The Feast of the Goat
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| Author | Mario Vargas Llosa |
|---|---|
| Original title | La Fiesta del Chivo |
| Translator | Edith Grossman |
| Language | Spanish |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Alfaguara |
Publication date | 2000 |
| Publication place | Peru |
Published in English | 2001 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 978-9505115846 Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character |
The Feast of the Goat (Spanish: La Fiesta del Chivo, 2000) is a novel by the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa. The book is set during the regime of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. The novel follows two interwoven storylines, both revealing the political and social environment in the Dominican Republic, past and present.
Plot summary
The novel's first story is that of the present-day return of Urania, the daughter of a disgraced crony of Trujillo to the city of her birth, Santo Domingo. It narrates Urania's odyssey in the present tense through the city she last saw as Ciudad Trujillo, renamed in honor of Generalísimo Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, nicknamed el Chivo ("The Goat"). Urania has left the Dominican and become a successful New York lawyer. Urania's return to the homeland and family, which she had sworn off forever is symbolic of the Dominican (and Latin American) political reality — the desire to confront the past and the complicity which made the horrors of Trujillo's reign possible. With each step, Urania remembers more of her past; with each person she encounters, the reader gains a window into the mentality of a people who have tried all but to wipe thirty-one years of tyranny from their collective memories.
The second story is set in the days and months surrounding Trujillo's 1961 assassination. Vargas Llosa uses this segment to meticulously examine the thoughts and lives of the most important political actors of the era: Trujillo himself, then-figurehead president Joaquín Balaguer, intelligence chief Johnny Abbes García, and each of the general's assassins, as well as a variety of fictional and composite characters. Each of these figures makes for a fascinating character study; the motivations and philosophy of the Goat and his cronies provide valuable insight into the mind of a dictatorship. The moral and rational justifications presented for the iron-fisted governance of Trujillo, the torture and persecution, the terror and assassination campaigns against Dominican exiles, and Trujillo's 1937 massacre of tens of thousands of Haitians on the Haitian-Dominican border are as informative as they are shocking. The story furnishes a real perspective on the mind of the Dominican people, and indeed, any people living under oppression, as well as allowing a glimpse into the machinations of global and hemispheric politics during the Cold War. Vargas Llosa examines Trujillo's attitudes towards communist Cuba's Castro, Venezuela's Betancourt, and of course John F. Kennedy and the "Yanqui meddlers" who eventually brought him down.
Vargas Llosa dedicates a large portion of the novel to narrating the eventual sad fates of Trujillo's assassins. Principal among these stories is that of the ex-Secretary of the Armed Forces José René "Pupo" Román, who had a minor role in the conspiracy to kill the dictator. Román was tortured in the most brutal and horrendous manner possible for several months before dying at the hand of Trujillo's son Ramfis. Some of the tortures described in The Feast of the Goat are horrific to the point of incrediblity; nevertheless, the writer insists that he had to tone down descriptions of some of the procedures used in the La Cuarenta prison in order to make them more believable, which is not to say more palatable.
Explanation of the novel's title
The title of the novel is taken from the popular Dominican merengue Mataron al Chivo ("They Killed the Goat") which has its roots in the assassination of May 30, 1961. It is cited at the beginning of the novel:
- El pueblo celebra
- con gran entusiasmo
- la fiesta del Chivo
- el treinta de mayo
- "The people celebrate
- With great enthusiasm
- the feast of the Goat
- the thirtieth of May"
Characters
Urania Cabral: the protagonist.
El Senor Cabral: the father of Urania and a member of the government.
Rafael Trujillo: "The Goat", a Caribbean dictator.
Ramfis: abused by his father as a child and becomes a playboy. Later avenges for his father's death.
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
A motion picture adaptation exists, starring Isabella Rossellini as Urania Cabral. This was directed by Luis Llosa, Mario Vargas Llosa's cousin.
A theater adaptation of the novel under the direction of Jorge Alí Triana has recently premiered in Lima, with Alberto Isola, a famous Peruvian actor, theater director and professor, portraying Trujillo.
Sources
Ruiz, Maria Regina. (2005). The permeability of history and literature in Santa Evita and La fiesta del Chivo [electronic resource]. Doctoral dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin.
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?Ver=1&Exp=03-04-2013&FMT=7&DID=765350711&RQT=309&attempt=1&cfc=1
Resurrecting Rafael: Fictional Incarnations of a Dominican Dictator. Available at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/callaloo/v029/29.1patterson.html