Vargas Llosa part 2: Its in the Body

It seems to me that a central way in which our authors have chosen to break down the mystique of the dictator is to show their bodies crumbling. Vargas Llosa shows us the naked “Generallisimo” like Marquez showed us the naked, almost dead Simon Bolivar to start The General in his Labyrinth. Although we never see The Supreme naked in Roa Bastos’ work, the physical degeneration of Dr. Francia is still omnipresent. Ultimately Vargas Llosa and his fellow dictator novelists are trying to show the human side of the dictator; the frail bodies that lay behind the powerful mystique. It also seems that the degeneration that occurs in all three works is an attempt to show the cancerous effect that wielding absolute power has on the body. This isparticularly true of Bolivar, but also of Trujillo and Dr. Francia, as if the authors want to show the natural effects of an unnatural concentration of power in the hands of one individual.

Vargas Llosa’s portrait of the naked Trujillo is an attempt to emasculate him. His body is portrayed as effeminate with a “soft belly” and “hairless legs”. Under his “white pubis” Urania sees his “small, dead sex.” Above these weak features, his eyes, red from weeping, stare down. Even before he loses his erection, Trujillo looks weak and ridiculous in his struggle to undress Urania. He takes Urania to his bedroom not out of lust (although that comes), but to prove his physicality and virility to the world. It does not seem to occur to the dictator how weak he looks, trying to seduce a girl of 14, who is not a women by any physical or mental standard. His impotence enrages him, because it is symbolic of his failing power and the betrayal of his body. Like Bolivar and Dr. Francia, Trujillo is a man who is supposed to control everyone and everything in his domain, yet he fails to even control his own body.

So that’s it then. Feast of the Goat is the last novel in the line of dictator novels assigned in this course. In the end I have to agree with Professor Jon: Augusto Roa Bastos’ novel was the best. Maybe it was the Wikipedia article that made me appreciate its true significance. I think the course was successful in illustrating and exploring the disparate attributes of the dictator novel and also the extent to which writing has great power. However, I am left with one question: what would a Roa Bastos or any of these authors think about the power of writing in the era of blogs and Wikipedia? Jon, your assignment for the summer is to contact each of these authors and get a quality response to my question!