Holy Week, Unholy Murders: Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo

Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo

A book review 

How best to express the horrors of a bloody civil war whose memory is still painful?  How can one probe into wounds which are still open and smarting? An answer might be provided by literature in general, and genre literature in particular.  One could cite as an example Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s “Cemetery of Forgotten Books” series, haunted by the memories of the Spanish Civil War.  Zafon’s bestselling novels have shown that how the Gothic, so often dismissed as ‘mere’ entertainment, can successfully engage with and comment on troublesome recent history.

Peruvian writer and journalist Santiago Roncagliolo did something similar with his crime thriller Red April (Abril Rojo), originally published in Spanish in 2006 and subsequently in an English rendition by veteran translator Edith Grossman (it won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for 2011).    

The civil war which acts as a backdrop to the events in this book is the armed conflict in Roncagliolo’s native country between the Government, the Communist Party (also known as Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path) and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.  The conflict started in 1980 and has been largely dormant since 2000, albeit with occasional resurgences of violence.

The plot unfolds around the period of the presidential elections before Holy Week in the year 2000.  In the context of this campaign, the Government is keen to make a statement that communist insurgents have been defeated. However, during Carnival in the town of Ayacucho, a gruesome murder raises suspicions that Sendero Luminoso might once again be rearing its head. Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar investigates the matter and prepares a convoluted report which conveniently makes no mention of terrorism.  And, possibly for this very reason, when this murder is followed by others, all bearing the stamp of a deranged serial killer or ritual murderer, the authorities assign the case to none other than Chacaltana.  He is hardly the ideal detective but, in the eyes of his seniors, appears to be an official who can be easily manipulated.

As evidenced by the style of the legal reports spread throughout the text, Chacaltana is well-versed in the letter of the law which he tries to follow with pedantic conscientiousness, but this hardly equips him for the complexities of life and for the intricacies of the tense political climate of his country.  Abandoned by his wife and obsessed with the memory of his long-dead mother, the Prosecutor is often naïve and ingenuous, reminding me of Umberto Eco’s claim that “real literature is about losers”.  Perhaps for this very reason, the novel’s protagonist brought to my mind failed journalist Colonna in Eco’s own Numero Zero or, to cite another Italian novel, Paolo Laurana in Sciascia’s A Ciascuno il Suo, hapless figures who end up embroiled in matters beyond their ken. Over the course of the novel, Chacaltana starts to wise up, and this change is not all to the good.  Indeed, some unsavoury aspects of his character come to the fore and contributed to some of my dissatisfaction with what is an otherwise engrossing book.

As a crime novel, Red April is thrilling and intriguing.  Much of its dark feel is given by the elements it borrows from the horror – and particularly the folk horror – genre.  Indeed, we start to realise that the serial killer is borrowing imagery both from Christian traditions linked to Holy Week and from pagan Andean myths and rituals.  An underlying theme of the novel, is the friction between Andean/pre-Colombian culture (as represented by the Quechua-speaking “natives”) and the subsequent Christian traditions imported by the Spanish-speaking settlers.   It is suggested that underneath the veneer of Christian ritual, the old rites have never died out.  The language/culture barrier becomes a symbol of this perennial conflict, which seems to fuel present-day violence.  As one of the characters puts it:

Ayacucho is a strange place.  The seat of the Wari culture was here, and then the Chanka people, who never allowed themselves to be subjugated by the Incas.  And later were the indigenous uprisings because Ayacucho was the half-way point between Cuzco, the Inca capital, and Lima, the Spaniards’ capital.  And independence in Quinia. And Sendero.  This place is condemned to be bathed in blood and fire forever.   

Some readers have been put off by the very graphic murders. To be honest, however, an act of senseless sexual violence towards the end disturbed me much more than the admittedly gruesome crime scene descriptions.   Plot-wise, the solution to the “whodunit” is rather too convenient – I believe that this is a novel which is best enjoyed by soaking up its dark atmosphere tempered by a streak of black humour.

Paperback, Atlantic Cult Classics, 273 pages

Published 2018 by Atlantic Books (first published 2002)

Being a fan of Jan Garbarek, the references to the Quechua culture could not but remind me of the great saxophonist’s collaboration with the Hilliard Ensemble and their recording of Quechua Song.  It seems ironic however to represent this native culture through a piece European jazz, particularly in the light of the themes of Roncagliolo’s novel.  So here’s what is hopefully a more “authentic” rendition of the Quechua song “Munasqetay”.

One of the traditional instruments of Peru is the charango, a guitar-like instrument which is a descendant of the vihuela a mano imported by the Spanish conquistadores.  Its use in Peruvian folk music epitomises the sometimes uncomfortable but always intriguing mix between native and “European” elements.  Here’s Jamie Guardia, one of the Peru's foremost singers and players of the charango in a song named, appropriately, Adios Pueblo de Ayacucho.

Gabriela Lena Frank is an American classical pianist and composer whose mother is a Peruvian of Chinese descent.  Some of her works celebrate her Peruvian family heritage.  Apu – Tone Poem for Orchestra, commissioned by the Carnegie Hall, is inspired by Andean mythology.  The apu is one of the spirits which keep a watchful eye on travellers passing through highland roads.

As it happened, I read this book in March/April, the months in which the novel is set, and this helped me to get into the atmosphere of the book.  Indeed, although I live on the opposite side of the world, I could feel an affinity to the descriptions of the Holy Week pageantry and, particularly, the crowded processions with the statues showing Passion scenes.  And so I’d like to end with a funeral march such as are typically heard in Mediterranean countries – and more specifically, Malta – during this time of year.  The march is accompanied by shots of local processions, not far removed from what is portrayed in Roncagliolo’s novel.