Señor Vivo And The Coca Lord (1998) - Plot & Excerpts
... let me introduce you to Dionisio properly, except that I am going to start calling him Empedocles, who misguidedly threw himself into a volcano in order to prove that he was a god. I find that analogy very apt. In the eyes of his friend Ramon, an unusual policeman who refuses bribes and reads the classics, the natural philosophy professor Dionisio Vivo is an idealist with a death wish. Vivo puts principles before common sense, and attacks the powerful drug cartels in his city of Ipasueno through brilliantly argued letters to the editors of a national newspaper. While Vivo's arguments gain him a huge following of admirers (including the fluffy brained president of the republic), the local 'capo' Pablo Ecobandodo, also known as El Jerarca, is sending his killers repeatedly first to intimidate, later to assassinate the professor. The novel opens with a gift left by the bandits in Vivo's front yard: a body wearing a "Colombian cravate" (look it up on the net, if you have a strong stomach)The second book of the 'South American' trilogy by Louis de Bernieres follows a timeline seven years after the events of 'The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts' using the same setting of a fictional Latin American nation that combines elements of all the countries in the region. If the first book's main theme was the political and economical impact of corruption and political adventurism, it is the time now to look at how the cocaine traffic is as much a force of social change as military dictatorships and rebel guerillas. To some people of the region, cocaine is a legitimate culture, a cash crop, a way out of poverty, and the criminals who control the industry are modern Robin Hoods who invest in the local infrastructure, building schools and churches and housing. This argument ignores the long series of murders that put the lords in their top of the anthill position and the terror campaign that maintains them in power, the silencing by force of all dissenting opinions and of all competitors. Through the voice of Dionisio Vivo, the author uses satire, ridicule and magic realism to pull the veil from the atrocities. El Jerarca may come out of the page as a sort of fatty Wile E. Coyote, with his silly assassination plans and the idiot accomplices, but the deaths and the tortures are real, witness the dedication of this second volume: To the Honoured and Respectedmemory ofJudge Mariela Espinosa ArangoAssassinated by Machine-Gun Fire in Medellin,on Wednesday 1 November 1989 The modern fairytale format is not meant to dissimulate the seriosity of the issue but to underline an alternative to the cynical worldview of predators and prey, to go to the roots and draw strength from the cultural heritage of the campesinos - aboriginals, Indios, former slaves, former conquistadors, guerilleros, disillusioned army generals, European expats - all coming together in that wonderful place in the Andes, Cochadebajo de los Gatos, to celebrate life and love and irreverence. The festival is called a 'candomble', a sincretic religious gathering that marries African deities with Christian saints and voodoo possession to cast auguries for the future, to reaffirm the blessings of the otherworld on the pilgrims. The world is well stocked with legends of the times when deities walked the earth and when saints performed miracles in Jesus' name. For the most part these legends are a quaint echo of nostalgia for times which now seem naive. But for the population of Cochadebajo de los Gatos and for millions of santeros of all races and colours all over the Hispanic Western hemisphere they walk the earth in broad daylight, still performing miracles, still discoursing with ordinary folk, still arguing, fighting, having love affairs, dispensing favours and punishments, still being greeted by cries of 'Ache'. I kind of hoped to spend more time with my friends from the first volume, now living in Cochadebajo de los Gatos, but, with the exception of this candomble, the novel is focused on the life of Dionisio Vivo, on his friendship with the policeman Ramon and on his passion for a young student named Anica. Dionisio took a long time to gain my appreciation, mostly because I thought he was disingenuous about ignoring the danger his accusatory letters caused for the people around him. His crusade is admirable, but his idealism I found misplaced and dangerous. I only became reconciled with Vivo when I ceased to regard him as a real person and treated him as an avatar, as a catalyst for change. I think the turning point was one of his introductory speeches to his philosophy classes at Ipasueno university: 'I do not want you to believe any of this because it is all crap, but it is the crap in which the piles of our pseudo-European culture are embedded, so you had better understand it because no one who does not understand the history and taxonomy of crap will ever come to know the difference between crap and pseudocrap and non-crap ...' The discussion about the merits of different philosophical schools brings me back to the earlier reference by Ramon to the ancient Greek thinker Empedocles. The analogy with Vivo is not restricted to the challenge he makes to gods to destroy him by fire. Empedocles also considered that the world / reality is the result of the struggle between good and evil forces: The four elements, however, are simple, eternal, and unalterable, and as change is the consequence of their mixture and separation, it was also necessary to suppose the existence of moving powers to bring about mixture and separation. The four elements are both eternally brought into union and parted from one another by two divine powers, Love and Strife. Love is responsible for the attraction of different forms of matter, and Strife is the cause for their separation. If these elements make up of the universe, then Love and Strife explain their variation and harmony. Love and Strife are attractive and repulsive forces, respectively, which is plainly observable in human behavior, but also pervade the universe. The two forces wax and wane their dominance but neither force ever wholly disappears from the imposition of the other. (source: wikipedia)Strife is represented in the present story by El Jerarca and his goons with their 'Colombian cravates', while Love is embraced by Don Emmanuel and his friends who prefer to fornicate and to talk dirty and to laugh at misfortune. In their simple approach may reside the only hope for the future: Don Emmanuel had said, 'I believe in that proverb that a man cannot make love to every woman in the world, but he ought to try.' Felicidad had laughed her inimitably wanton laugh and replied, 'A woman has more sense; she knows when she has found the best lover in the world, and she stays with him.''You have never stayed with anyone.'Felicidad smiled and said, 'But no one can accuse me of not looking very hard.'General Fuerte wrote down, 'I have never really noticed before, while I was in the army, but truly this country is one huge bed of love.' the more educated philosophy professor Dionisio Vivo says the same thing in his last anti-drug trade letter:Dear Sirs,Irrespective of the ideology or the social structure under which one lives, it is a fact of common experience that the single force capable of both welding us together and imparting meaning and purpose to our lives, is that bond of natural affection which renders us most truly human, and which forges with its excellently gentle flame the essential conditions of mutual trust. The ones who go againt the flow, like El Jerarca, belong in the dustbin of history.Onward, soldiers of love, to the third book of the trilogy ...
This is a read for adults only, set in South America in a small nation being dominated by the drug gangsters. The author was born in UK but lectured in South America for a few years, after which he wrote his books. Don Vivo is a lecturer who writes erudite letters to his local paper about how the coca trade is destroying the nation. For instance, the balance of trade is badly affected, because of every ten millon dollars of gain from selling coca, the drug lords lodge nine in a Swiss bank account and spend the rest on imported luxury goods. The police are few and poorly paid, also prone to being threatened by heavily armed drug gangs. Naturally many of them take bribes. And people paid with pesos to be labour, are then paid with coca derivatives and become slaves, quickly dying, while the women and children are abducted and raped. From his small but cosy home Don Vivo asks - twice - why it is that Spanish people who used to adore and respect nubile young women have turned to hating women. While the professor builds a following his sweetheart becomes more in love with him and more concerned about his safety. Don Vivo has a staunch and incorruptible friend in the police force, to whom he reports the frequent dumping of mutilated bodies on his lawn. The tale does not get easier to read and there are scenes which show absolute depravity. The author must have either found it difficult to write some of them, or dissociated somehow. Don Vivo's reactions show the reactions of a normal, right minded person. I only wished he had got moving sooner because good lives would have been spared. However the tale is a salutary lesson in why it is important to fight the horrible drugs trade and by the end we see signs of progress. The moral is, buy coffee not coca. We also get a look at the many forms of worship practised simultaneously, by the same people, a different belief for a different occasion. Various cultures have different cures and festivals which are carried on, which slow down the tale at times but form a rich cultural backdrop. We also find the book alive with animals and plants in the verdant mountainous, jungly, coastal scenery. The author is packing in all his experiences and observations, so amid the casual brutality of a gold refining camp we find a leper, and in a village considered to be underwater by the maps we find semi-domesticated black jaguars. There are touches of magical realism, in that a man is early told his daughter is a cat, or a person on the street is believed to have spent four hundred years dead under an avalanche before being revived, but these peter out in the full glare of the semi-miraculous, sometimes amusing escapes of Don Vivo from the gangsters, who, being peasants, become ever more superstitious. The book is not an easy read, but full of detail and determination.
What do You think about Señor Vivo And The Coca Lord (1998)?
A random book I pulled off the shelves and decided to read, this book pleasently surprised me. I would have liked it so much more if the ending wasn't so sickening. I loved the courtship of the first half of the book as well as all the silly things that occurred. The rape scene scarred me though and I felt myself getting sick to my stomache at the gruesome detail to which the author went. Nothing upset me quite as much as having to get though that chapter. I still think about it and get upset.
—David Cohen
Oh my, that's a long list!I write my review usually every morning before starting my day's work in the office. Normally it takes me less than an hour to write it. But of course while driving to work or while dressing up in the morning, I am already thinking of what to write in my review. And I normally write my review within 24 hours after finishing the book unless I have a backlog due to too much workload in the office or chores at home.Of course your reviews have more depths and contents than mine. Normally mine are just how the book struck me personally and some details taken from Wiki. :)
—Velvetink
This is the second in De Bernieres wildly imaginiative Latin American trilogy, after The War Of Don Emmanuels Nether Parts. Whereas the first focuses primarily on politics, this story is a scathing attack on the drug trade. The eponymous hero, Dionisio, is a philosophy professor who provokes the wrath of the cartels with his public letter writing campaign.Yet, when the drug lords send hit men to get rid of him they inexplicably fail every time. Baffled by his seeming invincibility, a myth builds up, that Dionisio is in fact a ‘brujo’ (sorcerer) and shouldn’t be messed with. As a result, he acquires a wide following, with women trekking across the country in the hope of bearing his children.Seemingly oblivious to his influence, and ignoring the pleas of his best friend Ramon and girlfriend Anica, Dionisio continues his campaign with some help along the way from some familiar faces from the first novel, including Aurelio, Don Emmanuel and the mysteriously tame jaguars.When the cartels realise they can’t get to Dio directly, they decide to pick off the people closest to him. This results in some truly horrific and heartbreaking scenes, which, ten years after first reading this book, still stay with me to this day. But they are not the only element. There’s also romance, and quite believable romance too, not all mushy and soppy. There’s a sub-plot involving Lazaro, a poor leper seeking salvation which I also found devastating, and Father Garcia, a levitating priest. Once again, there’s a heap of magical realism here, but the whole plot is peppered with such colourful, bright, distinctive characters which give the entire trilogy an immense sense of fun. This is its greatest triumph. Ten years after reading it, it’s still among my favourite ever books and remains vivid in my mind. Just writing this has made me realise that I need to go off and read it again and I recommend you do too.
—Books HQ
