Published in 2000 “The Feast of the Goat”, a novel that is widely considered as one of the greatest Spanish language works in modern times, now is a quarter century old. There are so many things to love about Mario Vargas Llosa’s epic novel about the Trujillo dictatorship. First, the protagonist is a woman, unlike his previous novels which have mostly male protagonists. Urania Cabral the heroine in this story is the archetypical strong, hard-working, and intelligent “tita” (auntie) several Latino families have, who left Latin America for the US to become international lawyers and never once looked back. Also, Vargas Llosa the master storyteller makes the readers feel that they are parked near the highway to San Cristobal waiting along with a group of Dominican heroes to ambush Trujillo’s limousine during the late hours of night and liberate the Dominican Republic from tyranny once and for all. So, in honour of its 25th anniversary, the recent passing of literary giant Vargas Llosa, and Don Fausto’s (my Dominican uncle who is a wonderful person and avid reader) upcoming birthday here are three things to love about “The Feast of the Goat” (La Fiesta del Chivo).

1 The hero’s journey
“The Feast of the Goat” narrates three stories, one of them is the story of the Dominican heroes who will shoot Trujillo naively assuming that the Dominican people will immediately take to the streets to celebrate Trujillo’s assassination. Sadly, the opposite happens, and they are hunted like prey after his death. Interestingly, many of the heroes benefited at one point from Trujillo’s regime, as in the case of many dictatorships they were otherwise regular people who welcomed a strongman with open arms. Mario Vargas Llosa masterfully recounts how each of the heroes has a falling out with the Trujillo regime leading them to choose the path of what Joseph Campbell describes as the hero’s journey. In essence, the heroes are presented with the temptation to continue to support Trujillo. Perhaps, their support will make them wealthy. However, they all realize that they are being called to serve their country and their people which they love deeply in their darkest hour. Tragically, right after they assassinate Trujillo everything that could go wrong goes wrong leading them into an abyss of capture, torture, and eventual execution. Just before their death each of the heroes transforms and accepts their fate calmly and peacefully knowing in their hearts that in the long run, the Dominican Republic will one day soon be liberated from tyranny thanks to their sacrifice.

2 The resilience of Latina women
The second story in this epic novel is the story of Urania Cabral which is the story of so many women in Latin America who were tortured, raped, and often disappeared during the dirty wars. However, Urania miraculously survives the dictatorship and mysteriously manages to escape to the US where she would study law and eventually become a renowned lawyer working in New York. As she recounts her story of oppression and violence to her niece and cousin she is received by their love and what can only be described as feminist solidarity. Interestingly, Urania is one of the only characters in this wonderful novel who is fictitious; however, she is based on real women whose resilience in the face of a dictatorship is to behold and admire. These women are the true heroes in this literary masterpiece and real life since they were not only fighting a dictatorship, but they also had to overcome deeply rooted misogyny and sexism in their lives.

3 Karma triumphs over might
The third story in this saga describes how the diminutive bespectacled Joaquin Balaguer transforms his image from puppet president of the dictatorship into that of a respected statesman. After seeing the power vacuum left by the death of Trujillo, a devious Balaguer sensing opportunity outmaneuvers in a Machiavellian chess game worthy of a Mario Puzo novel the members of the Trujillo family (most of them criminal thugs) one by one as well as Trujillo’s right-hand man and torturer Johnny Abbes. Vargas Llosa has been criticized for portraying Balaguer who was complicit in many of Trujillo’s worst atrocities, such as the massacre of Haitians in 1937, as being too sympathetic. Vargas Llosa responded that Balaguer was one of the villains in the novel. My impression is that Balaguer like many Latin American leaders is an ambiguous character capable of doing good, such as helping protect nuns and priests from the dictatorship in the Dominican Republic yet also has an amoral almost ruthless side that mistakenly believes the crimes of Trujillo were a necessary evil at the time.
Regardless of how one may view Balaguer, he sets off a series of karmic events and eventual poetic justice by forcing the Trujillo family and Johnny Abbes into exile while bringing democratic reforms after Trujillo’s death. During their exile in the tradition of Latin-American magical realism literature, each of the members of the Trujillo family and Abbes appear to be cursed and suffer unusual almost mysterious deaths that defy explanation. Near the end of the novel, the incredibly racist torturer Abbes, who after exile works for Haitian President François Duvalier, poetically suffers a horrific death at the hands of a Haitian death squad as a consequence of having betrayed Duvalier.
I was born in Peru and grew up in the Dominican Republic, so you can see how this novel about the darkest years in the Dominican Republic from Peruvian Nobel prize winner Vargas Llosa speaks to me in so many ways. With all the tortures and abuses during a brutal dictatorship accurately described it is a difficult read. Yet, ultimately it is a novel that leaves one with hope for our world thanks to the resilience of its heroine Urania Cabral who represents all the courageous Latin American women throughout history.