Revenge and crime are the best friends of Marcel Gaspar, a retired CIA spy and protagonist of the most recent work by Quito lawyer and novelist Óscar Vela.
It is about That night in Parisa work that was presented for the first time in Guayaquil this Thursday, September 19, at the 2024 International Book Fair.
“It’s been a few years, a couple of years at least writing and discovering a bit of history,” says Vela about the Historical fiction book featuring several real characters and stories behind the Cold War and the crimes that occurred as a result of the death of Che Guevara.
‘That Night in Paris’, a book by Óscar Vela.
The story also follows a well-known counterspy and traitor named Frank Vildósola, and Monica, the daughter of a Nazi, who became involved with communist guerrillas from a very young age. She was the one who carried out the first crime of revenge for the death of the Argentine communist revolutionary who had become a Cuban national.
Gaspar’s world takes place in many places: it begins in the Mediterranean, important scenes take place in Paris (hence the title), in Bolivia, Santiago de Chile and in California.
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“It all started with the murder of the person who ordered Guevara’s hands to be cut off in 1966 when he was assassinated in the Bolivian jungle. It was a very high-ranking Bolivian military leader during the dictatorship, Roberto Quintanilla, who was behind the order. He took photos with the corpse, which made the left go crazy over the death of this idol for them. From this, a series of criminal events and revenge against all those involved occurred. It is the crime of Monica against Quintanilla in Hamburg, Germany,” he explains.
To develop this work, Vela devoted himself to conducting preliminary research in which he reviewed historical documents, declassified by the CIA and other international agencies. “It was a lot of research, especially to get involved in the era of the Nazis who came to America, of Klaus Barbie, Walter Rauff, of all the characters that appear,” he explains about the beginning of his writing process.
“I also dedicated myself to finding the profiles of the most important spies of that time. My routine was basically to put together a novel structure, that is the first thing I do so as not to get lost. Once the head is assembled, I then capture it in timelines, in drawings, in sketches of the main characters with their characteristics and how they think. In some way I have a map that guides me throughout the entire story,” he adds.
That night in Paris The book features fascinating figures. “They are all linked by espionage. The idea was to uncover these crimes, find out who committed them and find the perpetrators to carry them out. It was precisely on a night in 1971 that they all met in a specific place in the French capital for different reasons,” he concludes, alluding to the meaning behind the title of his book.
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For Vela, the emotions he felt when his work was finally published were contradictory. There is always the illusion of showing it to the reading public, but when this finally happened, it in a certain way symbolized the action of having to say goodbye to what you wrote.
“The story and its characters are no longer with you because they are transferred to a book and now belong to everyone who reads it. There is a nostalgia. This story is over and we have to start thinking about others.”. (E)
