Plot Summary
The town of Chiriguaná is threatened with rape and murder by the caprices of the thuggish Capitan Figueras, and drought, thanks to the spoilt Doña Constanza's plan to divert the Mula river in order to feed her swimming pool. When Doña Constanza is kidnapped by communist guerillas and held for ransom, the unkindness she had shown towards her tenants leads them to celebrate a three-day long fiesta.
Several chapters focus on individual characters, from those detailing the life of Aurelio, the magical Sierra-turned-Jungle Indian, to those involving Chiriguaná, to letters home to France from Antoine, and to those of the guerilla characters.
In the capital of the nation, the handsome young Capitan Asado is promoted to Colonel and given orders from the highest positions in the military to eliminate subsersives and communists through whatever means necessary. After initial distress, Colonel Asado hardens, his objectives change, and thousands of ordinary civilians are kidnapped during the night and driven in Ford Falcons to army buildings where they are systematically tortured and killed.
Journalists and relatives who report the kidnappings are abducted themselves, and the capital of the nation becomes lawless and fearful. The escapades and political in-fighting of the divided and deeply corrupt military drive the people of Chiriguaná to fight the army, and after the battle, to flee, en masse, in an exodus to the mountains.
Guided by Aurelio, and accompanied by a mysterious host of cats, the townspeople travel away from the degenerate civilisation of Chiriguaná towards a new civilization rooted in past magic and majesty. Shortly after their departure, an earthquake triggers a great tsunami, which destroys a vast area of the Mula Basin jungles. Due to Aurelio's premonition of it, they observe the event from higher ground.
The long journey takes the townspeople across high plateaus and through tropical jungles, and at its end Don Emmanuel and Aurelio traverse a glacier to navigate over a mountain. An avalanche occurs, which both men miraculously survive, and exposes hundreds of long-buried colonial Spanish conquistadors and their hundreds of Indian slaves, who had been perfectly preserved in ice for centuries.
The earthquake earlier in the journey had burst the dam of a lake-filled valley, situated over the mountain Don Emmanuel and Aurelio climbed. The draining of the valley had exposed the remnants of an Inca town, partially buried in mud. At the valley end there is a cliff dropping down to the jungle below, which lies under deposited mud from the burst dam. The townspeople clear the mud from the buildings in the Inca town, and the new town is subsequently named Cochadebajo de los Gatos after the Inca stone statues of jaguars which line it. The mud deposited on the flattened jungle below the valley provides fertile farmland for the new town, and mud-brick terraces are built on which to grow crops. The conquistadores are brought back to life by Aurelio and, after initial rampant chaos, eventually adapt to their new lives alongside the main characters in the new town.
Read more about this topic: The War Of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts
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