A few months ago, the favorite topic my wife and I chose for our entertainment was the Mexican Revolution, a period of roughly the first quarter of the 20th century. This included watching TV shows on this historical epoch, reading up on its characters and occurrences, and not leaving out the Pancho Villa museum on our visit to Chihuahua, which happened for a completely different reason. As we got so deeply immersed in the historical accounts, my wife thought that we should not forgo adding a not-so historical book to complete the picture: The fictive novel Los relámpagos de Agosto - in English The Lightning of August written by her favorite author, Jorge Ibargüengoitia.
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... Just to Clear up Some Common Misconceptions ...
The novel is written from the point of view of a retired general in the Mexican army, José Guadalupe Arroyo, a veteran of the armed uprising of 1910, and therefor also of the subsequent counterrevolutions and similar armed conflicts that marked the following decades. His objective is to dispel the defamatory claims, cooked up by his political enemies. Aha...
I think for all those of you who are used to read between the lines, such an introduction should ring the bullshit alarm, indicating that a whole bunch of lies are about to be expected. And you are absolutely correct! In fact, that is precisely the point of the book. And Ibargüengoitia does a brilliant job telling the story with the words of a man, who did not particularly distinguish himself as a heroic revolutionary, with brave actions, based on firm moral convictions. Actually, the exact opposite seems to be the case, but that we have to interpret ourselves as readers, since the narrating protagonist would never defame himself.
What starts out as a slight exaggeration on a few rare occasions slowly grows into insanely outlandish claims, where one must wonder about the actual limits of this career politician. Apparently there are none! This becomes particularly obvious when he's discussing how certain plans failed to work out, all of which were exclusively due to the incompetence and/or malevolence of others. Such a shame, to be the only one around with any sense of honor.
A Dangerous Undertaking
To set a context to this work, it was first published in 1964, at a time when Mexico was firmly in the hands of the PRI (Party of the Institutionalized Revolution). - Alone this name highlights the absurdity of the situation! The harsh reality, however, was that since the revolution this party had become the only one with any say in anything, winning every single election during the 20th century. In other words, anyone who had anything to do with the revolution, most certainly all military generals, were longtime PRI members. In other words, no one in their right mind would start criticizing, or even writing parodies about these established heroes. Ibargüengoitia knew this very well.
So in order to avoid persecution, he changed the names of all characters, cities, and sometimes even entire states. It is not even clear whether the narrating protagonist is based an actual historical figure, or maybe a number of them. This makes the book light on the "historical" and heavy on the "fiction", but that was not enough. Since it would have been difficult to publish such a story in Mexico, it had to be printed in Cuba first. Later, once it had proven its genius by winning prizes, it was also published in Mexico.
Where is the History?
As we first started reading it, I felt we should look up a who's who of all the characters, so we could relate it to the actual historical events that we had learned about the revolution. However, I soon realized that it didn't matter one bit. In fact, that would completely miss the entire point of the book. It's not about the things that have actually happened. It's more about the way the story is related. How a cowardly opportunist without much of a backbone, but sufficiently uninhibited by a lack of moral norms and values, is trying to whitewash his own incompetence and malevolence.
Relating the book to politicians who are currently, or have been recently in power, is an obvious next step. One common thing readers may exclaim, is something along the lines of "How stupid does he think we are?" But then, once you apply the same thing to your least favorite politician of our days, things fall into place very quickly. After a while you start laughing about the sheer absurdity of it all, including that of some allegedly serious politics of our days. When the same things make you laugh, cringe, and shudder with fear, you know you've got the right material.
To make things even better, the author utilized the writing style of the time, which is characterized as "the solemn language and rhetoric frequently found in some autobiographical memoirs of the period". The result is an overly overblown and unnecessarily complex way of formulating the simples things, merely to give off an air of sophistication. While on one hand this may seem completely presumptuous, it offers a stark contrast to the crude and overly simplified way of talking about things, which is becoming more popular in contemporary politics.
A Bit of Perspective
If you are tired of the obvious clown show that contemporary politics have become, this book may be just for you. A different place at a different time, with potentially different people... but who do pretty much the exact same things. After reading The Lightning of August you may also take a more light-hearted approach to the political discourse of our own days. After all, every fool just wants to make themself look good in whatever light they are shining in.