The General in His Labyrinth

It was the festival of the Three Kings and the colour was red. From the top of the steep terraces of Ollantaytambo where once Indian and Spanish blood mixed and flowed into the Inca irrigation channels, we looked down on the festivities of the Valle Sagrado. Hundreds of indigenous Peruvians dressed in shawls and flat round hats of the brightest scarlet had occupied every possible spot on the hillside to get a view of the bullfight. Inside the bullring second rate matadors move effeminately across the sand distorted by the long sweeps of their crimson capes. Picadores were waiting in the wings behind barricades painted dark red. A long dark stain connected two pools of blood, one in the centre of the ring the other in the goalmouth of the adjoining five-a-side football pitch where young boys poked the carcass of the last showpiece and men in aprons sharpened knifes. Hemingway believed a person’s reaction to a bullfight depended on which of the main protagonists he or she identified with. I was enthralled. The fight was primitive yet elegant and the joyous reactions of the predominantly hardworking and underpaid residents seemed to be sufficient justification for such small scale cruelty. E rushed down the hill to join the town’s celebrations. Small children hit their elders with white plastic bags and showered gringos with water bombs, squealing and shaking at the sheer subversiveness of it all. To them this was the most special of days.

That was over a week ago and now, on the road to Potosi, I have to exit the most conspicuous vehicle in the tailback and walk a hundred yards to the scene of the delay. The old women who sit in the road have square, heavy set faces. Their skin is brown and weathered and they carry a shared stoic expression. Thick brown dresses bellow out around them giving no idea of their occupants’ shape. These frail women seem as monolithic and immovable as the great sandstone statues of Tiwanaku in the north of the country. Around them a growing crowd of curious tourists and exasperated motorists shuffle about to get a view. A trucker in a baseball cap raises both hands in frustration towards the wide altiplano sky. Younger women in more European clothes try to negotiate their passage with the protesters but nobody raises their voices. The group’s leader, a woman of about 60 years of age, sports small round reading glasses and course black ponytails tied together at the base with alpaca wool. She avoids eye contact, ignores all protestations and demands to speak to the Colonel.

Forty minutes later a murmur of excitement rises above the frustration and resignation of the crowd. A path opens and an army general from Potosi, cutting a sinister figure in his thick green overcoat and aviator sunglasses, approaches the old women. Watching the muscles in his jaw tense, you get the impression he is suffering a cruel nostalgia for the days when such challenges to public order could be settled by a few good men versed in the sciences of intimidation and the truncheon. But this is Evo’s Bolivia and the military man listens with his most patient face to the demands of the protesters which predictably revolve around land reform and taxation. At one stage he raises his open hand up to his cheek in a comical expression of shock and concern and ten years of political preconceptions fall away, leaving me scratching my head through an llama beanie. For someone who has always identified with the people and the causes these stubborn grannies represent, feelings of sympathy for the square jawed man in olive are unexpected. But suddenly to me he seems completely impotent. Outnumbered and bullied, slave to his superiors, reluctant messenger of a policy he had no part in making. An order from the top, an angry crowd, an impossible task. As the Colonel pushed through the jostling crowd towards the public phone which was his only chance of salvation I couldn’t help thinking that the stars on his epaulettes had become a huge weight on his shoulders. After my recent conflicts with passengers and senior staff, I found myself emphasizing with the bull.

My passengers frequently ask me for recommendations concerning Latin American authors or books on Latin America in general. While I’d much rather be discussing One Hundred Years of Solitude or Hopscotch than outlining safety and security issues in Lima or trying to explain that the amount of money you’ll need really does depend on how much your going to spend on booze and tacky souvenirs, I thought I’d save myself some time and compose an email on the subject to send out to anyone with an interest in the area. I hope it points you in the right direction and if you have any further questions feel free to mail back.

The first stop for anyone wanting to get into Latin American literature should be the Nobel Prize winner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. As a child, the native of the Colombian Caribbean coast would listen to the wild and fanciful tales of his grandmother. The outstanding feature of the matriarch’s style was the way she would describe the most fantastic and unlikely events as if they were entirely natural and commonplace. GGM transferred her style of understated hyperbole into his own writing and became the leading exponent of the literary style of ‘magical realism’. Widely regarded as one of the most important novels of the twentieth century, 100 Years of Solitude traces the fate of several generations of the Buendia family in the small colonial town of Macondo. Through countless civil wars, biblical rains, foreign exploitation and family feuds, tiny isolated Macondo serves as a microcosm for Colombia and Latin America in general. It’s a place where landlocked Spanish galleons and plagues of insomnia are far more real and comprehensible to the citizens than the politics of civil war or the dastardly excesses of the American Banana Company. In 1982 GGM was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his novel Love in the Time of Cholera, a classic love story concerning the enduring unrequited affection of a local bureaucrat for a high society girl. Written with typical wit and compassion it encompasses love in its many forms, from the carnal to the platonic. GGM also has a background in journalism and has written a selection of celebrated non-fiction works such as News of a Kidnapping and Chronicle of a Death Foretold. The General in his Labyrinth, his most historical piece, is a kind of floral biography of the great hero of Latin American independence, Simon Bolivar. It is set during Bolivar’s final voyage along the Magdalena river, as the great Liberator reminisces about battles won, assassination attempts foiled and women conquered and bitterly comes to terms with a new age of South American politics and his shattered dreams of a unified continent.

While GGM is all mangos, riverboats and pastel-colored colonial buildings his Argentine contemporary and friend Julio Cortazar is all smoky cafés, jazz music and rosy cheeked women. Having spent much of his life in political exile in Paris, Cortazar burst onto the literary scene in 1966 with his groundbreaking novel, Hopscotch. Concerning the bohemian existence of Oliveira, an Argentine in Paris, and his relationship with the mysterious La Maga, the novel stands out for its fragmented structure which allows the reading of the chapters in any order. While I can’t claim to understand all of the many philosophical and metaphysical arguments Cortazar proposes, the book is memorable for its style, tricks and word games. The author’s short stories teem with a sinister and uncomfortable atmosphere. Not one to insult his reader’s intelligence by giving too much away, stories such as ‘End of the game’, ‘The night face up’ and ‘Blow up’ are full of loose ends, the unexplained and the imagined. See Blow-Up and Other Stories.

One of Cortazar’s most obvious influences was the god-father modern Argentine fiction, Jorge Luis Borges. While his own life experiences were largely limited to the confines of his father’s extensive personal library, Borges wrote short stories that knew no limits of time and space. A treacherous ancient Greek warrior, a captured Mayan prince, a desperate gaucho knife-fighter and a tribe of immortals living at the end of the world are all heroes in Borges' fiction. See The Aleph or The Book of Sand.

The successful west-end play Kiss of the Spiderwoman was written by another Argentine, Manuel Puig. It’s the story of the unlikely friendship and its ultimate betrayal that builds between Valentin, a socialist guerrilla and Molino, a gay sex-offender who share a cell during the Argentine military dictatorship. To pass the time Molino retells the plots of Hollywood movies he has seen with a particular fascination for the femme fatale….

Staying in the River Plate, two Uruguayan authors stand out. The first, Eduardo Galleano, is a journalist who dabbles in history with a beautiful, concise writing style. A personal friend of Fidel Castro and Subcomandante Marcos of the Mexican Zapatistas, there can be no doubt of Galleano’s politics and his most famous book The Open Veins of Latin America is a dense and dogmatic attack on the exploitation of the continent by Europe and the USA. Far more accessible is his Memory of Fire Trilogy. Dividing the history of the western hemisphere into pre-Colombian times, the colonial era and the twentieth century this is one of the most engaging historical works I have read. Using short and poignant chapters, Galleano offers snapshots of Latin America at crucial points in its development focusing on famous historical figures as well as the common people. Juan Carlos Onnetti spent the last decades of his life in bed in Madrid, hiding from the outside world. His most notable books, such as A Brief Life and The Shipyard are set in an imagined Argentine town of Santa Maria. Slow-paced but with underlying philosophical and psychological arguments, Galleano described Onnetti’s works as “shouts that sound like whispers”.

Another leading figure of the boom in Latin American fiction in the 1960s and 1970s was Mario Vargas Llosa... While the Arequipenan author has since sullied his reputation in many circles by standing as an Andean-Thatcherite candidate in the Peruvian elections of 1990, his early works dramatically describe many of the social and political problems endemic in Latin America. His style is very modern, with stark jumps between time and place in the narrative and at times his books seem to read like film scripts. Death in the Andes is the story of two civil guardsmen charged with investigating disappearances in a remote Peruvian mining town. Ancient Andean myths and demons merge with the actions of the equally mysterious Shining Path guerrillas in this dark and peculiar tale. The plot of The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta centres on a botched revolution attempt in the Peruvian countryside. As well as focusing on the motives and psychology of the central revolutionary character, Vargas Llosa steps back from the story and describes, in the first person, the research process his fictitious author goes through, the interviews with peripheral characters and the synthesis of his version of ‘the truth’. In this sense the book is also an essay on the nature of fiction.

Aside from Paulo Coelho, the most read Brazilian of the twentieth century is Jorge Amado, author of many vibrant, tropical popular novels such as Gabriela. For something completely different the 19th century resident of Rio de Janeiro, Machado de Assis, is a revelation. Epitaph of a Small Winner is one of the most surprisingly funny books I have read. It brightened up my early morning journeys on the Sao Paulo metro. Machado de Assis was postmodern before the term existed, his books are full of irony and self-deprecation, he includes bizarre dream sequences and writes about the process of writing. Epitaph is the posthumous tale of the wasted life of a diplomat in colonial Brazil. Clarice Lispector, a Ukrainian immigrant to Brazil, is the country’s most celebrated female author. The Hour of the Star tells the story of a poor, unattractive girl from the slums of Rio and her visit to a fortune-teller. The book along with Lispector’s other work has been celebrated for its portrayal of the female psyche and Lispector is often described as a ‘feminist author’. Another female author, Patricia Melo, has been very successful in recent years with her gritty crime novels set in modern Brazil. Inferno centres on a young boy’s entry into the drug gangs of Rios favelas. The protagonist in The Killer is a law abiding citizen who discovers a love for violence and drugs and sets up a vigilante group in Sao Paulo. This book was converted into the film The Man of the Year, also recommended.

A good collection of short stories from across the continent is Latin American Short Stories, edited by Carlos Fuentes. It contains many of the authors above. For anyone wanting to improve their Spanish I can recommend Penguin Dual Language Stories which also showcases many big names in South American and Spanish literature.

I can recommend two memorable non-fiction books off the top of my head. The first In Patagonia, by Bruce Chatwin, is a fantastic travel book that describes beautiful bleak scenes from the southern cone of South America. Written in short, telling sentences In Patagonia steers clear of the self-absorbed style endemic in most travel literature. The second book is The Country Under My Skin an autobiography of the Nicaraguan poet and revolutionary Gioconda Belli. As you’d expect from a celebrated poet, it is a beautifully written account of the author’s transition from a high-society girl to a leading figure in the Sandinista revolution of 1979.

I hope this list is of help to someone

Mat

Mateo runasimita yachshan

Out of the major black cloud which was my failure to get on the Inca trail during my training trip were a few threads of the proverbial silver lining. Despite the fact that I had sent my passport details off to Tucan travel months in advance, London office and Cusco office appear to be working with communication lines inherited from the conquistadores. A simple email from Acton to Peru would have sufficed but, no, my details were not passed on and the trail will have to wait till next month. Anyway, the silver linings. I got to spend a few extra days in Cusco mainly used up visiting mummies and buying purple trousers etc. The real bonus was that I managed to squeeze in a Quechua lesson. Quechua is one of the original indigenous languages of the Andean region and was the dialect of the Inca Empire. It is still spoken by 8 million of the poorest people in South America. Except for the absence of a dark eyed, greasy haired infant smothered against her back in a coloured shawl, Elsa, my teacher, was exactly as I had imagined her. For the next two hours I stared at her wrinkled mouth as she produced a variety of bizarre clucks and sighs.

Having only ever studied romance languages, these new sounds were new and fascinating but also strangely familiar. It was later revealed to me where I had heard them before. In the original Star Wars, when Hans Solo is arguing with a gable of aliens in a bar before he shoots one of them under the table, it is Quechua that they are speaking. The language has strong onomatopoeic influences. On a trip to the mountains surrounding Cusco, my guide stopped by a waterfall and imitated the sound of water cascading over the rocks: “Paaaahhhhhhssshhh”. The Quechua for waterfall is phaqcha. The syntax is unusual but actually quite simple. A sentence consists of a few base words, normally in the order subject, object, verb and a range of suffixes are added to the end of these bases. For instance the suffix ‘pi’ means ‘in’ and can be added to the end of a place name or destination. ‘ta’ on the end of a noun denominates the emphasis of the sentence. Another interesting feature of the language is that it has two versions of the first person plural. One is inclusive and refers to the speaker and the listener together, the second is exclusive and refers to the speaker and ‘his people’ as Elsa explained it. As the class came to an end and my tongue and jaw started to tire of the ejective sounds, I paid Elsa a fee which was peanuts to me but clearly a good days work for her and was left with a few pages of scribbled notes which seemed like a code from another world.

The second antidote to my Inca trail bother was found in the hotel bookcase. Sandwiched between Mills & Boon and Jilly Cooper, looking embarrassed and snobbish, like an economist reporter at the Jordan, Peter Andre wedding, was a copy of In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin. The southern Andes of Chile and Argentina have been high on my agenda for a couple of years but my travel plans have been thwarted by carnival and the bank balance in both 2004 and 2005. The blurb promised a classic of travel literature and as all good travel books should, it fuelled my desire to visit the region. The wonderfully short chapters contain disparate anecdotes and historical tales linked together by the tracks of Chatwin´s tired walking boots. In concise, telling phrases the author traces the life of his great uncle Charley Milward, investigates the true fate of the American outlaws Butch Cassady and the Sundance Kid, infiltrates the region’s stoic and conservative welsh communities and explores the myths around Patagonian giants and the witches of Chiloé island.

The chapter which most captured my attention (because it coincided nicely with my Quechua lesson) concerned a dictionary compiled by an English ex-pat clergyman. He was studying the language of the Yaghan tribe in Tierra del Fuego and undertook the task on the assumption that their limited vocabulary would lend itself easily to quick translation. It turned into a life long labour of love. While the Yaghan vocabulary was relatively small, he hadn’t accounted for the tribe’s talent for metaphor and invention. The word for fish scales, for instance, also means sleet. The word for "adulterous" is taken from the "hobby", a hawk that hovers and flits over its prey. One word is used for "mussels out of season", "shrivelled" and "old age". My personal favourite "monotony" = "the absence of male friends". For a brief moment I missed Twickenham and the Lenton hall bar.

finally to those who emailed with words of encouragement for this greasy, unreliable Latino of a blog, thank you.

mat

Through bleary eyes i see the last inch of fluid in the whisky bottle displaced slightly by the rocking. The coca-cola is long gone and Carlos has sunk even firther into his chair, smoothing the tip of his blonde moustache between thumb and forefinger. He is talking about his wife again. After demistifying the Incas, debunking the shining path and disecting Wilbur Smith we have returned to his favourite subject. I dont need to look at my watch to know that im late to meet the tour group, but this conversation is too wonderful, i could listen to Carlos talk about Yavari all night. Conjouring up her past with well polished anecdotes, from her birth in England, her passage to Peru, the wars and the insults and her insatiable apetite for llama shit...

Carlos' wife of 18 years is a 100ft Victorian gunboat that sits in a secluded north western corner of Lake Titicaca. Sharing cuba libres around the mess table and listening to the captain speak i feel i am in the presence of another South American master of magical realism. Or perhaps it is because the Yavari's history seems to come straight out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. On varnished wooden walls, sepia photographs show tatooed forearms of London shipbuilders in front of a ship's dark hull. On a map of south america Carlos traces the route the dismantled and packed down Yavari took from the Peruvian coast, throught the Andes to Lago Titicaca, on the backs of llamas and porters. Tapping the nations southern border furiously. "her guns are still in Chile" he bemoans. The War of the Pacific between the two rival nations had prevented the guns arriving at their destination.

Down in the hull Carlos describes how the steamship had to be supersized to accomodate the necessary volume of fast-burning llama droppings, the only locally available fuel source. Sighing he points to a mark 4 ft up the side of the hull up to which accumulated rainwater had reached during the ships second incarnation as a neglected barracks for the Peruvian Navy.

18 years of maritine married life has taken an emotional toll on Captain Carlos. With money he explains, the boat could be ready to take passengers across Titicac in four months. "And the next day i will leave" he declares. "if it takes four months then in four months and one day i am gone. I like Puno but i[ve been away from Lima too long. I miss my people, i miss the smell of my family's farts..." We laugh along, leave a healthy donation and exit into the chilly andean air.

If i remember correctly...
in the late 19th century, after the ritual humiliation of the british ambasador to Bolivia, Queen Victoria ordered that the capital of the the offending american nation be bombarded by the royal navy. When one of her advisors informed her that the country had no coastline and that La Paz lay in the Andean sierra she reportadly drew a cross through a map and said "Bolivia does not exist". One hundered years later and a US senator and foreign policy advisor suggested that an aircraft carrier be sent to the coast of Bolivia to "persuade" the coca loving rascals to comply with US "War on Drugs" policy.

(In case the above looks like an example of meticulous historical research, be assured that is but a near verbatim rendition of the introduction of the Rough Guide to Bolivia). Ive known Bolivia to be landlocked for a good couple of months now but they say you can never thoroughly understand a truth until you contend against it.

today i tried to buy bermuda shorts in santa cruz de la sierra. At first i thought it was just my rusty spanish, maybe the verb "surfar" was only used in Brasil. I tried to paraphrase explaining to the woman that i wanted shorts "that i could go sea....waves.....plank" i put my feet shoulder width apart, bent my knees, put my arms out and looked over my left shoulder. No response, the girl seemed less confused than sympathetic to my obvious insanity. No luck in the second shop either. It seemed that not having a sea meant a complete obliviousness to its possible recreational posibilities. I eventually found a young guy who understood what i wanted but only after i had hummed the theme to Hawaii 50. "sorry we dont have any" he told me "theres no sea in Bolivia"

i settled on a pair of imitation Bolivian national football shorts, made from that synthetic material that stinks like a jock strap after the most fleeting of uses.

This journal starts on Air France flight 454 from Paris to Sao Paulo. At last Normando, my (over) friendly brazilian neighbour is asleep, still smiling broadly, and i can write.

I was in england for three months and three days.In the last few weeks i spoke as best man and engaged in fantastic family banter at my parents wedding. For a day i saw mum and dad as young people before normal nagging/bollocking service was resumed. I made a friend at work who was kind enought to take my annoying bullshit with a pinch of salt and almost made me wish i could delay my return to south america a little. I played rugby with guys i havent played with for years, had a very mediocre game but it was all about the bonding anyway. Before i went away i got a phone call from my brother who´s at uni and he seemed really happy, a little stoned, but very content. Above all i took the opportunity to catch up and, obviously, get drunk with friends from home and uni.

But at various times in my slight return i would have started this piece in a very different way. it would have been a rant. A friends girlfriend asked me if i had been making a list of all the things i hate in england. i hope i wasnt such miserable company. I dont hate england, its just not where i want to be right now. i left something in south america and im gonna get it back..