Death in the Andes
Death in the Andes ( Spanish Lituma en los Andes ) is a 1993 novel by the Peruvian Nobel Prize for Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa .
overview
Corporal Lituma and his assistant Gendarme Tomás Carreño were commanded from the Peruvian Pacific coast to the Andes . Both police officers are supposed to investigate the disappearance of three men from the Naccos road construction site there. All three missing people are outsiders among Native American road workers. The young Pedrito Tinoco from Abancay is mute and Casimiro Huarcaya is an albino . Finally, Don Medardo Llantanac, Deputy Governor of Andamarca, disguised as the foreman of the blasting drills in Naccos, hides from the terrorists from the " Shining Path " under the false name Demetrio Chanca. It is very likely that no superior will believe the outrageous result of the investigation from the corporal Lituma because it is based on testimony, but not on solid evidence. This is how the policeman only tells the reader: The operators of the construction site canteen, the couple Dionisio and Adriana, had incited the two hundred unskilled workers, i.e. the local superstitious Indians, from the surrounding mountain regions of Huancayo , Ayacucho and Apurímac , to cannibalism . The remains of the three gruesome meals had been thrown into the opening of an abandoned mine. Motive: In order to counter catastrophes like landslides et cetera, the mountain spirits and mine devils should be appeased , as there are apus , amarus (dragons) and mukis. In addition, they wanted to make good on the construction site with the terrorists who occasionally marauded without notice.
content
In the godforsaken area, the two police officers have set up in their post, an emergency shelter. Sometimes the Junín radio station comes in. Armed and barricaded, the representatives of the Peruvian state power fearfully await the terrorists at night. The latter stay away throughout the novel, but there is talk of several massacres in the road builder's canteen.
Lituma is particularly concerned about Pedrito Tinoco's disappearance. Gendarme Tomás Carreño had brought the mute from Andahuaylas . The mentally retarded vicuna shepherd Pedrito had survived a terrorist attack high up in the Pampa Galeras - armed fighters against imperialism. Later he made himself useful for everything as a girl at the little Naccos police station.
In his police investigations, Lituma concentrated on the host couple in the canteen from the start, because he held them responsible for inciting the Indians. With Doña Adriana, whom the corporal believes to be the main culprit, he meets with indifference. Her also hardened husband picks up the policeman with a laugh. Both spouses repeatedly express a deep-seated conviction: behind all adversity, behind every devilry, lies the mountain deity. Among other things, they would kick off the huaycos. These are torrents that tear earth and boulders down into the valley as an avalanche after a storm. Lituma survives in the second half of the novel - on foot on the way home from an official act in the neighboring silver mine "La Esperanza" - only with luck such a natural spectacle that wrecks half a year of road builders' work in just one evening. In any case, the couple wants to make the investigator Lituma believe in all seriousness that a Pishtaco - that is a mythical man-eating monster of the ancient Peruvians - has devoured the three unfortunates. The real rulers of the mountains around Naccos are the apus mentioned above.
The landlord Dionisio wants to sell Lituma the secret of the whereabouts of the three missing people so that he and his wife can finally leave Naccos. The policeman is insolvent.
At the end of Vargas Llosa's Lituma texts, punitive transfers of the innocent uniformed men are generally the order of the day. So here too. The unsuccessful corporal Lituma was promoted to sergeant, but had to command the remote Santa María de Nieva post in the Selva . The gendarme Tomás Carreño has better luck. He is transferred to Piura - directly to the rather civilized hometown of his beloved wife Mercedes.
Quotes
- About the danger: "Doesn't it represent real life, the life that is worthwhile?"
- About the old Peruvian blood toll for the preservation of the order willed by God: "Only the decay as it rules today can be obtained free of charge."
Form and interpretation
As the title suggests, the book can be read as a detective novel. The resolution of the case comes as no surprise at the end of the novel. The big topic, human sacrifice of the old Peruvians in road construction - spun into modern road construction in the high mountains, is explicitly mentioned in the middle of the novel. The mule track is to be replaced by a road. The mountain deity enraged by this must be appeased.
Ten chapters are divided into two parts and an epilogue. The first part has five and the second part four chapters. In the first chapter three storylines are opened. First, the two police officers enter the Naccos crime scene and look around. Second, la petite Michèle and Albert, a young French backpacker couple, are stoned to death by the terrorists in a raid on the bus to Andahuaylas . And thirdly, the gendarme tells the corporal lengthily the story of his great love for Mercedes Trelles from Piura . More precisely, the crush is a thread that is spread over the entire novel and has nothing to do with the criminal case outlined above. At least this crazy, humorous love story has three little functions. Firstly, it is motivated by the presence of the gendarme, this deserter of the gendarmerie, who willingly and voluntarily be sent to the very remote crime scene in an emergency area in the Andahuaylas region. Second, it entertains Lituma and the reader as an incredibly long and nevertheless readable story with a happy ending. Thirdly, Lituma suffers from an acute shortage of women in the male world of road builders. So he eagerly takes on the story of the charming Mercedes at any time. A highlight in this regard has been prepared for a long time. When Mercedes appears encrusted with mud on the construction site in the Andes, Lituma asks herself: Is that the Meche? However, the reader needs to know the piece " La Chunga " to understand the question.
A fourth storyline must not be forgotten. The first-person narrator Adriana appears several times in a lengthy literal speech laden with myths. The reader can only identify the addressees of the monologue towards the end of the novel after a remark by Lituma. The corporal asks the spokeswoman why, as his main culprit, she never told him that, but only ever told the Indians in the canteen.
Vargas Llosa's relaxed, light tone stimulates reading on. Any clumsiness is carefully avoided. The description of the second stoning, to which the environmental activist Señora d'Harcourt, who had been operating in the Andes for decades, and her colleague - both from Lima - fell victim, only hinted at the terrible end. The reader already knows. However, the clear expression of the type of death is unmistakably made up later.
The Peru connoisseur comes across a classic while reading: "a person named Prescott "
The narrator makes common with Lituma; talks about "shit highlands" Of course, forgivable violations of logic should not be missing in the flippant narrative: What a nonsense - the missing Huarcaya and Pedrito appear in Lituma storylines! There is another example matching this. When Gendarme Tomás Carreño dished up almost endless reports of adventures with his Mercedes in dialogue form to his superior Lituma, Lituma kept talking in between, as if he had been there third.
Relations
Corporal Lituma from Piura is the Vargas Llosa reader from “ The Green House ”, “ Who killed Palomino Molero? "And best known from the piece" La Chunga ". One of the rare places where something about the appearance of the protagonist is communicated is called the blunt nose and dark, small eyes.
myth
Vargas Llosa has incorporated both Greek and Inca mythology as well as the Huancas - old Peruvians, formerly based around Junin. The Greek husbands Dionysus and Ariadne are role models for the criminal couple Dionisio and Adriana . For example, Dionisio blows the Quena during his Dionysia . The author even has the Ariadne thread in the novel - but in his own way: the big-nosed intruder into the labyrinth eats very hard beforehand and is therefore able to put piles fairly equidistant on the way. Thanks to its oversized olfactory duct, the return is unproblematic. On closer inspection, the mixture of Greek and ancient American mythology also contains suitable Christian elements: Before the poor, mute Pedrito Tinoco met his fate in the canteen, he received the Judas kiss from the landlord Dionisio several times .
Vargas Llosa tells of old Peruvian tradition. In a matriarchy , after an annual festival, a single man surrounded by wild women was invariably the victim to be mangled. Of course, only men were available as cannibals on the construction site in the 20th century.
reception
- Marie Arana-Ward writes in the Washington Post on February 25, 1996 that it is not a detective novel, but a skillfully packaged social criticism.
- According to Clara Isabel Martínez Cantón, there is an archaic utopia.
literature
Used edition
- Death in the Andes. Novel. Translated from the Spanish by Elke Wehr. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1997 (st 4327, 1st edition 2011), ISBN 978-3-518-46327-7
annotation
- ↑ In addition to the stoning of the two French tourists listed under “Form and Interpretation”, Vargas Llosa carried out other slaughter, flogging and so on narrative (for example the edition used, p. 104 and following, p. 140, 3rd Zvu to p. 163, 1st Zvu).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Capital of the district (Spanish :) Carmen Salcedo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 361, 5th Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 320 below
- ↑ Spanish amaru
- ↑ Spanish muki
- ↑ Edition used, pp. 414–419.
- ↑ eng. Pampas galeras
- ↑ Edition used, p. 75, 2. Zvo
- ↑ eng. huayco
- ^ Spanish Santa María de Nieva
- ↑ Edition used, p. 363, 13. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 366, 10th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 239, 2nd Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 374, 15. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 397, 16. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 238
- ↑ Edition used, p. 233, 8. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 277, 7th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 311, 1. Zvu
- ↑ used edition, p 348, 3rd ACR
- ↑ Edition used, p. 265, 3rd Zvu
- ↑ eng. Ancient Peru
- ^ Spanish. Lituma en los Andes
- ↑ Edition used, p. 357, 12th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 355, 6. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 365, 6th above to p. 366, middle
- ↑ eng. Marie Arana-Ward
- ^ Spanish Clara Isabel Martínez Cantón, University of Madrid 2008