Red April

Red April (Abril rojo) is the English translation from Spanish of a whodunit novel by Santiago Roncagliolo, published in 2006 and was awarded the Alfaguara Prize that year.

The story unfolds around presidential elections and Holy Week in the year 2000, which is to say, in a period after the internal confrontations caused by the civil war that took place in Perú in the decades of the eighties and the nineties. Nonetheless, the after-effects of this clash are evident in the novel as is discussed.

The main character, Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar—who as associate district attorney attempts to investigate serial murders supposedly related to resurgent terrorists of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), despite lacking direct, first-hand experience with the armed conflict that battered the country—upon whose return to Ayacucho and while in the pursuit of his duties becomes involved with people that definitely have had experience with Senderistas like Edith, the daughter of terrorists; with Hernán Durango (a jailed terrorist) and Commander Carrión.

Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar appears at first as someone who has great faith in the formality of procedures. He is organized, precise and pedantic to a “T”, with high regard for proper grammar—in a word, he is "anal"; he is intellectual and even ingenuous, to a certain degree, until he goes about uncovering corruption that exists in different procedures in which he is directly involved: for example, the presidential elections or usurpation of authority. Thus it dawns on him that he is able to use his authority for his own designs and file reports that have nothing to do with reality. The novel's ending chronicles his tragic, yet at times comical, descent into madness.

Narrated in a lineal manner the novel thus begins with the report on the first murder that was carried out and from which there will come a series of murders that the assistant district attorney investigated. From this point on the different events of the story will become known owing to conversations the main character has with others and the reports filed by this prosecutor.

One ought to be reminded that the novel can be understood as a place where different facts are given expression, on one hand as a faithful rendition as they took place, or by use of fiction on the other. Upon reading one can find that the novel reviewed touches on topics that positively have occurred and are validated in detailing events of Uchuraccay, the Quechua Indian myth of the Inkarrí as related cogently by Father Quiroz, festivals like the fertility rite and Turu pukllay (indigenous bullfight) (cf., photo [1]), the Holy Week processions, in mentioning the terrorist practice of hanging dogs from street lamps. The author also bases a character named Edith, albeit quite loosely, on an actual Senderista martyr of the same first name (Edith Lagos), who was the daughter of a prosperous local businessman and sprung from jail in a Senderista raid on the Centro de Reclusión y Adaptación Social (CRAS) de Huamanga (Penitentiary and Social Change Center of Huamanga). [2]

...
Wikipedia