The President

In Miguel Ángel Asturias’ phenomenal novel, life under a corrupt and authoritarian regime is revealed through a sweeping narrative consisting of many incidents and subplots which add up to a rich, vivid whole. The country in which this novel takes place is unnamed, but is clearly a Latin American state based on Asturias’ native Guatemala. A large cast of characters encompassing all sections of society interact with each other to form a tapestry of life in harsh and often terrifying conditions. This is not an unrelentingly bleak novel, and there are many moments of humour and tenderness, but the terror of dictatorship is at its core.

The novel starts with a group of homeless beggars who sleep on the Cathedral Porch. In a moment of crazed rage, one of the beggars murders a passer-by, who happens to be a colonel loyal to the President. Events spiral in different directions from this event, which fractures the status quo and has far-reaching implications that continue until the end of the novel. The authorities arrest the beggars and try to force statements from them that the murderer, rather than an angry beggar, was the retired General Eusebio Canales, who is suspected of subversive activities. Meanwhile, the beggar responsible for this death flees into the depths of the city, and is saved by a mysterious Good Samaritan, Miguel Angel Face, who is described here and at many other points to be “as beautiful and as wicked as Satan”.

Along with the President, Miguel Angel Face is one of the figures whose presence is felt throughout the novel. We see him a little later as a trusted favourite of the President, who orders him to warn Eusebio Canales that he is accused of murder and advise him to flee. Therefore, when the police come to arrest Canales he will be caught fleeing his house like a guilty man. Angel Face duly warns Canales of the danger, but ends up having to take in Canales’ daughter Camila when neither of her uncles want her, as they are frightened of the potential repercussions if they shelter a criminal’s daughter. Angel Face’s plan for Canales to escape works a little too well, and  the general manages to evade capture by the police. As he hides out with Camila, still playing the role of the helpful friend who saved her father from arrest, he falls in love with her and marries her, putting his loyalty to the President under considerable doubt.

The plan to capture Eusebio Canales fails in other ways as well. Angel Face describes his plan to a local member of the secret police, who tells a friend, who tells his wife. She is a friend of Camila’s, and rushes to the house to warn Camila of the danger she is in. When the police raid the house, looking for Canales, they find her and suspect her of being part of a conspiracy to help Canales evade capture. Thrown into prison, she becomes a link between the escape of Canales (and its consequences) and the lives and fates of those who have been imprisoned on the orders of the secret police. In these stories, Asturias’ wry humour bursts forth: a sacristan is there for taking down a flyer celebrating the President, but is illiterate and was trying to clear space on the church door. These prisoners have their own parts in the story, mostly as vignettes in between the main narrative.

Due to bungling the plan to capture Canales and then marrying the old general’s daughter, Angel Face finds himself in a precarious position, where he is suspected to be a double agent or disloyal. He struggles to free himself from the noose which slowly tightens around him, and many of the novel’s subplots cumulate in his final, desperate attempts to prove himself to be a loyal servant of the President.

While The President was written and translated during the “Latin American Boom” in literature, which highlighted works of magical realism, this novel is not an obvious example of that genre. The President is a mysterious, shadowy figure, but in the glimpses we get of him he is wholly human. Indigenous visions and mythology provide eerie foreshadowing and explorations into the human psyche, but are not presented as literally true as in many works of magical realism. What elevates Asturias’ novel is his vivid use of metaphorical language; the crescendo of voices in a brothel is described as a train passing, and a frightened woman feels like she has disappeared from her clothing. Through these arresting metaphors and frequent forays into the dreams and memories of his characters, particularly Angel Face, Asturias creates a heightened, surreal reality of life under a dictatorship.