The Feast of the Goat

Mario Vargas Llosa

This is a dark, brooding novel for the first 3/4 of the book - historical fiction about the military dictatorship of Generallisimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina "the Benefactor, the Father of the New Nation, His Excellency, the Chief", also called by Domnicans the Goat. Tulijillo and his colaborators are deparved, brutal thugs with control of the Dominican Republic for thirty years, from the 1930's through 1961, when he was ambushed and murdered in a coup. The book is told from the multiple points of view. It begins with Dr. Urania Cabral returning to the Dominican Republic after 35 years to visit her father, an invalid, and the family, in an attempt to exorsize her own demons.

Most of the characters are well drawn, and insiders of the regime. The nicknames read like any other organized gang of the period - in addition to the Goat we have Blacky, Peepers, the Constitutional Sot, the Egghead (Senator Augustín Cabral - Urania's father), the Walking Turd and others. Trujillo has come to power in part to throw black Haitians out of the Dominican to keep order. He himself is part black and a descendant of slaves, and hiding this appears to be part of the motivation for the excesses of his regime. Trujillo keeps control largely through sheer force of will, blackmail, extortion and murder if all else fails. The murders nearly always are disappearances - often in a bay with sharks assisting in the elimination of any evidence. Despite this thuggish behavior, he is supported by the US because the Dominican Republic is a staunch foe of communism - which has a eerie ring given what is going on today. An error in judgment that Trujillo makes is that he arranges an 'accident' for the Mirabal sisters, which is one of the events which leads the US to condemn Trujillo and his supporters.

Senator Cabral at one point is ordered by Trujillo to attend a party and report on the results. Shortly afterword, newspaper accounts begin talking of Cabral as Señor, not Senator - and Trujillo has set him up to be shuttled out of his position. The Senator, trying to maintain his position and power, tries to do a deal with the Goat, which is done but doesn't achieve the hoped for results. Shortly afterword, the coup unfolds.

In most of the last quarter of the book puppet President Balaguer of the regime goes from a token while Trujillo is alive to the real thing after the coup. The coup would have failed without Balaguer, since the military would have taken over, even at the risk of a US invasion. However, navigating through the military, whose top echelon includes relatives and close collaborators of Trujillo, Balaguer slowly brings democracy to the Domnican and most of the henchman, family or otherwise, are exiled. In the end, we learn what Cabral's deal with the devil was, and that Urania's demons may in fact have been exorcised.

The only minor quibble that I have with this book is that while it appears to be a largely factual account of the period (with the dialog being largely fictional, I'm sure) there is no afterword or commentary which would give a better feel for the research that went into this work. Research which appears to be quite extensive - and an afterword would help in an understanding of the non-historians among us of the line between fact and fiction that co-exists in the book.