Death in the Andes (1993)

Cuando vio aparecer a la india en la puerta de la choza, Lituma adivino lo que la mujer iba a decir. Y ella lo dijo...

Buenos Aires - Enero 1994

Premio 1993

PREMIO PLANETA 1993.
En un campamento minero de las montañas de Perú, el cabo Lituma y su adjunto Tomás viven bajo la constante amenaza de los guerrilleros maoístas de Sendero Luminoso, y debatiéndose con misterios sin aclarar, como ciertas desapariciones inexplicables. Está también la historia íntima de estos personajes, sobre todo la de un antiguo amor de Tomás

“as everybody in the Andes knows, when the devil comes to work his evil on earth he sometimes takes the shape of a limping gringo stranger."

This is my first experience of the author and even on completion I am somewhat non-nonplussed by his methodology.The book is split into two distinct parts with an epilogue and as the title suggests is set in the mountains of Peru. However, the main protagonist of this novel is an outsider, a man from the coast, Corporal Lituma. Lituma is a police officer who along with his adjutant Carreno has been sent to offer token protection from guerilla attacks at a road construction camp in the remote mountain village of Naccos.

Three men mysteriously vanish from the camp and whilst Lituma becomes obsessed by the disappearances this is much more than a murder mystery tale. Intertwined throughout is Carreno's reminiscences of the murder that he had committed whilst supposedly acting as a bodyguard and the subsequent naive love affair he had with a prostitute alongside tales of the guerillas (Senderistas) and their victims. The Senderistas are portrayed as being both brutal and dogmatic but the author deliberately avoids giving them little more than a peripheral role in both this novel and perhaps in Peru in general, in contrast their victims are given greater prominance. However, their inclusion alongside Correno's ill fated love affair seems aimed purely at distracting both Lituma's and the reader's attention from the on-going case. This idea is further enforced when despite it transpiring that all three missing men had previous encounters with the guerrillas, not to mention Lituma's and Correno's own precarious situation, they virtually disappear from the second half of the novel. Instead this half centres on yet another sub-plot, one that is equally dark and violent but one far more far more difficult to fathom.

Lituma suspects that Dionisio and his wife Dona Adriana, the keepers of the local cantina, have some involvement with the disappearances. Both are degenerates. Dionisio encourages the workers to drink and dance with himself and one another when drunk whereas Adriana reads fortunes and is viewed as a witch. They are knowledgeable of local folk lore which includes pishtacos, vampires who leach the fat from their victims' bodies, and apus, ancient spirits of the mountains, who were placated by Indian women with human sacrifices before undertaking any new project, eg a road. Lituma finally discovers that the three missing men were not victims of the guerillas but rather of a sadistic ritual.

The author intimates that human blood was as important as mortar as a building material back within mountain communities. A Scandinavian anthropologist informs Lituma how ''Aztec priests stood at the top of the pyramids and tore out the hearts of the victims'' and suggests that the serruchos, local villagers' Christianity, with its very own human sacrifice, is secretly enmeshed with the cults of their ancestors. Equally the Senderista purges are necessary tools as they attempt to build a new society of their own design. Llosa seems to intimate this as an unholy trinity and that many Andean communities haven't really advanced that much at all.

There are some beautifully written vignettes but they are often difficult to mesh together and the murder mystery element ultimately seems strangely peripheral to the novel. Instead it can be viewed as a vehicle to remind Lituma and educate the reader on Peru's bloody past. Personally I feel that the author would have been better advised to concentrate on one of these mountain myths rather than trying to incorporate so many. I generally enjoyed the author's writing style but sadly felt that the plot was often muddled. This has rather intrigued rather than deterred me from reading some of the author's other works but overall OK rather than great. ( )