Death in the Andes
by
by
Edith Grossman (Translator)
🎼 The Hills Are Alive... etc.
According to one of Vargas Llosa’s principal characters, “life in Peru has its dangers, honey.” And this is certainly the case during the nearly four decades of insurgency by the Maoist Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path. This conflict forms the background of much of Vargas Llosa’s work, but is a central theme of Death in the Andes.
Vargas Llosa frequently uses the peculiar geography of Peru to great effect. In The Green House, for example, he emphasizes the extreme conditions of the coastal desert and the far Eastern jungle to frame the fragility of much of Peruvian life. And in The Time of the Hero, the overwhelming presence of the Pacific Ocean dominates the mood of his narrative. In Death, he puts forward the Andean Cordillera itself as an active force in the existence of the country.
Unlike most regions of the world, the mountains of the Andes don’t form an international or political boundary. Rather they are literally the backbone of Peru and form the country’s central mass. Historically, the mountains were the seat of Incan and pre-Incan power. The Shining Path began its insurrection in the rugged mountainous area of the book’s main narrative; and the most brutal violence by both the rebels and the government took place there. In a sense the high Andes are the source of life and death as well as power for the country.
The mountain people, the serruchos, form a sort of Greek chorus in Death. They are the ever-present but virtually invisible remnants of the ancient cultures of the Incas, Huancas and Chancas which were all but destroyed by the Spanish conquest. Living in remote communities, they speak Quechua not Spanish. They form the bulk of the labour-force but are only marginally part of Peruvian society. They are also a mystery to the lowlanders of the coastal plains who fear them as both uncivilised and as potential terrucos, Shining Path terrorists. “It isn’t race that separates us, it’s an entire culture,” says the protagonist, a Corporal of the Civil Guard who is posted to protect a road construction crew in a remote village.
After a time, and a number of unexplained deaths, the Corporal discovers he has underestimated how different the serruchos really are. “They’re from another planet,” he says. And it is unclear to him if the principal threat is the Shining Path, or the local workers or, indeed, the mountains themselves with their pishtacos (a sort of vampire who prefers human fat to blood), the ancient muki (devils who take revenge for misusing the wealth inside the mountains), and the apus (the protective gods of every mountain peak). The Dionysian (literally, since that is his name) proprietor of the cantina and his Orphic wife could well form the nexus of these spirit-forces as suspected by the Apollonian Corporal in his quest for psychic as well as social orderliness.
In other words, the insurgency may not be just a temporary event but an inherent and permanent part of the country itself, an echo of the historical violence of the cultures which have never quite disappeared, but are embedded somehow in the substance of the mountains: “What if what’s going on in Peru is a resurrection of all that buried violence. As if it had been hidden somewhere, and suddenly, for some reason, it all surfaced again.” As it does not infrequently in the form of huaycos, great landslides which obliterate all merely human endeavors. This is perhaps why “Peru is a country nobody can understand.”It is a country which consumes itself.
Peru seems to have become a product of its own violence accumulated over centuries and from which it cannot escape. The condition seems to be ingrained. “The Chancas and the Huancas sacrificed people when they were going to build a new road... It was their way of showing respect for the spirits of the mountains, of the earth, whom they were going to disturb. They did it to avoid reprisals and to assure their own survival.” Perhaps the mountains will always demand a similar sacrifice. “Maybe a whole tribe of apus had to be placated,” in order for Peru to exist at all. Meanwhile, as the mystic wife of the cantina-proprietor says, “music helps us understand bitter truths.” What could be more Dionysian?
According to one of Vargas Llosa’s principal characters, “life in Peru has its dangers, honey.” And this is certainly the case during the nearly four decades of insurgency by the Maoist Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path. This conflict forms the background of much of Vargas Llosa’s work, but is a central theme of Death in the Andes.
Vargas Llosa frequently uses the peculiar geography of Peru to great effect. In The Green House, for example, he emphasizes the extreme conditions of the coastal desert and the far Eastern jungle to frame the fragility of much of Peruvian life. And in The Time of the Hero, the overwhelming presence of the Pacific Ocean dominates the mood of his narrative. In Death, he puts forward the Andean Cordillera itself as an active force in the existence of the country.
Unlike most regions of the world, the mountains of the Andes don’t form an international or political boundary. Rather they are literally the backbone of Peru and form the country’s central mass. Historically, the mountains were the seat of Incan and pre-Incan power. The Shining Path began its insurrection in the rugged mountainous area of the book’s main narrative; and the most brutal violence by both the rebels and the government took place there. In a sense the high Andes are the source of life and death as well as power for the country.
The mountain people, the serruchos, form a sort of Greek chorus in Death. They are the ever-present but virtually invisible remnants of the ancient cultures of the Incas, Huancas and Chancas which were all but destroyed by the Spanish conquest. Living in remote communities, they speak Quechua not Spanish. They form the bulk of the labour-force but are only marginally part of Peruvian society. They are also a mystery to the lowlanders of the coastal plains who fear them as both uncivilised and as potential terrucos, Shining Path terrorists. “It isn’t race that separates us, it’s an entire culture,” says the protagonist, a Corporal of the Civil Guard who is posted to protect a road construction crew in a remote village.
After a time, and a number of unexplained deaths, the Corporal discovers he has underestimated how different the serruchos really are. “They’re from another planet,” he says. And it is unclear to him if the principal threat is the Shining Path, or the local workers or, indeed, the mountains themselves with their pishtacos (a sort of vampire who prefers human fat to blood), the ancient muki (devils who take revenge for misusing the wealth inside the mountains), and the apus (the protective gods of every mountain peak). The Dionysian (literally, since that is his name) proprietor of the cantina and his Orphic wife could well form the nexus of these spirit-forces as suspected by the Apollonian Corporal in his quest for psychic as well as social orderliness.
In other words, the insurgency may not be just a temporary event but an inherent and permanent part of the country itself, an echo of the historical violence of the cultures which have never quite disappeared, but are embedded somehow in the substance of the mountains: “What if what’s going on in Peru is a resurrection of all that buried violence. As if it had been hidden somewhere, and suddenly, for some reason, it all surfaced again.” As it does not infrequently in the form of huaycos, great landslides which obliterate all merely human endeavors. This is perhaps why “Peru is a country nobody can understand.”It is a country which consumes itself.
Peru seems to have become a product of its own violence accumulated over centuries and from which it cannot escape. The condition seems to be ingrained. “The Chancas and the Huancas sacrificed people when they were going to build a new road... It was their way of showing respect for the spirits of the mountains, of the earth, whom they were going to disturb. They did it to avoid reprisals and to assure their own survival.” Perhaps the mountains will always demand a similar sacrifice. “Maybe a whole tribe of apus had to be placated,” in order for Peru to exist at all. Meanwhile, as the mystic wife of the cantina-proprietor says, “music helps us understand bitter truths.” What could be more Dionysian?
posted by The Mind of BlackOxford @ January 06, 2019
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