The authoritarian paper dictators and leaders, configured as cardboard heroes, enlightened or clumsy, are all characterized by their desire for total control and their determination to impose themselves on their subjects, thus conceived because only in the blind obedience of the masses and favorites do they recognize themselves. the earthly power of the Supremes, Generalissimos and Benefactors of the Nation. If some obtain it above all through demagogy, corruption, the purchase or breaking of wills and the theatrical display of their strength and splendor; others, like the President of Asturias, also appeal to dark forces, which protect them and instill fear in their environment. No one, not even the austere and educated Supreme Court, dismisses terror as an implacable instrument against critics and opponents.
Authoritarian figures, however, cannot rule by blows alone, nor do they stand on their own. They must take care, as the novels of the dictator or caudillo illuminate, the close connection between the desire for power of One, the courtly clique or the bureaucratic apparatus and the conformism, even if lukewarm, of the masses. Thus, they promote the cult of personality, through some official poet who sings his deeds and with a string of titles exalts them to Olympus, or with plaques that in each home elevates them to the heights (“God and Trujillo” ). Some, like the Supreme, rely on the influence of education to form consciences, with contrasting results: while one child writes that “The Supreme helps us to be good and works hard making the grass, flowers, and plants grow,” another Influenced by his parents, he sees him as a threatening “hairy spider”. Espionage, of ordinary or privileged citizens, manipulation of the media to embellish reality, sow discord between potential successors, discredit or destroy those who have fallen from grace or transmute State crimes into “defense of the Homeland”, as in La sombra. of the caudillo, they are also part of the wide arsenal of the aspirants to “Perpetual Dictator”.
Whether they stand out for their skill or cruelty, our fictitious Presidents need servile courtiers to the point of ignominy, capable of assuring them that their mediocre little countries do not deserve them, of spreading lies even against relatives, friends or former comrades in struggle, willing to obey without question all the orders, even if it is lying, betraying, murdering, to accept humiliation and dispossession in silence. In order to avoid the contempt or fury of the Leader, who equates criticism or denunciations with attempts to “undermine (bar) the credit of (his) government”, he is silent in the face of corruption or injustice. As the still-favourite Cara de Ángel affirms in Asturias’s novel: “an innocent man in bad hands with the government is worse than if he were guilty.”
Despite its dark appeal, absolute power is more the product of an authoritarian delusion than an achievable reality, even in literature. When it falls into excess and imposition at all costs, political or military power devastates the landscape and sows its own ruin: Pedro Páramo or the apparent stone of Ixtepec remind us that violence annihilates.
Against the tragedies and tragicomedies of authoritarianism, literature confirms the liberating power of the imagination. The novels or dramas of Asturias, Roa, Vargas Llosa, Rulfo, Garro and others remind us that those who think for themselves, disagree or dare to act against the Tyrant, who critically intervene in his writings, denounce his crimes or bear witness to the horror They transcend those dark times. Although the victors write history, one witness, one survivor is enough to tell the stories of those who rejected “a different ethic”, rebelled against submission, resisted in silence to account for their time.
