Trump gold statue brought to mind Trujillo from Vargas Llosa’s novel

N ews that Donald Trump may attend the unveiling of a 15-feet tall statue of him, cast in bronze and finished with a thick layer of gold leaf, put me in mind of Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Feast of the Goat.

Not because Rafael Trujillo, the man who brutally ruled the Dominican Republic (DR) for 31 years from 1930, is shown in the novel attending the unveiling of his own statue.

Nor because of any particular similarity between Mr Trump and Trujillo, other than the first three letters of their surname.

Trujillo, who trained with US Marines during their occupation of the DR from 1916 to 1924, graduated from military academy and rose to become head of the national police. Mr Trump has neither military nor police training.

Why think about Feast of the Goat then? Other than the fact it is brilliantly written?

Perhaps it is the vanity that rides roughshod over every action — in real life as well as in fiction.

Trujillo renamed Santo Domingo, the capital, Ciudad Trujillo (Trujillo City) in 1936. It stayed that way until his assassination in 1961.

In real life America, Mr Trump is slapping his name on everything — the US Institute of Peace, the Kennedy Centre, even National Park passes. Perhaps the 250-feet arch he plans in Washington, D.C., will bear his name? It may be only a matter of time before Trump Town and Trump City find their place on the map.

Perhaps the novel also resonates in this moment because of the pervasive atmosphere of fear and fawning.

Vargas Llosa portrays the dictator in minute detail, with great care. So too his country, transfixed, frozen in fear before the dictator’s cruel gaze. Here’s how Vargas Llosa describes a general, legendary for his courage except when he stands before the great man:

“… like so many officers, so many Dominicans, before Trujillo his valor and sense of honor disappeared, and he was overcome by a paralysis of his reason and his muscles, by servile obedience and reverence. He often had asked himself why the mere presence of the Chief — his high-pitched voice and the fixity of his gaze — annihilated him morally.”

The fawning rises to ludicrous heights when we learn that the DR’s national radio stations have changed news bulletin broadcast timings to suit Trujillo’s morning routine:

“He undressed and, wearing slippers and a robe, went to the bathroom to shave. He turned on the radio. They read the newspapers on the Dominican Voice and Caribbean Radio. Until a few years ago the news bulletins had begun at five. But when his brother Petan, the owner of the Dominican Voice, found out that he woke at four, he moved the newscasts up an hour. The other stations followed suit. They knew he listened to the radio while he shaved, bathed, and dressed, and they were painstakingly careful.”

The kowtowing to Mr Trump is also at absurd levels and it’s not just the millions meekly being handed over by media outlets every time a lawsuit drops. It’s also not the custom-made, one-of-a-kind plaque featuring a 24-carat gold base that Apple CEO Tim Cook gifted Mr Trump. And it’s not even the $75m sunk into Melania, the documentary, by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

The gold leaf statue may be an example of investment-grade hyper-flattery. It’s all being done on spec. The cryptocurrency investors paid $300,000 to have a sculptor create the statue in tribute to Mr Trump. Calling the statue ‘Don Colossus’, they are pulling out the stops in hopes of receiving Mr Trump’s blessings — and thereby cachet for their memecoin called $PATRIOT.

Their efforts to flatter have even led them to lean on sculptor Alan Cottrill to portray Mr Trump as slimline. The New York Times quotes Mr Cottrill remarking on his statue: “I had him [Trump] very lifelike. The crypto guys said I had to get rid of some of the turkey neck. I had to thin him down”.

Finally, there is Pastor Mark Burns, a friend of Mr Trump’s and sometimes described as an informal spiritual advisor. He says he is supporting the venture for no individual monetary gain and seems genuinely enthusiastic about the presidential hard-sell required on behalf of the crypto investors.

That the pastor sees no impropriety in associating the US president with this venture seems to chime with his sunny perception of people, processes and events. He once described Mr Trump as “a deeply spiritual man.”

It feels like a 21st century American version of Vargas Llosa’s novel, in which popular legend has it that Trujillo “did not sweat, did not sleep, never had a wrinkle on his uniform, his tuxedo, or his street clothes”.

GOING FURTHER

• The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa (Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature) | FABER & FABER

• A 15-Foot Gold-Leaf Trump Statue Is Coming to Washington | THE NEW YORK TIMES

• Review: The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa | THE GUARDIAN

• Rafael Trujillo: The life and death of a dictator | BBC NEWS

• Trump’s name is appearing on more and more public landmarks | THE WASHINGTON POST

• Inside the $PATRIOT memecoin push for White House access | REUTERS

• The Art of the Flatterer: Trump and the Dictator Style | THE ECONOMIST

• Who is Mark Burns, the pastor backing the Trump ‘Colossus’? | AL JAZEERA

Sources:

▪ This piece was first published in Medium and re-published in Europeans TODAY on 10 February 2026 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. | The author writes in a personal capacity.

▪ Cover: Dreamstime/KORWEN.