The Book Depository The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa

Author: Mrs. J. PIRES-OBRIEN

Rating: 5

Review: This book is a tale of tyranny with lessons for everyone that values their dignity and their freedom. It is probably the most sophisticated novel of the Peruvian-born writer Mario Vargas LLosa, who in 2010 won the Nobel Prize for Literature. It skilfully recreates in fiction the last years of the dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina in the Dominican Republic, as well as the political turmoil that occurred after his assassination in 1961. The settings are real and the situations perfectly plausible as told by Urania Cabral, one of the tyrant's many victims, who was sent to the United States by the sisters of her nunnery's academy to study in a similar school in Adrian, Michigan. After finishing high school in Michigan, she moved to Boston to attend Harvard and after graduation she went to work for the World Bank in Washington, D.C. Uri, as she is called by her friends in the United States -a nickname that is very unlike the debauched ones which were common at that time in the Dominican Republic-, cuts off all ties with her father and her family, and decides never to return to her country of birth. Now a forty-nine year old woman with a slender figure and big brown eyes she is well settled in the United States where she presently works for a law firm in New York. Unmarried, she lives for her work and spends her spare time reading and researching the history of the Trujillo Era. Although Urania has never had a holiday, she makes a last minute decision to travel to her homeland for a week. She wonders what made her take that hasty decision and whether she would eventually regret it. Urania's narrative takes place entirely during the week she spends in Santo Domingo. It unfolds partly through monologues in front of her stroke-stricken father, Augustín Cabral, once an important figure in the old regime until he was cast aside by Trujillo without any apparent reason. Urania wants to tell her father about this and the facts she learned about Trujillo and his closest supporters, as well as about herself. Her father does not hear what she says; his eyes focus on her mouth as if trying to lip read her. She carries on talking anyway. Flashbacks from her childhood help to close some of the gaps in the story, a big jigsaw puzzle, which she is now able to complete using her expertise. The title of this book has to do with the plot to assassinate the dictator, who in his later years was nicknamed `the Goat' by his detractors, as well as with an existing folk festival of the goat, a prized meat in Latin America. It took nearly thirty years for people to perceive the true colours of the dictator. Before that, he was called by the most sycophantic titles like `Father of the New Nation', `His Excellency', `The Generalissimo', `The Benefactor' or simply `The Chief'. To his detractors, Trujillo became the personification of the devil for he robbed people's souls and turned them into non-entities. In one of her flashbacks Urania recalls the visits of the dictator to the house of the Minister Don Froilan, in the absence of the latter, to have sexual encounters with his wife. She then recollects that the Generalissimo had the habit of visiting the wives of his ministers in their absence. She is saddened that her father had turned a blind eye to that and cannot help but wonder if Trujillo had tried the same with her own mother. The judgement of history that crystallised decades later revealed Trujillo as a bully and a power-addicted psychopath who ordered the massacre of thousands of Haitians and brought misery to his countrymen. As young officer's training recruit man Trujillo revealed himself to be a confident individual. His self-confidence was boosted further by a certain Sergeant Gittleman, an American marine officer, who provided his military training during the occupation, mentoring him and then becoming his friend in the United States. Trujillo liked to boast about his military discipline and he always acknowledged the fact that he owed it to the marines. He had a cunning ability to read people's body language and facial expressions, something which he used to browbeat his subordinates and opponents. Just before the Presidential elections of 1930, the Dominican Republic was suffering from a collapsed economy and rampant crime. Trujillo, then in charge of the Dominican National Guard, was a presidential candidate who embraced the popular belief at the time that the ills of the country were caused by the Haitian immigrants. The people saw him as the man who could bring a definite solution to the problem and a panacea for their country's problems. Once elected, Trujillo stayed legally in office until 1938 but managed to remain in power until 1961 by governing through a series of puppet presidents. Soon after taking office he became the richest man in his country as well as the biggest land owner and employer. The fact that he practically had a monopoly of the job market perpetuated his father-figure image. Urania's father, the Senator Augustín Cabral, also known as `Egg Head' due to his high intelligence, was an important figure in the regime. Before becoming the President of the Senate, he had been Minister of Foreign Affairs and President of the Dominican Party. Sadly, his intelligence did not prevent him from partaking in the popular racism against Haitians. It certainly did not make him a knower of character: he admired the punctuality, order, exactitude and discipline of the Chief but was blind to the Chief's faults. In his favour Senator Cabral was an honest man who never used his position for personal gain. The same cannot be said of the remaining men of the dictator's inner circle. Joaquín Balaguer, the puppet President, was a savvy politician, capable of maintaining his composure no matter what. Senator Henry Chirinos, whose nickname had to do with his drinking habit and his fancy rhetoric, was a hypocrite who after the end of the regime pretended to be a democrat to secure the post of ambassador to the United States. As Urania found out during the time she worked for the World Bank, it was he who had betrayed her father causing his downfall. The puppet President, like the two senators, Cabral and Chirinos, was just a figureheads who served to give the country a pretence of democracy. Only the military chiefs had real power in the inner circle of the dictator, specially General José René (Pupo) Román, the head of the armed forces, and Colonel Johnny Abbes García, the former informer who was recently appointed head of the military intelligence service, SIM. Known by a rude nickname linked to his bad appearance, Garcia was a cold and cruel torturer and murderer. In spite of these credentials the Chief still managed to browbeat him for his failure in the mission to assassinate President Betancourt of Venezuela. All the men who conspired against Trujillo were recently disaffected, each with their personal motives. Antonio de la Maza who came from an anti-Trujillista family which actually fought the dictator, at some point succumbed to the charisma of Trujillo and even worked for him together with his brother, who was recently killed by the dictator. A more typical story was that of the Lieutenant Amado García Guerrero, known as Amadito, a model soldier who was trained to obey orders. He hated Trujillo because he forbade him to marry Luisa Gil, the woman he loved and for turning him into a murderer during a test of loyalty forced on him, when he fired two shots into the head of the prisoner unaware that the prisoner he shot was Luisa's brother. The conspiracy had two main phases: eliminating the dictator and forming the new government. The first phase of the conspiracy was the ambush, to be carried out by a group of seven: besides the already mentioned Antonio de la Maza and Amadito there were also Salvador Estrella Sadhalá (the Turk), Tony Imbert, Pedro Livio Cedeño, Huáscar Tejeda Pimentel and Roberto Pastoriza Neret. The second phase of the conspiracy was to put in place the plan of action for the transition government, and it had the support of no other than the chief of the Armed Forces himself, General Román. However, after the dictator was killed on 30th May, 1961, the expected regime change did not occur since Román became paralysed with fear after finding out that the Chief had been killed but that his driver had survived the ambush. The half baked conspiracy failed to foresee the need for safe hideouts for the seven men that participated in the ambush. As a result of Roman's failure to carry out his part of the agreement, most of the principal conspirators were arrested, tortured and had their property destroyed; hundreds of innocent members of the family and friends of the conspirators suffered the same fate. Of the group of seven only one survived -Tony Imbert-, thanks to the help of a conscientious individual, a rare breed in those days when most people had lost their better humanity. Of the five who were caught straight way, two luckier ones managed to kill themselves before being taken into custody while the remaining had to endure several months of torture before being executed by Trujillo's son Ramfis, with the full knowledge of President Balaguer. Soon the implication of General Pupo Román in the conspiracy was discovered and he too was arrested. There is a superimposing narrative over the plot surrounding the operation `Killing the Goat', in the form of an anatomy of a servile society that results from all tyrannies. There is also something Dickensian in the vile situations which the characters of this book found themselves, reminders of how things should not be done. Since the tyranny does not allow the right of free expression, people are not aware of what really goes on in the government. This is how people can be tricked by propaganda, indoctrination and the fear of isolation. Once individuals abdicate their free will to the leader, they become like children who eventually love author

Author: Amazon Customer

Rating: 4

Review: Vargas Llosa writes powerfully of the dictator Trujillo (called "the Goat" by some because of his high pitched "bleating" voice) who dominated life in the Dominican Republic for over 30 years before his assassination in 1961. Interweaving real and fictitious characters this ambitous and well researched novel seeks to give a multifaceted picture of unbridled power and its effect on the person who holds the power and everyone else. It is equally fascinating on both counts. The Peruvian Nobel Laureate writes very well (it's even better in Spanish!), and it's true to say I couldn't put the book down once I had started it. The author claims the subject matter to be emblematic of dictatorships which were commonplace in Central and South America during this period (many of these brutal regimes were supported by the US of course to keep the Communists out). The difference is that Trujillo's rule was more totalitarian than most, similar to Stalin's Russia in its cult of personality and stranglehold on dissent. The disgrace of a fictional high-level supporter of Trujillo who never finds out what he is accused of could (as one of the characters suggests) come straight from Kafka. In a sense the book follows the pattern of a number of historical novels written by Latin American writers (such as "The House of the Spirits" by Isabella Allende), everything leading to an tipping point which unleashes unimaginable violence before a concluding comment on the historical legacy of the events. Be prepared for a couple of quite gruesome chapters describing the torture of people connected with Trujillo's assassination. It's also true to say that there is savage black humour throughout. I don't agree that this is a more complete book than Marquez' "A Hundred Years of Solitude" as some critics have claimed. For me Marquez' vision and technical brilliance sets him apart from all other South American writers of the twentieth century. Even so Vargas Llosa is a highly intelligent writer who deserves to be read more by the English speaking world. Highly recommended.