The city and the Dogs

The City and the Dogs is the first novel by Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. Winner of the Biblioteca Breve Award in 1962, it was published in October 1963 and also won the Spanish Critics Award. Originally the author titled it "The hero's abode" and then "The Impostors". Its importance is transcendental, since it opened a cycle of modernity in Latin American narrative. Along with other works by various Latin American authors, it began the so-called Latin American boom. It has had multiple editions and has been translated into dozens of languages.

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Mario Vargas Llosa studied two years of secondary education at the Leoncio Prado Military College, between 1950 and 1951, and this experience or “adventure” (as he himself calls it) marked him deeply, to the point that when years later he was convinced that he would be a writer (around 1956), he was very clear that his first novel should be based on that school experience. But reasons of time prevented him from getting down to work then. It was not until he left for Spain with a scholarship that he was able to have free time. He began writing the novel in the fall of 1958 in Madrid, in a Menéndez y Pelayo tavern called "El Jute", which today is a restaurant with another name, and finished it in the winter of 1961, in an attic in Paris..

The process of writing and rewriting this work was very exhausting. Vargas Llosa confessed this to Abelardo Oquendo in a letter that he wrote to him at the beginning of 1959:

In the novel, I go forward and I twist. It costs a lot of work... I spent hours correcting a page or trying to close a dialogue and suddenly I started writing without stopping a dozen pages. I have no idea how she's dating, but I feel drunk. Writing is the only really exciting thing that exists.

The draft of the novel covered 1,200 pages and Mario presented it to various Spanish and Latin American publishers, but they all rejected it. Although in Spain he had just won the Leopoldo Alas prize thanks to his book of short stories Los Jefes (published in 1959), with his first novel an apparently impossible obstacle arose. to overcome: Franco's censorship. In Paris, he had his manuscript read by the French Hispanist Claude Couffon, who was delighted with the story and suggested that he commission its publication to the editor Carlos Barral, of the Seix Barral publishing house in Barcelona, since he was the only one who could find a way to avoid cleverly censors it.

Before reading the manuscript, Carlos Barral received a very negative report on the work from his advisors. Despite this, the Barcelona publisher, one day when he was bored, found the original stored in a desk drawer in his office in Seix Barral and read it. From the first moment he was amazed by the story, proposing to do everything in his power to spread it. But he suggested to Mario that he previously submit the novel to the Biblioteca Breve Award, and as he had foreseen, it was the winner. One of the members of the jury, the famous Spanish critic José María Valverde, said that the work was "the best novel in the Spanish language, since Don Segundo Sombra." (this novel had been published in 1926).

After long negotiations to avoid Franco's censorship, the work was published in 1963. It immediately won the Spanish Critics Award, and was on the verge of winning the Formentor Award, losing it by a single vote.

Source of title

The first title that the writer tried for his novel was The Hero's Home, which he later changed to Imposters, although he was not satisfied. While in Lima he met his friend, the Peruvian critic José Miguel Oviedo, whom he consulted about this dilemma. Oviedo, who had already read the work with a small group of friends, suggested the name The city and the mists, alluding to the mist that always covers the coastal area where the military college is located and which is frequently alluded to in the novel. Since he did not convince Mario, Oviedo then came up with another name, The city and the dogs , alluding to the “dogs” or third-year cadets, characters in the novel. Mario, enthusiastic, then exclaimed: "That's the title", and that's how the writer's first novel was baptized.

Plot

The play is set in the Leoncio Prado Military College, where adolescents and young boarders receive secondary school training under severe military discipline. The different stories of some boys are narrated who discover and learn to live with an alienating way of life that does not allow them to develop as people, and where they are subjected and humiliated. However, through this system, some find the necessary strength to face their challenges.

Vargas Llosa criticizes the military way of life and culture, where certain values are promoted (aggressiveness, courage, manliness, sexuality, etc.) that mutilate the personal development of the boys in that boarding school. With a great profusion of characters, their lives intertwine, until weaving the tapestry of the work. The core of the story centers around the theft of exam questions, which is betrayed by a cadet nicknamed El Esclavo, who later dies, presumably at the hands of another cadet nicknamed El Jaguar. Another cadet, the Poet, will unsuccessfully try to denounce the Jaguar. All this will confront the cadets with each other, and all of them with the school authorities, who are also army officers. The epilogue of the novel certifies what the school has been for the protagonists: a way station that has shaped or deformed them, to integrate them into civil society.

Scenarios

The main stage is the "Lima Military College", close to the sea and surrounded by open fields or farms. The main entrance to the school, guarded by a guard post, is called La Prevención, which is also the name of the building where the cadets are consigned (punished with confinement); Nearby is an outdoor patio where the statue of the hero Leoncio Prado is. From La Prevención you can see three cement blocks where the third, fourth and fifth year blocks are located. Further inside is a stadium, the athletics track and some dilapidated wooden stands; also a swimming pool, in front of which stands a construction supported by four columns, known as La Glorieta.

Other settings are the neighborhoods of Lima, where the main characters live: the district of Lince (the Slave) and the district of Miraflores (Alberto Fernández). Also Huatica street in the La Victoria district, home to the most famous brothel in the capital.

In the alternate histories of the Poet and the Slave other main arteries of Lima are mentioned: Nicolás de Piérola avenue, Alfonso Ugarte avenue, Salaverry avenue, as well as some of the main squares of the capital. The setting for the alternate stories of the Jaguar is the district of Bellavista and other sectors of Callao.

Structure

The novel is divided as follows:

• Part one, subdivided into eight chapters with Roman digits;
• Part two, equally subdivided into eight chapters;
• Epilogue.

At the same time, each of the 16 chapters (in addition to the epilogue) is made up of independent episodes, which are distinguished graphically by being separated by blank spaces.

Technique

The central and linear plot of the story begins in medias res, that is, in the middle of the novel's core action, which begins with the theft of the chemistry exam questions. However, the story as a whole is not linear because chronologically previous episodes are interspersed around the central plot, and that are related to the lives of the main protagonists (Ricardo Arana the Slave, Alberto Fernández the Poet and an unidentifiable third party). for the moment, but that will later be discovered as El Jaguar). These episodes or parallel stories go back to the time when the cadets first entered the military school, but through the analepsis or (flashback) technique they go back even further in time, when the protagonists were still children, in which months (and even years) prior to entering said school. The story, as a whole, unfolds in different times and places. With this multiple exposure of events the central plot is enriched.

Storytellers

To the previously mentioned temporary game are added the different narrators and their different perspectives. The first clearly identifiable narrator is, & # 34; the Poet & # 34;, Alberto Fernández, with a double perspective: on the one hand, the vision of him "from outside", as an objective narrator, and on the other, the transcription of the monologue inside of him. Another would be "Boa", one of the cadets of the "Circle", who with instinctive and emotional impetus comments on the facts from an internal, subjective perspective, in the form of a stream of consciousness. He also narrates Ricardo Arana, the Slave, in the form of an interior monologue and Lieutenant Gamboa, in the same way. Sometimes the Boa also fulfills the function of the narrator, for example, in the episode of the expulsion of the mountain man Cava. Another perspective "from outside" would correspond to Jaguar, who in the first person recounts his life prior to his admission to school, although keeping his identity enigmatic, which will only be revealed at the end.

Synopsis

The work narrates the experiences of the boarding students of the Leoncio Prado Military College, especially Alberto Fernández "el Poeta", El Jaguar, Ricardo Arana "el Esclavo", the serrano Cava, El Boa, el Rulos, brigadier Arróspide and the black Vallano, who are in their last year of high school, first section, and are eager to get out of the hole where they find themselves. Of all of them, the most timid is Ricardo Arana, for which he is always humiliated by his peers, receiving the nickname "El Esclavo"; he is the only one who cannot adapt and feels alien to the whole school despite living day and night with his classmates in the classrooms and in the stables (dormitories).

Every day the students get up early to line up and receive their classes. Lieutenant Gamboa leads the formation and punishes the last three to line up. The inmate lifestyle is burdensome and demeaning to some. The story goes back a long time, when Alberto Fernández and his classmates just entered the school to attend the third year of high school, and received "baptism"; by the fourth-year students, in which the fifth-years also participate. This "baptism" it consisted of treating them in a demeaning way in front of the members of the school as "dogs", a name by which students in lower grades were known. The Jaguar is the only one who cannot be “baptized”, since he violently opposes and even defeats a fourth grade student in a fight. As the "baptism" lasted a month, El Jaguar and the students from his same section decide to form a "Circle", to defend themselves and take revenge on the fourth year students. The "Circle" it is discovered by Lieutenant Gamboa and the entire section is punished. However, El Jaguar maintains the group, but reduced to his three closest friends: Cava, Rulos and Boa. All of them, among other "exploits", steal uniforms to resell them, organize the entry of liquor and prohibited material into the College (erotic magazines, cigarettes, etc.), play dice and card games, and plan to steal the answers from the exams; the novel begins precisely at the moment when the theft of the chemistry exam is carried out. But the mountain man Cava, who is entrusted with such a mission, is not careful and breaks the glass of a window, so those of the "Circle" fear being discovered. However, they trust everyone to be discreet and not give anything away. But that same night, El Esclavo and Alberto are imaginary (guards in turns) and find out about the robbery.

Alberto and El Esclavo begin to become friends and tell their intimacies. The Slave wanted to go out for the weekend to visit a girl named Teresa, his neighbor, with whom he was in love, but to whom he still did not dare to declare himself. Alberto, known as the Poet, was much requested by the cadets to write love letters to the lovers and erotic novels, and the Slave asks him to write a few letters for him. During the chemistry exam, a rolled up piece of paper with the exam answers falls into Alberto's folder, but Gamboa discovers it and orders the person in charge to stand up. The Slave gets up pleading guilty and Gamboa confines him not to go out on the weekend. That same Saturday Alberto decides to take advantage of his departure to go to the famous "Pies Dorados", a prostitute from the Huatica jirón, in the district of La Victoria; at the same time he offers to take a letter from the Slave for Teresa, who lived in the district of Lince. Alberto invites Teresa to the movies, and he begins to fall in love with her, although deep down he feels bad for missing her friend like that. He returns home, in Miraflores, to spend the night, no longer wanting to go to the “Golden Feet”.

As expected, the theft of the chemistry exam questions is discovered, and Lieutenant Gamboa confines the students who were imaginary that night, that is, Esclavo and Alberto, preventing them from leaving until they discover the responsible. The Slave, who already had a string of confinements, can't take the punishment anymore and instead of "shooting against" (sneaking out of school), he prefers to betray the culprit, Cava; he is demoted and expelled. Said punishment was terrible because the student thus expelled lost all the years he had studied.

El Jaguar and the rest of the Circle swear to discover the snitch (informer) and give him a well-deserved punishment. Meanwhile, El Esclavo obtains permission to leave the College that same afternoon and thus be able to visit Teresa. Alberto is jealous, because he too has fallen in love with Teresa and runs away from school to get ahead of the Slave. When he gets to Teresa, he finds out that she had not yet been visited by the Slave. Alberto takes the opportunity to declare his love for her and Teresa reciprocates. The Slave does not get to visit Teresa that day because her parents prevent him from leaving the house.

Life at school seems to go on as usual, but then a tragic incident occurs. During a firing practice outing, towards a field outside the school, Lieutenant Gamboa forms formations to climb a small hill, but at the moment of the maneuver, a student collapses to the ground. He was The Slave; nobody notices him until moments later, when they discover him badly injured. A bullet, apparently accidentally, had hit him in the head.

The Slave is taken to the school clinic, but passes away soon after. His funeral is celebrated in front of the whole school. The school officials explain that the cadet was the victim of his own mistake, when he became entangled with the trigger of his weapon and fell to the ground, shooting himself; in reality they conceal the proven fact that the shot had come from behind. They suspect a mistake in the maneuvers and hold Gamboa and the other officers responsible for not being careful, but in order to avoid a scandal, they maintain the official thesis of the cadet's mistake.

The entire section is impacted by the event. Alberto does not believe in the official version of the death and begins to suspect that it was an act of revenge by the Círculo, for the accusation of the theft of the chemistry exam. The fact that El Jaguar was immediately behind the Slave at the time of the maneuvers makes him more convinced in his suspicion. Tormented by this idea, he leaves school and goes to Teresa, to whom he tells the sad event; Confused by this news, she limits herself to replying that she knew Ricardo very little, despite the fact that he was her neighbor, and tries to comfort Alberto, asking him what else was worrying him. Alberto gets upset with Teresa, believing her to be indifferent to the death of her friend, and they both end up fighting. In the end, Alberto says goodbye to Teresa, with the feeling that he would never see her again.

Alberto visits Lieutenant Gamboa at his home and accuses Jaguar of the Slave's murder. At the same time, he denounces the liquor and cigarette trade, the dice games and the theft of uniforms that the Circle carries out secretly in the blocks. Gamboa tries to bring the case to a real investigation; For now, he begins by locking up the Jaguar in a Prevención cell, and carries out an inspection in the stables, where he verifies what Alberto said, but as for the murder accusation, it does not prosper for lack of concrete evidence. Alberto insists on denouncing him; then the highest-ranking officer, a colonel, calls him into his office and demands that he stop insisting, otherwise his version would be easily refuted, since the inspection carried out in the stables also brought to light his highly requested "erotic novels." ”, which would demonstrate his great imagination and his lack of reliability as a witness. In addition, he would be expelled for sexual pervert and no school would receive him. Alberto then declines and does not insist on denouncing him. At the moment he is confined in the dungeon where El Jaguar was, awaiting the lieutenant's order to send him back to the block. El Jaguar and Alberto argue. At all times the Jaguar denies being the Slave's murderer; Alberto, for his part, confesses that he was the one who accused him before the lieutenant. Both of them hit each other, Alberto taking the worst part. After going through the infirmary, they return to the block.

The entire section, headed by Brigadier Arróspide, believes that Jaguar was the one who gave away the liquor and cigarettes, and they turn against him; Several students surround him and brutally beat him. Despite this, El Jaguar does not betray Alberto as the real informer, but he feels very bad at seeing himself treated like this by his classmates whom he had taught from the beginning to defend themselves against the abuse of the elderly. Due to his insistence on investigating the death of the Slave, Lieutenant Gamboa falls out of favor with his superiors, who decide to send him to a remote base in Juliaca, where he will not be able to insist on the case any further. Before his departure, the Jaguar gives Gamboa a letter where he confesses that he killed the Slave, believing that with this confession the lieutenant would be rehabilitated, but the latter replies that it is already too late, since the Army had already decided that the death of Ricardo was accidental in order to avoid a major scandal. Before leaving, Gamboa asks Jaguar to change his attitude and take advantage of what happened.

Later on, some time after finishing school, Alberto, who has already forgotten about Teresa, prepares to go to the United States as memories of Colegio Leoncio Prado become more distant and impersonal. He meets a new member of her neighborhood, Marcela, and falls in love with her. On the other hand, El Jaguar gets a job and is reunited with his childhood love, Teresa (the same one who was in love with the Esclavo and Alberto), with whom he marries, thus changing the image that the reader had up to that moment. he had played the Jaguar, becoming a more complex character than expected. What is unique about the story is that throughout it the story of the Jaguar prior to his entry into the Military College is interspersed, although without mentioning his nickname; and only at the end does the reader who is inattentive to the details of the story find out that it is the same.

Main characters

Alberto Fernández, The Poet

Alberto Fernández is in his last year at the Leoncio Prado military school (first section of the fifth year), where he is known as El Poeta for his skill in writing pornographic novels and love letters in return of money and cigarettes. He is white and lives in the Miraflores neighborhood.

Alberto was barely a child when he entered school and came from a broken family. Like the vast majority, it was difficult for him to get used to the new lifestyle that the institution imposed on him.

The Poet, like the other students from León, must assume a double identity: within the school, as he himself declares, he must be insensitive, rude and surly, and not being a good fighter, he managed not to get involved in quarrels, in this way he avoided being "scrubbed", which in the language of the Leonciopradinos implied from bad jokes to sexual abuse. On the other hand, outside of school, with his friends, Bebe, Emilio, Tico and Pluto, his behavior was totally different: with them he did not have to be insensitive or surly, since with them he did not face situations stressful or violent.

Despite being very different, Alberto becomes the only friend of Ricardo (the Slave), however, he falls in love with Teresa, Ricardo's love interest, thus demonstrating how little value he gave him at that time to the friendship he had with the Slave.

In a shooting practice carried out by the institution, Ricardo Arana dies. Alberto assumes that his death was revenge against the Slave for having betrayed Cava from the Serrano for stealing an exam. After what happened Alberto feels the need to find the culprit behind the death of his friend, to do so he confesses to all the acts not allowed within the school (smoking, drinking alcohol, etc.) which causes him a series of conflicts with the Jaguar.

The Jaguar

From the Chalaco district of Bellavista, Jaguar is a young man with a strong, agile and courageous temperament, whose character was shaped by the low social context in which he lived. Upon entering the military college, he demonstrates his imposing personality by not allowing himself to be baptized, thus breaking with the tradition of the student body. He calls himself the Jaguar, due to his agility in dodging blows and his dexterity in delivering them. From this denomination, El Jaguar takes the initiative to group his companions in the "Circle" with the aim of imposing a fighting spirit and daring in the face of violence and injustice in which they lived.

Within this environment, El Jaguar plays a very important role, all the experience within the Military College makes this young man use all the means he has to defend himself in the face of any problem that arises. The Jaguar does not surrender to any situation, thus showing his feeling of superiority to others; he does not allow himself to be trampled by anyone, thus exercising the control of power that he has before his companions.

The Jaguar is present throughout the entire work, not only in the central plot set in the Leoncio Prado, but in various stories that are interspersed throughout it; but his identity is not clear at first: he is a teenager who narrates in the first person his life prior to entering the military school, when he lives with his mother in a modest house near the Plaza de Bellavista and attends school May 2 of Callao; He also recounts his attempts to make his neighbor fall in love with him, a girl his age called Teresa, whom he usually visits after his school (Rosa de Santa María); he also recounts the way in which, influenced by bad company, he ends up dedicating himself to robbery; then he runs away from his house and goes to live with his godparents, who finally send him to the Military College. In the last part of the novel, the mystery of this boy is revealed: it is Jaguar himself, who thus becomes the owner of the story and ends up marrying Teresa, his friend and childhood crush on him. He could thus be defined as the hero of the novel.

Ricardo Arana, The Slave

He is one of the main characters of the novel. This character is characterized by his submissive and docile attitude, the product of a childhood in which women were a decisive element. Due to this, his father, an authoritarian man, decides to send him to the Leoncio Prado Military College where he receives a great baptism in the presence of his companions with the intention of turning him into a "man".

Inside this boarding school, where the law of the strongest prevailed, Ricardo is nicknamed "El Esclavo", since he takes the role of victim before his classmates.

Despite the passivity of this character, his sentimental side is also evident when he demonstrates the great affection he secretly had for Teresa, a girl he met before entering school. However, a tragic fate awaited the Slave, as he would ultimately die from a shot to the head, possibly a revenge killing by the Jaguar. This unfortunate event was quickly covered up by the campus authorities, since their priority was to maintain the prestige of this renowned institution.

Theresa

She is the most important female character in the novel. The author reveals Teresa to us as an accommodating, neat and delicate girl, thus projecting to be an icon of feminine perfection in the lives of the three main characters (The Slave, the Jaguar and the Poet). She becoming their love interest in certain parts of the play.

All men have points in common despite socio-economic and cultural differences and it is because they are based on the very human essence, this is what Mario Vargas Llosa in his book The city and the dogs wants to communicate through Teresa. They coincide in longing for what they do not have, in the desire to be loved, in the need for spirituality, among others.

Mario Vargas Llosa highlights the human dimension, which is more relevant than the physical and economic aspects. By showing Teresa as a dignified and clean person despite being mired in poverty, he emphasizes that humanity is not lost due to lack of resources.

For the protagonists who fall in love with Teresa, she represents what they had to give up to survive in the military school. For the Slave, the peace he longed for after a hard and cruel life. For the Poet, the innocence lost when he is forced to enter the school. And for the Jaguar, the domestic life he never had.

At the beginning of the play, the writer tells us about Jaguar's obsession with Teresa and everything he does because of the love he feels for her. As a child, this character (El Jaguar) always longed to be with her, he looked for her to study and constantly chased her on her way to school.

Later on, losing sight of the Jaguar, the Slave appears. He innocently wanted Teresa. Then, because of the Slave, The Poet meets Teresa and in the same way begins to see her like the others. She so perfect, so pure (despite knowing that she was the interest of her best friend). But after the death of the Slave we notice that these affective illusions towards Teresa are discarded.

Finally, the paths of Teresa and Jaguar come together again. After leaving the military college, he meets her again and proposes to her. Theresa accepts.

Side characters

“The Boa”

El “Boa”, due to his ferocious attitude and great physical strength, is another member of the select fifth-year group known as “El Círculo”, which is made up of school bullies. His nickname, which he hates, comes from his well-developed male member. Boa is also one of the story's narrators, notoriously one of only two in the first person.

Boa is best friends with the leader of the Circle, El Jaguar. Boa faithfully follows his friend and complies with all his instructions despite not always agreeing with them because he trusts that his friend's intelligence and recklessness will always prevail. He is the only one who defends Jaguar when the whole class accuses him of being a snitch, and he ends up getting into a fight with Brigadier Arróspide.

Boa considers it vital to always be brutal and violent because the nature of the school rewards those qualities and creates a system in which those who do not dominate are dominated. Despite living in such a severe and wild universe, Boa has a friend, the dog "Malpapeada" who is the school's mascot. He admires the fidelity that this animal presents, becoming an escape from the world in which it is submerged, that is why his life revolves around it, as a form of release and transmission of sensations of protection and warmth that the innocent creature. A common interpretation is that Malpapeada represents Boa himself and his relationship with the dog is parallel to his relationship with The Jaguar, since the Boa remains loyal and friendly to the Jaguar no matter what happens or what abuses it does to it, just as the Malpapeada does with the Boa.

Porfirio Cava, "El Serrano"

Porfirio Cava is another of the members of the “Circle”. He is nicknamed "el serrano" for being a native of the mountains; they also call him “el cholo”. A peculiar physical characteristic of his was that hair used to grow all over his forehead, and he had to shave constantly, which was the reason for the ridicule of his classmates. After Jaguar, he was the one who beat the Slave the most and some teachers, like Fontana, the French teacher. He was one of the few students who really felt the military vocation and his dream was to be an artillery officer. He was entrusted with the theft of the chemistry exam questions, but in his nervousness he breaks a window glass through which he enters to commit the crime. His friends from the Circle scold him and call him gross. Reported on by El Esclavo, he is publicly demoted and expelled, he loses all the years he studied at school and returns to his land, in total failure. «The serranos have bad luck, the worst happens to them. It is lucky not to have been born in the mountains.», reflects the "Boa".

Lieutenant Gamboa

Lieutenant Gamboa, tutor of the first section, is in charge of ensuring that everything flows correctly. He plays a very important role within the institution since he must be a model and example for the cadets, and also the first to correct any anomaly within said institution. His teaching method was based exclusively on a very severe military discipline, this always hostile attitude gives him the respect he needs to lead this society in which the law of the strongest prevails. Despite being constantly cruel to the cadets, most of them (notably the Jaguar) respect and admire him for his bravery and combat history. Unlike most of the other officers at the college, Gamboa is a devoted military man who believes in the discipline, hierarchy, and honor of the army.

When Ricardo Arana (the Slave) died, supposedly due to an accident, Gamboa received a confidence from cadet Alberto Fernández, who assured him that the Jaguar had actually murdered the Slave. Faced with such an accusation, Gamboa tries to behave following his ethical principles and prepares a report on the event for his authorities, but they prefer to maintain the thesis of the accident to avoid a scandal that could compromise them all. After personally questioning the Jaguar, Gamboa realizes that he is guilty and insists on an investigation, causing him to be fired and sent to a menial position in a forgotten base in the city of Juliaca.

Seeing this, the Jaguar confesses that he killed the Slave and tells him to report it to his superiors to get his career back, but Gamboa tells him that it's too late for that and instead he has to change his attitude and "get something out of all this." Gamboa's departure has a profound effect on Jaguar, who feels guilty about everything and is what leads him to change the course of his life.

"The Curlers"

“El Rulos” is another of the members of the “Circle”, that is, one of the thugs of the first section of the 5th year. He particularly amuses annoying the Poet and some believed that he did it out of envy. When the entire classroom pounces on Jaguar, accusing him of being the snitch, El Curlos flees and leaves his friend helpless. For that reason, he makes enemies with the Jaguar, with whom he does not speak again.

Brigadier Arróspide

Arróspide is the brigadier of the section and, together with the Poet, one of the few “whites” from Miraflores in the College, and the only ones in his section. He was a very dedicated student, “a chancón”, for which he was elected brigadier three years in a row. He is the one who leads the entire class against the Jaguar, shouting “snitch” at him in chorus.

Raúl “El Negro” Vallano

Vallano is a cadet of Afro-Peruvian origin; everyone calls him "el negro", a name that in Peru is not offensive unless it is said in a derogatory tone. He is proud to wear the cadet uniform on outings, because according to him, "the uniform attracted the little girls." He is the one who advises those of his block to visit the "Golden Feet", the whore of the Huatica shred. He usually has verbal duels with the Poet, but he always wins.

“Golden Feet”

“Pies Dorados” is the nickname of a prostitute who worked in the red light district of Lima, the Jirón Huatica, in the district of La Victoria. She was a petite woman, with curly blond hair and very smooth, fair skin. Her peculiar nickname derived from the fact that she had small, white, well-groomed feet. She becomes the favorite of the cadets of the first section of the 5th year. She earned 20 soles and many cadets did everything possible to raise that amount and visit her on weekends, among them the Poet, who raised her money by selling her erotic novels and writing love letters at her request.. According to the writer, the "Golden Feet" is the only real-life character that has been faithfully reproduced in the novel, beginning with her name.

Paulino.

Paulino, who is called “el injerto” because he looks like a mix of Japanese, black, and cholo, was in charge of a kiosk called “La Perlita,” located near the back wall of the school; there he sold sweets and drinks. He was also dedicated to smuggling cigarettes and pisco into the school, merchandise that he carefully concealed and resold at a high price. On weekends some students would meet at "La Perlita" to drink and smoke. Paulino was homosexual and in one of the scenes of the novel he is described as giving oral sex to a group of students, with the promise of giving prizes (ten soles and a bottle of pisco) to those who "lasted" the longest.

Other characters

• Captain Garrido he is the immediate superior of Lieutenant Gamboa and his closest friend at school; he is also the only one who supports him in the investigation of the death of Arana and the only officer who fires him after his expulsion from school. He is the one who finds Ricardo Arana lying on the hill and wounded by a shot during the practice campaign. It is described as follows: "...a tall man with pale skin, somewhat green in the cheekbones. They told him Piraña because, like those carnivorous beasts of the Amazonian rivers, his double row of huge and white teeth overflowed his lips, and his jaws were always beating. »
• Lieutenant Huarina. "Small, plain, his commanding voices inspired laughter, his choleras didn't scare anyone, the sub-officials gave him the parts unblocked and looked at him with contempt." He is one of the officers in charge of the first division of fifth year, but his authority is constantly ignored in the presence of Lieutenant Gamboa. It is to him who the Slave denounces serrano Cava as the author of the chemical examination theft, but Huarina is attributed only the merit of the discovery. When Gamboa is transferred to Juliaca due to his insistence on investigating the alleged murder of Ricardo Arana, Huarina takes its place, waiting (and failing to) to gain the respect of the students.
• Officer Pezoa“a small, musculoskeletal mess, of great carnivorous faucets. He plays very well football and his kick is very violent.” Insolete cadets call it “rata”, as it always takes care (with great pleasure) to distribute the punishments to cadets. He's the most hated character in school.
• Officer Joaquín Morte, accompanies deputy officer Pezoa.
• The Service Lieutenant Pedro Pitaluga, friend and companion of Gamboa since the days of the military school.
• Commander AltunaHe was a "silence and escaped character, and he was rarely seen by the blocks or the classrooms."
• The Colonel, director of the school, a low and very fat man, who “had almost white hairs and used glasses; behind the crystals, gray eyes, sunk”. It is the one who convinces the Poet to desist from his complaint about the alleged murder of the Slave.
• The Major: third in command, appears when Lieutenant Gamboa and Captain Garrido present the part about the death of the Arana cadet and is the one who passes the report on the behavior to his superiors about Lieutenant Gamboa.
• The Professor of Chemistry, a squalid and inhibited man.
• FontanaThe French teacher. According to the same author, this character is inspired by the poet César Moro, who was actually a professor at the Colegio Leoncio Prado. By their fine ways and their velvety voice is called "marica" by the students; the most insolent they spit at him while he is behind the slate or make noise with razor blades while teaching the lesson. Fontana supports everything stoically and never calls the guard officer to impose the order, except for once, when Lieutenant Gamboa intervened, experience of which he was ashamed.
• The School chaplain He is a blond and jovial priest, who pronounces patriotic sermons, preaching the love of God and the homeland. However, it did not oppose the different attacks that occurred at school.

We should also mention the characters from the alternate stories:

• The friends and relatives of the Poet: their parents, their friends El Bebe, Emilio, Tico and Pluto, their love Marcela, among others.
• The friends and relatives of the Jaguar: his mother Domitila, his friend the skinny Higueras (who enters the world of crime), his fellow thieves, his godfathers who welcome him, etc.
• The parents of the Ricardo Arana Slave.

Controversy

It is often said that the novel has an “autobiographical” character, but the most accurate would be to say that the novel is a fiction inspired by the writer's experiences during his two-year stay at the Leoncio Prado school. Vargas Llosa himself makes this point clear in his memoirs:

Most of the characters in my novel The city and the dogs, written from memories of my leonciopradinos years, are very free and deformed versions of real models and others totally invented.

It is inevitable, however, that the novel alludes to real situations experienced by the writer in said school (some of which he explains in his memoirs), but it should definitely not be taken as a truthful and meticulous chronicle. However, from the moment of its publication in Peru, the novel caused a scandal, especially among the members of the Leonciopradina community, who considered that the work denigrated their educational institution, until then very prestigious. Many high-ranking members of the armed forces also felt that the work was a stain on the army. Paulino's homosexual scene with some cadets was undoubtedly the one that caused the most scandal, along with the alleged bestiality practiced by some students with chickens and the Malpapeada dog, being seen as aberrant practices, or according to the colloquial saying, "dirty.". General José Carlos Marín, one of the founders of the College, went so far as to say that the work was “an instrument by which armed institutions are attacked, a typical communist tactic”. No It has been confirmed, however, if the already legendary burning of the copies of the novel by the military in the schoolyard took place.

Criticism

In the work, Mario Vargas Llosa delves into the social, economic and political situation of his country. The characters in the novel come from different social backgrounds and reflect the microcosm of a society —Lima and Peru in the 1950s— under whose façade all kinds of hatred and prejudices boil, especially racial (“whites”, “Indians”, “cholos” and “blacks”, facing each other), the regional (coastal, mountainous and jungle) and the socioeconomic. The writer's animosity towards brutal and undemocratic militarism is also glimpsed in the work. As a faithful writer of the new Latin American literature, Vargas Llosa uses crude language and black humor to achieve the critical effect he intends to leave on readers.

His technique of "communicating vessels" It is used for the first time in this novel, with great mastery. This technique, as defined by the author himself, consists of associating within a narrative situations that occur in different times or places, to merge them and make a new experience emerge from them, different from what would exist if the episodes had been narrated separately.. That is why this work is told in different times, which can sometimes make the reader lose what had happened up to that moment, although it gives the story an avant-garde characteristic.

But undoubtedly, the greatest ambiguity of the novel lies in the death of cadet Ricardo Arana, the Slave. Despite the fact that the Jaguar, at the end of the novel, takes responsibility for his death, there is always a breath of doubt. In this regard, the writer has said the following:

I went to Mexico to see a great French critic who led the Gallimard literature commission. He had read my novel and I went to see him in his Unesco office. He told me that he liked the character of the Jaguar because he attributed a crime that he did not commit to reconquer his authority over his colleagues. I said, “The Jaguar did commit that crime.” Then he looked at me and said, “You are wrong. You don't understand your novel. For the Jaguar, losing leadership was an infinitely greater tragedy than being considered a criminal.” (His version) convinced me; although when I wrote the novel I thought I had killed him.

The writer then rescued the importance of the reader's truth over the author's truth: «A writer does not have the last word on what he writes. I think it's a big mistake to ask an author what this or that is like," he explained. That is why since then he has tried to maintain the doubt about the responsibility of the Jaguar in the crime, arguing that his characters "took their own life, [and] left me alone." hands» .

Importance

The appearance of The City and the Dogs marked a milestone in the development of the Spanish-American novel, signifying the overcoming of narrative regionalism, then in vogue in Latin America, and of the social novel, preponderant even among Spanish authors. In addition, it opened the doors of the Iberian publishing industry to many Latin American authors, initiating what has been called the Latin American boom. In the course of a few years, writers such as Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, José Donoso, Carlos Fuentes, and Guillermo Cabrera Infante would become universally known.

It was included in the list of the 100 best novels in Spanish of the 20th century by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.

Between reality and fiction

Vargas Llosa has always mentioned the need to be inspired by real-life people and his interrelationship with them when writing his novels, although in the course of writing he tends to distort the character; This novel, naturally, has not been the exception. The Poet, Alberto Fernández Temple, is obviously inspired by himself, although it should be noted that the facets of other characters, such as the Slave, are also inspired by his own experience. For example, the Slave's stormy relationship with a violent and vociferous father, who mistreats his mother and even slaps him, is inspired by his own family experience.

The young writer from Lima Sergio Vilela (b. 1979) has delved further into this exciting task of identifying who were the real-life people who inspired the writer to sketch the characters in his novel. Vargas Llosa himself made the confession that the character of El Jaguar was inspired by a cadet named Bolognesi, a young mocker and fighter, whom he had already mentioned in his memoirs. And El Esclavo was inspired by another boy with the last name Lynch, a very quiet and calm cadet, probably the same one he mentions in his memoirs as "the Sad Roe".

With these data, Vilela began to investigate, reviewing the school files and interviewing the former cadet classmates of Vargas Llosa. From these investigations he brought to light the identity of those: The Jaguar (whose name in fiction is never mentioned) turned out to be called in real life Estuardo Bolognesi Cedrón, great-grandson of the hero of the hill of Arica, and whose nickname was "El Loco ”. Unlike his heroic great-grandfather, Stuart did not pursue a military career and ended up working for a major insurance company; he finally died in a car accident in 1974. El Esclavo (in fiction, Ricardo Arana) turned out to be actually called Alberto Lynch Martínez, nicknamed “el Nene”, or more contemptuously, “el Huevas”, who, at the time of publication of the Vilela's book, still lived in Houston, United States, dedicated to business and totally uprooted from his homeland.

To finish, we will say that Teresa, one of the few female characters in the novel, is inspired by Teresa Morales, who was the writer's first love interest (in 1952); she lived in Miraflores, very close to the house of the then-teenager Mario.

Movie adaptations

A film adaptation of the novel was directed by Peruvian Francisco José Lombardi and released in 1985. The script was written by Vargas Llosa himself and by José Watanabe. The cast included the actors Pablo Serra (the Poet), Gustavo Bueno (Lieutenant Gamboa), Luis Álvarez (the Colonel), Juan Manuel Ochoa (El Jaguar), Eduardo Adrianzén (El Esclavo), Aristóteles Picho (El Boa), among others. It is considered one of Lombardi's best films and one of the emblematic samples of Peruvian cinema.

Another film inspired by the novel was Jaguar, directed by Chilean Sebastián Alarcón in 1986. It was produced in the Soviet Union.