GROUP PORTRAIT DICTATOR WITH FUND
The Latin American novel of the dictator is still alive in future generations. The forcefully demonstrates Jorge Eduardo Benavides in his recent A million suns (Alfaguara), which enormously ambitious narrative recreates the seven-year dictatorship populist Velasco Alvarado in Peru (1968-1975).
Benavides's main contribution to this subgenre is to show that behind the messianic vision of a man at the crossroads of all the threads, there is an environment very much willing to handle the chop. Velasco dictator appears here as being moody and paranoid but basically well-intentioned, faithful to the end in their revolutionary project, able to mourn at the way that the "ungrateful homeland" slaughter returns. As a character, fails to dominate the novel, Benavides is more interested in the military and civil environment conspire, are gaining ground, dreaming of the fall of Velasco. Among these is a young military more Montesinos, the most Machiavellian of all, willing even to sacrifice a relationship ("there are things that must be done even if it hurts") provided to consolidate state power at the first demonstrations against the regime. Montesinos emerge as a great creation, the novel earns interest every time he appears on stage.
Novela "power" rather than the dictator, then. A "microphysics of power" Foucault would say that it has always been, that power is never concentrated in one person, is diffuse and extends over infinite ramifications. Thus, in the Latin American novel, the charismatic and fearsome great leaders of the French style in I Roa Bastos, Supreme (1974), have given way to impose a puppet incapable of leading members of his court. May in fact never held power at all, and we have misread these novels: In Autumn of the Patriarch (1975), García Márquez and showed us a dictator who, as the novel progressed, was being supplanted with him by his close associates (must read this novel unnatural, like a magical realist text is, to the surprise of many, a precursor of the current thinking on the triumph of the simulacrum in contemporary society). The incident Trujillo Vargas Llosa in The Feast of the Goat (2000) is perhaps an exception to the rule, although even there the best parts of the novel have to do with the way in which Balaguer is manipulating the facts to become the unchallenged successor.
In recent years, several projects have expanded the narrative record of what is meant by "novel" Latin America (Aira and Bellatín, Zambra). The main trunk, the realist, the concern for social and political issues - however, remains very much alive. Since his first novel, Years useless (2002), Benavides was installed as one of the writers of the new generation settled central to these traditions. It is not difficult to see the shadow of Vargas Llosa in certain basic ideas of the project narrative, the way an entire society is corrupted to the abuse of power, for example - and also in the architectural structure of his novels, in skillful in incorporating the speech of the characters within their párrafos (“Sánchez Idíaquez esbozó una sonrisa inmensa, que le achinó el rostro, qué guapa estaba hoy Leticita, dijo, y ella frunció la nariz como ante un mal olor, cogió el abrigo del decano, que no usara ese diminutivo horrible con su nombre, por favor…”). También se puede reconocer la influencia no tan obvia del José Donoso más realista en el ritmo de las frases, en la minuciosa profusión de detalles que van dándole textura y densidad a sus novelas.
Un millón de soles tarda en armarse. Velasco aparece, enérgico, ambicioso; los militares y civiles de la corte –Tamariz, Carranza, Ravines, Montesinos, are portrayed with their ambitions and petty, parading women, but in this patriarchal society appear to serve only men to confess in the privacy of the bedroom, or sex. There are frames that are deployed in bulk, secret meetings continued while playing poker and drinking whiskey and gin with Bingo Club (these talks serve as a sort of Greek chorus, commenting on the action while advancing the novel). From the second half, tying the ends Benavides is the world of the novel becomes intelligible and dynamic.
Benavides's gamble is risky: instead of focusing on important government sometime de Velasco - a catalyst to explain to us which meant that regime - the Peruvian writer has opted for a more panoramic view, encompassing, in which a series of events will mark out the seven of the revolutionary government: the nationalization of U.S. oil companies, the deportation of opponents, the arrival of Yugoslav advisors to transform the industrial model, the nationalization of the press, the police strike. Benavides is winning points, as suggested Cortázar winning novels, but in reality it is a trap: the last fifty pages and exciting show that what Benavides wanted was to win by knock-out . It does.
(published in the English edition of Letras Libres, March 2008)
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