General Alcazar
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General Alcazar is a character in The Adventures of Tintin series of classic comic books drawn and written by Hergé. A general in the army of San Theodoros, Alcazar is involved in a never-ending struggle for power with his arch-rival General Tapioca, both men claiming leadership of the country with comedic frequency. He is a dictator who is not above being corrupted and having his enemies shot without trial. Nevertheless, even Tintin the idealist considers Alcazar a friend. In his first appearance, he in some ways represented a typical 1930s Latino dictator, while his later incarnation was more inspired by the revolutionary figures of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.
An "Alcázar" is a Spanish castle.
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[edit] Early Appearance
General Alcazar first appeared in The Broken Ear when he had overthrown Tapioca at a time when Tintin was about to be shot by Tapioca's men. Unusually, Tintin had been drinking heavily and he drunkenly called out his support for Alcazar. Impressed, Alcazar made Tintin a Colonel and aide-de-camp.
Rather than deal with running the country, Tintin and Alcazar spent much of their time playing chess. They were also the targets of bungled assassination attempts by Tintin's humiliated predecessor, former Colonel Diaz. Diaz had joined a group of conspirators against Alcazar, though more out of self-interest than actual desire for the country's liberty.
On one occasion Tintin defeated Alcazar at chess. The furious General took out his gun and fired right into Tintin's face! However the bullets turned out to be blanks. It was a joke Alcazar often played on his officers, one of whom had suffered from jaundice as a result. While Tintin was being told this story, Diaz was planting a bomb which went off but failed to kill Alcazar and Tintin. The shock of the explosion did however cause Alcazar to come down with jaundice himself.
Once recovered, Alcazar started taking the affairs of state more seriously. He met Trickler, a representative of General American Oil, who talked him into starting a war with the neighbouring republic of Nuevo Rico in order to seize the Grand Chapo oilfields. Trickler was only prepared to give San Theodoros 35% of the oil profits, but talked Alcazar into it by suggesting he could take 10% of the offer for himself.
Alcazar then bought weapons from arms dealer Basil Bazarov (based on the real-life Basil Zaharoff), unaware that the man was selling the same weapons to Nuevo Rico. Since Tintin was trying to prevent the war, Trickler and Bazarov framed him for espionage and Alcazar ordered him to be arrested and shot without trial. Tintin escaped before his execution with the help of Pablo, a local gangster who owed him a favour.
Tintin raced to the border by car only to be fired upon by Nuevo Rican troops. The incident provoked the war for the Grand Chapo plains, which turned out not to have any oil after all. (The conflict and the involvement of western businesses was based on the Gran Chaco war of the mid-1930s.)
[edit] On the Music Halls
Later overthrown by Tapioca, Alcazar left for Europe where, in The Seven Crystal Balls, he plied his trade as a knife thrower in a variety show with assistant Chiquito. He took the stage name of Ramon Zarate, but Tintin recognised him during a performance and visited him in his dressing-room, accompanied by Captain Haddock. The fact that Alcazar had sentenced Tintin to death was not raised; both men were now friends again. Tintin did, after all, suspect that Trickler had framed him in order to get rid of him. Alcazar offered them drinks and told them of his recent troubles with his old enemy Tapioca.
Soon after, Alcazar was seen at La Rochelle, about to set off for San Theodoros to lead another uprising against Tapioca. It is not revealed if he succeeded or not.
[edit] Buying Arms
By his next appearance in The Red Sea Sharks he was again out of power. Quite by chance, he met Tintin and Haddock in a busy city street. Alcazar was less friendly this time, cutting the encounter short by brusquely saying that he was late for a meeting. He also gave a false name for the hotel he was staying at. It later transpired that Alcazar was in Europe to buy arms to fight Tapioca and was not keen on a reporter like Tintin interfering. His arms supplier was Dawson, an enemy of Tintin in The Blue Lotus. The armaments included de Havilland Mosquito fighter-bombers. At the end of The Red Sea Sharks a newspaper clipping shows that Alcazar had deposed Tapioca. His time in power however was yet again short-lived.
Alcazar's wallet contained a four-leaf clover which implies a superstitious nature.
[edit] Guerrilla leader
Alcazar's next appearance was in the last completed Tintin adventure book, Tintin and the Picaros, in which he played his most prominent role in the series. In this he was the leader of a guerrilla army known as the Picaros, again fighting Tapioca. As in The Broken Ear powerful outside interests were involved in the conflict: Alcazar and the Picaros were supported by the International Banana Company, while Tapioca had the support of the state of Borduria.
Alcazar had previously endured some trouble with the local Arumbaya Indians, including the explorer Ridgewell, but this had been sorted out and Alcazar, hiding from Tapioca's forces, found them a useful deterrent against Tapioca's soldiers, who were hesitant about getting too far into the jungle.
Alcazar suffered major setbacks due to Tapioca's strategy of parachuting crates of whiskey into the area, which encouraged the spread of alcoholism among the Picaros, making them unfit for an uprising. Tintin and company resolved the problem with a drug invented by Professor Calculus — tablets that Alcazar told his men were vitamins, but actually made any and all forms of alcohol extremely unpalatable. Not surprisingly, the men quickly sobered up. Then, wearing carnival costumes taken from Jolyon Wagg, Alcazar and his men arrived at San Theodoros, entered the Presidential palace and overthrew Tapioca.
In exchange for curing the Picaros of their drunkenness, Tintin had insisted on a bloodless coup and Alcazar reluctantly complied, though he found it galling and humiliating to spare even the life of Tapioca, who was sent into exile — and quite likely started plotting another counter-revolution of his own.
The capital of San Theodoros was originally called Los Dopicos. Tapioca had renamed it Tapiocapolis after himself, and Alcazar announced that he would name it Alcazaropolis. At the end of the story, a pair of policemen (in uniforms denoting their loyalty to Alcazar) are shown patrolling a slum much like they did under Tapioca. Hergé's implication is that a change of regime does not necessarily mean a change for society.
[edit] Private life
By the time of Tintin and the Picaros, Alcazar was also married. He was the hen-pecked husband of a fiery, red-headed woman called Peggy who wore curlers in her hair, made him wash dishes, warned him of his smoking and of being too generous with the state economy.
Although not mentioned in the final story, some sketches and writings by Hergé show that she was the daughter of Basil Bazarov, the arms dealer who had sold guns to Alcazar and an enemy country in The Broken Ear. She herself sat on the board of her father's company and kept Alcazar supplied with weapons. She smokes a cigar and likes to get drunk. Apparently they met in New York City when he was still doing the music halls with his knife throwing act. Hergé modelled her on a female member of the Ku Klux Klan whom he had seen on TV.
[edit] References
- Michael Farr. Tintin: The Complete Companion. ISBN 0-7195-5522-1.
