think again. Mario Vargas Llosa's THE FEAST OF THE GOAT is a work of literary brilliance."Literature is fire," writes Vargas Llosa, a writer touted by critics to become the next Spanish-American writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and his latest novel radiates with the incendiary heat of Machiavellian politics, sexual obsession, and bestial brutality.To the inhabitants of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina was known as Chief, Generalissimo, the Benefactor, the Father of the New Nation, and His Excellency. To his enemies, Trujillo was the Beast and the Goat.For more than three decades, Trujillo ruled the Dominican Republic with an iron fist. He had cut the Gordian knot of the "Haitian problem" by having between 10,000 and 15,000 Haitians slaughtered.In 1961, writes Vargas Llosa, "the country had touched bottom, placed under quarantine because of the excesses of a regime which, although in the past it had performed services that could never be repaid, had degenerated into a tyranny that provoked universal revulsion."On the mild, starry night of Tuesday, May 30, 1961, the 70-year-old Trujillo, suffering from bouts of incontinence and impotence, was being driven from his palace in Ciudad Trujillo (Santo Domingo de Guzman) to his Mahogany House in San Cristobal, for another of his orgies--"to prove again he was a man." On the highway to San Cristobal, seven men stationed in three cars lay in ambush to assassinate him.THE FEAST OF THE GOAT has three storylines:(1) The story of Urania Cabral, now 49, who returns to the Dominican Republic in 1996, after 35 years absence from her homeland. At age 14 she had been cynically betrayed by her own father, Sen. Augustin Cabral, one of the highest-ranking officials in the Trujillo regime.(2) The story of those who plotted a military-civilian junta and were successful in tyrannicide but were captured by Trujillo's son.(3) The story of Trujillo himself, who (like Joseph Stalin, but on a lesser scale) accomplished much good but was also "the person in whom all the strands of the dread spider web [of tyranny, corruption, and terror] converged."THE FEAST OF THE GOAT is not for the squeamish. Its explicit language and shocking scenes of sex, violence, and torture depict the decadent life of "a small country, a huge hell."In a novel of this type, however, such excesses are non-gratuitous; one cannot imagine an adequate or realistic description of the Trujillo Era apart from such graphic scenes.The entire atmosphere of the Trujillo Era has a Kafkaesque quality. Like something in The Trial, a person could be arrested, tried, tortured, and executed and never discover his offense. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Trujillo's dictatorship is that it caused men such as Sen. Augustin Cabral, who otherwise would have remained decent, to betray their own flesh and blood.Although the word masterpiece often

La Fiesta del Chivo recrea la era Trujillo en la Republica Dominicana. Trujillo, como un semidios, decide el destino de los dominicanos. Y Vargas Llosa escoge los ultimos dias del Benefactor, del Generalísimo, del Jefe, para mostrarnos en detalle sus rutinas diarias, su séquito de subalternos, su visión del poder, de la vida, de la política. Sus colaboradores bien podrían ser los personajes siniestros y repugnantes detras de cualquier gobierno latinoamericano. El Coronel Abbes Garcia, Henry Chirinos, Agustín Cabral, Pupo Roman, Manuel Alfonso, son estereotipos de personajes que habitan a la sombra de cualquier gobierno democrático o dictatorial que practica el terror en defensa de las institucionses. En una conversación con el Presidente fantoche Balaguer, que le recomendada a Trujillo no firmar el ascenso del Teniente Peña Rivera, por estar vinculado entre otros hechos al asesinato de las Hermanas Mirabal, le dice Trujillo: "Usted Presidente Balaguer, tiene la suerte de ocuparse solo de aquello que la politica tiene de mejor. Leyes, reformas, nogociaciones diplomaticas, transformaciones sociales. Asi lo ha hecho treinta y un años. Le tocó el aspecto grato, amable de gobernar. Lo envidio. Me hubiera gustado ser solo un estadista , un reformador, pero gobernar tiene una cara sucia, sin la cual lo que usted hace sería imposible." La construcción de la novela es magistral. Escrita desde distintos planos muy cinematograficos, desde distintos puntos de vista y desde distintas epocas. Los narradores de un mismo hecho se entremezclan en el tiempo y en la historia, creando una visión total de lo sucedido, y de lo pensado, sentido, temido, soñado, esperado por cada uno de los protagonistas. El regreso de Urania Cabral, su voz questionando una época, a traves de los reclamos que hace a su padre, simboliza la recuperación de la palabra y de la libertad negada a la mujer mancillada, violada y utilizada como objeto sexual. Sobre la veracidad histórica de los hechos narrados, los historiados tienen la palabra. Los lectores asumimos La Fiesta del Chivo como un texto de ficción, un banquete literario, que viene a sumarse a la lista de grandes novelas dedicadas a los dictadores latinoamericanos y que forman parte ya de un género específico dentro de la literatura universal: El Señor Presidente de Miguel Angel Asturias, El Yo Supremo de Augusto Roa Bastos, El Otoño del Patriarca de Gabriel García Marquez, el Recurso del Metodo de Alejo Carpentier entre otras. En sus dos anteriores novelas El elogio de la Madrastra y Los Cuadernos de don Rigoberto, Vargas Llosa incursionó en el erotismo literario y una sutil fascinación por las obras de arte que son descritas y deseadas en el cuerpo de Lucrecia protagonista en ambas novelas. Con La Fiesta del Chivo, Vargas Llosa vuelve a la novela política. Y que es la política? Vargas Llosa responde en "La Fiesta del Chivo:"abrirse paso entre cadaveres".

¿Por qué regresa Urania Cabral a la isla que juró no volver a pisar? ¿Por qué sigue vacía y llena de miedo desde los catorce años? ¿Por qué no ha tenido un sólo amor? En la Fiesta del Chivo, la esperada y magistral nueva novela de Mario Vargas Llosa, asistimos a un doble entorno. Mientras Urania visita a su padre en Santo Domingo, volvemos a 1961, cuando la capital dominicana aún se llamaba Ciudad Trujillo. Allí un hombre tiraniza a tres millones de personas sin saber que se gesta una maquiavélica transición a la democracia. Vargas Llosa, un clásico contemporáneo, relata el fin de una Era dando voz, entre otros personajes históricos, al impecable e implacable generalísimo Trujillo y al sosegado y ambicioso Doctor Joaquín Balaguer que había de ser todavía, cuarenta años después (para desgracia de los dominicanos), el Sumo Pontífica de la política dominicana. Con un ritmo y una precisión difícilmente superables, este peruano universal muestra que la política puede consistir en abrirse camino entre cadáveres, y que un ser inocente puede convertirse en un regalo truculento. El escritor involucra en acciones inmorales a familias ligadas a la tiranía, muchas de las cuales se han dado por aludidas. Con algunos de los aspectos tratados en la novela, Vargas Llosa "irrita a miembros de familias poderosas" que se sienten "casi retratados" en personajes de la novela a quienes el autor involucra en orgías sexuales y otras actuaciones inmorales registradas durante la época de Trujillo. Un libro para no perder la raíces. Una novela que ya es historia. Una historia que sin terminar es ya novela.