Lope de Aguirre has been almost universally reviled as one of the most evil figures of the sixteenth century, familiar from his portrayal, albeit fictional, in Werner Herzog's 1972 film Aguirre, Wrath of God. Yet suppose that this story, largely derived from the accounts of chroniclers with an axe to grind, was wholly inaccurate. Suppose that this Basque adventurer should really be viewed as an early rebel against the Spanish crown, who might more deservedly have received the encomiums granted to later liberators such as Simón Bolívar. This is the delightful revisionist interpretation that Evan Balkan, a US historian, now presents for our delectation, building on the imaginative recreations of several Latin American novelists. Aguirre's only bar to historical renown, in Balkan's version of his tale, lay in his lack of success. This is a version of the story pioneered (in English) by Bart Lewis in his book The Miraculous Lie: Lope de Aguirre and the Search for El Dorado in the Latin American Historical Novel (Lexington Books, 2003), but Balkan is more concerned with actual history than with the subsequent fictional accounts.

Aguirre first appears in this book, in Cusco in 1551, as ‘a very little man, very ill-favoured, and of no good repute’. He had travelled there from Potosí, via Lima, to assassinate the Spanish magistrate who had sentenced him to a public whipping of 200 lashes – a rough diamond, certainly. He had landed in the New World in 1534, at Cartagena, and had subsequently obtained work in Cusco as a horse breaker. Taking part in various battles to subdue the Indians, both in the Andes and in the upper Amazon, he often fell foul of the Spanish authorities. So far, so familiar. Finally he was recruited to an expedition in September 1560 led by Pedro de Ursúa, which was scheduled to travel down the Marañón and the Amazon in search of the legendary El Dorado.

Aguirre's story comes chiefly from three chroniclers: Francisco Vázquez, Gonzalo de Zúñiga and Custodio Hernández. All three were on the expedition; a fourth chronicler, Pedro de Simón, wrote nearly half a century later. It was a large expedition, with 370 soldiers, 500 horses and 600 Indian porters. There were also three priests and a dozen women, one of them Aguirre's daughter Elvira. The story is fairly familiar in basic outline. There is much violence and gore as Aguirre kills off Ursúa and other rivals, then he abandons the search for El Dorado and decides to continue on down the river, and to return to Peru via Panama. With his large force, and with others gathered on the way, he plans to overthrow the Spanish Empire.

The expedition follows the Amazon to the sea, although whether the ‘Marañones’, as they called themselves, took the short cut through the Casiquiare canal to the Orinoco or came through the Amazonian delta is a question left unanswered in this version. Their first serious clash with the forces of Spain comes on the island of Margarita, and by the time Aguirre's diminished force has reached the mainland, the Spanish viceroys and generals along the range of the Andes from Bogotá to Cusco have been alerted to the threat of a mad killer on the loose. Balkan makes no effort to underplay Aguirre's maniacal characteristics, and apart from his attempt to portray the Basque adventurer as an independence leader operating two centuries early, he has little to add to the traditional story.

Aguirre moves inland to Valencia and sends a defiant letter to the King of Spain, itemising those whom he has already killed – not just Pedro de Ursúa but also his replacement, and ‘the captain of his guard, the lieutenant-general, his majordomo, his chaplain, a woman in league against me, a knight of Rhodes, an admiral, two ensigns, and six others of his allies’ (p. 151). The slaughter of some of his companions as he moves on towards Barquisimeto is just a prelude to the eventual collapse. His troops are outnumbered by the royalists, his powder is rotted after long months on the Amazon, and many soldiers are tempted by promises of an amnesty. In the penultimate scene, Aguirre murders Elvira, his own daughter, ‘for it is not right that you should remain in this world for some villain to enjoy your beauty and your loveliness’ (p. 170). At the very end, Aguirre himself is shot, appropriately enough, by two of his own men.

This is a popular and imaginative tale, but Balkan allows himself to be carried away too often for his account to be regarded as proper history. He has a tendency to invent what Aguirre might have been thinking: ‘one can imagine what might have been going through his head’, he tells us as Aguirre crosses Margarita (p. 109). Elsewhere he moves into the realm of psychiatry, making comparisons with the jungle-inspired madness of Sendero Luminoso. The maps too are strikingly inadequate.

Balkan concludes with a chapter on Aguirre's treatment at the hands of several romantic novelists, in whose books Aguirre is often portrayed as the progenitor of generations of caudillos, that particular creation so typical of Latin America. President Pérez Jiménez of Venezuela liked Aguirre so much that he erected a statue to him on Margarita. Yet although many caudillos were indeed strong men, few shared Aguirre's passion for the unrestrained cruelty and sadism recorded in this book.