Llosa, Mario Vargas [1936-]; Helen Lane (tr.);
The Storyteller
Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1989, 246 pages
ISBN 0374270856, 9780374270858
topics: | fiction | peru | latin-america
One must read this story if only to study how to tell a story. Two narratives are interspersed, presenting completely differing perspectives of the same myths, from an Amazonian tribe, the Machiguenga, who live in southeastern Peru, near the border w Bolivia and Brazil. The fascinating view is that of the insider - the storyteller's - unlike other myth narratives, here you step into the story itself, living and visiting the gods, you are very near, part of the very myth, indeed, you yourself become Tasurinchi. The story is felt in a deeply personal way, somewhat like the Bhakti tradition, how one feels a personal bond with Krishna. On the other hand, from the civilized, university ethnologist culture perspective, these are mere stories - "taboos" and "rituals" far from a scientific "truth", re-told objectively, not quite looked down-upon, but still clearly primitive and clearly not true, and completely de-personalized. In the storyteller narratives though, the myth comes alive like nothing I have encountered. (Though a few scholars, e.g. Heinrich Zimmer in Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization manage to do better than most. See also Subodh Ghosh's Love stories from the Mahabharata ) The story opens with a brief visit to a photo exhibition in Florence, and then it shifts to the narrator's college days in Lima, and his friendship with Saul Zuratas [Sául], "the ugliest lad in the world" - one half of his face a giant purple scab. Zuratas, it turns out is knowledgeable on the native tribes, and is particularly fond of on the Machiguenga. There is a hint of tragedy, and then the story moves to a completely different dimension, among Machiguenga myths. Nearly half the book comprises of these myths, but they are interweaved so well into the story, with occasional asides about the atmosphere of the storytelling frame. The alien names, offered in context with no explanation, evoke this distant sub-Andean atmosphere of this dying tribe. He discovers that Saul is near-fanatic in his championing of the Machiguenga. This obsession (he has been "converted" early) leads to the main story in the book, which is almost peripheral to the rivers of myth on which it bobs along. Sometimes we see the story from the top, and sometimes from underwater. The latter is by far the more fascinating of the two, and also the slower (unfamiliar) read. I had to read these parts twice to get the sense of it, but it's definitely worth it. Like very few books of ambition, this one lives up to it.
Chapter 1: (number mine, no numbers in the book) [He is drawn to an exhibition: "Natives of the Amazon forest" from eastern Peru.] What I am about to say is not an invention after the fact, not yet a false memory. I am quite sure I moved from one photograph to the next with an emotion that at a certain moment turned to anxiety. What's happening to you? What might you come across in these pictures that would justify such anxiety?
He talked of those Indians, of their customs and myths [and gods], with the
respect and admiration that were mine when I brought up the names of Sartre,
Malraux, and Faulkner, my favourite authors that year. 16
In [his] stories, Saul's enthusiasm made the most trivial happening --
clearing a patch of forest for fishing for gamitana - take on heroic
dimensions. 19
[argument for development; against environment]
Should sixteen m Peruvians renounce the natural resources of three-quarters
of their national territory so that seventy or eighty thousand Indians could
quietly go on shooting each other with bows and arrows, shrinking heads and
worshipping boa constrictors? 21
Babies born with physical defects, lame, maimed, blind, with more or fewer
fingers than usual, or a harelip, were killed by their own mothers, who threw
them in the river or buried them alive. Anybody would naturally be shocked
by such customs. ...
Suddenly he touched his enormous birthmark. "I wouldn't have passed the
test, pal. They'd have liquidated me." he whispered. "They say the Spartans
did the same thing, right? That little monsters, Gregor Samsas, were hurled
down from the top of Mount Taygetus, right?" 25
[Gregor Samsa: name of his parrot - Saul is fond of Kafka. It is these
touches that enliven what would have been dry ideology in lesser hands. ]
At the time, i was wearing myself out trying to land some sort of fellowship
that would get me to Europe... 31
[S refuses his scholarship to Bordeaux; very gently reveals how important
such scholarships were in the Lima U. milieu; quite sim to India]
His friendships [like ours] were cordial but fairly superficial. 35
[The third chapter is magical, mystical, and opens suddenly with stories, the
myths of the Machiguenga, related in first person. You gradually realize
that the narrator may be a storyteller. He visits the legendary Tasurinchi,
and goes and comes across the land, sometimes falling very ill, but
recovering.
The chapter is crafted with great care, emphasizing legends, but very subtly
- e.g. every time evil times come around, the M are urged to keep up customs,
to "keep walking"), gently mingling in what one realizes are deep-seated
beliefs (like the going away and coming back, that makes death seem a lot
easier) aspects of the lifestyle, like lice:
nonchalantly talking of "women picking through the hair" 50;
and then on the next page, after the
first White fathers came "even the lice died, it seems" 54 ]
Inkite - upper realm w sun and the stars. sun - one eyed always open, fear
that it may fall from the sky. after death, one branch of the river
Kamabiria goes up, to the land of bountiful fish and game.
Menkoripatsa - white world of the clouds 43
Gamaironi - nether lands "those who descend to the Gamaironi to suffer" 58
connected via a river of piss and shit 213
Kashiri - moon - causes evil 42
Kamabiria [ía] - river of the dead 45
Meshiarini - river connecting this world w Inkite 58
"a stairway of bright stars, to Inkite" [milky way]
Ostiake - end of the world, "into which all the rivers flow" 58
Tasurinchi - god, wise man
Mashcos - another tribe, more belligerent 42
seripigari - wise man 57
saankarite - his spirit helper 57
Kientabakori - lord of evil
"has many intestines, like inkiro the tadpole" 61
"chief of demons and creator of all things poisonous and
inedible" 91 [ethnologist gloss, v stilted comp to M view]
"creator of filthy things, spirit of evil and the chief of a
legion of demons, the kamagarinis." 107
breathes out kamagarinis (little devils)
Kasibarenini - worst of the kamagarinis -
"small as a child,he turns up somewhere in his earth-coloured
cushma," to take possession of some sick person's soul 66
Ornaments:
where the devil ties you down 67. But also may protect from
machikanari 46
death:
Those who went came back, and entered the spirit of the best. That way,
nobody used to die. 37
[Tasurinchi] would go to the river and make his bed of leaves and dry
branches, with a roof of ungurabi overhead. He would put up a fence of
sharp-pointed canes all around to keep the capybras prowling about from
eating his corpse. He would lie down, go away, and soon come back...
[death] made them stronger, adding to those who remained the wisdom and the
strength of those who went. 38
That, anyway, is what I have learned. 38
[this line serves as a refrain; every alternate chapter, from the
Storyteller's perspective, has it at the end of each story, a kind of
signature.]
[from the time "Before"; before they started "walking", keeping on the move.] In the night the jaguar roared and the lord of thunder rolled his hoarse thunder. There were bad omens. Butterflies invaded the huts and the women had to flap straw mats at them to chase them away from the food. They heard the owl and the chicua screech. What is going to happen? they said, alarmed. During the night the river rose so high that at dawn they found themselves surrounded by rolling waters carrying along logs, small trees, weeds, and corpsews being smashed to bits as they crashed against the banks. They hastily felled trees, improvised rafts and canoes before the flood swallowed the desolate island the earth had become. ... over there, over there, a flick of the tail of the cunning yacumama, lying very still beneath the water, waiting for the right momemnt to overturn the canoe and swallow the paddlers. Deep in the forest, the lord of the demons, Kientibakori, crazy with joy, drank masato and dcanced in the middle of a crowd of kamagarinis. 41 Tobacco plants, whose smells kept vipers away. ... There were no Mashcos, Kashiri, the moon, caused no evils yet. 42 [the reader is told how salt was precious. Near Cerro] The rocks were salt, the ground was salt, the river bottoms, too, were salt. The men of earth filled their baskets aned their pouches and their nets, at peace, knowing that the salt would never run out. 43-4
[at salt licks, there is peace] Who has ever seen a sajino attack a majaz, or a capybara bite a shimbillo at a salt lick? 44 [men were at peace near Cerro] Viracochas - white men, lay in wait at the salt licks, with traps. They carried off the ones who fell. [tribes] Ashaninkas, Piros, Amahuacas, Yaminahuas, Mashcos. They had no preferences. 45 Tasurinchi: The Viracochas have their magic. We must have done something. The spirits protect them, and us they abandon. We are guilty of something. Better to stick a chambira thorn into yourself or drink cumo juice. [also "We have done sth wrong. We have become corrupt, staying so long in one place. Custom must be respected. We must become pure again. Let us keep walking." 43] ["evil has come. We are surrounded by kamagarinis. Let us go. It may not be too late. We may still be able to walk." 51] [also 64-65: T an old seripigari, becomes a saankarite - rebukes them for giving up their ways. They start walking.] [Walking involves throwing away possessions, so it is harder. ] Those who go from a rifle bullet don't come back. They stay floating on the river Kamabiría, dead amid the dead, forever. 45 [this period came to be known in M legend as the "tree-bleeding" time - because of the rubber the press gang slaves harvested.] kamagarini devils ... machikanari witch can't cast spells on you 46 a sopai pushes out dead children [gives birth to] 48 [Tasurinchi's wife] brought a pot of freshly roasted cassava that she emptied out onto plantain leaes, and a little jar of masato. 46
armadillo meat must not be eaten because the armadillo has an impure mother and brings harm. 49 [but Tasurinchi offers him some, and he eats, and nothing happens. Thus, these spirit stories are also not infallible. ] [Tasurinchi is completely repulsed by the sight of a white man sneezing] all of a sudden he broke off, just like that, with his face all puckered up. He opened his mouth wide and achoo! achho! achoo! Three times running, it seems. His eyes got all tear, red as a candle flame. Tasurinchi had never been that scared in his whole life. I'm seeing a kamagarini, he thought. ... A stream of green snot ran out his nostrils. 51 "evil has come. We are surrounded by kamagarinis. Let us go. It may not be too late. We may still be able to walk." 51 [they "walk" to a faraway gorge] The women, picking about in each other's hair, keep saying: "We're lucky we escaped." 50 The evil entered your body because some machikanari sent it or because, quite by accident, you crossed its path. The body is merely the soul's cushma. It's wrapping, like a worm's. 56 Blind Tasurinchi: [The devil steals souls from houses] by escaping through the crown of the roof. Why do we weave the slats in the top fo the roof so carefully? 56 [after snakebite] turned as black as huito dye 57 [annato dye: red 56] ["dyeing strands of wild cotton with palillo roots." 46] [About storytellers] Tasurinchi: What a miserable life it must be for those who don't have people who talk, as we do. Thanks to the things you tell us, it's as though what happened before happens again, many times. 61 [Kafka legend repeats itself several times] One fine day Tasurinchi woke u0p covered with fish scales, w a tail where his feet had been. He looked like an enormous carachama. 63 64-65: T, who is old, has become a seripigari. everyone is turning into an animal - he urges them to start walking again [a kasibarenini becomes an ant] "enters T's body by way of the little opening inside the nose through which tobacco juice is sniffed." 68 [causes T to burn down the village at Shivankoreni.66-69] [The M of Shivankoreni set machikanari on T. ]
[T returns to the M after being w the Viracocha]. He doesn't wear a cushma, but a shirt and trousers. 69 "There among them, I felt like an orphan. I dreamed of returning to Shivankoreni. And now that I'm here, my kinfolk make me feel like an orphan, too." [The story of the returned convert. ]
[Summer Institute of Linguistics, funded by US : studies the native languages, compiles lexicons etc. Conservatives disapprove. But while Peruvians are not doing this work, pragmatists find it welcome. ] 72-3 Jum, cacique or leader of Urakusa - beaten up for proposing that the Urukasa trade directly with the town, instead of via the nearby whites and mestizos.74 [Shapra village: prisoner from another tribe. was allowed to roam freely, but his dog was kept in very tight check. ] in the minds of both parties, the caged animal kept the prisoner from running away and bound him to his captors more securely -- the force of ritual, of belief, of magic -- than any iron chain could have. 79 Japanese adventurer, rogue, and feudal lord called Tushia, who was said to live on an island in the Pastaza river w a harem of girls he had abducted from all over Amazonia. 79 [The M] had been breathed out by the god Tasurinchi, creator of everything that existed, and did not have personal names. Their names were always temporary, related to a passing phenomenon and subject to change: the one who arrives, or the one who leaves, the husband of the woman who just died, or the one who is climbing out of his canoe, the one just born, or the one who shot the arrow. Their lg had expressions for only for the quantities one, two, three and four. All others were covered by the adj "many". Their notion of paradise was [a place where] rivers had fish and woods had game. They associated their nomad life w the movement of the stars through the firmament. There was a high incidence of self-inflicted death among them. Mostly the women took their own lives by plunging chambira thorns into their hears or temples, or by swallowingpotions of deadly poison, for pointless reasons - an argument, an arrow that had missed, a reprimand by a kin. It was as though their will to live, their instinct for survival, had been reduced to a minimum. 83 seripigari = "witch doctors or medicine men" [contrast w respectful tone of earlier chapter]
sadness is looking at me sadness is looking at me sadness is looking hard at me sadness is looking hard at me sadness troubles me very much sadness troubles me very much air, wind has brought me air has borne me away sadness troubles me very much sadness troubles me very much air, wind has brought me sadness troubles me very much sadness the little worm, the little worm has brought me air, wind, air - M song, presented with original words 85 [Most linguists] were motivated by a spiritual goal - translating the Bible into the tribes' own lg so they could hear God's word in the rhythms and inflections of their own tongue. 86 I have always been both moved and frightened by the strong, unshakable faith that leads men to dedicate their lives to that faith and accept any sacrifice in its name, for heroism and fanaticism, selfless acts and crimes alike can sprint from this attitude. 87 The Huambisas spit as they talk, to prove they're telling the truth. a man who doesn't spit as he talks is a liar. 87 the river cosmogony of the M, in which the Milky Way is the river Meshiareni, plied by thye innumerable great and minor gods in their descent from their patntheon to the earth, and by the sould of the dead as they mount to paradise. 89 [note difference in register from ch3] M society lacked any sort of authorities. The only headmen they had ever had were those imposed by the Viracochas. 91 Memory is a snare, pure and simple: it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present. 95 [of his attempt to reconstruct his last conv with Saul] in the seedy cafe on the Avenida Espan~a, w its broken down chhairs and rickety tables, that by now i am not sure of anything, with the exception, perhaps, of hsi enormous birthmark... 95 [note narrative device - believability - the details of the cafe despite his allusion to memory as a snare... ] Saul: "Those apostolic linguists of yours are the worst of all. They work their way into the tribes to destroy them from within, just like chiggers. Into their spirit, their beliefs, their subconscious, the roots of their way of being. The others steal vital space and exploit them or push them farther into the interior. At worst, kill them. Your linguists are more refined. They want to kill them in another way. Translating the bible into M - how about that?" 96-7 He paused, noting that three men at the next table had stopped talking to listen to him, their attention attracted by his birthmark and his rage. 97 The Incas could not subjugate the Antisuyo (Amazonian tribes / primitive empire?) What happened ... to Topac Yupanqui? Hadn't I read [on them w Porras Barrenechea?] How their warriors disappeared in the jungle, how the Antis slipped through their fingers. They hadn't subjugate a single one, and out of spite, the people of Cusco began to look down on them. That's why they invented all those disparaging Quechua words for the Amazonian Indians: savages, degenerates. 98 Yet the Inca empire Tahuantinsuyo vanished - the barbarians went on being what they had been. ... 98 [to Saul, this meant that] "these cultures must be respected. And the only way to respect them is not to go near them. Not to touch them." 98-9 Author: should we bring back the Tahuantinsuyo? Human sacrifice, quipus, trepanation w stone knives? 99 The great trauma that turned the Incas into a people of sleepwalkers and vassals hasn't yet occurred there. 100 S, of A's scholarship to Europe: We'll see if you come back a real Madrilen~o, lisping your z's and using archaic second-person plurals. 103 The earth was the center of the cosmos and there were two regions above it and two below, each one w its own sun, moon, and tangle of rivers. In the highest, Inkite, lived Tasurinchi, the all-powerful, the breather-out of people, and through it, bathing fertile banks w fruit-laden trees, flowed the Meshiareni, or river of immortality, that could be dimly made out from the earth, for it was the M.W. Below Inkite floated the weightless region of clouds, or Menoripatsa, w its transparent river, the Manaironchaari. The earth, Kipacha, was the abode of the M, a wandering people. Beneath it was the gloomy region of teh dead, almost all of whose surface was covered by the river Kamabiria, plied by the souls of the deceased before taking up their new abode. And last of all, the lowest and most terible region, the Gamaironi, a river of black waters w no fish... the domain of Kientibakori, creator of filthy things, spirit of evil and the chief of a legion of demons, the kamagarinis.
T's penis bitten by kamagarini in wasp form 109 penis swells up - like a tree - 111 Kashiri the moon as spoiler of the time "before" - no sun - "there were no stars yet. Instead of cassava and plantain, men ate earth. It was their only food. " 113 [several versions of the myth ] The world was still dark and the wind blew fiercely. The rain came down in buckets. Kashiri jumped ashore on the Sskiaje, where this earth meets the worlds of the sky, where monsters live and all the rivers go to die. ... He spied the M girl who was to bring him happiness and unhappiness... [teaches her abt cassava and plantain] K gives gifts to her father, Tasurinchi [Women's first menstruation ritual - locked up w old woman as guard] Not once did she go near the fire or eat chilli peppers, so as not to bring misfortune upon herself or her kinfolk. ... Then she cut her hair and the old woman helped her bathe herself, wetting her body w warm water poured from a pitcher. [the son born of them is the sun] We help [the sun] by walking. Rise, we say to him each night as he sinks. His mother was a M, after all. That, anyway, is what I have learned. 115 But the seripigari ofSegakiato tells the story differently. [mother dies, but her stomach is cut open, and baby is alive and twinkling. Moon left bearing her dead body, went back to the sky. ] 116 [Kashiri is only half a man, which is why his light is so weak. ] Others say that a bone got stuck in his throat while eating a fish. Ever since his light has been dim. 116 Anger is what is to blame for there being comets - kachiborerine - in the sky. 122 [Kachiborerine myth 122-124] tseibarintsi - "hole in the ground hidden by leaves and branches, w spears to impale peccaries and tapirs. 122 The Viracochas told the ones who were tied up to go and hunt people. "Buy your freedom", they said. "Here's food. And clothes. And here's a gun, too. ... Catch three Machiguengas and you can go forever." 140
[He is running a TV documentar program, Towers of Babel]
What we discovered was our dependence on material factors in an
underdeveloped country, the subtle way in which they subvert the best
intentions and thwart the most diligent efforts. I can say, without
exaggeration, that most of the time that Lucho, Moshe and I put in on the T
of B was spent not on creative work, trying to improve the program
intellectually and artistically, but was wasted in an attempt to solve
problems that at first sight seemed trivial and unworthy of our notice. 148
[van's battery dead, or camera shows a half-moon smudge because filters can't
be replaced - despite orders from very top that it be done.] 149
I could tell dozens of stories... to illustrate what is perhaps the very
symbol of underdevelopment: the divorce between theory and practice, decision
and facts. During these six months we suffered from this irreducible
distance at every stage of our work. 151
In point of fact, it was notthe schedules (for doing the work) but the
cunning and the clever maneuvering of each producer or technician that
determined who would have more or less time for editing and recroding, and
who could count on the best equipment. 151
stratagems, ruses, wiles or charm had to be used, not to obtain special
privileges, but merely to do a more or less decent job of what we were being
paid to do. 151
[such a common litany in all Indian settings, even corporate]
Of the 5000 surviving Machiguengas nearly half were now living in
settlements. 16
he pesters Irish friends until they get him to meet a tradl storyteller -
seanchai
Mr. Schneil:
"The storytellers are their entertainment. THey're their films and their TV.
Their books, their circusses, all the diversions we civilized people have.
They have only one diversion - the storytellers are nothing more than that"
"Nothing less than that." I corrected him gently. 178
The wisest seripigari I ever knew has gone. His name was Tasurinchi. (from Kompiroshiato) Nothing held any secrets for him, in this world or the others. He could tell which worms you can eat by thye color of their ringsand the way they crawled. ... The one that lives on giant reeds, the chakokieni, is good; the one that liveson lupana is bad. The one that lives in rotten tree trunks, the shigopi, is good, and also the one that lives on cassava fibers. The one that lodgs in the shells of tortoises is extremely bad. The best and the tastiest is the one that lives in the pulp left after maize or cassava go through a sieve to make masato. This worm, the kororo, sweetens the mouth, relieves hunger, and brings untroubled sleep. But the worms that lives on the corpses of caimans washed up on the shore of a lake does the body harm and brings on the same visions as a bad trance. 190 [after shooting a deer (forbidden game) he eventually becomes a deer] 195 [T meets Inaenka, powerful woman from the dark. She is about to sprinkle boiling water on him and melt his skin, when he reminds her that she is powerless while he has the two stones on a necklace.] "What you say is true," said Inanenka. "I'll wait here near you till you fall asleep. Then I'll remove the stones, and sprinkle you as much as I like" [And he can't keep awake, and she boils his skin off]" Once I woke up. I'd barely opened my eyes when I understood. Alas, poor Tasurinchi! I'd changed into an insect, that's what. A buzz-buzz bug, perhaps. A Gregor-Tasurinchi. I was lying on my back. The world had gotten bigger, it seemed to me. I was aware of everything. Those hairy, ringed legs were my legs. 203 [kafka story - family comes, then they finally lock him] 205 Morenanchiite - lord of thunder 210 [As storyteller, he worries about his half-black face. He argues against women killing their defective newborns ] Tasurinchi only breathed out perfect men and women. Monsters were breathed out by Kientibakori. 211 "You are Tasurinchi, the storyteller." 212 fight between Tasurinchi and Kientibakori 213 parable on Jesus: Jehovah-Tasurinchi [HOLY TRINITY]215 In a remote ravine, a child was born. He started saying: "I am the breath of Tasurinchi. I am the son of Tasurinchi. I am Tasurinchi. I am all three things at once." That's what he said. And that he'd come down from Inkite to this world, sent by his father, who was himself, to change the customs because the people had become corrupt and no longer knew how to walk. ... He had the power to change a few cassavas and a few catfish into a whole lot, enough to feed everyone sth. He could make an arm grow back on those who had lost one, and give the blind their eyes back. 216 [The Virachochas nail him to two crossed tree trunks and left him to bleed. But he came back.] [History of the Jews] Since then... terrible things happened to the people into which he had been born. [Like the M, they started walking.] 217 This story happened again and again in many places. Jehovah-Tasurinchi's people... always fulfilled its obligation; always respected the prohibitions, too. Was it hated because it was different? Was that why, wherever it went, peoples would not accept it? 219 He [T] was grinding some tobacco to inhale. I saw him tamp down the powder in the hollow turkey bone, and then he asked me to blow it up his nose for him. I placed it in one nostril and blew; he breathed it in deeply, anxiously, closing his eyes. 224 [A parrot trying to kill her chick by pecking] - born with leg twisted, and three claws just a stump. Why do pumas claw their cubs that are lame or one-eyed? Why do sparrow hawks tear their young to pieces if they have a broken wing? 233
[He has been to the gallery several times.] I have decided it is [Saul] who is the storyteller in Malfatti's photograph. It's true that the face of the figure is heavily shadowed -- on the right side, where his birthmark was. But at that distance the impression could be misleading; it might be no more than the sun's shadow... 240 But his becoming a storyteller was adding what appeared impossible to what was merely improbable. Talking like a storyteller means being able to feel and live in the very heart of that culture... reaching the marrow of its hystory and mythology, given body to its taboos, images, ancestral desires, and terrors. It means being, in the most profound way possible, a rooted Machiguenga... 244 Darkness has fallen and there are stars in the Florentine night, though not as bright as those in the jungle... --- The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa is a novel that deals with displaced cultural identities and Peru's noncohesive diversity. Its major themes are the relationship between the global, national and tribal societies; the coexistence and codependence of center and periphery, the "first and third worlds"; cultural hybridism, miscegenation and transnationalism as the only possible way of survival in the modern world. The novel also questions the dichotomous relationship between the writer, as a modern autonomous subject, and the storyteller, as an already disappeared part of the collective experience. It explores different possibilities of a dialogue between the storyteller/novelist and his/her listener/reader.
http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Llosa.html The Storyteller: Through the alternation of two narrators, the novel presents a story of Saul Zuratas, a man who decides to leave his past identity behind and go native in one of the indigenous tribes of Peru. Unlike the ethnographers and linguists who explore the aborigine tribes for professional or rational reasons, Saul’s motive is intimate and emotional – it is an act of love. But his noble intention becomes questionable when the reader gradually finds out that the hero could not leave behind the western dominant discourses on which his entire life had been built. This novel deals with the problem that not only persists in Peru, but also in many other counties of Latin America: the coexistence of the modern society which is prepared to participate in the cultural, economical and political life of the Global World, and of the indigenous population, which is viewed by modern societies as archaic and primitive. The tribes mentioned in The Storyteller, The Machiguengas are indigenous tribes who live along the banks of the Urumba River in Amazon Rainforest of Peru. Throughout the centuries, Jesuit Missionaries, Franciscans and Dominicans came to these territories to convert the indigenous tribes. They were often held responsible for the destruction of Machiguenga culture. The Amazon Basin became even more attractive when the World Market started exploiting rubber, quinine and Hydrocarbons in the 19th and 20th centuries. In recent decades, ethnographers, anthropologists and linguists took up the role of the colonial missionaries by carrying out the cultural penetration and Occidentalizing Amazonian Indians. At present there are still certain Machiguenga tribes that choose to live isolated from the world. However, throughout the Amazon Basin these indigenous communities are opening small lodges and co-operatives that allow tourists to visit their communities (El caso Machiguenga).
from interview by Deborah Solomon 2007 oct, [
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/magazine/07wwln-q4-t.html|NYT]
... you have written a surprisingly sentimental novel, “The Bad Girl” — a
love story narrated by a bookish Peruvian who moves to Paris and devotes 40
years to pursuing a woman he first met in high school.
Ricardo is a translator, which is a reflection of his
temperament. He’s an intermediary. He has not much personality, and
in his life there is only one adventure: the bad girl. Without her,
his life is very mediocre, curtailed, without much horizon.
Do you admire him?
I admire most the bad girl. She is cold and opportunistic, a gold
digger who winds up marrying businessmen in France, England and Japan
without feeling an ounce of affection for any of them. I think she is
more complicated than that. Look where she comes from.
She comes from a social background in which life is a kind of jungle, a place
in which if you want to survive, you become an animal.
She has been trained to be a kind of fighting animal, and she fights.
Do you know any bad girls?
Yes. Several. Absolutely. In Peru, there are many, but also in France
and in Spain. There are a lot of bad girls in America too.
Like a character in a Victorian novel, you’re married to your first cousin.
I fell in love with her. The fact that she was my cousin was not
taken into consideration.
Your first wife was the sister-in-law of your uncle and supposedly the
inspiration for your comic novel “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.” What does
all this family romance signify?
We would need a psychoanalyst to find out, but I am not in favor of
psychoanalysis. So the mystery will prevail.
more on the Machiguenga: http://www.westonaprice.org/ihf/machiguenga.html