Ethnographer goes Native in the Amazon
A Peruvian writer walks into an art gallery in Florence, Italy. On display is an exhibition of photographs of an Indigenous community in the Amazon rain forest in Southern Peru. The writer recognizes a figure in one of the photographs, thus sparking a series of memories presented as flashbacks in the novel. When the author was younger, studying at San Marcos University in Lima, he befriended a classmate named Saúl Zuratas. Nicknamed “La Mascarita” because of a large birthmark occupying half of his face, Saúl was a misfit in Peru due to both his unusual physical appearance and his Jewish heritage. The two students meet in a class on the ethnology of the Indigenous Peruvian Indians. The writer seems to favor the government policies of gradually assimilating the Amazonian peoples into modern Peruvian society, thus preventing their extinction as agricultural and industrial “progress” encroaches upon their lands. Saúl, on the other hand, is adamant that the remaining Amazonian tribes should remain uncontacted and unspoiled, and allowed to live in the manner in which they have existed for thousands of years, no matter how strange and incongruent their customs may seem to modern Peruvians.
While the writer goes on to become a literary celebrity, Saúl devotes his life to his ethnological studies. He focuses his research on one tribe in particular, the Machiguenga. The Machiguenga communities recognize a figure called the Storyteller or Hablador, who is neither chieftain nor shaman. About this mysterious role little is known to the outside world, even among the most expert researchers in the field. Upon hearing of these Machiguenga Storytellers, the writer becomes fascinated by this vocation and its role in Indigenous culture and decides to investigate further. Although his friendship with Saúl ended years ago, the writer periodically comes across hints of his former classmate’s whereabouts and his work amongst the Machiguenga.
The perspective of the novel alternates between two narrators. Every other chapter is narrated by the author character, through which we get a view of academia and the intellectual sphere in modern Peruvian society. Alternate chapters, on the other hand, are presumably narrated by a Machiguenga Storyteller, who recites the myths and legends of his people. Of these two parallel threads, the academic narrative is the more successful in delivering a clear and compelling story, providing the reader with an understanding of life in Peru, and exploring the political issues around the Amazonian tribes’ place in the modern world. The Storyteller chapters provide a glimpse into the mindset of an Indigenous culture, but they feel more like departures from the novel than a part of it. While certainly interesting, if I really wanted to know the creation myths of the Machiguenga, I would rather read it in a nonfiction text on ethnography. Vargas Llosa’s literary voice renders such stories more poetic than coherent. Also complicating matters is the fact that the Storyteller indiscriminately applies the name Tasurinchi to almost any male character referred to in the third person.
If you’re reading Latin American literature, it’s likely because you’re looking for a reading experience that’s somehow different from the European literary tradition. Vargas Llosa certainly gives you that in The Storyteller. If you also want to learn about the reality of life in Peru, however, this novel is at times quite educational and at other times frustratingly confusing.
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