Death in the Andes. - book reviews

National Catholic Reporter, May 23, 1997 by Ignacio Lobos

DEATH IN THE ANDES By Mario Vargas Llosa Translated by Edith Grossman Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 276 pages, $24

High in the Peruvian Andes, in the heart of an unforgiving land, death wears many faces. Once in a while, it shows up as a huayco, a violent avalanche of rock, mud and snow that destroys everything in its path. Or it hides behind the knitted face masks of Sendero Luminoso's guerrilla troops. Or it dresses in the clothes of a mythical pishtaco, a vampire who slashes the throats of its victims and feeds on their fat.

Reality clashes with the surreal in Mario Vargas Llosa's novel, his first work of fiction after a temporary detour from writing to run in Peru's 1990 presidential race. By most accounts, Vargas Llosa was a lackluster politician. This time, he has not focused on the world of politics as he did when he wrote about his own failed campaign in A Fish in the Water in 1994.

In Death in the Andes, Vargas Llosa sets his literary sights on Naccos, once a small but thriving town high in the Peruvian highlands, but now a shadow of its former self, a decrepit, dangerous place that houses a road construction crew and people like the "witch" who reads their fortunes on coca leaves, and her husband Dionisio, the amicable and morally ambiguous bartender who sells the builders gut-wrenching pisco and cheap beer. The tale extends to two civil guards who, interrupting their job of protecting the construction site, pass the time telling each other stories.

Tension abounds in this setting -- Shining Path territory. Vargas Llosa creates the sensation that the guerrillas could stop by at any time for a quick "people's trial" -- a euphemism for executions of those who somehow stand in their way.

Within its claustrophobic confines, Naccos at first appears to be the backdrop for a simple mystery. A woman shows up at the civil guard post to denounce the disappearance of her husband, the foreman of a highway construction crew. Two other men already have vanished, one of them a mute who helped the two civil guards. Lituma, the post's corporal, and his deputy, Tomas Carreno, begin to worry. Who has taken these three men?

Is this the work of the Sendero Luminoso -- Shining Path -- guerrillas? Lituma is not ready to point fingers so quickly. "Does Sendero ever disappear people? They just kill them and leave their leaflets behind to let everybody know who did it," Lituma tells his deputy.

Town gossip leads Lituma to the witch, respectfully known as Senora Adriana. But her statements only complicate the investigation. "I told him what I saw," she tells Lituma about her encounter with the foreman. "That he would be sacrificed to appease the evil spirits that cause so much harm in this region. And that he had been chosen because he was impure."

Lituma, a skeptical man raised on the more urbanized Peruvian coast, is not about to give in so easily to supernatural explanations. He is a cop with an inquisitive mind. But Senora Adriana is not impressed by this vulgar man with the tough questions. There will be no clear answers.

"All these hills are full of enemies," she tells him. "They live inside. Day and night they weave their evil schemes. They do endless harm. That's why there are so many accidents. Cave-ins in the mines. Trucks that lose their breaks or drive off the road on curves. Boxes of dynamite that explode and blow off legs and heads."

Vargas Llosa's tale is often macabre, but also intriguing; it is richly layered with multiple voices and story lines. On one level, it is simply a pleasurable read. But with Vargas Llosa, social commentary and political reality are never far behind.

Vargas Llosa spends a great deal of time describing the atrocities committed by the Shining Path guerrillas, but his omission of similar crimes committed by the army is surprising. Even the two civil guards are portrayed sympathetically, despite their human frailties. Vargas Llosa takes us on a tour of Shining Path horror, from the senseless stoning to death of two young French tourists drawn by the beauty of the country; the slaughter of a herd of mountain-dwelling vicunas; the execution of an ecologist who wants to improve the standard of living for the people of the high Andes; and a "people's trial" in a small village, where residents are forced to massacre each other to atone for the sins of the past.

Blood runs freely down from the Andes, not unlike water after the snow melts. It is blood that links this story, whether it is shed by the Shining Path or Vargas Llosa's fantastic and fearful pishtaco, who hangs his victims from hooks, just like fine hams, to collect their fat. Blood is the link between the ancient Indians of the high plateaus and the modern people of this Andean nation.

Vargas Llosa appears to ask, Which is more terrifying, or more profound -- the crushing reality of modern Peru, or Senora Adriana's surreal world of mountain gods and human sacrifice?

"In the old days people had the courage to face great troubles by making sacrifices. That's how they maintained the balance ... life and death like a scale with two equal weights, like two rams of equal strength that lock horns and neither one can advance or retreat," Senora Adriana reveals.