The War of the End of the World

The Counselor, Antônio Vicente Mendes Maciel, is the instigator of the novel’s plot and a deeply mysterious, static, archetypal character. No insight into his past or psychology is ever permitted; the reader understands him purely through the perspectives of outsiders on whom he exerts a profound influence. This is a deliberate choice; the Counselor was a real person, whose biography historians have reconstructed, but Vargas Llosa chooses to withhold this data in order to emphasize his mysteriousness.

Key to the Counselor’s ability to inspire tens of thousands of followers is his charisma, which seems almost supernatural. “His eyes burned with a perpetual fire” and look beyond his interlocutors “at someone or something only he could see” (3-4). His eerie calm, mysterious prophecies and profound gravity distinguish him from the priests and other itinerant preachers roaming the backlands of Bahia. Over the course of the novel, his every word becomes scripture to his followers, written down by the Lion of Natuba for future generations.

Although a Catholic radical who brands the Republic of Brazil as the Antichrist for separating church and state, he does not actively seek to wage war against the government. His motivation, as far as it is possible to distinguish from the limited perspective Vargas Llosa grants the reader, does not therefore seem driven by a lust for power. One of his most consistently proclaimed beliefs is that “Death is a fiesta for the just man” (238). His focus is on bliss in heaven rather than power on earth. This is emphasized by the fact that, as he accumulates more and more followers, the Counselor becomes less and less proactive. Whereas at the beginning he tears down government posters and decides when and where he and his followers will go next, during the war, he stays in the background, leaving the military and logistical decision-making to select subordinates.

It’s possible to read the Counselor as an allegory for Jesus Christ; both reject the religion as practiced by the state, both are persecuted as a result, both accumulate disciples, and both end up sacrificing their lives. The Baron de Canabrava and the nearsighted journalist discuss the question of whether he really is divinely inspired, and the novel leaves this open to the reader’s interpretation. This is the perhaps the most important aspect of the character’s flatness: It enables readers to inscribe a wide range of interpretations as to his motivations and psychology, without ever answering which is correct.

The Baron de Canabrava is the wealthiest and most powerful landowner in Bahia. He represents the old aristocratic class, which is losing its power under the newly established Republic of Brazil. For the whole of Parts 1 and 2, he is talked about by the other characters but does not appear on the page. This builds up his reputation as an archetypal éminence grise, someone who wields an immense degree of power but stays out of the limelight. His key attributes are political cunning, favoring practicality over ideology, calm, love for his wife, nostalgia for the old order, and a melancholy sense that the world is leaving him behind.

In contrast to his two ideological enemies, Epaminondas Gonçalves and Moreira César, who hope to turn Brazil into a dictatorial republic in order to institute modernization, the baron is reserved, polite, and shows little appetite for violence. He realizes later in the novel that his favoring cunning over the use of force has made him a relic. All the same, he contrasts with those two men and Galileo Gall in the sense that he is not an ideologue. Though he yearns for the old order, he sees clearly that it is disappearing, and is unsentimental in making plans to prepare for that fact; hence his unifying with Gonçalves in Part 3, Chapter 7.

Despite the freedom and power his position grants him, the baron despises politics and wishes he had been able to pursue his boyhood passion for nature. While Gall, Gonçalves, and Moreira César are consumed by politics, and the Counselor and his followers by religion, the baron has other passions. He loves his garden, his animals, and his wife, Estela; he speaks several languages and enjoys traveling. Right up until the final chapter, he is perhaps the most sympathetic character. But then, as if to remind the reader of the absolute power on which the baron’s entire lifestyle rests, Vargas Llosa describes his spontaneous rape of Sebastiana, his wife’s maidservant, which is encouraged by Estela and which the maid has no recourse to resist or punish. Suddenly, the violent machismo that until now has defined the lower-class characters is revealed to reach its apogee in the baron. Whereas Gall is killed for raping Jurema, the consequences for the baron will almost certainly be nil. Thus, this one instance of violence comes to represent the entire system of exploitation on which the aristocracy is built.