Aguirre

by Stephen Minta

Stephen Minta has travelled extensively through Cetral America working closely with the El Salvador Committee for Human Rights and the Nicaragua Health Fund. In the mid-1980s he began his travels through the Andean countries of South America before embarking on the journey that is the subject of this book. He now teaches comparative literature at the University of York. In the late 1550s a Basque adventurer named Lope de Aguirre set out in search of El Dorado. He joined an expedition led by Pedro de Ursua and embarked upon a great journey that would take them across the whole width of South America from the Pacific to the Atlantic. In 1987 Stephen Minta set out on the trial of this expedition. Drawing on the writings of the chroniclers of that time, on eye-witness accounts and on more modern literary allusions, he reconstructs the adventure, charting its tempestuous progress along the Amazon where death and destruction lay in its wake. He relives the atmosphere within the ranks as, in the face of increasingly hostile terrain, illness and inadequate supplies, hopes and aspirations give way to treachery and dissent. The author's own journey takes him from Cuzco in Peru, "a city where you can feel the pain of oblivion", across the Andes, through the heart of Amazonia until Peru "vanishes" into Brazil, then to Margarita Island, off the mainland of Venezuela. In each town and village he evokes a strong sense of history which, combined with anecdotes and unexpected encounters, makes this a remarkable story in itself. Minta moves between 16th-century and contemporary South America; he draws parallels as he goes and enriches our understanding of this land and its people, past and present.

Genres: History, Travel, Nonfiction

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (Aguirre, the Wrath of God), one of my favorite films, is loosely based on the factual story about a sociopathic conquistador—but I guess that’s a bit redundant—who was a member of an expedition in search of the mythical city of El Dorado in 1560-61. Lope de Aguirre was indeed a real person. The expedition began in Peru and went down the Amazon River. It was led by Pedro de Ursúa, a nobleman from the Basque Navarra region, Aguirre, originally from a the western Basque land, was one of his higher ranking officers. In Herzog’s movie, Aguirre manipulates, connives, and murders his way to isolated insanity. In reality, the force was larger, the journey was longer, and the brutality was greater. Stephen Minta, a British academic, went through the historical writings of Aguirre’s “chroniclers” and traveled to many of the places the expedition passed—or at least as close as could be reasonably constructed.

Although Minta does his best to summarize the accounts of the chroniclers—some contemporary, most not—there were many “what ifs, might haves, and possibly this or that” to undermine his conclusion that the histories were complete. What we do know is that Ursúa was a poor planner whose incompetence and vacillation soon led to discontent among the crew as they embarked down a tributary of the Amazon to the river itself. Combined with the resentment of bringing along is mistress, Ursúa was soon murdered in a mutinous insurrection and was replaced by a puppet of Aguirre’s, a buffoonish Spanish nobleman. Soon Aguirre had him murdered as well and took over leadership of the journey, declaring himself the emperor of he new lands his expedition “discovered” along the Amazon. Minta accounts how Aguirre ruled through a discipline of brutal terror, having many of his crew murdered along the way. The expedition eventually reached the island of Margarita, just off the coast of Venezuela. It is unclear if the expedition made it all the way up to the mouth of the Amazon or if they turned northward to take a river that emptied near the northern coast—another example of the incompleteness of the chroniclers accounts.

Where they agree is that Aguirre terrorized the people of Margarita by engaging in murderous rampages throughout the island. He wrote a letter to the king of Spain—which was never received—declaring himself emperor of the New World. He and a small group of his supporters tried to make their way overland from Venezuela to Peru to consolidate his “empire” but was tracked down by loyalist forces and killed in a southern Venezuelan village, but only after he murdered his own daughter by repeated stabbing so that she would not be sullied by others.

Minta fills his account with a personal travelogue that is well written but not captivating. It’s tough to fill a book with the scant evidence available to him. But, to his credit, unlike Alec Wilkinson does in The Ice Balloon: S. A. Andrée and the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration , at least he doesn’t resort to filler with stories that had nothing to with the main story and speculate what it might have been like.

This is an odd book; not bad, but somewhat inconsistent. It tried to combine travel writing with a sordid history and never quite pulled it together. The other curious part to me was that Minta completely ignored Herzog’s film with the exception of recognizing a man who played Gonzalo Pizarro, who in the film was the first leader of the expedition but historically had no role in the expedition, in a small Peruvian village. I found this somewhat strange since I would assume that anyone drawn to read this book, like me, did so because of the interest the film made me want to learn more. Perhaps that was the literary glue that was missing from the story and might have made it a complete tale.

[L. Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Want to know what it might have been like to travel with an insane, murderous conquistador back in the 1500s? This book will give you a decent idea. Aguirre was a real guy, and a real bastard. And there's quite a bit of documentation about his life. He murdered his expedition leader, declared himself independent from Spain, and then carried on murdering many other members of his expedition while they floated their way down the Amazon to the Atlantic, searching for riches they never found.

This book attempts to merge a modern travelogue with a historical account. It fails at that. The modern stuff is a real yawner. (Kinda waters things down.) The brutal history of Aguirre doesn't really get good and rich until near the last quarter of the book. But when it's good, it's good. (Note: Werner Herzog made a movie about Aguirre. It's an excellent movie, but it barely scratched the surface of Aguirre's brutality.)

[Lukas Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Minta retraces the bloody journey of the quite possibly insane Basque explorer Aguirre, who was the inspiration for Werner Herzog's great "Aguirre, the Wrath of God." In the film, Aguirre is played by the quite possibly insane Klaus Kinski.

[Christopher Corbett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I imagine fans of Werner Herzog's film - Aguirre - The Wrath of God - will find this interesting. That was why I picked up the book. I enjoyed Minta's trip. Some lovely writing. Alas, there is very little actual Aguirre in this story. He only shows up toward the end of Minta's account. That's not Minta's fault. We simply don't know much about Lope de Aguirre - although 500 years after his mad journey in search of El Dorado his name is remembered. In modern times that may have more to do with Herzog and Klaus Kinski - who will always be Lope de Aguirre - a crazed Basque conquistador who did terrible things. Minta's book reflects an extraordinary amount of serious research into the chroniclers of Aguirre. Time to rewatch Werner Herzog's masterpiece.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Knowing how it turns out gives it the feeling of a snuff film but the travelogue aspect is decent.