Roa Bastos, Augusto

(1917–2005)

   Paraguayan author, one of Latin America’s most important writers of the 20th century. Born in Asunción into a family of Spanish, French, and Portuguese ancestry, Roa Bastos moved early in the author’s life to Iturbe, near the provincial capital of Villarrica in the Guairá region, where his father was employed in the administration of a sugar plantation. The lush countryside, inhabited by the Guaraní people of Paraguay, was one of the first sites of the famous Jesuit missionary communities of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina, which were first founded in 1604. It also afforded the future writer the opportunity to absorb the culture and social structure of the region and to become fluent in Guaraní, a linguistic trait that will mark his writing throughout his life. His early education was conducted at home. In 1925 he was sent to Asunción under the care of his paternal uncle, Bishop Hermenegildo Roa, who undertook the financial care and lodging of his young country relative. Asunción at that time was a small city still reeling from the devastating effects of the War of the Triple Alliance (1865–1870), possibly one of the most destructive conflicts in modern world history. The country reportedly lost more than 50 percent of its population to war and disease; the survivors were mainly women, children, and the elderly. During this time, the young Roa Bastos continued his education, reading extensively of the Spanish classic authors in his uncle’s library, thus completing the process begun by his mother, who would read to him from the small library in her possession. Among her favorite books were a Bible in Guaraní and Charles Lamb’s prose retelling of Shakespeare’s plays. In 1933 Roa Bastos, by then working in a bank, volunteered for the second Chaco War (1932–1935) and served as a noncombatant, an experience that would weigh heavily on the future author’s attitude toward war and death. After the conflict, he worked in various occupations. As a journalist, he soon became known for his keen criticism of literature, particularly European. He published his first book of verse, El ruiseñor de la aurora y otros poemas (The Nightingale of Dawn and Other Poems) of marked Modernista influence, a work the author would later disown. While he was editor for the daily El País, the British Council awarded him a scholarship that took him to wartime London, where his activities included developing programming for the BBC and reporting for Paraguayan dailies. Of his time in Europe, he is remembered for his interview of the French leader Charles De Gaulle—a coup for any journalist at the time—and his impressions of England, later published in book form. Back in Asunción, Roa Bastos continued his work as a journalist until 1947, when he was singled out for detention by the Colorado government then in power. After narrowly escaping capture by a group of py nandí (Guaraní for “barefoot ones”) soldiers sent after him, Roa Bastos obtained political asylum in the Brazilian embassy until he was allowed to leave for Buenos Aires, Argentina. Thus began a life of exile that would create in Roa Bastos a deep consciousness of his lost country and an equally deep need to recreate its history. The experience would provide one of the most complex explorations of the psychology of power in modern narrative—his 1974 novel, Yo, el supremo (translated into English as I, The Supreme). At the time of his exile, “me estaba convirtiendo en un ‘axiliado’ cuya definición perfecta, la de Ambrose Bierce, dice que es el ‘ciudadano que sirve a su país viviendo en el extranjero, sin ser un embajador.’ Me estaba yendo a cumplir estas funciones honorarias de las que no se puede dimitir y en las que no hay retiro ni jubilación” (“I was becoming an ‘exile,’ the perfect definition of which, that of Ambrose Bierce, is ‘the citizen who serves his country by living abroad, without being an ambassador.’ I was leaving to carry out those honorary functions from which one can not resign and from which there is no pension or retirement,” an adaptation, as quoted, of one of Bierce’s entries in his popular Devil’s Dictionary.)

   Ironically, Buenos Aires proved to be the exiled author’s most fertile intellectual territory. While he maintained close ties to other Paraguayan exiles and made a precarious living at several occupations, his literary activities bloomed. He established close friendships with Argentine writers such as Ernesto Sábato and Jorge Luis Borges and soon began working as a journalist, as he had in Paraguay. His first book of narrative, El trueno entre las hojas (Thunder among the Leaves), was published in 1953. In 17 short stories, set mostly in the Paraguayan countryside, the author explores the tragedy of rural societies racked by war, social violence, and cultural disintegration. A few years later, some of these short stories were adapted for the screen by Roa Bastos, who will go on to participate actively in the then-burgeoning Argentine cinema.

   Roa Bastos initially attracted critical attention in Argentina with the publication of his first novel, El hijo del hombre (Son of Man), in 1960. Throughout several revised editions, the novel tells the story of the lives and exploitation of indigenous workers in the yerba mate fields. In poetic language suggestive of the Bible and heavily marked by Guaraní, Roa Bastos tells of mythical foundations, indigenous societies, the Chaco War, and the story of the son of man, Cristóbal Jara, born to die for his fellow humans. El hijo del hombre is the first in what is widely regarded as Roa Bastos’s monumental achievement, a trilogy that will eventually include Yo, el supremo and El fiscal (1993, The Prosecutor). While working on Yo, el supremo, he was briefly allowed to return to Paraguay, only to be expelled soon after his arrival by the regime of General Alfredo Stroessner, accused of subversive activities. Back in Buenos Aires, he then published Yo, el supremo to huge international acclaim. Although Roa Bastos would reject the label magical realism on more than one occasion, Yo, el supremo would immediately be included among the novels then attracting international acclaim to Latin American authors. In the United States, which until the 1970s had largely ignored the literary output of its neighbors to the South, the publication of an English edition in 1986 would anoint Roa Bastos as one of the voices of the so-called Latin American Boom.

   A dizzying literary tour de force, Yo, el supremo explores the limits and madness of power through the life of an unnamed Latin American dictator. The novel was based on the life of the supremely eccentric Dr. José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, dictator of Paraguay between 1811 and 1840. From its initial scene, where a pasquín (a political poster) is found pasted on a wall of the capital demanding the death of the dictator—and apparently written by the Supremo himself—the narrative flows between the past, present, and future, with the dictator at times speaking from his grave. Dictations to a private secretary, fragments of historical accounts, snatches from the dictator’s own journals, commentary by unnamed critics, a never-ending circular that narrates the history of the country, the presence of the Guaraní oral tradition—all constitute the fragments that readers are meant to organize as they read. The effect is maddening at times, and reflects, as one critic has noted, the destructiveness of absolute power, which, in its quest to control everything, is left to destroy itself. If the novel attracted international attention, it also won its creator attention from another, unwelcomed source. Roa Bastos had to go into exile once again, as Yo, el supremo was placed on the list of banned “subversive” books by the military junta of Argentina. Of his memory of the city that had become a second home, he would later say “Buenos Aires siempre fue para mí y lo seguirá siendo hasta el fin de mis días la ciudad más hermosa del mundo, intemporal, cosmopolita y mágica” (Buenos Aires was always for me and will remain to the end of my days the most beautiful, timeless, cosmopolitan and magic city in the world). In 1976 he was invited to teach Spanish and Guaraní at the Université Toulouse II-Le Mirail in France; previously, he had taught literature and film at several universities in Argentina.

   In his French exile, Roa Bastos concentrated on literary criticism, but he also published another novel based on Paraguay’s history, El sonámbulo (The Sleep Walker), based on the life and times of Francisco Solano López, who ruled as president-for-life from 1862 until the end of War of the Triple Alliance in 1870. This novel was later expanded into El fiscal, the third novel in the Roa Bastos trilogy. During this period, he traveled to Paraguay and was again expelled; this time, the government stripped him of his Paraguayan passport. Soon after, Spain and France would make grant him Spanish and French citizenships, in 1982 and 1985, respectively. He would, however, recover his Paraguayan nationality with the downfall of the Stroessner regime in 1989, which saw the definite return of the author to the country from which he had been exiled for 42 years. That year, Roa Bastos was awarded the Cervantes Prize, arguably the most important literary award in the Spanish-speaking world. In his acceptance speech, Roa Bastos—who had coincidentally received a Honoris Causa degree from Toulouse II-Le Mirail that same day—spoke of the location of human endeavor as “entre lo utópico y lo posible, éste es el reto de la historia” (the challenge of history lies between that which is utopian and that which is possible). The following years would see the publication of several other works. In 1992, to coincide with the 5th centennial of Columbus’ voyage, he published Vigilia del Almirante (The Admiral’s Vigil), another historical meditation, narrated in the first person, of an event with profound and cataclysmic results for Latin America. In his 1995 novel, Contravida (Counterlife) he examined the life of an exiled writer as he recreates his life through memory. In Madame Sui (1996), his last completed novel, he returned to Paraguay in the fictionalized account of the life of one of Stroessner’s lovers. In poor health in his last years, he was reportedly surrounded by assistants of dubious credentials and integrity. At times, the frail author was left alone at night, under key, reportedly with no food, by his daily attendant. After his death, this woman was charged with theft of the author’s money and incarcerated.

   Roa Bastos was the author of over 29 works, translated into at least 25 languages, including an extensive list of children’s works, poetry, and drama, as well as novels and short stories. He was often cited as a candidate for the Nobel Prize of Literature. Less known is his authorship, alone or with others, of the scripts of 12 movies of the early Argentine cinema; among them were film versions of his books Yo, el supreme (directed by Tito Chamorro) and El trueno entre las hojas (1958, directed by Armando Bo). He also wrote scripts for the films Alias Gardelito (1961, directed by Lautaro Murúa), El último piso (1962, directed by Daniel Cherniavsky), Choferes del Chaco (1963, directed by Lucas Demare and based on a chapter of Hijo del hombre), Shunko (1963, directed by Lautaro Murúa), and Castigo al traidor (1966, directed by Manuel Antín), as well as screen adaptations for the novels Don Segundo Sombra, by Ricardo Güiraldes, and El señor presidente, by Miguel Angel Asturias.

   Augusto Roa Bastos died in 2005 after surgery, following complications after a fall at his home in Asunción.