Major characters
Manuel Estrada Cabrera, the inspiration for Asturias's titular PresidentThe President
The fact that the novel's title character, the President, is never named gives him a mythological dimension, rather than the personality of a specific Guatemalan dictator.[27] Literary scholar Kevin Bauman notes that readers are not let into the mind of the President; instead his appearance is "continually re-evaluated, re-defined, and, ultimately, re-constructed according to his perception by others, similar to Asturias's own novelistic (re)vision of Estrada Cabrera's regime".[27] According to literary critic Hughes Davies, the President "represents political corruption but his presentation as an evil deity who is worshiped in terms that mockingly echo religious ritual elevates him to a mythical plane" and he is "an inverted image of both the Christian and Mayan deities since he is the source only of death".[28] The dictator also has an element of mystery about him—it seems that no one knows where he is because he occupies several houses on the outskirts of the town. Mystery also surrounds the questions of when and how he sleeps. In the novel, rumors abound that he sleeps beside the telephone with a whip in his hand while others claim that he never sleeps at all.[16] Because the appearance of the President is infrequent in the novel, readers' perceptions of him are formed through other, often minor, characters and episodes.[29] As such, literary critic Himelblau states that "the novel does not develop the figure of the President as a fictive personage, does not follow the President through a series of actions or diegetic complications that lead to psychological-existential changes or transformations of his character".[29]
Miguel Angel Face
Miguel Angel Face (orig. Spanish Miguel Cara de Ángel) is the novel's complex protagonist. He is introduced as the President's confidential adviser; there are many references to him as the President's favorite and he is repeatedly described "as beautiful and as wicked as Satan".[30] As the plot proceeds readers see his struggle to remain loyal to the dictator in the face of the regime's increasingly horrific acts. Angel Face is faced with the challenge of reconciling his position of power among a terrorized people with his desire to fulfill a higher moral purpose. In the words of literary critic Richard Franklin, he "struggles to affirm his absolute existence and to relate this to an authentic self".[31] Angel Face's linguistic intensity often reflects his inner moral struggle:
'An animal makes no mistake in its sexual reckonings,' he thought. 'We piss children into the graveyard. The trumpets of Judgement Day—very well, it won't be a trumpet. Golden scissors will cut through the continuous stream of children. We men are like pigs' tripes stuffed with mincemeat by a demon butcher to make sausages. And when I mastered my own nature so as to save Camila from my desire, I left a part of myself unstuffed; that's why I feel empty, uneasy, angry, ill caught in a trap. Woman is the mincemeat into which man stuffs himself like a pig's tripes for his own gratification. What vulgarity'[32]
General Eusebio Canales
General Eusebio Canales (alias Chamarrita or Prince of Arms) is forced into exile after being accused of the murder of Colonel José Parrales Sonriente. He appears to be organizing a guerrilla attack on the President, but dies of a broken heart after reading a false news report detailing his daughter's wedding to Miguel Angel Face, at which the President was apparently present. The character of the General comes into clearer focus while he is on the road to exile. Canales's road to exile also introduces readers to the desperate financial situation of three sisters who are being taken advantage of by a doctor who visited their ailing mother. This episode demonstrates that corruption and malice exist not just in the capital city but also in rural villages.
Camila
Camila, General Canales's daughter, is (somewhat reluctantly) rescued by Miguel Angel Face, when none of her relatives will take her in upon the flight of her father. Eventually Angel Face chooses Camila over his former master, the President. The two marry and she gives birth to his son, but only once Angel Face has disappeared. She and her son, whom she names Miguel, are last seen having moved to the countryside to escape the President's influence. She is the very picture of the adolescent who has been denied even the smallest margin of liberty, as critic Callan observes: "when Camila was thought to be dying a priest came to administer the sacrament of Penance. Her girlish faults stand out in the contrast with the evil that weighs upon the city. Indeed, one of the things she mentions in her confession is no fault at all: she went horseback riding astride, in the presence of someg Indians."[33]
The Zany
The Zany (orig. Spanish el Pelele), also translated as the Idiot by some critics, appears only in the first four chapters and again at the end of chapter seven but serves a critical function in the novel. The Zany, who "looked like a corpse when he was asleep" and had eyes that "saw nothing, felt nothing" is critical to establishing the tone of the novel and triggering the novel's action.[34] Critic John Walker argues that, by "choosing the Idiot as a representative of the innocent, the a-political, who suffer the abuses of a totalitarian regime [...] Asturias shows how dictatorship corrupts people and destroys their values to the extent that compassion for one's companion in distress ceases to exist."[35] In fact, it becomes clear that the only happiness that the Zany experiences is through the memory of his dead mother. Asturias then shows how el Pelele, a mother-loving figure, "suffers at the hands of those who, long under the domination of the over-aggressive father figure, lack love and pity".[35] Furthermore, el Pelele is a tool that allows readers to see the psychological effects of living under a dictatorship ruled by terror. His murderous act seems to trigger the subsequent events of the novel and to impact on all the characters. Also important is the fact that the one moment of complete happiness experienced by the Zany in the novel takes place while he is in a dream-like state. Walker argues that this serves to highlight the harsh, nightmarish world of reality in which he has been forced to live.[36]
Minor characters
The novel includes a host of minor characters who, in Richard Franklin's words, "grope for the means to assert the validity of self and to anchor this individuality in a nightmare which constantly faces it with black nothingness".[37] These characters range from Colonel José Parrales Sonriente, otherwise known as the "man with the little mule",[16] whose murder at the Cathedral Porch opens the novel, to a series of beggars, prisoners, minor officials, relatives, flatterers, barkeepers and prostitutes. Some of these are tragic figures, such as Fedina de Rodas, who readers see tortured and then sold to a brothel while she still clutches her dead baby in her arms. Others, however, provide comic relief. Sometimes they have colorful or playful names or nicknames, such as "Flatfoot" (a beggar), the "Talking Cow" (a woman who delivers a speech of praise to the President), or Doña Benjamin VenJamón, who, with her husband the puppet-master Don Benjamin, closes the novel with a lament for the demise of the cathedral porch.[38]
