Cerdopolis

His name has often been in the nominations for the Nobel. However, when it was least expected -and perhaps for that more rewarding- the award came to Mario Vargas Llosa (MVLL). The general rumor about why Vargas Llosa could not reach the prize before was that his ideas and opinions were too liberal for the conservative Academia.


MVLL is a Peruvian writer that started in the sixties, jointly with other Latin-Americans writers, the literary movement called “Latin-American Boom”. He is a meticulous writer who likes to experiment in different styles. For him, writing is a job that demands an enormous amount of reasoning and sweat. In that sense, his novels are not a consequence of a possessed and inspired writing process. On the contrary, they are result of a conscious and calculated exercise. I will suggest two of them: “The Feast of the Goat” that is a terrible description of Trujillo's regime in Dominican Republic and “Conversations in the Cathedral” which includes a question that is repeated many times by Peruvians: “At what precise moment had Peru fucked itself up?”

Besides a tremendous storyteller, MVLL is also a journalist, and his life includes an adventure as a film director -an experience that he describes as catastrophic- and a political entrepreneur as a presidential candidate -period of his life that also holds unpleasant memories. MVLL lost the elections against Fujimori in middle of a dirty and disgusting campaign on both sides. When I wonder what would have been if MVLL would have been president, I think that economically Peru would have been the same but socially the country would not have fallen into a moral decay. In fact, the makeshift Fujimori implemented the same neoliberal policies that MVLL openly proposed during his campaign to face the fiasco of García Pérez’s government (see the cartoon).

Critized for embracing the Spanish nationality, today he is considered more Peruvian than anybody. Those malicious campaigns against Vargas Llosa, affirming as a bitter loser when he assumed the Spanish nationality are now barely remembered. Many politicians affirmed that MVLL was ashamed of being Peruvian.

He went from a communist as everybody in the seventies to a liberal thinker and free-market capitalist. Nowadays, he is seen as a terrible headache for dictatorship regimes and authoritarian democracies such as Castro (Cuba), Chavez (venezuela) and Morales (Bolivia). MVLL is not only identified as a tremendous writer but also as a person committed to democracy and human rights. Until recently, he headed the Commission of Memory Museum to remember the victims of political violence in Peru. He resigned with a letter that shocked the government after a polemic law that attempted to release human right’s violators.

To speak of Vargas Llosa is to speak of Garcia Márquez (Gabo). The Gabo’s message of "we are even" seen in the twitter in these days brought talking about these two great Latin American writers. Both were giant exponents of the Latin-American Boom, communists in the seventies, friends when young and now, winners of the Nobel Prize. But also both are united by an enmity that has become a delicious mystery that seeks to be revealed. It was in a Mexican theater in February 1976 after a film. García Márquez went to embrace Mario Vargas Llosa. !Mario!, Gabo said, when suddenly, he received a blow to his face. “How dare you come and greet me after what you did to Patricia in Barcelona!”, Mario shouted referring to his wife.

Never came together again, never talked again and both followed different ideological paths. The cause of this punch has not yet been said. As the Peruvian writer says it is a task left to the biographers. Vargas Llosa prohibited new publications of his essay on Garcia Marquez. The MVLL’s Nobel Prize and the Gabo’s twitter message "we are even" seemed to open a reconciliation but, the message has been debunked.

*Cartoon from Heduardo
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_1qCv1fwoHmM/Rn7rN-8ZnLI/AAAAAAAAGlc/Bk_Cymc0m7k/s400/jodio_el_peru.jpg