Thomas H. Holloway

The Wrath of God: Lope de Aguirre, Revolutionary of the Americas (review)

It seems likely that far more people know the Lope de Aguirre of the 1972 Werner Herzog film Aguirre, the Wrath of God than know the complex and compelling historical figure who inspired that visually rich filmic fantasy. Evan Balkan’s book does much to put the Lope de Aguirre of history, the head of the fateful 1560–1561 expedition in search of El Dorado in the Amazon jungle, in the broader context his biography deserves. In retelling the Aguirre story Balkan draws on a wide range of published literature, including modern editions of several eyewitness chronicles, nineteenth-century ruminations, and the recent proliferation of essays on the topic, especially those by literary scholars whose focus, in turn, is on fictionalized versions of the outlandish tale of rebellion and murderous rampage and the inexorable fate of violent death.