La Fiesta del Chivo.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

La Fiesta del Chivo, by Mario Vargas Llosa. Madrid: Alfaguara, 2000.

Urania Cabral, a forty-nine year old, unmarried, World Bank employee, has returned from the United States to her homeland, the Dominican Republic. The capital is huge and noisy, with radios blasting merengues and rap. The Santo Domingo she remembers was different. It was called Ciudad Trujillo then, and the brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo, known as El Chivo (The Goat) ruled with an iron hand. Before falling suddenly into disfavor, Urania's father, Senator Agustin Cabral, had been one of Trujillo's right-hand men. Now Urania must face down the past.

The dictator had been a rabid anti-Communist and an enthusiastic supporter of the United States, but in 1960, the OAS condemned him, the U.S. broke off relations, and the Catholic Church initiated an anti-Trujillo campaign. By early 1961, the dictator was dead. Urania has devoted her adult life to researching the Trujillo era, in particular those chaotic last years. Sitting by the bed of Agustin Cabral, now an invalid in his eighties, Urania hurls questions at him, but the old man is mute. Certain questions will never be answered.

In the process, Urania dredges up horrific memories, for example the gang rape of a pretty society girl from a pro-Trujillo family by the despot's son Ramfis and his friends. News of the crime spread like wildfire, and soon even Trujillo's most trusted advisers feared for their daughters. To hush up the story, the despot sent Ramfis to military school in the U.S., but the younger Trujillo (actually the son of one of his mother's numerous lovers) proved to be an incompetent student. The school announced his imminent expulsion. Indignant, the dictator threatened to recall the Dominican military missions to the United States. Only the intervention of level-headed men such as Agustin Cabral, by then president of the Senate, prevented a diplomatic crisis. Not long afterward, Ramfis died in a car accident in Madrid--reputedly the work of the CIA and Joaquin Balaguer, the man who would topple Trujillo. Then, Ramfis's younger brother Radhames was murdered by Colombian drug dealers.

The goat is a traditional symbol of the Devil, of lechery and deception. Trujillo's sexual appetites were legendary, and Urania has first-hand knowledge of them. In the midst of unbridled political chaos--widespread dissatisfaction, insurgent plots, diplomatic disasters--one of Trujillo's henchmen picks up Urania in a chauffeured...