Novel
The Red Lances
Las lanzas coloradas
Arturo Uslar Pietri · 1931
Synopsis
In the valleys of Aragua, between 1812 and 1814, the sugar hacienda of El Altar belongs to Fernando, an indecisive master who lives with his sister, kept apart from the world, and who debates with the patriots of Caracas, torn between Catholic tradition and the ideas of the French Revolution. His overseer, Presentación Campos, despises both the slaves he commands and the masters he serves, and expects the war to give him the chance to take their place. When José Tomás Boves's war to the death arrives, he burns down the hacienda and takes the slaves into the royalist army.
Context
The author wrote this novel in Paris in 1929 and 1930, during his diplomatic posting, and published it in Madrid in 1931, with Zeus. In it he shows the fall of the First Republic and the terrible year of 1814, the fires and the pillaging, and slaves who follow Boves's royalist army rather than the Creole cause. Caracas Chronicles links it to the avant-gardes of the twenties. It was his first novel, and Jean Cassou translated it into French as early as 1933.
Who it is for
It helps to have in mind the main dates of the 1810s in Venezuela, from the first declaration of independence to Boves's campaigns.
Prizes and reception
Required reading in Venezuelan schools, translated into French in 1933 and into English in 1963, and reissued in the Bicentennial series.
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