Dr. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina was assassinated on May 30, 1961, after ruling the Dominican Republic for 31 years. Although he brought his country more stability and prosperity than it had ever known, he also suspended most human rights and maintained control through violence and terror. More than 50,000 people were killed on his orders. This novel is a fictionalized account of his rule, his assassination, and its aftermath, told from three viewpoints.
Llosa gives us the backgrounds of the conspirators, exploring the reasons they became assassins, and also telling the stories of their fates in the subsequent bloodbath of revenge carried out by Trujillo's oldest son.
We also read the story of Urania, who left the Dominican Republic as a girl of 14 in 1931, following a horrifying personal encounter with the dictator. Returning in 1996, she remembers and relives the terrible incident.
And we have the story of the last day of Trujillo's life, told from his viewpoint, giving us a glimpse of the kind of man who can maintain a cult of personality for three decades.
Even to someone having a minimum of knowledge about the actual Trujillo (that would be me when I started the book), this is fascinating reading. Demagogues, strongmen, and ruthless dictators continue to appear with regularity. We in the USA may naively ask ourselves how this can happen, how a populace can be so enslaved. This tells how.
We in the USA may sometimes wonder how and why our country can support another country one year and condemn it the next. This helps explain why.
We in the USA often suspect that our CIA is engaging in aiding assassins in other countries. This will reinforce that idea.
A very interesting and informative book, and written with such power and skill that it would still be a good novel if it were entirely fiction, and not based on actual events. Llosa won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010.
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