Violence, pathos and the triumph of fiction in Vargas Llosa’s Lituma en los Andes

José Manuel Blanco Mayor

doi:10.1515/roja-2024-0007

Artikel Open Access

Violence, pathos and the triumph of fiction in Vargas Llosa’s Lituma en los Andes

José Manuel Blanco Mayor

Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 14. November 2024

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Aus der Zeitschrift Romanistisches Jahrbuch Band 75 Heft 1

Abstract

Based on a theoretical framework of violence largely rooted in the work of Jan Philipp Reemtsma, this paper aims to examine the representation of violence in Lituma en los Andes. Through a nuanced analysis of select passages, I will place special emphasis on the significance of allusions to Greek mythology and the hybrid nature in which these mythical references are presented. Instead of promoting the transcendence of absolute truths, the novel advocates a relativistic aesthetics that challenges clear-cut ideological dualisms such as ‘civilization’ versus ‘barbarism’. While acknowledging that Mario Vargas Llosa's fictional works are influenced by the author’s ideological biases (especially in the case of a novel firmly rooted in specific socio-political contexts like Lituma in the Andes), the objective of this paper is to underscore the fictional aspect of violence and to dissect certain allusions to myths and texts where the reflection on violence plays a central role.

Keywords: Mario Vargas Llosa; Lituma en los Andes; violence; Jan Philipp Reemtsma; Greek mythology

1. Introduction

Among Mario Vargas Llosa's extensive body of novels, Lituma en los Andes stands out as one that has generated significant controversy. This controversy has arisen not so much from an aesthetic evaluation but primarily from the allusions to the culture and history of Andean Peru that it contains. The immediate reception of the work placed the author and his supposed ideological message behind the novelistic fiction in the spotlight.^[1] The aim of this paper is to re-examine the theme of violence and to question the reductive view of the novel as a mere pretext for the author's proclamation of a specific ideological message. In line with Kristal’s programmatic formulation, I will intend to ‘avoid the pitfall of that literary criticism that overemphasizes Vargas Llosa's realism while overlooking his own inventions, his dialogues with other literary works, and his transmutations of lived experiences, readings, and ideas into self-contained literary works’.^[2] Certainly, as Kristal himself argues elsewhere,^[3] Vargas Llosa’s work often does reflect his politics—especially regarding this period in Peru's history. However, my focus will not be on the political aspects but rather on the literary treatment of violence in this novel. After showing that the phenomenon of violence runs transversally through different layers of the novel, I will conclude that a teleology of evil cannot be inferred. Beyond a polemic against indigenism or the accusations of racism that have been levelled at the author, the only thing that can be truly asserted is the irrationality and senselessness of violence.^[4]

Thirty years after its publication, it is necessary to re-evaluate the judgments that, at the time, were made about the novel and appreciate sine ira et studio some of the themes around which this novel revolves. It should be remembered that Vargas Llosa published it at a time that had been preceded by the years of his most intense political activity, so that the examination of the ideological issues distilled from Lituma en los Andes has tended to lead towards a judgment of the person of Mario Vargas Llosa. His neoliberalism, his controversial anti-indigenism, his defence of globalization and the acculturation of the Andean peoples have repeatedly been the focus of criticism, all too often to the detriment of the aesthetic evaluation of a product whose fictional nature has tended to be confused with the political positions that the author has unambiguously expressed in his essays and journalistic work. As manifest as the novel’s spatial-temporal and cultural anchorage may be, Lituma en los Andes is, as the author himself defended, a literary endeavour: ‘una vuelta a la literatura, a la fantasía y la creación [...]. La política [...] es el mundo de las concesiones, del realismo, del pragmatismo. La literatura es un mundo en el que uno puede permitirse todos los excesos; uno es dueño de su imaginación’.^[5]

2. Lituma in hell: structure and plot of Lituma en los Andes

Due to the ‘reappearance’ of its protagonist, Lituma en los Andes apparently continues at the point where the novel Quién mató a Palomino Molero? ends. In both cases, the main character is Lituma, a police officer who hails from Piura, a city in northern Peru near the coast. As the readers who are acquainted with Vargas Llosa’s previous novels know,^[6] Lituma is forced to move to the Andean highlands as a punishment for the outcome of his investigations in the Palomino Molero case.

In this regard, however, it is important to note the deliberate chronological discontinuity regarding the presence of the figure of Lituma in Vargas Llosa’s narrative. The fiction of Quién mató a Palomino Molero? is set in the 1950 s, while Lituma is set in the 1980 s. Thus, there is not a proper chronological but rather a ‘dramatic’ continuity, in that the presence of the character intertextually evokes the ‘same’ Lituma from previous novels. The reader is thus able to establish the transition to the new Andean context.

From the beginning of the novel, Lituma appears as an outsider because the Andean region seems completely different from the Peru he knows. In addition, the fact that the community of Naccos does not accept him because of his coastal origin and because he does not speak Quechua, makes the character feel animosity towards the population.^[7] In his criminal investigations he is assisted by Tomas Carreño, who, despite being born in the Andes and speaking Quechua, was raised in Lima. Therefore, he does not sympathize with the indigenous population either.^[8]

The novel begins in medias res with the disappearance of three villagers. In the first part, Lituma and his assistant suspect that Sendero Luminoso is responsible for the disappearances since the terrorists are operating in the area, and both they and the people of Naccos fear its imminent arrival. In the second part, there is a turn in the police investigation, and Lituma discovers that the disappearances are related to religious rituals.

As for its structure, the novel is divided into two parts and an epilogue.^[9] The first part has five chapters, and each chapter consists of three sections: the first is dedicated to the investigation of the disappearances; the second to the terrorist attacks; and the third to the love story between Tomasito Carreño and Mercedes, which Tomasito himself narrates retrospectively to Lituma. The second part consists of four chapters, and each chapter is, in its turn, divided into three sections. The sections follow the same order as in the first part, except in relation to the second section, in which the story of Adriana and Dionisio replaces the narration about Sendero Luminoso. The epilogue has two parts: the first deals with the happy reunion of Tomasito and Mercedes, and the second concludes the investigations by resolving the mystery. In the epilogue, Lituma discovers that the three missing persons were not only sacrificed to the apus, the gods of the mountains, but were also victims of cannibalism by the population of Naccos, seemingly driven by fear and superstition and instigated by Adriana and Dionisio.

3. Typology and function of violence in Lituma en los Andes

Considering the different manifestations of the theme of violence throughout the novel, a bipartite division can be established, according to which violence is either explained by political motivations or integrated into practices that have a religious or ritual background. A third sub-type that can also be distinguished is sexual violence, although there are only some comparatively brief allusions to it in the novel, so that its function is secondary within the imagery of violence within the narrative. I will, thus, do not explicitly consider sexual violence in this paper.

It is necessary to emphasize preliminarily that these two main categories, despite their apparent rigidity, are not impermeable categories, but rather correspond to manifestations in which one form of violence predominates over the other. The reason is that the theme of violence extends throughout the work as a complex and intricate thread. On some occasions, the political takes on ritualistic characteristics, while in others, violent acts carried out through quasi-mystical ritualism are the result of irrational motivations whose connection to religion or ritual is little more than superficial –-at least from an external perspective. In any case, the centrality of the theme of violence in the novel requires an overview of its different patterns^[10].

3.1 Definition of violence. Methodological considerations

In view of the protean nature of the phenomenon of violence, any attempt of definition faces the difficulty of reaching a consensus. Two factors crucially contribute to this difficulty: on the one hand, scholarly approaches to violence usually engage more with description than with theory.^[11] On the other hand, a distinction between legitimacy and illegitimacy in the use of force (an assumption that, implicitly, underlies many attempts of definition) is problematic, as it is based on the concept of justice, which is a culturally transitional perception^[12]. Still, without entering controversial debates, the centrality of the body of the victim is, as Jean Claude Chesnais contends, the necessary starting point for any analysis of violence. In fact, his history of violence is grounded on the premise that the only mensurable form of violence is physical violence.^[13]

Methodologically, I will draw on Jan Philipp Reemtsma’s (2008) phenomenology of physical violence.^[14] According to the German sociologist, there are three types of physical violence: first, locative violence: the victim's body occupies a space and is an inert mass that must be evicted to achieve a given goal. Second, raptive violence: the agent of violence aims at the possession of the body of the victim –-often for sexual purposes. Third, autotelic violence: in this case, the act of violence contains the justification of its own end. In other words, violence is not an instrument for a higher goal. Instead, its sole target is the destruction of the body of the other. This is the reason why modern rationalized cultures perceive this form of violence as a senseless cruelty and as a symbol of absolute evil.^[15] An exploration of violence in Lituma en los Andes will lead us to the conclusion that, even though locative and raptive violence are also present in the novel, the third pattern, autotelic violence, is that which allows the author to explore in greater depth the ethical and aesthetic implications of violence.

In structural terms, the distinction between political and ritual violence corresponds to the syntagmatic axis, that is, it accounts for the manifestations of violence according to the linear unfolding of the plot. In its turn, the contrast between locative, raptive and autotelic violence is rather a transversal taxonomy, i. e., it reflects a paradigmatic relationship between a variety of violent acts that take place within the novel and that, apparently, overlap and even, at times, perform the function of each other.

3.2 Violence as a historical-political phenomenon in Peru and its literary treatment in Lituma en los Andes

The historical-political context in which Vargas Llosa wrote the novel contributed in a crucial way to the centrality of the theme of violence in it. A wave of political violence bloodied Peru in the 1980 s: the terrorist actions of Sendero Luminoso, the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, and the subsequent repression by the armed forces crucially marked this period.^[16] During this time, violence also acquired a marked ethnic bias: large population majorities became excluded from the benefits of an unevenly distributed development.^[17] In this socio-political context, Vargas Llosa adopted a critical attitude, consisting in the simultaneous condemnation of the violence of Sendero and a vehement criticism of the violent response of the government.^[18] Unlike other Peruvian authors, Vargas Llosa did not show any sympathy or understanding towards the atrocities committed by the guerrilla movement, probably because he had already expressed his disillusionment with revolutionary convictions.^[19]

The historical-geographical coordinates in which the novel is located explain to a large extent the relevance of violence —and, certainly, there is an implicit intertextual dialogue with other non-fiction works by the author such as Informe de Uchuraccay and Historia de una matanza.^[20] Vargas Llosa presents a Janus-like country: one is anchored in pre-Columbian times; the other is modern and civilized and rejects ancestral practices.^[21] As some scholars argue, Vargas Llosa, from the perspective of his privileged status within Peruvian social structure, uses violence as a means to stress the savage character of the Andean people.^[22] This could explain the occasionally overly reductionist stance that seems to emerge from the association between the Andean culture and violence in the novel.^[23] Although in the novel violence manifests itself in various forms, in all of them the same geographical space (the Andes) is involved, so that violence seems to inhere in the very location in which it takes place. Vargas Llosa has proposed a solution to the problem of these two realities in Peru: miscegenation and the eradication of archaic customs of indigenous peoples is the only way for the country to prosper and modernize.^[24]

However, the treatment of violence in the novel goes beyond the mere description of a specific historical-political phenomenon. It is through the interplay between fiction and reality, as I will argue, that the author fully exploits the aesthetic depth of violence. Any reductionist stance implying a too literal reading of the novel is problematic. As noted above, the author explicitly intended to underscore the fictional status of Lituma en los Andes: even if the references to the external reality are unmistakable, the world of imagination prevails and, particularly, the representation of violence reveals itself as an intricate bridge between the worlds of fiction and reality.

3.3 Analysis of violence in the novel.

3.3.1 Political violence: the supremacy of reality

3.3.1.1 Terrorist violence

Although the terrorist actions of Sendero Luminoso are only one subtype among the variegated manifestations of violence in the novel, they play a prominent role in the first part since a section is dedicated to it in each chapter. In addition, Lituma’s suspicions regarding the authorship of the disappearances fall from the beginning of the investigation on the terrorist organization. From the crimes perpetrated by the Sendero in the novel, the first one (Lituma, 21–29) stands out because of its programmatic traits regarding the function of violence. The third-person narrator tells the story of the murder of a French couple, Michèle and Albert, who were traveling through the Andean region controlled by the senderistas. The description of the couple is one of innocence, adventure, and a deep love for Peruvian culture and history, while the members of the terrorist group are depicted as ‘jóvenes, eran adolescentes, eran pobres y algunos eran niños’ (Lituma, 29). Particularly interesting is the fact that the terrorists are almost mute characters. Significantly, yet, their only explicit words all along the passage are their exhortations of silence, which, evoking a ritual rhetoric, are uttered thrice:

P. 26: —Señor, ¿por favor? —silabeó—, dirigiéndose al hombre abrigado en un poncho que estaba a su lado, y, al instante, una voz de trueno rugió: ¡Silencio!

P. 27: ¡Silencio! –chilló ella, arrebatándole los pasaportes. Era una voz niña, cortante y enfurecida—. Chitón.

P. 28: Cuando les tocó el turno, los dos muchachos con pasamontañas que estaban a la puerta del vehículo les pusieron los fusiles en el pecho, sin decir palabra, indicándoles que se apartaran.

—Por qué? —preguntó Albert—. Somos turistas franceses.

Uno de ellos avanzó hacia él en actitud amenazadora, y acercándole mucho la cara le rugió:

—Silencio! Shhht!

On the one hand, the passage highlights the ritual significance of the way the terrorists kill their victims, namely by stoning. Although there is an economic motivation for the use of this violent and archaic method of killing, such as the saving of ammunition, it is also related to religious beliefs, as suggested by Santini: ‘las piedras usadas como armas sacrificiales por los senderistas podrían corresponderse con el mito inca que transforma las piedras de la montaña en guerreros que diezman la población de la nación huanca’.^[25] As we will see, this interweaving between ritual and political violence and, in general, the hybridism of violence runs through the novel like a common thread.

On the other hand, the insistence on silence is the first of three instances in which the author alludes to an explicit relationship between violence and silence.^[26] This symbolic association dates back to the Greek dramatist Aeschylus.^[27] In fact, in the tragedy Prometheus Bound Aeschylus stages in the first scene of the play three characters: Hephaistos, who has been sent by Zeus to perform the task of binding Prometheus to the Scythian rocks as a punishment for defying Zeus’ authority. Besides Prometheus and Hephaistos, two more characters figure on scene: Kratos, the personification of power, and Bia, the personification of violence. Whereas Kratos reveals his orders harshly and states the reasons why Prometheus deserves the punishment, Bia remains significantly silent. Aeschylus’ decision to stage a mute character on scene was certainly a ground-breaking innovation –-yet, for what purpose? As Reemtsma points out: ‘She [Violence] does not speak, but by showing herself she says it all’ (my translation).^[28] That is, Bia needs no words –-her mere presence is already a menace. By the same token, Vargas Llosa depicts the terrorists as silent (and silence demanding) characters who turn out to be the very embodiment of violence. Whereas Kratos and Bia appear in the Aeschylean drama as complementary forces, the terrorists incarnate pure, wordless violence. This representation fits Reemtsma’s argument that violence and power are antithetical forces: violence comes to the forefront whenever power becomes endangered.^[29] In this case, though, there is no Power whose presence counterbalances the agency of Violence.

The second episode in which the terrorists are involved is the killing of vicuñas (Lituma, 51–62). This time the author deftly reworks the relationship between violence and silence: not only do the terrorists speak, but they also explain the reasons of their actions to a mute character, Pedrito Tinoco, the caretaker of the animals. As the third person-narrator tells in the second chapter of the novel, Pedrito, one of the three people whose disappearance Lituma and his assistant investigate, is a young man with a physical and mental disability from birth. Pedrito lives alone taking care of the vicuñas and establishes a very close bond with them. One night, a group of senderistas arrives, and although Pedro tries to defend them and begs as he can (Lituma, 60), they cruelly kill all the animals because they consider the reserve an instrument of the government and imperialism –and, therefore, an enemy of revolution.

The terrorists explain the motivation behind their actions and demonstrate their perfect assumption of the rhetoric of revolution.^[30] Yet, their actions turn out to be, this time again, empty violence. Conspicuously, the most eloquent of the terrorists is almost a child: ‘un joven de mirada dura, con la expresión de alguien que ha sufrido mucho y que odia mucho. ¿Cómo podía, siendo casi un niño?’ (Lituma, 57). Yet, all the rhetoric efforts are unable to reach Pedritos’s deaf understanding: ‘No entiende –-decían—. Es opa’ (Lituma, 58) // ‘No puedes entender, mudito, no puedes darte cuenta’ (Lituma, 60). The only effect of their actions is to inflict a deep suffering on Pedro. In any case, as the narrator explicitly remarks, they are entirely unable to make him understand the reason of their violent act.^[31] By this way, Vargas Llosa not only underlines the innocence of the victim, but, meaningfully, the powerlessness of the agents of violence.

The next episode of terrorist violence, the Andamarca trials (Lituma, 8–90), delves in a particularly interesting manner into the theme of violence.^[32] Now the members of Sendero Luminoso explicitly refrain from physical violence: they do not commit the crimes; they merely instigate the population to organize a popular trial and stone those neighbours who are considered guilty of having committed a crime. Vargas Llosa emphasizes in this episode that ‘[l]a milicia no participó en las ejecuciones’ (Lituma, 83). Therefore, the cruelty of the massacre is attributed solely to the peasants, who, carried away by the spirit of revenge, take advantage of the moment to punish a considerable number of neighbours. The terrorists deploy an ostensibly elaborate rhetoric that seems to overcome the hatred of the child-terrorist in the episode of the vicuña killing. In explicit contrast with the barbaric and uninstructed population of Andamarca, their speech seems almost civilized. Whereas the terrorists ‘[s]e turnaban y, pacientes, explicaban los crímenes, reales o virtuales [...] Los instruían y los alentaban’ (Lituma, 82), the inhabitants of Andamarca are driven by hatred, fear, resentment, confusion: ‘Poco a poco, rompiendo su timidez, su confusión, incitados por su propio miedo, el clima exaltado y oscuras motivaciones —viejas querellas, soterrados resentimientos, envidias sordas, odios familiares—, los vecinos fueron animándose a pedir la palabra’ (Lituma, 82). As they listen to the verbose revolutionary discourse of the terrorists,^[33] ‘[l]os vecinos aparentaban escuchar más de lo que escuchaban, entender más de lo que entendían’ (Lituma, 83).

While in the episode of the vicuñas Vargas Llosa explicitly depicts the powerlessness of the terrorists to be understood (being only able to exert sheer violence), this time the narration further underlines the essential inability of the terrorists to convey anything beyond violence: the people of Andamarca do not understand a word of their revolutionary rhetoric, yet they grasp the core of their message: brutal violence. In a way, violence remains a silent force: even if the terrorists largely speak and explain, they still are at odds with power.

In the fourth section of the Sendero narrative the third person narrator tells the story of the environmentalist Hortensia D’Harcourt (Lituma, 109–126). In correspondence to the passage of the French tourists, this time again the victims are innocent foreigners whose deaths are intended to provoke social and political impact in Peru and beyond. Mrs. D’Harcourt, born in Europe but with Peruvian nationality due to her marriage to a diplomat, works as an environmentalist on various international projects. Like the French tourists, she underestimates the danger and trusts that she can convince the senderistas in case of an ambush.

The terrorists present themselves as a heterogeneous group: ‘[e]ran una cincuentena de hombres, mujeres, muchos jóvenes, algunos niños, la mayoría campesinos, pero también mestizos de ciudad’ (Lituma, 120). Following a pattern that begins from an explicit silence in the first narrative (that of the French tourists) to an increasing use of the word, this time the exchange of words is marked by a sheer lack of communication. First, the environmentalist and her engineer associate try to explain that their project has not any relation to politics. Despite the latter’s efforts to explain, he eventually acknowledges that ‘[o]yen, pero no escuchan ni quieren enterarse de lo que se les dice [...] parecen de otro planeta’ (Lituma, 123). Hortensia D’Harcourt comes to the same conclusion: ‘la dominaba la certidumbre de un insuperable malentendido, de una incomunicación más profunda que si ella hablase chino y ellos español’ (Lituma, 124). The group’s leader justifies the imminent death of the environmentalist and her group for political reasons: ‘Esta es una guerra y usted es un peón del enemigo de clase –-le explicó, mirándola con su mirada blanca, monologando con su voz sin matices’ (Lituma, 125). Yet, as the narrator explicitly remarks, the whole passage turns out to be all but a juxtaposition of monologues. There is no real communication. What characterizes the terrorists is a deaf speaking and an essential inability to communicate. Besides, in this case, too, the way the terrorists kill their victims denotes an explicit focus on the body: whereas the two technicians are shot in the head, D’Harcourt and the engineer, by virtue of their higher rank, are given the privilege of the cruellest death: lapidation (Lituma, 126).

All along these four episodes of terrorist violence, Vargas Llosa seemingly confronts the reader with locative violence. In fact, political and military violence are typical instances of locative violence.^[34] However, what the reader perceives verges on an incomprehensible exercise of violence where the supposed motivations behind it fade away. Even if in some of the episodes the terrorists justify their actions with a verbose apparatus of revolutionary rhetoric, the result is incomprehensible, blind violence –-or, rather, mute violence, following Reemtsma’s Aeschylean metaphor of the interplay between Power (Kratos) and Violence (Bia), whereby Violence is a mute character. In their usage of word, the terrorists are unable to communicate, so that, functionally, they are wordless characters, as the first episode of terrorist violence programmatically anticipates. Vargas Llosa’s literary representation of terrorist violence perfectly matches the antithetical relationship that, according to Reemtsma, violence and power maintain: ‘Power and violence are opposites: where the one rules absolutely, the other does not exist. Violence comes on the scene where power is in danger’ (my translation).^[35] In any case, Lituma en los Andes confronts the reader with the complex imbrication of violence, (lack of) power and communication, evoking Reemtsma’s argument for the peculiar interplay of these forces. Unable to speak (French tourists); unable to be understood (killing of the vicuñas and Andamarca trials) and to understand or even to communicate (murder of the environmentalist): violence is, at any rate, associated to the absence of power –-specifically in relation to communication and with a remarkable tendency to autotelism.

3.3.1.2 Police violence

An all-encompassing analysis of political violence in Lituma en los Andes must also include the instances of police violence. The first case involves the torture that the police inflict on Pedrito Tinoco after the massacre of the vicuñas (Lituma, 73). The authorities believe he is a member of Sendero and do not hesitate to use any violent method to make him talk. The narration highlights the cruelty of the events and shows that police brutality knows no limits when it comes to fighting the enemy.^[36]

The second case occurs after the Andamarca massacre. After the trials, Medardo Llantac, the mayor who had managed to escape, arrives in Andamarca accompanied by a lieutenant from the coast and some guards. The police begin to interrogate the population in the investigation of the events, and chaos ensues, leading to an accusation clash among the neighbours (Lituma, 87–90). Although the town ultimately points to Sendero Luminoso as the sole perpetrator, the police arrest a group of people to take them to the Puquio station. Before leaving, the lieutenant and his guards search the houses and take all valuable objects. At the end of the episode, it is said that the prisoners never reached Puquio (Lituma, 90). As an epilogue to the narration of the events in Andamarca, the description of police abuse and the complete lack of scruples by law enforcement, which culminates in the disappearance of the suspects, serves to emphasize that violence is not a phenomenon monopolized by Sendero. Violence and abuse of power are revealed as a reality that permeates Andean-Peruvian society, including the government forces responsible for fighting terrorism and protecting, supposedly, the civilian population.

These instances of violence are, though, less relevant to the scopes of this paper, since in these cases the pattern of locative violence is perfectly recognizable and appears without fissures. Police violence is clearly a case of locative violence: the body of the victim is a mass that stands in the way to a given objective: in the case of the tortures that the police inflict upon Tomasito, violence is justified, in the agent’s eyes, as a means to obtain information. In its turn, the violence exerted on the population of Andamarca belongs to the pattern of punishing violence. In any case, there is a marked lack of interest in the body of the victim, as it is typical of locative violence.^[37]

Nevertheless, in the case of terrorist violence there is one significant difference: the terrorists are interested in the body of their victims. This is the reason why they explicitly choose stoning as the killing method. This pattern is in accordance with the thesis that ‘autotelic violence implies a brute interest in the body of the other’ (my translation) (Reemtsma 2008, 110). This is why I will focus on the next manifestation of violence, namely ritual/religious violence, because in this case the apparently locative pattern of violence ends up being substituted by a form of violence that is devoid of any justification. As we will see, the teleology of rituality turns out to be a senseless and banal act of evil. By the same token, as the plot of the novel evolves, Vargas Llosa presents a gradual progression from a predominantly realistic perspective (in the first part) to a ritual-mythical landscape (in the second part). According to this development, violence, in its turn, changes from an ostensibly locative to an autotelic pattern (although, as we have seen, the tendence to autotelism in the Sendero-narrative is already recognizable).

3.3.2 Ritual violence: the return to myth or the triumph of fiction

3.3.2.1 Sacrifices and cannibalism

Lituma en los Andes portrays rituality as a phenomenon that is closely related to pre-Hispanic cultures. It refers to rites belonging to the ancient Chanca and Huanca religion, which was based on magical beliefs related to nature. In the first chapter of the second part (Lituma, 173–185), there is a meeting between Lituma and Professor Stirmsson. The corporal is fascinated by the wisdom of the Dane, who explains to him the origins of Andean culture. In this conversation, it is hinted that the violent character of the indigenous population is a legacy of pre-Columbian cultures (Lituma, 179):

[L]os huancas, esa cultura de los Andes centrales, conquistada luego por los incas. –Mejor dicho, borrada por los incas [...]. A los huancas y a los chancas prácticamente los sacaron de la historia [...]

– Los huancas eran unos bestias, Escarlatina -alegaba Pichín [...] Y también los chancas. Tú mismo nos contaste las barbaridades que hacían para tener contentos a sus apus. Eso de sacrificar niños, hombres y mujeres, al río que iban a desviar, al camino que iban a abrir, al templo o fortaleza que levantaban, no es muy civilizado que digamos. [...]

– Yo me pregunto [...] si lo que pasa en el Perú no es una resurrección de toda esa violencia empozada. Como si hubiera estado escondida en alguna parte y, de repente, por alguna razón, saliera de nuevo a la superficie.

Throughout almost the entire first part, Lituma, as a coastal man influenced by Western values, does not believe in the possibility that rituals and customs of a pre-Hispanic indigenous culture may still exist. Thus, when at the beginning of the novel (Lituma, 46–47) Adriana reveals to him that Demetrio Chanca was sacrificed to the gods for being impure, the corporal does not believe her and blames the terrorists for the disappearances.

After the conversation with Stirmsson, the narrative focuses on the characters of Adriana and Dionisio. Whereas Sendero Luminoso dominates the first part of the novel, in the second part the realistic approach to Andean violence is replaced by an openly fictional representation of violence, insofar as mythical narrative comes now to the foreground. The mystery of the disappearances is resolved after Stirmsson’s explanations, and Lituma finally discovers the culprits and the motive behind the deaths (Lituma, 206):

Eso había pasado. Estaba clarísimo. El misterio se lo resolvió ese profe chiflado con el Perú. [...] Pero se sentía más descorazonado y confuso que antes. Porque, aunque su cabeza le decía que no había duda posible, que todas las piezas casaban, en el fondo se resistía a aceptarlo. ¿Cómo iba a entrarle a una persona normal, con un solo dedo en la frente, que a Pedrito Tinoco y a esos dos peones los sacrificaran a los espíritus de los montes por donde iba a pasar la carretera?

After Lituma’s visit to La Esperanza Mine, the option that seemed to be the only possible one from the beginning of the novel –-namely that Sendero was responsible for the disappearances— becomes discarded. The mystery is uncovered: the three missing persons, who had survived the terrorists’ violence, were sacrificed as an offering to the gods of the mountains, following Andean tradition, to obtain consent to build the road that crosses the mountains. Adriana and Dionisio got the workers drunk and convinced them to carry out the sacrifices so that the road works could continue, and they would not lose their jobs.

When Lituma realizes what really happens and understands that the disappearances are due to ritual acts, he shows his astonishment towards what he considers can only be accomplished by barbaric people (Lituma, 207):

¿Cómo era posible que esos peones, muchos de ellos acriollados, que habían terminado la escuela primaria por lo menos, que habían conocido las ciudades, que oían la radio, que iban al cine, que se vestían como cristianos, hicieran cosas de salvajes calatos y caníbales? En los indios de las punas, que nunca pisaron un colegio, que seguían viviendo como sus tatarabuelos, se entendería. Pero esos tipos que jugaban a las cartas y estaban bautizados, cómo pues.

Certainly, the author’s own stance regarding the Andean Peru permeates through Lituma’s view. In fact, Vargas Llosa has argued in other non-fictional works that the indigenous region of the Andes reflects the deep Peru, –the primitive and barbaric country that remains anchored in pre-Columbian times, as opposed to the mestizo, civilized, and modern Peru.^[38]

The ritual of sacrifice should not be understood in terms of guilt, innocence, or expiation, since sometimes the sacrificial victim is not guilty of a transgression, but rather the sacrifice occurs as a social mechanism to divert violence towards a scapegoat.^[39] For Adriana and Dionisio, who represent indigenous values in the novel, the three missing persons are sacrificial victims since they are destined for it: Casimiro Huarcaya for being an albino and ‘dárselas de pishtaco’ (Lituma, 69); Pedrito Tinoco because he is ‘inocente, puro, foráneo’ (Lituma, 268); and the former mayor of Andamarca for being ‘impuro’ by changing his name (Lituma, 45).^[40]

However, from a non-ritual perspective, the choice of victims is purely random: Adriana and Dionisio just take advantage of the moment of drunkenness to incite the inhabitants of Naccos to commit the murders. Thus, the religious sense is replaced by a purely casual motivation that deprives the ritual of meaning and exposes the action, instead, as sheer brutality. The violence suffered by the three victims is revealed as an act that cannot be explained through religious reasons, but rather as a gratuitous and fortuitous event whose only explanation can be traced back to the barbarism of a population drowning in ignorance and alienation caused by a lack of social perspective whose only escape is alcohol. Hence, violence is a structural phenomenon that is exerted irreflexively.

Yet, what most torments the blaster who confesses the crime and what he perceives as most atrocious is the act of cannibalism. Particularly striking is that he is unable to explain why he did it. Whereas ‘in previous novels violence always had an explanation or a rationalization, [...] [i]n Lituma en los Andes evil seems a real presence [...] and its most brutal expressions are inexplicable’.^[41] This act of ‘communion’ (Lituma, 316) represents a carnivalization of the Christian Eucharist, where the body of Christ is given to remove the sins and impurities of mankind.^[42] Ultimately, cannibalism that is deprived of any rituality epitomizes what violence stands for in the narrative of Adriana and Dionisio: a destruction of the other that, albeit irreflexively, implies a brutal interest in the victim’s body.

3.3.2.2 Myths of violence and irrationality

In the second part of the novel, in which the Sendero-plot is replaced by the narrative of Adriana and Dionisio, the theme of violence remains the central axis of the novel –-yet now myth takes the place of realism and further delves into the intricate relationship between barbarism and civilization that pervades the novel and confirms the tendence to autotelism that is already hinted at in the episodes of terrorist violence.

Firstly, the similarity of the story of Adriana and Dionisio with Greek mythology is evident.^[43] The solemnity of the Greek myth according to which Theseus, after killing the Minotaur, manages to leave the labyrinth thanks to the ball of string that Ariadne had previously given him, is replaced in the novel by a version with burlesque undertones: Adriana (Ariadne) prepares a purge for ‘el narigón’ (Lituma, 216) Timoteo Fajardo (Theseus) that will allow him to leave the pishtaco cave (Minotaur) after killing him, guided by the stench of the defecations he has left behind as he entered the cave (Lituma, 217–218).^[44] In the same way that Ariadne marries the god Dionysus after being abandoned on the island of Naxos by Theseus, Adriana marries the tavern keeper Dionisio in Naccos (a fictitious name alluding to the Greek Naxos), who, like the Greek god, wanders from town-to-town inciting drunkenness and debauchery, accompanied by a retinue of dancing bacchantes.

The pishtaco is a legendary figure in Andean culture that dates to the Spanish conquest. Although there are variations of the myth, he is a foreign man, a gringo, who extracts body fat from Andean men. The figure of the pishtaco represents in Andean culture the foreigner who destroys the indigenous community. However, as Wolfenzon (2010, 26) argues:

[e]n Vargas Llosa [...] el fantasma colonial cobra vida en los propios habitantes andinos que se devoran a sí mismos y, simbólicamente, al país. El peligro de que el Perú moderno u occidental fagocite y destruya a su contraparte andina se invierte en la novela: la barbarie degüella a la civilización.

Some scholars interpret this change as a clear ideological positioning. Kokotovic (2004, 89), for instance, argues that the deliberate similarity with the Greek myth reminds the reader that while the West has surpassed its mythical origins to move towards a civilized society, the Andean people remain in that primitive situation of barbarism.

The corollary to this stance is a reading of the novel as a defence of acculturation and Western civilization as opposed to the barbarism represented by Andean culture. However, it is crucial to remind that fiction is, as Vargas Llosa himself has often argued, a world of freedom in which the author does not abide by the constraints of politics.^[45] Keeping in mind this premise, a nuanced interpretation of the mythical allusions –-alongside the consideration of the essentially hybrid nature of myth in the novel— undermines, as I will argue in the last part of this paper, reductive dichotomies like barbarism vs. civilization or rationality vs. irrationality.

4. On grotesque heroes, sophist-witches, and pathetic violence

A close reading of some of the allusions to Greek mythology demonstrates that they are far from representing an Apollonian counterpart to the barbarism of Andean culture. Instead, the whole narrative of Adriana and Dionisio is marked by an eclecticism that makes it difficult to maintain any clear-cut opposition between logos (the heroic, Western and rational values) on the one hand, and pathos (the uncivilized and antiheroic forces) on the other. Particularly the re-elaboration of the myth of the Minotaur demonstrates that heroism is intrinsically endowed with grotesque and scatological traits. As a result of this re-writing of the myth, the excrementitious acquires a transcendental dimension. By transforming Ariadne's thread into defecation, scatology becomes a form of salvation.^[46] In other words, the reader assists to a conflation of scatology and eschatology.

Given that, within Western cultural tradition, scatology is traditionally associated with comedy,^[47] the fusion of a characteristically heroic myth (Theseus and the Minotaur) with a subject matter that belongs to the realm of the ridiculous, not only demonstrates the cultural hybridity of the characters in the novel but also blurs the boundaries between the serious and the comic.^[48] As a result, a reading of the novel as an orthodox ideological manifesto of cultural supremacy becomes subtly undermined. Instead, this fusion of seemingly antagonistic values rather hints at a deftly self-reflexive form of melodrama that debouches into bathos –i. e., intentionally bad pathos.^[49]

Besides, by depicting Timoteo as a character with an oversized nose, Vargas Llosa further underlines the grotesque nature of the myth –-in a manner that recalls Bakhtin's theories on the grotesque and its essential association with the sphere of the non-serious, of the carnivalesque, of humour.^[50] A big nose is, according to the Greco-Roman cultural imagery, a grotesque and ridiculous trait, and, therefore, the antithesis of heroism.^[51] In the context of Hispanic literature, the evocation of Quevedo's poem A una nariz as an archetype of the burlesque treatment of a big nose further contributes to highlight the mock-epic effect of the narrative of the Andean Theseus.

By the same token, Adriana is also a hybrid character. While Timoteo-Theseus’ heroism is grotesque and heterodox, Adriana is, in her turn, invested with traits that do not comply with witchery, irrationality, barbarism, pathos –the values that, as the reader should expect, the wife of Dionisio/Dionysus incarnates. On the one hand, her narrative is characterized by a fusion of two opposing mythical discourses: ‘uno heredado de un Perú prehispánico (y “bárbaro”) y otro oriundo de una Grecia antigua (y “civilizada”)’.^[52]

On the other hand, Adriana demonstrates an outstanding rhetorical skill that makes her resemble the best of the sophists, the magicians of the word and experts of logos. Echoing the magical character that the sophist Gorgias attributes to speech, Dionisio’s wife seems to take at face value the intrinsic, characteristically Gorgian union of violence and logos.^[53] Indeed, as Köllmann notes, ‘she entices the workers of Naccos to get inebriated and drop their inhibitions, so that they will take part in the sacrifice to appease the spirits. Like a good rhetorician, Adriana structures her stories with repetitions’.^[54] Although Adriana and Dionisio represent the liberation of the ‘enclosed animal’ that, according to the Vargasllosian interpretation of Bataille,^[55] dwells in every man, her rhetoric is rational, and her defence of the liberation of natural instincts conjures up the debates on the prevalence of physis (nature) over nomos (law/social contract) by the sophists Thrasymachus or Antiphon, or evokes the Rousseaunian protestations to return to nature in view of the decadence of culture:^[56]

Bailando y bebiendo, no hay indios, mestizos ni caballeros, ricos ni pobres, hombres ni mujeres. Se borran las diferencias y nos volvemos como espíritus ... El que no pone a dormir su pensamiento, el que no se olvida de sí mismo, ni se saca las vanidades y soberbias ni se vuelve música cuando canta, ni baile cuando baila, ni borrachera cuando se emborracha. Ése no sale de su prisión, no viaja, no visita a su animal ni sube hasta espíritu. (Lituma, 274).

In the best style of the Athenian sophists, Adriana’s speech is persuasive and appeals to emotions, in what seems to be an implementation of the Aristotelian precepts in relation to the concomitant elements of rhetoric –-conspicuously pathos at the service of a calculated persuasion.^[57] Moreover, it is a discourse that seeks persuasion through formal elaboration: resorting to a trikolon, Adriana makes use of the expression ‘a menos que...’ three times, leaving in deft suspense what is the condition, which must be given on three occasions, for stability to return to Naccos: three sacrifices.

La muerte de Naccos está decidida. La acordaron los espíritus y ocurrirá. A menos que... (Lituma, 274).

Los malignos saldrán de las montañas a celebrarlo bailando un cacharpari de despedida a la vida y habrá tantos cóndores revoloteando que quedará el cielo tapado. A menos que... (Lituma, 277).

Dejan que la vida se vaya escurriendo y la muerte llenando los sitios vacíos. A menos que... (Lituma, 279).

The hybridism incarnated by Adriana, whose maenadic nature coexists with a sophistic ability in the use of speech, further delves into the questioning of the limits between the serious and the comic, the transcendent and the low, logos and pathos. Once again, it is hard to cling to an ideologically clear-cut defence of ‘civilization’ as opposed to ‘barbarism’ –a programmatic dichotomy that, for many scholars, epitomizes Vargas Llosa’s neoliberal thought.^[58]

Thus, the second part (and, particularly, the end of the novel) blurs the contours between, on the one hand, violence that, responding to a ritual logic, is subordinate to a higher purpose, and, on the other hand, gratuitous, avoidable, banal violence. This reflection calls into question the supposed ‘discurso colonizador del texto’, as Quiroz puts it, and allows us, instead, to corroborate that we are dealing with an ‘ideologically unstable’ text, as Lasarte argues.^[59] Thus, any hasty transference from what Vargas Llosa argues in his essays on culture and modernization to a fictional text like Lituma en los Andes runs the risk of reductionism. I do not claim that the novel is just a virtuosic exercise about violence and evil that just happens to be set in Peru during the Senderista period. Yet, my aim is to offer a nuanced reading of the novel that counterbalances interpretations that focus exclusively on the political intentions of the novel.

Whereas violence is initially tinged with locative traits, (i. e., the victim’s body stands in the way of a particular goal), the end of the novel confirms the tendency to an increasing emptiness. Particularly violence exerted within a mythical and ritual context turns out to not really be subordinated to a rationale that justifies it, so that it ends up being an autotelic act. As Kristal puts it: ‘for the first time the violent instincts of some characters no longer have any rational explanation whatsoever; violence just happens. It is no longer an instrument of those who exploit or the result of political fanaticism’.^[60]

Even anthropophagy, a phenomenon a priori strongly imbued with rituality, is revealed as an event that, despite its brutality, is entirely gratuitous and incomprehensible, not only for Lituma, but for the blaster himself who participated in it, whose only means to face his actions is by drowning his memories in alcohol. But in moments of sobriety, cannibalism is stripped of its ritual logic and becomes a desacralized, banally atrocious act.^[61] Violence arises, as Vargas Llosa himself pointed out in his essay on Bataille almost thirty years before writing Lituma en los Andes,^[62] from its consideration as a normal fact that occurs unthinkingly –-a stance that unavoidably recalls Hannah Ahrendt’s ‘lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil’.^[63] As Walford (2004: 135) notes:

For Vargas Llosa, human suffering is not the product of a particular social or political system, but flows from diffuse, undefined, mysterious sources. [...] [It is] the expression of a darker vision of a state of corruption that exists in every society, everywhere, in every age. Time and time again, in novels, essays, and interviews, Vargas Llosa reiterates his belief in a powerful streak of irrationality, what he calls ‘demons’, that usually succeeds in undermining every human endeavor.

Through the allusive play with Greek mythology and the conflict between logos and pathos that underlies the myth of Theseus (the civilizing hero) and Ariadne (who ends up embracing the Bacchic pathos after being abandoned by Theseus) Vargas Llosa deftly corroborates the senselessness of violence. It is Greek tragedy and, specifically, Euripides who most deeply explores this conflict.^[64] Even if it is difficult to speak of a direct intertextual influence, Euripides undoubtedly belongs to the cultural memory of an author whose passion for theatre and for the Greco-Roman classics is well known.^[65]

Moreover, as Vargas Llosa himself has stated, his fascination with the theme of the barbaric and irrationality as intrinsic elements of the human being took a new direction after reading Dodds’ The Greeks and the Irrational, which profoundly marked his conception of what Lituma en los Andes was to be.^[66] It was Dodds’ book that led Vargas Llosa to establish a connection between the Andean world and the reflection on the irrational violence of classical mythology. The aspect that most decisively conditioned the writing of his novel was the fundamental idea into which Dodds’ book delves, as Kristal puts it: ‘the most profound aspect of the Greek view of irrational violence, as evinced in the plays of Euripides, occurs when those carried away by actions they are unable to control know that the evil comes from within and not from without’ (Kristal 1998, 196).

Some authors highlight the Bacchae as the most immediate intertext.^[67] Sheriff considers the conflict ‘between order and lawlessness’ as the axis around which Lituma en los Andes revolves, evoking the dramatic conflict of Euripides’ tragedy, in which Pentheus represents the law and Dionysus and his retinue of bacchantes its violation. As Sheriff argues, ‘[t]he struggle between Dionysus and Pentheus, and the threat it poses to society, is played out in Lituma en los Andes, with the villagers of Naccos playing the bacchae and Lituma as Pentheus’ (Sheriff 2018, 123). The Bacchae are, thus, certainly a relevant intertext.

Yet, alongside the Bacchae, there is one tragedy that has remained unnoticed by critics, even though the conflict between logos vs. pathos is a central conceit in it and, interestingly, it is Theseus who, as the embodiment of logos, plays a chief role. I refer to the Suppliants.^[68] This play, first performed in 423 BC, dramatizes the events after the battle of the Seven Argive heroes against Thebes and the defeat of the former. Specifically, it stages the efforts undertaken by Adrastus, the king of Argos, and the mothers of the fallen heroes to bury the corpses of the slain warriors. In the context of their pleas to the Theban king Creon to grant a burial to the bodies of the fallen, the intercession of the Athenian king Theseus is decisive.^[69] Theseus, depicted as a civilizing hero, embodies the struggle against passion through reason. However, the end of this tragedy subtly notes the essential fragility of mankind and its natural tendency to (self-)destruction. Indeed, the exodos of the play, in which the peace achieved after the recovery of the bodies is disturbed by the promise of vengeance of the children of the dead heroes, shows that reason is brittle: ‘what governs human relationships and guides them to despair is pathos and the frailty associated with it, exposed as are men not to the forces of a universe beyond them, but inside them.’ (Blanco Mayor 2009, 71–72). A relativistic awareness of the values of heroism, a perverse perception of political order, and the ascertainment of human tendency to self-destructive passion are the lessons that linger at the end of the play.

By the same token, in Lituma en los Andes the reader is left, once the crime has been solved, with the naked reality of an inexplicable violence devoid of teleology and, therefore, bereft of a higher logic (religious, political or of any other kind) that validates it. Although some scholars claim that Vargas Llosa’s use of Greek myth is to be explained in the context of his ideological positioning against Andean culture and his defence of Western values, and deny, thus, its universalizing force,^[70] the aporetic final of the novel casts a shadow upon such a Manichaean reading. The blaster who confesses the murders is devoid of any traits that explicitly portray him as an indigenous. Certainly, he participates in murders that are vaguely imbued within an exotic liturgy –-an ‘Andean ritual’, from the eyes of an outsider like Lituma. Yet, in the end, he is a man who is tormented by his acts and who is unable to explain why he committed them. The distinct lines between Western and Indigenous become blurred for the sake of a reflection on the gratuity of violence and on how easy it is to unleash the animal within us –-a lesson that both Theseus in the Suppliants and Lituma bitterly learn.

5. Fiction as a refuge from the irrationality of violence?

Although the blaster who confesses to the heinous crimes does not demonstrate any awareness of his personal guilt or responsibility, the inexplicable violence that runs through the novel ‘is not at odds with Vargas Llosa's most consistently held belief that irrational forces determine important aspects of human behavior’ (Kristal 1998, 196). The corollary to this tension between logos and pathos and the conviction that irrationality dominates the world is the pyrrhic victory of reason embodied by Lituma when he discovers the mystery of the crimes. The sergeant claims to regret having discovered the truth.^[71] Even if, as Morales Saravia (2009, 95) argues, Lituma ‘es más bien un personaje que pertenece [...] más a los destinos menores que trata la comedia que a los grandiosos y sublimes que son materia de tragedia’, the clairvoyance he obtains at the end of the novel bestows tragic stature on him. Like Oedipus gouging out his eyes after discovering the truth, the moment of knowledge (the tragic arti manthano) is a moment of horror. Despite being, then, in his role as a detective within the conventions of the police genre, ‘representante de la razón, [...] del mundo criollo [...] de la civilización, [...] la modernidad [...] el progreso’ (Morales Saravia 2000, 95), Lituma functions as a fulcrum between the police plot and the horror plot, so that his clear-cut association with the world of reason becomes crucially undermined. His moment of knowledge, his ‘illumination’ as he discovers that the most supreme form of violence cannot be explained, is tinged by an immediate reaction of pathos and by the longing of the state of darkness and ignorance in which he has lived until the revelation of the truth.^[72]

Even though some scholars read the happy ending of the love story of Carreño and Mercedes as an optimistic end of the novel,^[73] the obscure conclusion of the last chapter and the blurring of reason and knowledge that Lituma’s reaction towards truth implies make it difficult to adhere to the thesis of an optimistic ending. Unless we consider love and storytelling —the two axes of the Carreño narrative— as the only force that can, at least for a while, ‘unbind’ the promethean Lituma from the hellish mountains to which he has been bound. This reading is doubtlessly suggestive and, in a characteristically Vargasllosian manner, leaves fiction and love as the only means to escape from the cruelty and senselessness of reality.

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Published Online: 2024-11-14

Published in Print: 2024-11-14

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Artikel in diesem Heft

https://doi.org/10.1515/roja-2024-0007

Schlagwörter für diesen Artikel

Mario Vargas Llosa; Lituma en los Andes; violence; Jan Philipp Reemtsma; Greek mythology

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