Book Analysis

Book Report: Who Killed Palomino Molero?

By:Yuxing Wang

The long fiction Who killed Palomino Molero? was written by the Nobel Prize Winner Mario Vargas Llosa in 1986. The edition I read was published in 1988 by the Collier Books Macmillan Publishing Company in New York. This novel consist a total of 151 pages, taking the reader through a detective story around the murder of Palomino Molero. The ending of the story was rather confusing to me. I will explain my interpretation of the story in the first part of my report. The second part of my report will include some of the real social issues exposed in the story, such as machismo (when men treats women as objects of their desires), class prejudice, and corruption within the governing systems back in the 1950s.

       The story began with the discovery of a brutally tortured corpse of Paliomino Molero near an Air Force base. Molero was portrayed as an angelic character that was polite and gentle. In addition, Molero had the voice of an angel, and was incredible at serenade. The officers that were responsible for the case were Lieutenant Silva and his partner Lituma. Silva showed both lascivious and intelligent characteristics. Silva had two goals in life, one was to find the murderer of Paliomino Molero, and the other was to sleep with the chubby women Dona Adriana, who was a married woman with a husband and several kids. Lituma was the protagonist and the narrator of the story. The story was told from his point of view. Lituma seemed to be sentimental and imaginary, many of his thoughts and ratiocination are shared throughout the texts, but most of them are false. He appeared to be an eager learner from Lieutenant Silva, and deep down, Silva was a role model for Lituma. As the story progresses, the detective have found that Palomino Molero chose to enlist in the Air Force in order to be near the love of his life, who was the daughter of the Air Force base Colonel, Alicia Mindreau. Alicia Mindreau was portrayed as an indifferent, emotionless daughter, who had a secret with her father. The Colonel was haughty and an extreme racist, “a man who went strictly by the book” (19). He strictly followed the caste system of the Latin culture, and believed strongly that his upper-class daughter was swindled and taken advantage of by the lower class Molero. There was one more significant character, Alicia’s appointed boyfriend, Lieutenant Dufo. He was described by the Colonel as weak minded and weak characterized. However, he was born from an upper family, so the Colonel appointed him to Alicia so that the Colonel could control the boyfriend and his daughter in the long run. As the story carried on, evidences slowly emerge to the surface, and the murderer slowly surfaced. The Colonel was doubtfully guilty of the murder, whether appointed or really carried out the operation. The last part was very confusing for me, I was not certain about the Colonel’s words. The evidences seemed solid and yet vague, the author did not directly address the speakers of many dialogues, thus I was very confused. My interpretation of the story was that the Colonel wanted to save face; therefore, he lied to the Lieutenant about his daughter being sick and had delusions. The Colonel killed his daughter and committed suicide himself at the end. Again, I thought that was because he did not want to deal with the scandals that would burst out after the investigation went public. Therefore he chose death over losing his dignity. I was not certain about the real murderer of Palomino Molero. I believed that the “jealousy boyfriend” was actually the Colonel. If in fact, the incest affair was true, I believed that the Colonel would be twisted enough to torture the boy as described in the book. He was both jealoused and furious about Molero’s relationship with Alicia. First of all, he was jealous about Molero actually winning over Alicia’s heart, not just physically. Secondly, in his twisted mind, he was determined that Molero raped Alicia. The Colonel believed that Alicia was too innocent to distinguish between love and coax. The Colonel probably believed that he was the only one who could protect Alicia, and I also believed the Colonel imprinted his deceased wife onto Alicia. This is why Alicia emphasized in the novel several times that “what you call falling in love is disgusting, and what we had was beautiful.”(108) My interpretation for this sentence was that the Colonel tried to brainwash Alicia into believing that the incest relationship was not wrong but was rather an expression of the Colonel’s deep and faithful love to Alicia. The brain washing was reflected through Alicia’s dialogue “I don’t need anyone to protect me. My daddy protects me. He’s all I need.” (114) I feel that when the Colonel was describing about Alicia’s delusions, he was actually describing himself. This was also hinted by Lituma’s thoughts that the Colonel was “ just like his daughter, … Elusions, delusions, whatever it is.” (128). Nevertheless in the novel, the Colonel said that Lieutenant Dufo and another officer, Molero’s close mate, were appointed by him to kill Molero, and they were responsible for the torture. He said that Dufo and the mate were drunk, and they tortured Mario out of “revenge, a broken heart, tarnished honor”(127). The author did not give a definite answer to the Colonel’s confessions. The author narrated “Lituma had many things to ask about and comment on, but he didn’t dare open his mouth, paralyzed as he was by an ambiguous sensation of confusion and sadness.”(134) followed by Lituma’s self-conflicts between Alicia’s oblivious appearances and the Colonel’s words. There wasn't a definite truth about the murderer. I think the author did not name the story Who Killed Palomino Molero? by accident, he named it because he wanted the readers to decide who the murderer was. All the conversations told by the main characters within the story were twisted with ambiguity and confusion, probably with lies as well. From my perspectives, I believe the Colonel was the murderer, because he made up a story where he was the loving father and he only ordered to kill Molero in order to protect his daughter. I thought that was very fake, and I did not believe Dufo had the guts to torture a child like that. He seemed to have gone crazy after he witnessed the murder, thus I did not believe he had the guts to carry out the whole torture of Molero. The Colonel seemed to be heartless, and he was cold enough to kill his own daughter. He seemed to be the perfect fit for the murderer.

       The novel seem to be a typical detective story, however, this novel exposes many of the social problems within the Latin culture in 1950s. First of all, there were evidences of machismo throughout the story. Machismo describes the attitude of men in the 1950s, where they treat women as objects and show no respect for them. In the story, the brothel was mentioned repeatedly, and “whores” and “son of bitches” are used constantly throughout the story to show the lack of respect for women. It also reflects the low social status for women at the time. One of the whores named Tiger Lily came to Lieutenant Silva and Lituma in the hopes that they could stop her pimp from beating her every day. At the end of the story, the author mentioned Tiger Lily was flirting with Lieutenant Silva, offering him sexual favors, and happily whispered to him that her pimp “ hasn't slugged [her] now for three days.” (44) This section reflected machismo vividly. From the whole context, Tiger Lily seem like an object or a livestock to the pimp. In modern days, despite the foul business of the pimp, physical abuse is a serious crime in society. However, from the descriptions, it seemed so common at that time. The promiscuity of Tiger Lily and her sexual offerings as gratitude to the Lieutenant also showed that women at that time were brainwashed into thinking they were born as sex machines to the man. They seemed like they accepted their destinies and accept machismo within their society. They thought getting beaten and offering sexual favors were part of their every life. The whores did not seem to be ashamed of it, but rather enjoying the brothel and the companies of the man. Other reflection of machismo can be seen by Lieutenant Silva’s strong feelings toward Dona Adriana. Even though Dona Adriana was married and had kids, Lieutenant Silva bears no inhibitions with respect to how he lusts after the chubby women. He often describes Adriana with hidden licentious manners, and announced several times that he was going to screw her while her husband was gone for fishing. At the end of the novel, there was a twist in the story. Dona Adriana took the initiative in challenging Silva’s macho pride by her role-reversing sexual taughting of the Lieutenant, and she succeeded in scaring the Lieutenant out of his wits. Dona Adriana told Lituma “Your boss took off like a shot with his tail between his legs. And he made out that it was I who offended him, the wise guy!”(148) The moral of the one sided love of the Lieutenant to Dona Adriana showed that many of the guys who expressed machismo at the time were just big phonies who only knew how to big talk.

       Class prejudice was also a big problem shown through the novel. The Colonel for instance insisted that Molero raped Alicia. He believes “The daughter of a base commander does not fall in love with a guitar player from Castilla”(129) despite of the fact that the whole town of Amotape could testify that Molero and Alicia were madly in love. Even though the Lieutenant repeatedly asked the Colonel to reconsider the circumstance that there may be true love between them, the Colonel disregards the suggestion and simply replied “ Delusions, delusions. Lying fantasies. She wasn’t in love with him, she couldn’t fall in love with him…”.(129) The Colonel denied Molero as an equal human being. Molero was a cholo, and the Colonel treated the lower classes like dirt. The problem with class can also be reflected by Alicia’s name calling. Alicia refers Molero as “Palito” because it sounded more white and more upper class. This showed the racist atmosphere in old Latin culture. The lower classes were stumped on by the upper classes, and were denied of their identities by the upper class. If Alicia truly loved him, she should have accepted who Molero was, and of course should have respected his own name. Lituma had mentioned in the novel that Alicia was similar to the Colonel, because she was also a racist. I believe part of the reason that Alicia fell in love with Molero was because Molero did not look like a cholo. Alicia told the detectives that Molero was the politest man that she had ever seen and that “he doesn't look like a cholo. It’s true he didn't.” (100) In the old Latin culture, the lower class people were stereotyped to be rude and uneducated. This was probably why Alicia felt that Molero was not like a cholo. This kind of prejudice had made the Alicia and Molero’s love impossible, and it probably symbolized many of the tragic love stories that had happened in the older times between young people of different social classes in Latin America.

       Lastly, but not least, the corruption of the governments were shown throughout the last part of the story. Even though the case was solved and murderers were punished, the citizen did not believe that was the whole story. They suspected that there was a bigger story, and the death of the Colonel was only to cover up for the crimes that were committed by the “big guys”(143). A citizen at the end of the novel complained to the Lieutenant “Around here, it’s always us poor people who get shafted, never the big guys,..” (143). This presented a serious social problem, that the citizen had no faith in the government. Corruption was probably very common at the time, and many cover-ups and scapegoats were used which lead to the mistrusts between the citizens and the government. In addition, despite the hardy work of the detective in solving the case. The detectives not only did not get promoted, but rather demoted and transferred to remote area. This showed how corrupted the government was and how they were infuriated because the case did not go cold, but rather stirred up a scandal in the upper class officials. This problem was also echoed through the section where the detectives went to visit Dona Lupe. The whole town citizens were kept quiet due to the death threats from the officers. The book described how the officer pressed the gun up to Dona Lupe’s breasts and threatened her that if she dared to say a world, the officer would “come back and blow [her] brains out, then shoot [her] in the stomach, and then shoot [her] between the legs”.(78) This horrific scene vividly pictured the misuse of power by the officers at the old times, and their menacing intimidations to the citizens. Such misuse of authority only happens at places where the governments are so corrupted that there are neither justice nor law to govern the nation. In fact, that was exactly the conditions of people’s lives in old Latin America. There were no rules, no laws to protect the people. The novel bluntly exposed the sinful corruptions that were happening within the governing systems.

In conclusion, Who killed Palomino Molero? may seem like an ordinary mystery story, but in reality it far exceeded the realm of a fictional story. It exposed many of the social issues that were occurring in Latin America back in the 1950s. The book covers issues such as racism, stereotypes and prejudice, and corruptions. The characters represented the attitudes of the people at the time, and the helplessness of the common people. The book was short, but very intriguing. You really have to go back several times to reread the dialogues in order to speculate your own investigation. Since the author cunningly integrate both evidence and vagueness into the dialogues, the novel really gets you thinking and analyzing what had really happen. I would definitely recommend this book to my friends, I had a blast reading it and trying to make things work out in my mind for several days!

References and sites consulted:

1)      Mario Vargas Llosa.(1988). Who Killed Palomino Molero?. New York, USA. Collier Books Macmillan Publishing Company.

2)      Jeruen Dery (2010). Who Killed Palomino Molero? Reviews. Retrieved from < http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/175280634>

3)      Mackintosh, Fiona J. "Innocence and corruption: Who Killed Palomino Molero? and The Storyteller." The Cambridge Companion to Mario Vargas Llosa. Eds. Efraín Kristal and John King. Cambridge University Press, 2011. Cambridge Collections Online. Cambridge University Press. 20 June 2012

4)      Swanson, Philip. (2003). “The Politics of Detection: Uncovering and Obscuring in the Post-Boom Fiction of Mario Vargas Llosa and Juan Jose Saer”. University of Manchester: Centre for Latin American Cultural Studies. Working paper 2. Retrieved from < http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/socialanthropology/postgraduate/clacs/documents/Swanson_PoliticsofDetection.pdf>

5)      Patric Martin. (2011). “Who killed Palomino Molero summary”. Gmail Blogger Post. Retrieved from < http://pmartin760.blogspot.ca/2011/04/who-killed-palomino-molero-summary.html>

6)      Enotes. (2012).” Who killed Palomino Molero At a glance:” Enotes Literature. Reterived from < http://www.enotes.com/who-killed-palomino-molero-salem/who-killed-palomino-molero>