The Maypole Warriors

by Fernando Alegría

A spectral vision of the events in Chile during the 1930s and 1940s, this novel follows a family cast into tumultuous times. Written from the perspective of the bourgeois, the story provides fascinating insight into the artistic revolution and the role played in it by figures such as Pablo Neruda and Vicente Huidobro. Told in lyrical prose and with heartfelt depth, the book is a captivating window into Chile during a time of intense and sudden change.

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Escritor, crítico literario y diplomático. Se formó en letras en la Universidad de Chile, y se trasladó a los Estados Unidos, donde obtuvo una maestría en la Universidad Estatal de Bowling Green y el doctorado en la Universidad de California en Berkeley en 1947. Ya era entonces un autor reconocido, sobre todo tras la publicación en 1943 de Lautaro, joven Libertador de Arauco. Regresó luego a Chile, donde fue una figura central en los grupos de escritores nucleados en la Universidad de Concepción. El éxito masivo le llegaría con Caballo de Copas (1957), novela que el filósofo y escritor español Fernando Savater considera la mejor sobre carrera de caballos escrita en español.

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alegria (1918-2005) was a Chilean novelist, poet, and scholar. "The Maypole Warriors" is about 1930s Chile, culminating in 1938 with the election of leftist president Pedro Aguirre Cerda. This was a volatile period in Chilean. The decade began with a dictatorship that was meant to stave off the rising power of the middle and working classes and secure conservative control, a temporary and not particularly successful strategy at best. The old money and old families that had controlled Chile were fading. The Great Depression impoverished the nation, including the wealthy–or once wealthy–class, adding to the instability of the decade, which was marked by conflicts between conservative and liberal forces, including extremists like Nazis and communists. Other historical markers for the period are the Spanish Civil War and the coming world war.
"The Maypole Warriors" focuses primarily on the youth and their involvement in the political upheaval. The main characters are Juan Luis and Estela, lovers from old wealthy families in decline. Both have rejected conservative ideology that keeps money and political power in the landed class and actively fight for a radically democratic and egalitarian social order. Nonetheless, the aristocratic pretensions with which they have been raised still shape their behavior–that is, their expectation of privilege–which can be useful at times (pulling rank) and create difficulties. Alegria triangulates conflict in the novel between the leftists, the Nazis, and the police (representing the conservatives, the government, and the status quo). Other complicating factors: first, Estela is pregnant and, thinking liberally, is deciding not only whether to have the child but also whether to marry Juan Luis, while Juan Luis, despite his liberal views, feels possessive of Estela; second, Estela’s brother is a Nazi who actively participates in violent actions and insurrection.
Although Juan Luis and Estela center "The Maypole Warriors," the novel feels like something of a jumble as Alegria focuses on the many actors in the social turmoil he is attempting to portray. The novel would have benefitted from being longer and developing the complex class and political networks that dominated the period and make up the novel. Juan Luis and Estela occupy liminal positions–as do many other characters in the novel–and it would have been illuminating to flesh out the tensions of that liminality. The 1930s in Chile was a period of significant transition, and there was significant resistance to it just as there were forces working hard to bring about a more democratic and egalitarian social order. The novel needed to develop further the forces at play that brought about that transition. Alegria includes some well-developed representative moments–like the 1938 Nazi coup attempt and the subsequent massacre of the coup participants by the police, the Seguro Obrero massacre–but more often than not Alegria touches upon the complicated social, class, political, and ideological conflicts of the period without enough development. What I wanted was a well-developed family romance like Isabel Allende’s "The House of the Spirits."
The final chapter does function to tie up the many threads of the novel and contextualize the action with its historical moment, the election of Pedro Aguirre Cerda. Alegria includes, though, a feint that provides the impetus for unraveling those threads oe perhaps not. Juan Luis and Estela bow to family pressure to marry, but when they join the people on the streets to celebrate Aguirre Cerda’s victory the flow of the crowd separates them: the conservative ties of family and class cannot hold against the profound tides of history. At the very end, Alegria finally invokes the title, the maypole, the anchor that organizes youthful exuberance for radical change.