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The Feast of the Goat

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The Feast of the Goat
AuthorMario Vargas Llosa
Original titleLa Fiesta del Chivo
TranslatorEdith Grossman
LanguageSpanish
GenreNovel
PublisherAlfaguara
Publication date
2000
Publication placePeru
Published in English
2001
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBNISBN 978-9505115846 Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character

The Feast of the Goat (Template:Lang-es, 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.

Title

The novel's title 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 of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, the Dictator of the Dominican Republic. It is cited at the beginning of the novel:

"The people celebrate
With great enthusiasm
the feast of the Goat
the thirtieth of May"

Merengue is a style of music created by Ñico Lora in the 1920s but Rafael Trujillo had promoted it during his era. Due to the influence of the Dominican Republic, it soon became the country’s national music. Therefore, incorporating a part of this music in the beggining of the book reminds readers of the roots of Latin American society, which can be read about in this novel.

Critical Reception

The realist style of The Feast of the Goat is recognized by some reviewers as being a break from a more allegorical approach to the dictator novel.[1] The novel received largely positive reviews, most of which were willing to accept sacrifices of historical accuracy in favour of good storytelling.[2]

A common comment on the novel is the graphic nature of the many acts of torture and murder which are depicted in the novel. Vargas lets the reader see the realities of an oppressive regime with a degree of detail not often used by his compatriots in Latin American literature, as Michael Wood suggests in the London Review of Books: "Vargas Llosa ... tells us far more about the details of day-to-day intrigue, and the sordid, sadistic minutiae of torture and murder."[3]

Walter Kirn of the New York Times suggests that the "grisly scenes of dungeon interrogations and torture sessions" cast other aspects of the novel in a pale light, draining them of their significance and impact.[4]

Similarly, Kirn implies that the "narrative machinery" mentioned by Wood as being somewhat unwieldy also produces a largely superfluous storyline.[4] The plot line centered on Urania Cabral is described by Sturrock as being an emotional centre that focuses the novel, and Wood agrees that her confrontations with past demons holds the readers attention.[1] In contrast, Kirn's review states that Urania's segments are "talky and atmospheric ... seem to be on loan from another sort of book."[4]

Most reviews of The Feast of the Goat make either indirect of direct reference to the relationship between sexuality and power. Miller, Heawood, Kirn, and Wood detail the connection between Trujillo's gradual loss of ultimate control, both over his body and his followers. The means by which Trujillo reinforces political power through sexual acts and begins to lose personal conviction as his body fails him are topics of frequent discussion among reviewers.

Plot summary

The plot centres around three strands: a focus on Urania Cabral, a focus on the conspirator of Trujillo's assasination, and a focus on Trujillo himself [5]. The novel moves back and forth between these stands and back and forth through earlier times as well.

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.

Characters

Urania Cabral: the protagonist, who escapes from the Dominican as a child and returns in adulthood to confront her past.

El Senor Cabral: the father of Urania and the president of the Senate under Trujillo's rule.

Rafael Trujillo: "The Goat", "The Chief", the dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961 and official President of the Republic from 1930 to 1938 and 1943 to 1952 (Delpar, p 597). Trujillo assumes power after the U.S. military occupation of the Dominican, during which time he rises to the rank of Commander in Chief of the Dominican Armed Forces. In 1930 he becomes President of the Republic through electoral fraud (Balderston, p 1501). During his "thirty-one years of horrendous political crimes", Trujillo modernized the country's infrastructure and military, but his regime's attacks against its enemies overseas (particularly the attempted assasination of Rómulo Betancourt, president of Venezuala) led to the imposition of economic sanctions on the Dominican Republic by the Organization of American States in the 1950's (Tenenbaum, p 274). The resultant economic downturn, in conjunction with other factors, leads to the CIA supported assasination plot that ends Trujillo's life on May 30th, 1961 (Delpar, p 597).

Joaquín Balaguer: The puppet president of the Republic who assumes real power after Trujillo's death.

Johnny Abbes García: The head of Trujillo's secret police and the mastermind behind the regime's most cruel acts. He is a fat, poorly kept man, but is the most trusted man to Trujillo.

Henry Chirinos: Supervisor of Trujillo's business operations at the time of his assassination. At various times held other positions such as Senator and Minister of Justice.

Antonio Imbert Barrera: A politician who becomes disillusioned with the deception and cruelty of the Trujillo regime, and who later helps to kill Trujillo. His first conspiracy to kill Trujillo was foiled one day early by the unsuccessful attempted overthrow of the regime by Cuban para-military forces.

Antonio de la Maza: One of Trujillo's personal guard whose brother is killed as part of a government cover-up, and who later helps to kill Trujillo.

Salvador Estrelle Sadhalá: "Turk", A devout Catholic who, in indignation of the regime's many crimes against God, swears an oath against Trujillo and later helps to kill him.

Amado García Guerrero: "Amadito", a Lieutenant in the army who gave up his beloved as proof of his loyalty to Trujillo, and who later helps to kill Trujillo.

Ramfis Trujillo: the son of Rafael Trujillo and a brutal military leader who seeks vengeance against his father's killers. He was decorated as a military officer by his father, and was unsuccessfully schooled at the Fort Leavenworth Military Academy. Ramfis was also known for his womanizing.

Radhamés Trujillo: the second son of Rafeal Trujillo.

Petán Trujillo: Rafael Trujillo's brother, who seeks vengeance against his brother's killers.

Héctor Trujillo: Rafael Trujillo's brother, who seeks vengeance against his brother's killers.

Major themes

Through literature, Llosa examines the prevalence of authoritarianism and dictatorship in Latin America. Through this novel, Vargas Llosa paints a picture of Dominican society that is both tender and severe [6]. Though this novel, he also attempts to help us understand some irrational forces of Latin tradition that give rise to despots. Among these are traditions are machismo, and child-rearing practices that repeatedly shames the children through each generation, withering their souls away [7]


Political corruption

The structure of the South American Society was very hierarchal and gendered. It was ruled by a cruel dictator, Rafael Trujillo, who haunts the people of Santo Domingo even 35 years after his death. He is truely a caudillo who ruled with brutality and corruption. He encourages personality cult in his capitalist society and causes decadence to the regime.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). His people are to remain loyal to him at no cost. Some lietenents who's wife or children were violated still remained blindly loyal to him, as he validates the violation of women as an expression of political and sexual power.[8] Even the church and military instituions were employed to give women to the tyrant for pleasure.

Many of the assassins had belonged to the Trujillo regime or had at one point been staunch supporters of him, only to find their support eroded away by the crimes of the state against its people. [9] Imbert, one of the assassins, sums up this realization, "They kill our fathers, our brothers, our friends. And now they're killing our women. And here we sit, resigned, waiting our turn."[10] This was in response to the infamous murder of the Mirabal sisters.

Mario Vargas Llosa described the nature of Trujillo as a dictator in one interview, "He had more or less all the common traits of a Latin American dictator, but pushed to the extreme. In cruelty, I think he went far far away from the rest -- and in corruption, too."[11]

Machismo

Machismo is defined by Merriam-Webster's dictionary as: 1: a strong sense of masculine pride; an exaggerated masculinity 2: an exaggerated or exhilarating sense of power or strength. [12] Its root is in the Spanish word "macho" and machismo is often connected to Latin American masculinity.

The two important parts of machismo are aggressiveness and hyper-sexuality. The aggressiveness means that all me should show their strength and power to others. The hyper-sexuality means that men should demonstrate their sexual virility with many female partners.

Mario Vargas Llosa said of Trujillo's machismo and treatment of women, "He went to bed with his ministers' wives, not only because he liked these ladies but because it was a way to test his ministers. He wanted to know if they were ready to accept this extreme humiliation. Mainly the ministers were prepared to play this grotesque role -- and they remained loyal to Trujillo even after his death."[11]

The sexual abuse of Urania is part of this quest for Machismo that the dictator was known for. However, it is a humilitating experience and a failure for Trujillo, who fails to achieve an erection and is unable to reach his role of supreme "macho.".[13]

Memory

All three threads of the novel deal with the issue of memory in some sense or another. The most apparent confrontation of memory is on the part of Urania Cabral, who has returned to the Dominican Republic for the first time in 30 years, and is forced to confront her father and the traumas that led her to leave the country at 14. She was the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of the dictator himself, a sacrifice her father made to try to gain favor with the dictator again, a fact that she alludes to through the whole book. The book ends with her recounting the memory of that night to her aunt and cousins, who never knew the true reason she left the country. When her aunt is suprised that she remembers all these details, she responds that while she forgets many things, "I remember everything about that night."[14] For Urania, forgetting the atrocities committed by the regime is unacceptable.[15] Her father, on the other hand, is not capable of joining her in this process of remembering, since he has suffered a stroke and is not capable of speaking; however, Urania is angry that he chose to forget these things while he was still capable of aknowledging them.[16]

Memory is also important in the sections about the assassins. Each recalls the actions that led him to take place in the assassination of Trujillo. These real historical events included the 1956 Galinez kiddnapping and murder, the 1960 murder of the Mirabal sisters, and the 1961 split with the Catholic Church. "Vargas Llosa systematically links each conspirator with a specific historical event that typified the violence of the dictatorship."[17]

In addition, because of her academic study of the history of the Trujillo regime, she is also confronting the memory of the regime for the country as a whole.[18] This is in keeping with one purpose of the book, which is to ensure that the atrocities of the dictatorship and the dangers of absolute power will be remembered by a new generation of people.[19]

Writing and power

Power can be seen as a discourse of prohibition which can be reflected in history, for history reflects on what is told or was not told. [20] The government's discourse in The Feast of the Goat shows prohibition discourse. For example, foreign newspapers and magazines were prohibited from entering Trujillo's country as they were seen as a threat to the government's ideas.

Writing expands and limits knowledge. As power influences what gets written, history goes through a selection process. For example, in Trujillo's era, abuse were not recorded in offical history. Through time, writing evolves. The discourse in The Feast of the Goat brings back history and unveils some of the abuse under Trujillo's regime. It shows the role of power in society and its influences on different people.

Writing also has the power to transform reality. It brings us back to the past which allows us to comphrehend myths or distorted stories told by historians. Knowing the past is crucial to our understanding of the present that takes us to postmodernism. This novel, thus, can be seen as a postmodern discourse that gives power to history recreation. [21]

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

A motion picture adaptation was made in 2005 in English. It stars Isabella Rossellini as Urania Cabral, Paul Freeman as her father Agustin, and Tomas Milian as Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. This was directed by Luis Llosa, Mario Vargas Llosa's cousin. It was filmed in both the Dominican Republic and in Spain.[22]

A theater adaptation of the novel was written by Jorge Alí Triana and his daughter Veronica Triana in 2003, and directed by Jorge Triana.[23].

Fact and Fiction

The novel is a combination of fact and fiction. Blending together these two elements is important in any historical novel, but especially in The Feast of the Goat because Vargas Llosa chose to narrate an actual event through the minds of both real and fictional characters.[24] Some characters are fictional, and those that are non-fictional still have fictionalized aspects in the book. The general details of the assassination are true, and the assassins are all real people.[25] While they lie in wait for the Dictator to arrive, they recount actual crimes of the regime, such as the murder of the Mirabal sisters.[9] However, other details are invented by Llosa, such as Amadito's murder of the brother of the woman he loved.[9] In this way, Vargas Llosa weaves fact and fiction together to create a narrative of the events of the assassination.

Those within the regime are also a mix of fictional characters and real people. Cabral is a fictional person, but the current President Balaguer is not. The Cabral family is completely fictional. According to Vargas Llosa "uses history as a starting point in constructing a fictionalized account of Trujillo's "spiritual colonization" of the Dominican Republic as experienced by one Dominican family.[26] The fictional family allows Vargas Llosa to show two sides of the Trujillo regime: one, through Augustin, of the ultimate dedication and sacrifice to the leader of the nation; the other, through Urania, of the violence of the regime and the legacy of pain it left behind.

Vargas Llosa also fictionalized the internal thoughts of the characters who were non-fictional, especially those of the Goat himself, "Vargas Llosa's expands all the way into the very "dark area" of Trujillo's consciousness (as the storyteller dares to conceive it)."[27] Llosa also built an image of the regime with the troubled historical events: "...the slaughter of 25,000 Haitian immigrants in 1937, the murder of the dissident Mirabel sisters, the turncoat bishops with their Pastoral letter, the invasion of Dominican Exiles on June 14 1959 and the enduring, clandestine, “June 14” dissident movement". [28]

Mario Vargas Llosa said about the historical accuracy of his book, "It's a novel, not a history book, so I took many, many liberties. The only limitation I imposed on myself was that I was not going to invent anything that couldn't have happened within the framework of life in the Dominican Republic. I have respected the basic facts, but I have changed and deformed many things in order to make the story more persuasive -- and I have not exaggerated."[11]

Notes

  1. ^ a b Sturrock 2002
  2. ^ Cheuse
  3. ^ Wood
  4. ^ a b c Kirn 2001
  5. ^ http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/vargas/fiestac.htm#ours
  6. ^ http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/V/VargasLl.html
  7. ^ Lorenzo 2002
  8. ^ Neissa 120-129
  9. ^ a b c Patterson 2006, p. 232
  10. ^ Mario Vargas Llosa, 137
  11. ^ a b c Gussow 2002
  12. ^ http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/machismo
  13. ^ Andrew B. Wolff 287
  14. ^ Mario Vargas Llosa 385
  15. ^ Andrew B. Wolff 268
  16. ^ Andrew B. Wolff 268
  17. ^ Andrew B. Wolff 275
  18. ^ Andrew B. Wolff 267
  19. ^ Andrew B. Wolff 263
  20. ^ Ruiz 22
  21. ^ Ruiz 31
  22. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0428532/
  23. ^ Bruce Weber
  24. ^ http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/feastofthegoat.html
  25. ^ Richard Patterson, 224
  26. ^ Andrew B. Wolff
  27. ^ Richard Patterson, 225
  28. ^ http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/feastofthegoat.html

References

  • Neissa, Peter Anthony (Aug). "Dictators, Directives, Tyrannical Figures, and Cultural Discourse: Jorge Zalamea, Gabriel García Marquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa". Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences. 65 (2). Boston College: 535. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |coauthors= and |month= (help)
  • Vargas Llosa, Mario. The Feast of the Goat. New York: Picador USA, 2001.


  • Encyclopedia of Contemporary Latin American and Caribbean Cultures. Editors: Daniel Balderston, Mike Gonzalez, and Ana M. López. Volume 3. Routledge: New York, New York. 2000.
  • Encyclopedia of Latin America. Editor: Helen Delpar. McGraw-Hill: New York, New York. 1974.
  • Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture. Editor: Barbara A. Tenenbaum. Volume 5. Charles Scribner's Sons: New York, New York. 1996.

See also

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