A Guatemalan Classic On the Nightmare of Dictatorship
By
Chapman Caddell
Miguel Ángel Asturias’s masterpiece achieved lasting fame by trading political specifics for tragic grandeur.
This article is adapted from AQ’s special report on supply chains The president in Miguel Ángel Asturias’s novel Mr. President rarely appears in person. His regime is despotic, his power is boundless, but the man himself is a mystery. We know him by his works: show trials, police roundups, surveillance reports and despairing conversations in prison cells across Asturias’s native Guatemala City. Torture is par for the course. Without any knowledge of the president’s habits, politics, or inner life, we see him most vividly in his citizens’ nightmares. Asturias...
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