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The Feast of the Goat
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More reviews by Peter Gordon
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The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
THE FEAST OF THE GOAT, the latest novel by MARIO VARGAS LLOSA, one of Latin America's leading writers, is about the fall of Rafael Trujillo -- the Goat, dictator of the Dominican Republic -- in 1961.
Urania Cabral, 49, daughter of one of Trujillo's erstwhile ministers, returns to the her homeland in 1996, after 35 years in the United States, having left shortly before the Trujillo's dramatic assassination. During this brief visit to her estranged and now paralyzed father, the story of Trujillo's regime -- and Urania's reasons for leaving -- come out.
Readers who like Latin American fiction and Vargas Llosa in particular will find much to admire here. Although one knows the ending (or least one thinks one does), the book is still compelling. Trujillo is of course a monster almost a caricature of a caudillo, a character one that might be unbelievable if one didn't know if it is all pretty much true. The book is a technical marvel, with three different storylines moving back in forth in time all coming together in a surprising and shocking denouement.
It is, in addition, a work of historical fiction that illuminates the periods and characters, rather than obscuring them in literary embellishments. And if you want your literature to have a point, it would be hard to find a novel that does a better job of illustrating the fallacy that authoritarianism is acceptable in the interests of security.
But THE FEAST OF THE GOAT should be of more than mere literary interest to readers here, for the scenarios described here have played themselves out more than once in recent Asian history. We can feel echoes of Trujillo in Marcos and Suharto and echoes of Trujillo's awful wife, children and extended family in Tommy and Imelda -- among others.
Plus ca change ... the trappings of democracy failing to give credibility to a corrupt regime, the inconsistency of American policy, waivering from concern for human rights to short-sighted realpolitik, crony capitalism, brutality masquerading as justice.
We cannot even take comfort in the fall of Trujillo. Some dictators, such as Milosevic and Marcos, fall cleanly; others are merely replaced by other members of the nomenklatura. Trujillo was succeeded by Balaguer, his appointed President. Trujillo's son Ramfis stayed around as head of the Armed Forces to take vengeance and empty the Treasury.
And what of Urania? Is she cleansed by this visit? Perhaps. But 35 years is a long time. And she was one of the lucky ones. Vargas Llosa reminds us what happens when brutality and corruption is tolerated in the name of stability: a terrible waste of lives and humanity.
All of which begs the question: where is Asia's Vargas Llosa? The pen (or the word processor these days) can be a mighty weapon when yielded by one with such skill.
Peter Gordon
06/03/2002
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Peter Gordon is editor of The Asian Review of Books. |
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