The dictator novel () is a genre of Latin American literature that challenges the role of the dictator in Latin American society. The theme of caudillismo—the régime of a charismatic caudillo, a political strongman—is addressed by examining the relationships between power, dictatorship, and writing. Moreover, a dictator novel often is an allegory for the role of the writer in a Latin American society. Although mostly associated with the Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 1970s, the dictator-novel genre has its roots in the nineteenth-century non-fiction work Facundo (1845) by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento.
As an indirect critique of Juan Manuel de Rosas' dictatorial régime in Argentina, Facundo is the forerunner of the dictator novel genre; all subsequent dictator novels harken back to it. As established by Sarmiento, the goal of the genre is not to analyze the rule of particular dictators, or to focus on historical accuracy, but to examine the abstract nature of authority figures and of authority in general.
To be considered a dictator novel, a story should have strong political themes drawn from history, a critical examination of the power held by the dictator, the caudillo, and some general reflection on the nature of authoritarianism. Although some dictator novels centre on one historical dictator (albeit in fictional guise), they do not analyze the economics, politics, and rule of the régime as might a history book. The dictator novel genre includes I, the Supreme (1974), by Augusto Roa Bastos, about Dr. Francia of Paraguay, and The Feast of the Goat (2000), by Mario Vargas Llosa, about Rafael Leónidas Trujillo of the Dominican Republic. Alternatively, the novelist might create a fictional dictator to achieve the same narrative end, as in Reasons of State (1974), by Alejo Carpentier, in which the dictator is a composite man assembled from historical dictators.
The genre of the dictator novel has been very influential in the development of a Latin American literary tradition, because many of the novelists rejected traditional, linear story-telling techniques, and developed narrative styles that blurred the distinctions between reader, narrator, plot, characters, and story. In examining the authority of leadership, the novelists also assessed their own social roles as paternalistic dispensers of wisdom, like that of the caudillo whose régime they challenged in their dictator novels.
Literary context Literary critic Roberto González Echevarría argues that the dictator novel is "the most clearly indigenous thematic tradition in Latin American literature" and traces the development of this theme from "as far back as Bernal Díaz del Castillo's and Francisco López de Gómara's accounts of Cortés's conquest of Mexico". The nineteenth century saw significant literary reflections on political power, though on the whole the dictator novel is associated with the Latin American Boom, a literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s. For critic Gerald Martin, the dictator novel marks the end of the Boom and even (as he says of Roa Bastos's I, the Supreme) "the end of an entire era in Latin American history, the era which had stretched from Sarmiento's Facundo in 1845". In the 1970s, many dictator novels focused on the figure "of the aging dictator, prey to the boredom of a limitless power he is on the verge of losing".
Definition
Miguel Ángel Asturias's El Señor Presidente (written in 1933, but not published until 1946) is, in the opinion of critic Gerald Martin, "the first real dictator novel". Other literary treatments of the dictator figure followed, such as Jorge Zalamea's El Gran Burundún Burundá ha muerto, but the genre did not gain impetus until it was reinvented in the political climate of the Cold War, through the Latin American Boom.
The dictator novel came back into fashion in the 1970s, towards the end of the Boom. As Sharon Keefe Ugalde remarks, "the 1970s mark a new stage in the evolution of the Latin American dictator novel, characterized by at least two developments: a change in the perspective from which the dictator is viewed and a new focus on the nature of language".Keefe Ugalde, p. 369 By this she means that the dictator novels of the 1970s, such as The Autumn of the Patriarch or I, the Supreme, offer the reader a more intimate view of their subject: "the dictator becomes protagonist" and the world is often seen from his point of view. With the new focus on language, Keefe Ugalde points to the realisation on the part of many authors that "the tyrant's power is derived from and defeated by language". For example, in Jorge Zalamea's El Gran Burundún Burundá ha muerto the dictator bans all forms of language.
According to Raymond L. Williams, it was not until the 1970s, when enough Latin American writers had published novels dealing with military regimes, that "dictator novel" became common nomenclature. The most celebrated novels of this era were Alejo Carpentier's Reasons of State (1974), Augusto Roa Bastos's I, the Supreme (1974), and Gabriel García Marquez's The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975). He defines the dictator novel as a novel which draws upon the historical record to create fictionalized versions of dictators. In this way, the author is able to use the specific to explain the general, as many dictator novels are centred around the rule of one particular dictator. Within this group he includes those novelists who took to task authoritarian figures such as Vargas Llosa's Conversation in the Cathedral (1969) and Denzil Romero's La tragedia del Generalísimo (1984). He even includes Sergio Ramírez's ¿Te dio miedo la sangre? (1977), a novel about Nicaraguan society under the Somoza dictatorship, which has been described as a "dictator novel without the dictator".
Style and theme The novelists of the dictator novel genre combined narrative strategies of both modern and postmodern writing. Postmodern techniques, constructed largely in the late 1960s and 1970s, included use of interior monologues, radically stream-of-consciousness narrative, fragmentation, varying narrative points of view, neologisms, innovative narrative strategies, and frequent lack of causality. Alejo Carpentier, a Boom writer and contributor to the dictator novel genre pioneered what came to be known as magical realism, although the use of this technique is not necessarily a prerequisite of the dictator novel, as there are many that do not utilize magical realism.
A predominant theme of the dictator novel is power, which according literary critic Michael Valdez Moses, in his 2002 review of Feast of the Goat, is linked to the theme of dictatorship: "The enduring power of the Latin American dictator novel had everything to do with the enduring power of Latin American dictators". As novels such as El Señor Presidente became more well-known, they were read as ambitious political statements, denouncing the authority of dictators in Latin America. As political statements, dictator novel authors challenged dictatorial power, creating a link between power and writing through the force wielded by their pen. For example, in Roa Bastos's I, the Supreme, the novel revolves around a central theme of language and the power inherent in all of its forms, a power that is often only present in the deconstruction of communication. González Echevarría argues that: Dr. Francia's fear of the pasquinade, his abuse of Policarpo Patiño ..., [and] his constant worry about writing all stem from the fact that he has found and used the power implicit in language itself. The Supremo defines power as being able to do through others what we are unable to do ourselves: language, being separate from what it designates, is the very embodiment of power, for things act and mean through it without ceasing to be themselves. Dr. Francia has also realized that he cannot control language, particularly written language, that it has a life of its own that threatens him.
Another constant theme which runs throughout the Latin American dictator novel, which gained in importance and frequency during the Latin American Boom, is the interdependence of the Latin American tyrant and United States imperialism. In Mario Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat, for example, Trujillo faces serious opposition shortly after losing his material backing from the CIA, previously held for over 32 years in light of his anti-communist leanings.
Gender is an additional overarching theme within dictator novels. National portraits in Latin America often insist on the importance of women (and men) that are healthy, happy, productive, and patriotic, yet many national literary treasures often reflect government rhetoric in the way they code active citizenship as male. Masculinity is an enduring motif in the dictator novel. There is a connection between the pen and the penis in Latin American fiction, but this pattern cannot be explained by machismo alone—it is far more complex. According to Rebecca E. Biron, "where we find violent, misogynistic fantasies of masculinity, we also [find] violent social relations between actual men and women". Many Latin American works "include characters who act out violent fictions of masculinity, and yet their narrative structure provides readers with alternative responses to misogynistic fantasies of masculine identity formation".
Historical context
Dictators in Latin American history Since independence, Latin American countries have been subject to both right and left-wing authoritarian regimes. Given this long history, it is unsurprising that there have been so many novels "about individual dictators, or about the problems of dictatorship caudillismo, caciquismo, militarism and the like". The legacy of colonialism is one of racial conflict sometimes pushing an absolute authority to rise up to contain it—thus the tyrant is born. Seeking unlimited power, dictators often amend constitutions, dismantling laws which prevent their reelection. Licenciado Manuel Estrada Cabrera, for example, altered the Guatemalan Constitution in 1899 to permit his return to power. The dictators who have become the focus of the dictator novel (Augusto Roa Bastos's I, the Supreme, for instance, is based on Paraguay's dictator of the early nineteenth century, the so-called Dr Francia) do not differ much from each other in terms of how they govern. As author González Echevarría states: "they are male, militaristic, and wield almost absolute personal power".
Their strong-arm tactics include exiling or imprisoning their opposition, attacking the freedom of the press, creating a centralized government backed by a powerful military force, and assuming complete control over free thought. Despite intense criticisms leveled at these figures, dictators involved in nationalist movements developed three simple truths, "that everybody belonged, that the benefits of Progress should be shared, and that industrial development should be the priority". Epitácio Pessoa, who was elected President of Brazil in 1919, wanted to make the country progress regardless of whether or not Congress passed the laws he proposed. In particular, during the Great Depression, Latin American activist governments of the 1930s saw the end of neocolonialism and the infusion of nationalist movements throughout Latin America, increasing the success of import substitution industrialization or ISI. The positive side-effect of the collapse of international trade meant local Latin American manufacturers could fill the market niches left vacant by vanishing exports.