1. The author wishes to thank his good friends Nicolás Shumway and Carlos J. Alonso for reading the manuscript and making valuable suggestions both about form and content. Part of the research and writing of this paper was made possible by a grant from the Social Science Research Council, to which the author wishes hereby to make public his gratitude.

2. “Finally, Batista's own laziness and weakness damaged morale more than anything else: the president played canasta when he should have been making war plans; as his press secretary put it in exile, ‘Canasta was a great ally of Fidel Castro.‘” Hugh Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1971), p. 1041.

3. This is not the place, nor am I qualified, to discuss the reasons for the emergence of dictators in Latin America and their peculiarities. There is a useful introduction to this problem by José E. Iturriaga, El tirano en la América Latina (Mexico: El Colegio de México, Jornadas 15, n.d. [appears to be from the forties]). Although historians and political and social scientists have elaborated much more refined and documented views of dictatorship, I am still persuaded by Mariátegui's explanation of its origins:

Nineteenth-century philosophy was enthralled by the figure of the powerful, willfull individual, from Hegel to Nietzsche. I believe that it can be stated that the first modern consideration of the figure of the political leader appears in Hegel's Philosophy of History in the wake of Napoleon's exploits. Hegel writes, speaking of Caesar:

Marx's debunking of this concept of heroism in “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” is well-known. From our (literary) point of view, Stendhal's consideration of Napoleon's figure through the eyes of his sensitive, artist-like protagonist in Le Rouge et le noir (1831) is the most suggestive. By far the most authoritative and enlightening work by a social scientist on dictatorship is Juan Linz's remarkable “Totalitarian and Authoritative Regimes,” Handbook of Political Science 3 (Reading Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1975), pp. 175–411.

4. In a well-documented article (the best on this topic, in my view), Bernardo Subercaseaux mentions quite a few dictator-novels; see his “Tirano banderas en la narrativa hispanoamericana (la novela del dictador, 1926–1976),” Anales de la Universidad de Cuenca (Ecuador), no. 33 (1978). One must agree with Subercaseaux that Amalia, with Facundo however, is the beginning of the subgenre, though Echeverría's “El matadero” was probably written twenty years earlier, as Aída Cometta Manzoni has pointed out in her ‘El dictador en la narrativa latinoamericana“ (Revista Nacional de Cultura [Caracas], no. 234 [1978], p. 90). Besides those already mentioned, there are already quite a few studies of the dictator-novel. Bernardo Fouques’ ”La autopsia del poder según Roa Bastos, Carpentier y García Márquez“ (Cuadernos Americanos [1979], pp. 83–111), has some interesting observations, though its main point, having to do with the presence of the corpse of the dictator is difficult to grasp. Santiago Portuondo Zúñiga's ”Cinco novelas y un tirano“ (Santiago [Santiago de Cuba], no. 30 [1978], pp. 47–75), is strong on the historical background and proposes a chronological division (not of the novel but of dictatorships) that is useful; but the treatment of the novels (Tirano Banderas, El señor presidente, El gran Burundún Burundá ha muerto, El otoño del patriarca and El recurso del método) is not too detailed or convincing. Brian J. Mallet's ”Dictadura e identidad en la novela latinoamericana“ (Arbor [Madrid], nos. 393–94 [1978], pp. 60–64), contains many perceptive comments, such as this:

Angel Rama's Los dictadores latinoamericanos (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1976) is one of the most ambitious works on the dictator-novel, but one that I did not find useful. There is one observation made in passing with which I concur, though with some reservations:

Rama fails to notice, however, that what the recent dictator-novel demonstrates is precisely the delusion on the part of both the politician and the writer of thinking themselves at a center from which they can authoritatively construct or govern a totality. Giuseppe Bellini's equally comprehensive Il mondo alucinante. Da Asturias a García Márquez. Studi sul romanzo ispano-americano della dittatura (Milan: Cisalpino-Goliardica, 1976) contains more reliable information than Rama's monograph. Bellini's may be the best general overview available, though perhaps for that same reason his theses appear to me to be somewhat vague and his readings of the novels too thematic. Among the various useful facts in Bellini's book is the following, which gives us the anecdotal origin of various recent dictator-novels: “Gabriel García Márquez ha rivelato l'esistenza di un progetto di libro collettivo, dal titolo Los padres de las Patrias, dovuto all'iniziativa di Carlos Fuentes, frustrato quasi subito dall'apparizione di libri singoli di autori come Carpentier e Roa Bastos” (p. 10). I am not persuaded, however, by Bellini's thesis about the origin of the dictator-novel, particularly because of the way in which he conceives Latin American reality: “Alle radici di ognuno di questi libri sta un interesse immediato nei confronti di una realtà umana alucinante e di una espressione che continuamente si rinnova, a partir dal romanzo di Asturias” (p. 11).

Luis Pancorbo's “Tres tristes tiranos” (Revista de Occidente, 3ra época, no. 19 [1977], pp. 12–16) is just a review, written in the giddy style of a Spanish journalist trying to be trendy. Mario Benedetti's “El recurso del supremo patriarca” (Casa de las Americas, no. 98 [1976], pp. 12–23), is also a review, but much better written and with bits of interesting information. Though Benedetti's evaluations are based on somewhat dated notions of novelistic technique, I agree with his very high opinion of Roa Bastos' Yo el Supremo. I disagree, however, with his somewhat lukewarm reception of El recurso del método, above all when it is based on the mistaken notion that the Picaresque is a minor genre (p. 14). Angela B. Dellepiane is more thorough in her analysis “Tres novelas de la dictadura: El recurso del método, El otoño del patriarca, Yo el Supremo” (Cahiers du Monde Hispanique et Luso-Brésilien [Caravelle], no. 29 [1977], pp. 65–87). In her “La novela de la dictadura: nuevas estructuras narrativas” (Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana [Lima], Año 5, no. 9 [1979], pp. 99–105), Martha Paley Francescato calls attention to El gran solitario de palacio (1971), by the Mexican René Avilés Fabila.

5. Aída Cometta Manzoni has already noted that:

The Spaniards, however, did not bring the caudillo to America but developed the type here, when they came into contact with the peculiar sociohistorical conditions of colonial America. In terms of the dictator-novels or dictator-book the important pairings are Cortés-López de Gómara, Columbus-Bartolomé de las Casas, or Cortés-Bernal-Díaz; that is to say, the relation between the powerful political leader and the writer or editor who composes his biography or corrects it. The paradigmatic couple would in this case be Cortés-López de Gómara.

6. Bellini writes: “Con Sarmiento il personaggio del despota incomincia ad avere consistenza propria nella letteratura ispano-americana. La figura del tiranno deviene protagonista ‘de cuerpo entero,‘ e nella traiettoria che conduce al Novecento rappresenta una concrezione significativa” Il mondo alucinante, p. 7). I would say definitive rather than significative.

7. “Pero indiscutiblemente el hallazgo clave de Sarmiento consiste en identificar a Facundo con un conglomerado de cualidades étnico-psicológicas, sociales, ambientales, políticas. Es un mito, en efecto; un mito negativo, de las fuerzas bárbaras” (Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, Los invariantes históricos en el Facundo [Buenos Aires: Casa Pardo, S.A., 1974], p. 23). By literary myth I mean a story or figure that literature conceives to speak about itself and inquire about its own foundation, given that literature cannot really speak about itself except by speaking about something else. For more details see my Los reyes: Cortázar's Mythology of Writing,“ in The Final Island: The Fiction of Julio Cortázar, edited by Jaime Alazraki and Ivar Ivask (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), pp. 63–72.

8. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Facundo o civilización y barbarie en las pampas argentinas, fijación del texto, prólogo y apéndices de Raúl Moglia (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Peuser, 1955), p. 201.

9. I am, of course, alluding to The Theory of the Novel, tr. Anna Bostock (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1971 [1920]), and in a somewhat simplistic fashion. In a sense, Lucacs knows that the hero of the novel is the ironic all-knowing novelist, even when his total knowledge is precisely about the impossibility of knowledge. The latest Latin American writing deconstructs irony by finally moving away from the Romantic conceit of authority.

10. In his “Cómo se hace una novela,” Obras completas 10 (Barcelona: Vergara S.A., 1958), p. 861.

11. A good, though somewhat limiting, history of this may be found in Joachim Weintraub, The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978). An exemplary exposition of the relation of the self to literary creation is contained in Paul De Man's “Ludwig Binswanger and the Sublimation of the Self,” in his Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 36–50. For a brief, though clarifying, synthesis of some current notions of the self and their relation to writing, see Sylvère Lotringer, “The ‘Subject’ on Trial,” Semiotext (e) 1, no. 3 (1975), pp. 3–8, and Julia Kristeva's “The Subject in Signifying Practice,” Ibid, pp. 19–26.

12. A significant detail here is that Cara de Angel, the dictator's secretary in El señor presidente, is killed by the tyrant.

13. Some of the documentation for what I say here may be found in my Alejo Carpentier: The Pilgrim at Home (Ithaca-London: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 256–74. Beyond reviews of El recurso and the articles and books in which it is seen in relation to other dictator-novels, there are the following, generally not recomendable pieces: Terry J. Peavler's “A New Novel by Alejo Carpentier” (Latin American Literary Review 3, no. 6 [1975], pp. 31–36); Jaime Labastida's “Alejo Carpentier: Realidad y conocimiento estético. (Sobre El recurso del método)” (Casa de las Americas, no. 87 [1974], pp. 21–31); and José Vila Selma, El ‘ultimo’ Carpentier (Madrid: Artes Gráficas Clavileño, 1978). For further bibliographical details the reader may consult the Guía bibliográfica a Carpentier that Klaus Müller-Bergh (University of Illinois at Chicago Circle) and I have in preparation.

14. In my Alejo Carpentier: The Pilgrim at Home I have studied the impact that the Revista de Occidente and in general Ortega y Gasset's publishing ventures had on Carpentier and other writers who began their work in the twenties and thirties. Vico was one of the thinkers very much in vogue during the period and a rather useful gloss of his philosophy was published then that could very well have been Carpentier's introduction to the author of The New Science: Richard Peters, La estructura de la historia universal en Juan Bautista Vico, traducción del alemán por J. Pérez Bances (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1930). I was not aware of the existence of this book when I wrote The Pilgrim at Home, but came upon it in the private library of my dear friend and colleague Emir Rodríguez Monegal, to whom I hereby express my gratitude. In a forthcoming book on the relationship between the notion of culture and the idea of literature in modern Latin America I take up again, from a different perspective, the topic of the relationship between European thought and Latin American literature. No serious work on the influence of Vico on Latin American letters has been done, though it is in my view a very promising subject.

15. Reasons of State, translated from the Spanish by Frances Partridge (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), p. 9. The translation reads fine but contains one crucial error: on page 197 it says “ ‘Santicló‘ who brought toys to children three days before the Three Magi …” It should, of course, say thirteen. The importance of the number lies in Carpentier's manipulation of the liturgical year, particularly of the time of Advent.

16. Considering the “erudite” nature of Carpentier's fiction I was surprised to find in Cuba that most readers considered El recurso del método as his most accesible novel because they could recognize many of the incidents narrated.

17. Carpentier had written two dictator-works before El recurso del método: El reino de este mundo and El derecho de asilo. El reino de este mundo (1949) was a fantasy of order, a secret order, wrought by the author of the prologue, as I have studied in my “Isla a su vuelo fugitiva: Carpentier y el realismo mágico” (Revista Iberoamericana 40, no. 86 [1974], pp. 9–64). The English version of this became the third chapter of my Pilgrim. El derecho de asilo (Barcelona: Editorial Lumen, 1972) deals not so much with a dictator as with, significantly, a “Secretario de la Presidencia y Consejo de Ministros.” I have devoted a few pages to this story in my book on Carpentier, but discuss it more thoroughly in “Literature and Exile: Carpentier's ‘Right of Sanctuary’,” a paper delivered at Yale as part of a symposium on “Revolution/Counter-Revolution” that will appear soon. Within the arguments put forth in this paper, El derecho de asilo should be seen as a fiction beyond Yo el Supremo's. Here the Secretary, a figure of the writer, changes countries and returns to his own as ambassador from his present one. S. Jiménez Fajardo's “Carpentier's El derecho de asilo: A Game Theory” (Journal of Spanish Studies-Twentieth Century 6 [1978], pp. 193–206) is an intelligent reading of the story.

18. My student, Isabel Vergara, has analyzed the interplay between the history of Colombia and Biblical and Christian lore in her “Mito e historia en El otoño del patriarca,” M.A. Thesis, Cornell University, 1977.

19. “Big Mama's Wake,” Diacritics 4, no. 4 (1974), pp. 8–17. There is, it seems to me, a clear relationship between Carpentier's dream of order in El reino de este mundo and its deconstruction in his dictator-novel El recurso del método and García Márquez' Cien años de soledad and El otoño del patriarca. On the idea of order in Cien años I have written “With Borges in Macondo” (Diacritics 2, no. 1 [1972], pp. 57–60). The most suggestive work on El otoño is Julio Ortega's “El otoño del patriarca” (Hispanic Review 46 [1978], pp. 421–46), in which I find much to agree with.

20. See, for example, Jaques Derrida, Of Grammatology, tr. Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak (Baltimore-London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), pp. 16–17. A more detailed account of the philosophical and mythological “repression” of writing at the expense of voice may be found in Derrida's “La pharmacie de Platon,” a text that first appeared in Tel Quel (nos. 32 and 33) and was later collected in La dissemination (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1975). I am particularly indebted to this latter text for my reading of the dictator-novel.

21. It seems clear to me that Roa Bastos has read some Derrida. Rama (Los dictadores, p. 24) alludes vaguely and confusedly to “experimentaciones narrativas que debemos a la lingüística sistemática de hoy,” and Fouques mentions Derrida to support his own metaphorical system, based on the corpse of the dictator (the “Pharmacie,” which he does not cite, would have been more useful). The most detailed and valuable criticism of Yo el Supremo is contained in the Seminario sobre Yo el Supremo de Augusto Roa Bastos (Poitiers: Publications du Centre de Recherches Latino-Americaines de l'Université de Poitiers, 1976). Of the six pieces contained in this fine volume I found Rubén Bareiro Saguier's “La Historia y las historias en …” the most insightful because it shows how, through a figurai presentation of history, Roa Bastos alludes to Stroessner. Though I admire the detailed nature of Jean Andreu's reading and learned a good deal from it (“Modalidades del relato en Yo el Supremo de Augusto Roa Bastos: lo Dicho, el Dictado y el Diktat”), in my view he allows himself to be blinded by Supremo's claims about his own power and fails to take into account the full import of the roles of Patiño and El Compilador. Other pieces in the volume contain good background information and curiously re-enact the polemic about Francia's good or evil nature. I was disappointed by Nicasio Perera San Martín's “La escritura del poder y el poder de la escritura,” in spite of the appealing title. I also found useful background information in Comentarios sobre Yo el Supremo (Asunción: Ediciones Club del Libro no. 1, 1975), by Beatriz Alcalá de González Oddone, Ramiro Domínguez, Adriano Irala Burgos and Josefina Plá.

22. Oedipus means “swollen feet,” according to Lévi-Strauss in his now famous essay “The Structural Study of Myth” (Structural Anthropology, tr. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf [New York: Anchor Books, 1967], pp. 202–28). The problems with the feet, Lévi-Strauss argues, has to do with “a universal characteristic of men born from the Earth that at the moment they emerge from the depths they cannot walk or they walk clumsily” (p. 212).

23. There can be no better definition of Text than Yo el Supremo itself, but Roland Barthes' “From Work to Text” offers a more conventional characterization, from which I quote the following:

24. Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Vista del amanecer en el trópico (Barcelona: Seix Barrai, 1974). There is an excellent translation by Suzanne Jill Levine: View of Dawn in the Tropics (New York: Harper & Row, 1978).

25. Melodrama is one of the characteristics of Cabrera Infante's work, particularly in his early stories, collected in Asi en la paz como en la guerra. It is also a very important element in Tres tristes tigres, though in this book melodramatic situations are defused by breaking down the narrative sequence and mixing several strands of the plot.

26. “Dictadura e identidad,” p. 65.

27. Borges is one of the quoted sources of Derrida's “La pharmacie de Platon,” as he is of so much of current French criticism (See Emir Rodriguez Monegal's “Borges and la nouvelle critique,” Diacritics 2, no. 2 [1972], pp. 27–34). For Borges' influence on García Márquez see my “With Borges in Macondo.” The relation between Derrida's and Borges' texts should be studied in detail. One can anticipate that, besides Borges' influence on Derrida, there is also a coincidence in their sources, to wit: both Borges and Derrida refuse to read Western tradition as the product of only Graeco-Roman antiquity, choosing instead to make manifest the productive marginal and polemical contribution of the Semitic world (both Arabic and Hebraic). If Derrida seems so akin to the Hispanic tradition it is obviously because of the strong Semitic element in Spanish history. “La pharmacie de Platon” had a branch in Fernando de Rojas' Celestina and nearly all of the important Kabbalists were from Spain. Carpentier also pays homage to this tradition in El siglo de las luces, a text that can be read as a Kabbalistic allegory, as I have endeavored to show in the last chapter of The Pilgrim at Home. One should see in relation to all this the work of my dear friend and colleague, Harold Bloom, particularly his Kabbalah and Criticism (New York: Seabury Press, 1975).