• DOI:10.1353/lar.2016.0035
• Corpus ID: 152210483

La fiesta del Chivo, Novel and Film: On the Transition to Democracy in Latin America

@article{Dzero2016LaFD,
  title={La fiesta del Chivo, Novel and Film: On the Transition to Democracy in Latin America},
  author={Irina Dzero},
  journal={Latin American Research Review},
  year={2016},
  volume={51},
  pages={100 - 85}
}

• Irina Dzero
• Published 4 November 2016
• Political Science
• Latin American Research Review

In this article, I compare the attitudes to the recent democratic transition in Latin America in La fiesta del Chivo, the 2000 novel, and in its 2005 film adaptation. In the novel, Mario Vargas Llosa describes how Joaquín Balaguer, the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo’s puppet president, put on the mask of a democrat, absorbed Trujillo’s absolute power, and went on to serve as president for twenty-four years. In the novel, Balaguer is a stand-in for the Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori, who prepares to serve as president for a third term in a row. Why do Balaguer and the artificial democratic transition that he enacted go missing in the film adaptation? The film details instead the crimes of the dictator Trujillo and his inglorious end. I argue that the director adapts the novel’s message to a changed political reality in Peru: the dictator Fujimori fled, and the newly elected president is restoring democratic institutions and government accountability.