Captain Pantoja and the Special Service

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  How am I going to see Teófilo if I don’t have money for the boat? And where am I going to work? Snotnose is very spiteful, he doesn’t want to see me because I left him to work in Pantiland. I don’t want to be a “washerwoman” again, the work’s killing, on top of that there’s the police, who take away everything you earn. There’s no place to go, Missis. Kiss him and use all kinds of tricks, like us women know how, you’ll make him forgive me and I’ll come on my knees to kiss your feet. I think about my Teófilo there in Borja and I want to kill myself, to stab a palm thorn into my heart like the savages in the tribes to end their pain, but my cousin Rosita doesn’t let me and besides I know that neither God our Father or Brother Francisco, his steward on Earth, would pardon me for it, they love all creatures, they even love a whore. Have pity on me and make him hire me again, I’ll never make him angry again, I swear it by your daughter, I’m going to pray for her till I get hoarse, Missis. My name’s Maclovia, he already knows it.

  Well then, thank you so much, Missis Pantoja, may God repay you, I kiss your feet and your little daughter’s, with all my devotion,

  MACLOVIA

  Request for a discharge from the Army from

  Commander Godofredo Beltrán Calila, Chief of the

  Corps of Military Chaplains of Region V (Amazon)

  Brig. Gen. Roger Scavino

  Commander in Chief of Region V (Amazon)

  (Delivered by hand)

  Dear General:

  I am performing the painful duty of requesting through your intercession my immediate discharge from the Peruvian Army, in whose ranks I have had the honor of serving these past eighteen years; that is, since the year when I was ordained a priest, and during which I have attained, I would like to think on the basis of my merits, the rank of commander. At the same time, I am performing the very sad moral imperative of returning to the Army, through you, my immediate superior, the three decorations and the four honorable citations with which, throughout my years of service in the victimized and disregarded Corps of Military Chaplains (CMC), the armed forces have wanted to encourage my efforts and at the same time render gratitude.

  I feel an obligation to state clearly and in precise detail that the reason for my separation from this institution and from these medals and citations is the sinister existence, as a semi-clandestine organization of our Army, of the so-called Special Service for Garrisons, Frontier and Related Installations, a euphemistic term that in reality embraces an active and growing traffic in prostitutes between Iquitos and the military camps and the naval bases of the Amazon. Neither as a priest nor as a soldier am I able to accept that the Army of Bolognesi and of Alfonso Ugarte, which has crowned the history of Peru with notable deeds and celebrated heroes, has descended to the shameful extreme of nourishing mercenary love in its bosom, subsidizing it with its own budget, and placing its logistical force and its quartermaster’s office at its service. I want only to remind you of the contrasting paradox in the fact that during eighteen years of insistent pleas and efforts I have not succeeded in having the Army create a mobile corps of priests with the purpose of periodically carrying the sacraments of confession and of communion to the soldiers at isolated garrisons where there is no chaplain—which are in the majority—and the fact that after scarcely one year and a half of existence the aforementioned Special Service presently has at its disposal a hydroplane, a boat, a truck and very modern communications equipment to distribute throughout the entire vastness of our jungle sin, lasciviousness and, undoubtedly, syphilis.

  Finally, I would like to observe that this singular Service appears and prospers just when, in the Amazon, the Catholic faith, the official faith of Peru and of her armed forces, is threatened by a superstitious plague, which under the name of the Brotherhood of the Ark devastates towns and villages, wins over initiates day after day among the ignorant and naïve and extends its grotesque cult of the child bestially sacrificed in Moronacocha everywhere, including, as has been verified, the barracks in the jungle. I do not need to remind you, my General, that scarcely two months ago, in the San Bartolomé Post on the Ucayali River, a group of fanatic recruits, secretly organized into an Ark, attempted the live crucifixion of an Indian to ward off a storm, which had to be prevented at gunpoint by the unit’s officers. And it is at this time, when the Corps of Military Chaplains is resolutely fighting this blasphemous scourge and homicide in the bosom of the Amazon regiments, that headquarters thinks it opportune to authorize and promote the functioning of a service that weakens morality and relaxes the mores of the troops. That our Army should foment prostitution and itself assume the degrading function of procuring is a symptom of decadence far too serious for me to remain indifferent. If the ethical decay takes hold in the backbone of our nation, which is the armed forces, then the gangrene can spread itself at any moment throughout the sacred organism of the Nation. This modest soldier priest does not want to be an accomplice, either by commission or omission, to such a terrible process.

  With a military salute,

  [Signed]

  COMMANDER GODOFREDO BELTRÁN CALILA, CMC

  Chief, Corps of Military Chaplains of Region V (Amazon)

  NOTE: Transmit the present request to the Ministry of War and to staff headquarters with the recommendation that:

  1. The request for discharge by Commander Beltrán Calila, CMC, be accepted due to its irrevocable nature;

  2. That he be mildly admonished for the somewhat intemperate terms in which he has expressed his request; and

  3. That he be thanked for service he has rendered.

  [Signed]

  GEN. ROGER SCAVINO

  Commander in Chief of Region V (Amazon)

  7

  Broadcast of The Voice of Sinchi, Radio Amazon,

  9 February 1958

  And with the Movado clock that adorns the wall of our studio striking exactly six o’clock, Radio Amazon is pleased to present to its listening audience the most widely heard program on the air:

  [Bars of the waltz “La Contamanina” rise, fall and continue in the background.]

  The Voice Of Sinchi!

  [Bars of the waltz “La Contamanina” rise, fall and continue in the background.]

  A half hour of commentary, reviews, anecdotes, information—all in the interest of Truth and Justice. The voice that takes and transmits over the airwaves the pulse of the people in the Peruvian Amazon. A lively and down-to-earth human program, written and broadcast by that well-known journalist Germán Láudano Rosales—The Voice of Sinchi!

  [Bars of the waltz “La Contamanina” rise, fall and are cut completely.]

  And a very good afternoon to you, my dear and distinguished listeners. Here I am once again on Radio Amazon, the first station of western Peru, to bring to the man of the cosmopolitan center and to the woman of the distant tribe taking its first steps along the road to civilization, to the prosperous businessman and to the humble farmer of the isolated backwaters—that is, to all those fighting and working for progress in our unconquerable Amazon—thirty minutes of friendship, amusement, confidential revelations and important debates, sensational reports and history-making news from Iquitos, the beacon of Peruvian character raised aloft in the vast verdure of our jungle. But before continuing, my dear listeners, some commercial announcements.

  [Recorded and taped commercials: 60 seconds.]

  And, to start off, as we do every day, our section “A Little Bit of Culture.” We will never tire of repeating it, listeners: we need to raise our intellectual and spiritual levels, to deepen our knowledge, especially of what concerns our surroundings, our native soil, the city that shelters us. Let’s learn its secrets, the lives and deeds of those who have given it their names, the history of the houses we inhabit, many of which have been the cradle of great leaders or the scene of never-fading episodes that are the pride of our region. Let’s learn about all this because penetrating a little into our people and into our city in this way, we’ll love our Fatherland and our compatriots e
ven more.

  Today we are going to tell you the history of one of the most famous mansions in Iquitos. I’m referring—you’ve already guessed it—to the very famous House of Iron, as it is popularly called, which stands—so original, so different and graceful—in our Army Plaza and currently houses the noble and distinguished Iquitos Social Club. The Voice of Sinchi asks: How many people of Loreto know who built this House of Iron that surprises and delights strangers when they set foot on the fertile soil of Iquitos? How many knew that this beautiful metal house was designed by one of the most celebrated architects and builders of Europe and of the world? How many knew, before this afternoon, that this house came from the creative mind of the brilliant Frenchman who at the beginning of this century erected in the City of Light, Paris, the universally famous tower that bears his name? The Eiffel Tower! Yes, dear listeners, you heard right: the House of Iron on the Army Plaza is the work of the daring and very renowned French inventor Eiffel, and thus it is a historical monument of the first order— in our country or in any part of the world. Does this mean that the famous Eiffel himself was once in sultry Iquitos? No, he never was here. How can we explain, then, that this great work of his gleams in our beloved city? That is what Sinchi is going to reveal in the section “A Little Bit of Culture” on his program….

  [A few arpeggios.]

  It was during the years of the rubber boom when the great pioneers of Loreto, the same men who plowed the dense growth of the Amazon, from north to south and from east to west, in search of the coveted rubber, competed sportingly, for the benefit of our city, in seeing who could construct his house with the most artistic and costly materials of the period. And so there came into being residences of marble, with building stones, glazed tile façades and elaborate balconies, that beautify the streets of Iquitos and bring to mind the Golden Years of the Amazon and show how the poet of our Motherland was right when he said “any past time was better.” Well, then, among those pioneers, who were all great rubber barons and adventurers, was the millionaire and great citizen of Loreto Anselmo del Aguila, who, like many of his equals, was in the habit of taking trips to Europe to satisfy his restless spirit and his thirst for culture. And here we have our native of Iquitos, Don Anselmo del Aguila, during a raw European winter—can you imagine how that citizen of Loreto must have shivered?—arriving in a German city and lodging in a little hotel that powerfully called itself to his attention and delighted him with its great comfort, with the daring of its lines and its very original beauty, since it was completely constructed out of iron. What did our home-grown del Aguila do then? Neither timid nor lazy and with that fervor for his own region that distinguishes the people of our land, he said to himself: This great architectural work should be in my city; Iquitos deserves it and needs it for its elegance and excellence. And without more ado, the prodigal man from Loreto bought the little German hotel built by the great Eiffel, paying for it what they asked without haggling over one cent. He had it dismantled, shipped and brought to Iquitos, down to the last nut and bolt. The first prefabricated house in history, my dear listeners! It was reassembled here with great care and under the loving supervision of del Aguila himself. Now you know the reason for the presence of this curious and unequaled artistic work in Iquitos.

  As a final anecdote, I should add that in his kind gesture and his noble desire to enrich the urban heritage of his land, Don Anselmo del Aguila also acted somewhat recklessly in not considering that the material of the house he bought was very suitable for the polar cold of enlightened Europe, but something very different took place in the case of Iquitos, where a metal mansion, in the temperatures we know, can constitute a serious problem. Inevitably, that is what happened. The most expensive house in Iquitos proved to be uninhabitable because the sun converted it into a cauldron, and people couldn’t touch the walls without blistering their hands. There was nothing else for del Aguila to do but to sell the house to a friend, the rubber planter Ambrosio Morales, who thought he was capable of putting up with the hellish atmosphere of the House of Iron, but he also failed. And so the owner changed year after year, until the ideal solution was hit upon: to convert it into the Iquitos Social Club, an institution that is uninhabited during the day, when the House of Iron is throwing off flames, and that is brightened by the presence of our most gracious ladies and our most distinguished gentlemen in the afternoons and evenings, hours when the coolness makes it inviting and temperate. But keeping in mind its illustrious progenitor, Sinchi thinks that the House of Iron should be expropriated by the city and converted into a museum or something similar, dedicated to the golden years of rubber, when our valuable black gold turned Loreto into the economic capital of the country. And with this, kind listeners, we come to the close of our first section: “A Little Bit of Culture”!

  [A few arpeggios. Commercials on record and tape: 60 seconds. A few arpeggios.]

  And now our “Commentary of the Day.” Before anything else, dear listeners, since the topic I must touch upon tonight (very much against my will and because I am forced to by my duty as an honest journalist, as a citizen of Loreto, as a Catholic and as father of a family) is extremely grave and may offend your ears, I urge you to send your younger daughters and sons away from your radios because, with the frankness that characterizes me and has made The Voice of Sinchi the citadel of truth defended by every arm in the Amazon, I won’t have any choice but to refer to crude facts and to call things by their proper names, as I have always been known to do. And I shall do so with the energy and serenity of someone who knows he speaks with the backing of his people and is echoing the silent but upright thoughts of the majority.

  [A few arpeggios.]

  On numerous occasions, and with delicacy so as not to offend anyone, because that is not our desire, we have alluded on this program to an activity that is a cause of scandal and indignation to all decent and proper people, who live and think morally, and who are in the vast majority in this city. And we had not wanted to attack this shameful activity directly and head on because we naïvely trusted—we confess it freely—that the individual responsible for this outrage might reconsider, might understand once and for all the magnitude of the moral and material damage he was inflicting on Iquitos in his desire for immoderate profit, in his mercantile zeal that respects no barrier nor stops to consider how he achieves his ends, which are to hoard, to fill his coffers, even though it might be by the forbidden means of concupiscence and corruption—his own and others’. Some time ago, meeting face to face with the lack of comprehension among the simple people, and displaying our physical rectitude over these very airwaves, we conducted a civilizing campaign directed toward putting an end to the custom of whipping children in order to purify them after Holy Saturday. And with our own little grain of sand, I think we’ve contributed something to eradicating in the Amazon this wicked custom that made our children cry so much and left some of them psychologically incapacitated. On other occasions we have crusaded against the superstitious mange that, under the disguise of the Brotherhood of the Ark, infects the Amazon and sprinkles the jungle with innocent little animals crucified by fault of the foolishness and ignorance of one portion of our populace, by the false messiahs and pseudo Christs abusing these qualities in order to fill their own pockets and satisfy their own sick instincts for popularity, for subduing and controlling masses and for anti-Christian sadism. And we have done this without backing down from the threat of being crucified ourselves in the Army Plaza here in Iquitos, as is prophesied for us in the cowardly anonymous letters, full of spelling errors, that we receive daily from those brave types who throw rocks and then hide their hands behind their backs, who dare to insult but not to show their faces. Just the day before yesterday, on the doorstep of our home as we were preparing to go out and earn our daily bread by the sweat of our brow, we stumbled on a crucified kitten—a barbarous and bloody warning. But these Herods of our time are wrong if they think they can silence Sinchi with the fear of intimidation. We will
continue to combat the demented fanaticism and religious crimes of that sect over these airwaves, and to hope that the authorities capture the so-called Brother Francisco, that Antichrist of the Amazon, whom we hope soon to see rotting in jail as the conscious and perverse perpetrator of the infanticide in Moronacocha, of the several frustrated attempts at assassination by crucifixion that have been recorded during the past months in different jungle settlements fanaticized by the Ark, and of the abominable crucifixion of the old man Arévalo Benzas at the hands of these outlaw “brothers” that took place last week in the missionary town of Santa María de Nieva.

  [A few arpeggios.]

  Today, with the same steadfastness and taking all the necessary risks, The Voice of Sinchi asks: How long are we going to continue tolerating in our beloved city, my distinguished listeners, that shameful spectacle which is the existence of the improperly named Special Service, more commonly known as Pantiland, in ridiculous homage to its founder? The Voice of Sinchi asks: How long, fathers and mothers of families in refined Loreto, are we going to continue suffering the anguish of shielding our innocent and inexperienced, our ignorant children from the danger they run in being exposed, as though it were some carnival or circus, to the traffic of courtesans, of shameless women—of prostitutes, to stop speaking in euphemisms—who brazenly come and go from that den of iniquity erected at the gates of our city by the unlawful and unprincipled individual answering to the name of Pantaleón Pantoja? The Voice of Sinchi asks: What powerful and murky interests protect this person so that, during two long years, he has been able to direct with complete impunity a business as illicit as it is prosperous, as offensive as it is opulent, right under the noses of all honest citizens? Threats do not frighten us; no one can bribe us; nothing will obstruct our crusade for progress, morality, culture and Peruvian patriotism in the Amazon. The time has come to confront the monster and, just as St. George dealt with the dragon, to chop off its head in a single blow. We want no such carbuncle in Iquitos. All our faces drop with shame and we live in constant torment and nightmare with the continuance of that industrial complex of harlots presided over, like a modern-day Babylonian sultan, by the regrettably well-known Mr. Pantoja, who never wavers in his lust for wealth and exploitation, in offending and dishonoring the most sacred institutions—such as the family, the Church and the barracks of the men who defend our territorial integrity and the sovereignty of our Homeland.