The Mule (2003)
Juan Eslava Galán (1948-)
290 pages
Soldiers and civilians caught up in the front lines battles of a war face a violent and horrific experience. In a civil war, and particularly one where the ideology dividing the sides does not lead to a clear geographic split, widespread confusion is added to the mix. The Spanish civil war (1936-39) was just such a brutal and chaotic event for the Spanish people, as the forces supporting the republican-style government in power fought against groups in the army and among the population that wanted to restore a more conservative, catholic, and for some, monarchical form of government. The war quickly split the country into separate areas of control, but these regions were based primarily on the side with which the army leadership in a particular area allied itself, and many supporters (civilian and military) of a particular side found themselves caught on the wrong side of the suddenly evolving dividing lines.
Juan Eslava Galán’s main character in The Mule embodies the confusion of those times. A corporal in the Nationalist (that is anti-republican) army, Juan Castro Pérez is the leader of a group of muleteers --- he and his team of soldiers care for a group of mules that they use to haul supplies to the soldiers at the front lines. Castro is a peasant from the Andalusian countryside, whose family carved out a hardscrabble existence before the war working for the wealthy land-owner in their small town. Despite the extreme poverty his family experienced, and in the face of many of his friends arguments supporting the pre-war republican government to counter what they found to be the oppression of the large peasant population in Spain by the wealthy few, Castro conforms to his family’s conservative views and supports the Nationalists in the war. When the war started, Castro found himself in Republican territory, and was called up into service with the Republican army. He eventually deserted, crossing the lines into Nationalist territory. Once able to prove that his support for the Nationalists was real (few on either side could be completely trusted about the true nature of their hearts), he joined the Nationalist army.
(A short note on names: Spaniards typically don’t have a middle name; thus, Juan Castro Peréz’s last name is Castro Peréz, the Castro coming from the first last-name of his father, and the Peréz from the first last-name of his mother, and he would typically be referred to as Castro by anyone not a close enough friend to call him Juan.)
As the novel opens, Castro discovers a mule wandering, apparently owner-less, near the front lines. He leads it back to his company’s team of mules, and a subplot of the story develops around his efforts to keep the presence of the additional mule off the official army lists, in the hopes that he will be able to take it back with him to his rural home, once the war ends.
Thus, in a war seen by the leaders and supporters of the two sides as a battle for the future political and cultural direction of the country, Castro’s simple hope is to survive the fighting and return home with the mule he has found. More generally, he and his team, all fellow peasants from simple backgrounds, go through the war experiencing extreme hardship and searching for simple pleasures as they struggle to survive not only the fighting itself, but also the day-to-day life on the front lines with poor food and little shelter. They carry on with a kind of stubbornly hopeful resignation that the war is simply their lot in life of the moment, an event they must try to make it through. They feel some basic level of support for the cause for which they are fighting, but feel little direct connection to or fervor for the larger goals.
In this wonderful story that is at some points tragic and others full of almost slapstick comedy, Eslava gives us a glimpse into the absurdity of the Spanish Civil war for many of those caught up in the heart of it.
Other reviews / information: Although I haven’t seen it yet, the book has been made into a movie.
In my review of The Spanish Civil War there is a high-level summary of the history of the war.
I have review some other books related to the war, such as Waiting For Robert Capa, A Manuscript of Ashes and The Mexican Suitcase.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION and NON-FICTION
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