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A review by jfl
The Storyteller by Helen Lane, Mario Vargas Llosa
5.0
One theme that weaves its way through many of Vargas’ novels is the conflict between Western European culture and the indigenous cultures that have survived in Latin America and, in particular, Peru. It is the conflict, to use Domingo Sarmiento’s terms, between civilization and (from the European perspective) barbarism. In many cases it is less conflict than a lack or failure of communication and of integration between the various segments of Peruvian society. Western European, Spanish speaking culture hugs the Peruvian coast and is often more intimately linked to Europe and the United States than to Peru’s own hinterland. In contrast, a variety of indigenous cultures or groupings occupy the largely Quechua/Aymaran-speaking Andean highlands. While the native peoples of Amazonia (both those occupying the Montaña and the low-lying tropical forest) speak in other voices, including Panoan and Arawakan-rooted languages. And those cultures or socio-cultural assemblages are not only isolated from the coast but often from each other.
What complicates the disintegration, typically from the perspective of the European segment, is the failure to understand the actual complexities and, for want of a better term, the sophistication of the indigenous worlds. The Western European infused society speaks of “barbarism” when looking at the Andean Highlands and Amazonia, often failing to recognize the complex cosmologies that orient the groupings of non-European peoples.
Mario Vargas’ novels situated in Peru do span the various socio-environmental worlds of the country. And three of them expose the reader to Amazonia: La casa verde (The Green House), Pantaleon y las visitadoras (Captain Pantoja and the Special Services) and El hablador (The Storyteller). But only the latter novel deals exclusively with Amazonia and the world visions and cultural challenges of its native peoples.
Vargas’ subject is the Machiguenga, a grouping linked at least linguistically to the Ashaninka or Campa Indians, once, before Sendero Luminosa, one of the largest tribal assemblages in the Montaña. In alternating chapters (a technique he used in Aunt Julia and the Script Writer) Vargas’ narrators discuss the ethics of the national integration of the Machiguenga—presenting the various sides of integrating the Amazonia people into national Peruvian culture-- juxtaposed to the unique orientating world vision of the Machiguenga themselves, laid out in oral myths and folktales based on actual Machiguenga myths.
But beyond the theme of inter-ethnic and inter-cultural conflict, the novel is also a clear reminder that Western cosmology and organizing world visions are not the only way peoples view the world and move about in time and space. The Machiguenga are a clear case in point—as are, focusing only on Latin America, many of the other Amazonian peoples as well many of the Quechean/Aymaran-speaking cultures.
What complicates the disintegration, typically from the perspective of the European segment, is the failure to understand the actual complexities and, for want of a better term, the sophistication of the indigenous worlds. The Western European infused society speaks of “barbarism” when looking at the Andean Highlands and Amazonia, often failing to recognize the complex cosmologies that orient the groupings of non-European peoples.
Mario Vargas’ novels situated in Peru do span the various socio-environmental worlds of the country. And three of them expose the reader to Amazonia: La casa verde (The Green House), Pantaleon y las visitadoras (Captain Pantoja and the Special Services) and El hablador (The Storyteller). But only the latter novel deals exclusively with Amazonia and the world visions and cultural challenges of its native peoples.
Vargas’ subject is the Machiguenga, a grouping linked at least linguistically to the Ashaninka or Campa Indians, once, before Sendero Luminosa, one of the largest tribal assemblages in the Montaña. In alternating chapters (a technique he used in Aunt Julia and the Script Writer) Vargas’ narrators discuss the ethics of the national integration of the Machiguenga—presenting the various sides of integrating the Amazonia people into national Peruvian culture-- juxtaposed to the unique orientating world vision of the Machiguenga themselves, laid out in oral myths and folktales based on actual Machiguenga myths.
But beyond the theme of inter-ethnic and inter-cultural conflict, the novel is also a clear reminder that Western cosmology and organizing world visions are not the only way peoples view the world and move about in time and space. The Machiguenga are a clear case in point—as are, focusing only on Latin America, many of the other Amazonian peoples as well many of the Quechean/Aymaran-speaking cultures.