In the end, the story offers a different vision, a kind of true human brilliance thanks to grotesque and bizarre characters like William walker. Madmen convinced by improvised ideals for adventure and who end up unveiling the great miseries and underground plans that other so-called great men meditate for their own glory and power.
His status as one of the last filibusters makes William Walker an outdated character for his time, in the XNUMXth century. And yet, with the passage of time, his figure has acquired the profile of a kind of Caribbean Robin Hood who planned invasions, confronted established states and overseas trade.
Only that the end of this type of madman usually ends up succumbing to the danger through which they move without due awareness of the risk. At the age of thirty-six, William Walker ended up being shot in Honduras.
Walker acted convinced by the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, a kind of almost divine political justification that gave the United States a right to expand throughout America.
In his various campaigns throughout almost all of Latin America, he managed to mobilize soldiers for his cause in Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras or Nicaragua.
As is often the case in any ideology based on a consideration of own reason as the ultimate truth, Walker granted himself the right to raid ships or to establish fictitious republics. His dealings with the townspeople, always benevolent, his respect for defeated enemy soldiers and his ability to enrage big businessmen who did business from the United States with all of Central America gave him a popular fame that on many occasions he opted for
So in light of the character, building this novel wouldn't be that difficult at the plot level. The life of William Walker is in itself a novel that delves into the history of America with the firmness of its determined step, with the imprint of its utopian ideology and, at times, with its Machiavellian behavior.
One of the great characters in the long history of the American revolutions, along with Ché Guevara or Simón Bolivar himself.
With a small discount for accesses through this blog (always appreciated), you can now buy the novel Pura Vida. Life & Death of William Walker, by Patrick Deville, here: