The Ballad of Agapito Robles

In this volume, the fourth in his chronicle, «La guerra silenciosa,» Manuel Scorza describes the increasingly militant stance taken by the dispossessed Indian peasants of Peru in their struggle to regain their ancestral lands. Agapito Robles carries out the mission entrusted to him at the end of the preceding novel, The Sleepless Rider ; namely, to encourage his fellow Indians to intensify their fight. Under his leadership, the Indians finally succeed in bringing down their archenemy, Judge Francisco Montenegro. Montenegro's defeat awakens the Indians to reality and initiates a process of demythification that is the focus of the chronicle's fifth and final volume, Requiem for a Lightning Bolt .