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Harsh Times

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This novel is a fictional retelling of the political environment and events of life in Guatemala in the 1950's. Jacobo Arbenz was the elected president of the country with a progressive agenda, especially land reform as foreign interests such as United Fruit held much of the best land leaving the native Indian population in poverty. This agenda did not suit the business interests, which were focused mainly in the United States and asked for help from the government. The CIA and President Eisenhower got involved, spreading lies that Arbenz was a Communist and that he was the beginning of communism taking over all of South America. This led to a CIA backed coup that unseated Arbenz and installed Carlo Castillo Armas instead.

The story is told through the lives of various participants. Notable among them was a woman known as Miss Guatemala who was the mistress of several of the men at the top and later a political journalist. While serving as mistress to the President, she was also working with the CIA providing gossip and intelligence. When events heated up, the CIA helped her escape to another South American country and eventually to the United States. We also hear the story of the head of the security forces who was falsely accused of the murder and lost everything as he served time in prison. Other players were forced into exile, roaming the earth in search of new lives but never finding them.

Mario Vargas Llosa is known for his books about the political events in South America as well as biographical novels about various writers and artists. He was born in Peru but spent much time overseas during the turbulent times of the 1950's and 1960's. His work is celebrated as exposing much of the background behind the events taking place and how foreign manipulation put the South American countries behind in their quest for independence. I listened to this novel and the narrator was perfect; his accent and pronunciation of names added to the experience. This book is recommended for literary fiction readers as well as those interested in political events.

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4 stars

An important & powerful story tracing the series of coups & election interference by foreign governments (including the CIA) that overthrew Guatemala’s democracy during the early Cold War. The characterizations are masterful, & the writing top notch.

[What I liked:]

•This is an important episode in history that imo not enough Americans are aware of. I had learned the basics of what happened in school, & seen a documentary that focused on the banana plantation workers & United Fruit, but I wasn’t as familiar with the government leaders involved. I definitely learned some history from reading this. The part about the uprising at the military academy was particularly touching.

•The writing is skilled & nuanced. I particularly admire the character development work. Somehow, I managed to care about what happened to Johnny by the end, while also really disliking him. Castillo Armas, in particular, is a character with lots of nuance who would have been easy to caricature. Instead, we see his greed & power lust, his mental instability, his insecurity, his delusional belief that he’s doing what is right, & get to watch his slow breakdown up close.

•I particularly enjoyed Vargas Llosa’s recounting at the end of his real-life visit to Marta while he was researching this book. He really captures what a colorful & slippery character she is, & it is clear how much work he put into researching the figures & events of the novel.


[What I didn’t like as much:]

•The alternating timelines were quite confusing to me, especially since they often happened mid-scene, with a character jumping back & forth between the current moment & a parallel moment in the past multiple times in the same scene or paragraph. That was pretty frustrating.

•I’m not really sure who is the protagonist in the book. Marta is more of an anti-hero, a master manipulator. Johnny is downright horrible, although I feel bad for what happened to his family. Árbenz is the most sympathetic character by far, but he’s a peripheral character for much of the book. Castillo Armas is no hero, although he’s portrayed with some nuance & sympathy. In short, it was hard to like most of the main characters in this story.

CW: murder, torture, sexual assault, civil war

[I received an ARC ebook copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Thank you for the book!]

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I just didn’t get on with this complicated political novel, and found it hard work. Lots of characters, lots of places, lots of political machinations and intrigues, and lots of history to absorb. I’m willing to accept that it was my lack of application rather than any inherent fault in the writing, especially as it’s received so many positive reviews, and maybe I will try it again some time, but for now I admit defeat. At the beginning it felt like reading a dry history textbook and by the time the narrative really got going I was already disengaged and unwilling to put in the required effort. However, I can see that it is an important examination of Guatemala and its troubled relationship with the US, thus well worth reading, but not one for me.

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First published in Spain in 2019; published in translation by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on November 23, 2021

Harsh Times is the story of Guatemala in the middle of the twentieth century. The book can’t quite decide whether it wants to a novelized history or a character study. The story is framed by the political actions and personal reactions of several characters, most notably a young woman named Marta Borrero Parra.

Guatemala has a history of “murdered politicians and presidents,” including Carlos Castillo Armas, who governed from 1954 to 1957 and, as Mario Vargas Llosa tells it, took Marta as a lover after she left the friend of her father who made her pregnant in her early teens. Marta weaves in and out of the narrative in the novel’s first half before she disappears for a long while, leaving the story to be framed by a succession of other characters, most of whom serve in government or the military. None of those characters are as compelling as Marta, whose vulnerability as an outsider gives her a unique role in a story about powerful men who abuse their power. Marta’s reappearance in an epilogue adds a few details about her life but does little to wrap up the story, given the conspiracy tale she spins about a character who (like Marta) left Guatemala and reinvented himself. Perhaps Llosa’s point is that separating truth from fiction is a daunting task when some conspiracies are real and others are imagined.

Instead of focusing the novel on central characters, Llosa chose to focus on historical events in Guatemala and other Central American or Caribbean countries. Armas took power in a military coup orchestrated by the CIA with a mandate to root out real and imagined communists, defined as anyone who believed workers should organize, elections should be fair, and power should not be concentrated in the hands of the corrupt.

Llosa spotlights the American anti-communist crusade of the 1950s as the instrumental force in Guatemala’s development. In Llosa’s version of history, the crusade was manipulated by a Machiavellian public relations consultant for United Fruit, a banana grower that oppressed workers and ruthlessly acquired land in Guatemala. United Fruit sought public relations assistance because it wanted to reform its cutthroat image without losing its power. Telling the blatant lies that the PR guru concocted, United Fruit claimed to be the victim of a communist government, although none of its productive land had been nationalized and it was the only grower in Guatemala that didn’t pay taxes. According to Llosa, the pro-democracy government that preceded Armas was simply trying to move away from a feudal society by using eminent domain to redistribute unproductive land to peasants who would put it to good use, a win-win for the peasants and for Guatemalan society. United Fruit thought it was only a matter of time before democracy would result in a government it couldn’t control; hence the deceptive PR campaign.

Nothing serves a public image better than championing anti-communism, even if United Fruit’s true aim (shared by the American government) was to undermine Guatemala’s emerging democracy and quash its efforts to distribute power and wealth more equitably. After the CIA orchestrated the government’s overthrow, Armas nullified deeds to small plots of land that pulled Guatemalans out of poverty and imprisoned or killed union organizers and dissenters. But America wants a democratic façade in its banana republics and Armas, having carried out the country’s shift to the far right with murderous zeal, didn’t even pretend to be interested in democracy. Thus the CIA’s support for the assassination of Guatemala’s president three years after it brought that president to power. A fickle agency, the CIA.

Whether the story’s political background is accurate in all of its particulars doesn’t matter. This is a work of fiction, after all, and while the political narrative is interesting, characters drive literary novels. The narrative weaves back and forth in time, focusing on various players at different times: Dr. Efrén García Ardiles, the friend of Marta’s father who raped Marta and made her pregnant while she was a young teen before marrying her at her father’s insistence (a marriage that allowed Marta’s father to disown her); Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, the alcoholic but well-intentioned defense minister who became the pro-democracy president of Guatemala until the CIA intervened; Enrique Trinidad Oliva, Armas’ director of security whose life rises and falls in ways that parallel Guatemalan governments; Mike Laporta, a CIA agent who “couldn’t look more gringo if he tried”; American Ambassador Peurifoy, a willing pawn of Allen Dulles and the CIA; Rafael Trujillo, the ruthless dictator of the Dominican Republic; and Johnny Abbes Garcia, the anti-democratic chief of Dominican intelligence under President Trujillo whose life took unexpected turns after Trujillo was killed.

Marta is the most sympathetic of this large cast of characters, if only because she is so often used and condemned by men. Her shift to the far right when she becomes a radio commentator is an act of self-preservation, as was bedding Armas. Her decision to abandon her child to be raised by her rapist is understandable, as are the choices she makes to survive in a world where men see only a potential conquest when they gaze in her direction.

I’m not sure that the novel’s shifting time frame serves a purpose, other than to remind the reader that this is a novel and not a history text. Still, some chapters read like a lively history text, contributing little but a perspective on history to the story. Llosa introduces a central character to serve as a focal point for those chapters, but those characters tend to appear for a brief time and disappear after they have served their purpose, giving those chapters a disjointed feeling. A cadet named Crispin Carrasquilla, for example, is featured in a late chapter that tells of a clash between military cadets and invading forces. A diplomatic agreement (soon to be violated) resolves their conflict, a small episode that (Llosa assures us) “would hardly appear in the press or the history books.” Crispin’s chapter contributes little to the overall narrative.

The novel’s struggle between its focus on history and its attempt to be a character study causes Llosa to follow characters like Abbes Garcia after he eventually lands in Haiti. While the gruesome end of Garcia’s story would merit its own book, it seems disconnected in a novel that wants to tell a story of Guatemala.

As a broader history, although driven by a mix of invented and real characters, Llosa reminds the reader of important geopolitical realities. Every attempt the US has made to meddle in the internal affairs of governments it perceives as “leftist” has backfired. Llosa argues that Cuba moved in the direction of communism and dictatorship as a direct result of the CIA’s interference with democracy in Guatemala. “When all is said and done,” Llosa writes, “the North American invasion of Guatemala held up the country’s democratization for decades at the cost of thousands of lives, as it helped popularize the myth of armed struggle and socialism throughout Latin America.” Just as salient is Llosa’s illustration of how easily the American public is manipulated by corporate interests that invent fears of communism to conceal the harm their business practices inflict on ordinary people. While Harsh Times might be more effective as a history lesson than a character-driven novel, it is never less than engrossing.

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A good book, but not great. Where does reality end and fiction start? Is this really a novel? Not many people know Guatemala's history in the 1950s, so the author has to provide excruciating details in order to set the stage and for the story to make sense. Unfortunately, because there are so many characters it becomes disorienting at times. The author's politics come through loud and clear at times to the detriment of the story. I wish the author had focused less on the politics and more on the story of Marta. That was a missed opportunity and perhaps would have resulted in a great novel. Character development is lacking, because they are not on stage for that long. The novel feels jumpy, and the back and forth between voices and storylines is at times distracting. A main pro of this novel is that it is easy to read, unlike some of Llosa's earlier novels. Thank you to NetGalley, FSG and Macmillan Audio for the advance copy.

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The Historical Novels Review, November 2021.

Focusing on the machinations in and around the Guatemalan Revolution and leading up to the civil war of 1944-1960, Nobel recipient Vargas Llosa has blended historic and fictional characters to tell a story from true events. The narrative shifts back and forth through the presidencies of Juan Jose Arevalo, Jacobo Arbenz, Carlos Castillo Armas, and Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes. The Dominican Republic, Generalisimo Trujillo, and the CIA also play a role. It is heavy on history while personalizing the players. Llosa highlights the conspiracies, collusions, and manipulations of the truth which brought about endless devastation and death to the country with long-lasting consequences.

Sam Zemurray, owner of the United Fruit Company who introduced bananas to the U.S., has profited from paying no Guatemalan tax on his huge profits. When President Jacobo Arbenz comes to power, he plans to bring Guatemalans out of poverty and isolation, and steer the country to democracy. In order to provide education, highways, and public works, United Fruit must pay taxes the same as other growers. Edward Bernays, an American public relations and propaganda expert, begins a propaganda campaign on United Fruit’s behalf which persuades President Eisenhower and the CIA that President Jacobo’s democratic reforms are communism infiltrating Guatemala. A U.S.-backed coup d’état placed Castillo Armas into power, who reversed Arbenz’s democratic policies and returned Guatemala to an oppressive dictatorship.

Interacting with the historical figures is the fictional Martita Borrero Parra, who became interested in politics as a young child listening to her father and his friends. After suffering terrible wrongs by the men in her life, she took back her power by building relationships with political figures and assisting the CIA.

Harsh Times is a challenging read with lots of villains and too few heroes, but rewarding for readers who love a book of intrigue in the world of messy, dirty politics.

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It helps, I think, to have at least a general understanding of what happened in Guatemala in 1954. Vargos Llosa has blended fact and fiction to tell the story of the US backed coup promoted by United Fruit in order to. maintai its monopoly and tax benefits. Lt Colonel Carlo Castillo Armas, who pushed out Jacobo Arbenz, and his lover Maria Parra are betrayed when the Dominican Johnny Garcia arrives to assassinate Armas. It's a tour through the politics of the region which might require some research to fully appreciate but the message is clear. The characters are good and even though we largely know what's going to happen, there's tension. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

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Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. In Guatemala in 1954, the CIA helps bring down Jacobo Árbenz and replace him with Carlos Castillo Armas as the country’s new leader. This is a thrilling book that follows around a dozen characters leading up to this coup and what happens in the years to come to some very unsavory players and so many pawns that are caught in the middle. A dazzling mosaic of characters that you won’t forget.

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Metafiction is fun to read because it brings history alive with a mix of real and imagined characters and situations that frame what some might otherwise be dry facts. Llosa is a master of the genre. In HARSH TIMES, he relates the complex events surrounding the 1954 US-backed Guatemalan coup with a mix of historical and fictitious characters. President Jacobo Árbenz led a progressive administration aimed at land reform and taxing corporations. This was understandably opposed by the country’s most powerful corporation, the United Fruit Company. At the time, it was the largest worldwide distributer of bananas. I’m not sure if Guatemala was the origin of the term “banana republic” but United Fruit’s reach into its government clearly make it a candidate for the title.

With the support of the Eisenhower administration, notably the Dulles brothers and Guatemala’s creepy U.S. ambassador (John Peurifoy), a propaganda campaign was built around a “big lie” (i.e., that Guatemala was about to provide a foothold in the Western Hemisphere for Russian communism). Llosa claims there was little evidence for this. The marginally competent Lt. Col. Carlos Castillo Armas was installed as the successor to Árbenz and the bulk of the novel revolves around a successful conspiracy to remove Armas by assassination.

Llosa puts a human face on the Armas assassination by following the activities of largely fictitious coup plotters. Martita Borrero Parra is a particularly intriguing figure. Known as Miss Guatemala, despite never actually holding that title, she was impregnated at 14 by one of her father’s best friends. Papa disowned her and arranged a shotgun wedding. The marriage subsequently failed, Martita abandoned her child and eventually became Armas’ mistress. Her involvement in the murder is murky, but following the assassination, she sought safe harbor in Trujillo’s Dominican Republic. Llosa ends his novel with a fascinating epilogue where he interviews Martita at her home in Florida as a septuagenarian. He is too good a writer to answer every question surrounding Miss Guatemala, so much is left to the reader’s imagination.

Another fascinating creation is Johnny Abbes García. He is installed by Trujillo as chief of his military intelligence service and sent to Guatemala to orchestrate the Armas assassination. Trujillo’s motives for this are unclear but seem to involve perceived slights. Johnny and a “gringo who probably was not called Mike” worked to accomplish the task and eventually to extricate Martita from the country.

Llosa also describes the gruesome fate of Enrique Trinidad Oliva, Armas’ director of security, following the assassination. Oliva may (or may not?) have been implicated in the plot, but clearly was a scapegoat. He, along with Garcia and Peurifoy, eventually get their just deserts.

The novel is a wild ride filled with lots of dirty deeds along with some important insights. In point of fact, Llosa believes that the two most dastardly figures in the whole sorry saga were Sam Zemurray and Edward L. Bernays. The former was the founder of United Fruit, and the latter was a PR guru he hired to spread the big lie. More importantly, he believes that this act likely hindered democratization and contributed to corrupt, violent and undemocratic systems that persist to this day in the region.

Despite some murkiness resulting from the inherent complexity of the story, as well as Llosa’s use of a non-linear timeline and multiple perspectives in his often ironic and sexy narrative, the novel moves along at a swift pace and is a satisfying read.

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Mario Vargas Llosa is a force of nature. His books are something to be reckoned with.

The story of Guatemala's political turmoil of the 1950s starts with the story of the United Fruit Company and two advertising men. I was familiar with both due to a long ago course in comparative politics and research on that same company!

The setting: "The military coup perpetrated by Carlos Castillo Armas and supported by the CIA topples the government of Jacobo Árbenz. Behind this violent act is a lie passed off as truth, which forever changes the development of Latin America: the accusation by the Eisenhower administration that Árbenz encouraged the spread of Soviet Communism in the Americas. Harsh Times is a story of international conspiracies and conflicting interests in the time of the Cold War..."

There are many characters in this novel and one must pay attention due to the numerous details and changing situations/fluidity. At times this book seemed too much/all over the place. Guatemala [predominantly], but also the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Thailand, and Japan [!} appear in this novel. And the CIA--Mike--likely not his real name [said many times] has a pivotal role in the Central American setting. Conspiracy. Political intrigues. Deceptions, Mistresses [many], whore houses, embassies, palaces, hotels.

Two noteworthy descriptions:
"He hadn't been in such a state of effervescent expectation, of exacerbated apprehension since his years in Mexico..."
"Her heart withered from sorrow."

I loved the "After"--which is a very short part of the book. The "Before"--is more than 90% of the novel.

3.5 cannot round up.

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Truth and fiction intermingle in this fluid true-story narrative: the events are real. The characters and situations are re-created. And the lies that overthrew the democratically-elected president of Guatemala were not. In it, we can imagine the way that the US-based United Fruit Company fabricated a lie and used it to join forces with governments, disaffected mercenaries, and enemies of Guatemala's president's to stage a coup d'état. The process, if not the change of government, changed the course of history in Latin America. Despite the fact that the outcome is known to history, the reader can't help to sit in suspense until the last moment, hoping against hope that this time it could be different.
Stories like this break my heart. Vargas Llosa is a favorite author of mine, precisely because his work illustrates so well the passions and weaknesses of human nature. His portrayal of time so closely reflects reality--it doesn't really pass in an orderly, linear fashion, as we would like to believe, but instead takes unanticipated trips to the past alongside possible projections into the future. This is lyrical imagining of the details of historical reality, breathing humanity into what we read coldly in textbooks. It is also a timely reminder (although perhaps new to some?) of what the US Government and human nature are capable of doing in the quest for power and money.

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I've been a fan of Mario Vargas Llosa for a long time, so I was excited to see his latest novel available early on NetGalley. True to fashion, it did not disappoint, though it did require several Google sessions to satisfy my curiosity about the actual history in Guatemala during that time. The story is thick with detail and nefarious happenings, and yet it all does seem believable. Vargas Llosa makes Latin American history very engaging!

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Harsh Times
by Mario Vargas Llosa
Translated by Adrian Nathan West
Publication Date: November 2nd, 2021

I received my Bachelor of Arts degree in Spanish Literature and language, and also attended graduate school for Spanish Literature. In one of my courses, we read several works by Mario Vargas Llosa, who was born in 1936, in Peru. I vividly remember reading his books "The Feast of the Goat" (about the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, and "The Way to Paradise" (about the artist Paul Gauguin). They were not only amazing works of literature, but Vargas Llosa also weaved in historical details, political beliefs, and feelings about his own life.

Harsh Times is Llosa's latest work, and it is a complicated one. He writes about a very challenging time in history, and he makes it come alive for his readers. While it's described as a novel, it most definitely has elements of reality and history in it. Harsh Times is a story about Guatemala, in the 1950s. So much was happening there politically and socially, and Llosa is able to interweave actual historical events with fiction. The book progresses at a good pace, and the reader is invited into the lives of people in Guatemala.

As this book is not set for publication until November 2nd of this year, I will be writing a more detailed review prior to that date. I really enjoyed reading "Harsh Times," and was absolutely swept up in the history and circumstances Vargas Llosa wrote about.

#NetGalley #MarioVargasLlosa #Guatemala

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