Mario Vargas Llosa: Reaction in Latin America turns on Nobel winner's political views

Now that Mario Vargas Llosa has won the 2010 Nobel Prize in literature, an award seen as a victory for Spanish-language and Latin American letters, comes the backlash over the Peruvian author's politics.

Vargas Llosa, 74, known for his novels such as "The Time of the Hero" and "The War of the End of the World," is also strongly identified with "boom"-era writers in Latin America who initially supported leftist political movements but eventually moved rightward in their views -- much like the last Nobel Prize winner in literature from the region, Mexico's Octavio Paz.

"What a horror!" the novelist Luisa Valenzuela told the Mexican daily La Jornada at the Frankfurt book fair in Germany upon hearing the news (link in Spanish). "With the political swerve that Mario took, I would have preferred Carlos Fuentes."

On Twitter, some reaction was even fiercer. One user wrote: "Nobel Prize given to racist fascist pro-Hispanic, anti-Indigenous rights writer Mario Vargas LLosa LatAm is backyard of Europe."

Why such severity of critique?

The Nobel Prize in literature, awarded once a year to an author for literary output in any language, is invariably viewed through a political lens, particularly in Latin America, where writers often play prominent roles as so-called public intellectuals. As news of Vargas Llosa's win spread, many writers and lit-lovers in Latin America generally felt that Vargas Llosa deserved the prize for his long trajectory and beloved novels, but attention also turned to Vargas Llosa's political views.

An almost orthodox liberal, the author supports same-sex marriage and the decriminalization of drug use. Yet he also reserves his strongest criticism in the political sphere for hard-line leftist leaders in Latin America, including President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and former President Fidel Castro in Cuba.

Vargas Llosa considers himself, above all else, an opponent of dictatorships, both left and right.

Speaking on air to CNN Español after receiving the Nobel, Vargas Llosa made reference to previous authoritarian regimes in Peru, and even to the Franco regime in Spain, as targets of his political passions (link in Spanish).

"I can say in a certain way that I'm an expert in dictatorships," the author said. "Maybe that's why dictatorships appear so much in my novels, and maybe that's why I'm critical of all dictatorships, without exception."

In another CNN interview, the author was asked what he would say if he had a chance to meet Chavez or Castro in person. His response was blunt and stone-faced: "That they should leave, that they should leave the government, that they are a barrier to progress in their countries."

L.A. Times book critic David Ulin, citing author and professor Ilan Stavans in a piece in The Times, notes that Vargas Llosa's career as a writer is often rendered in a binary: before and after the 1990 presidential election in Peru.

Vargas Llosa, spurred by his opposition to nationalization reforms under Peruvian President Alan Garcia (then in his first term in office) ran in the 1990 race as a right-leaning free-market candidate. He lost that race to little-known Alberto Fujimori -- who now sits in prison for human rights crimes.

"Before, he was a writer and an apprentice politician; literature was his obsession," Stavans told Ulin. "Afterward, it was no longer fiction that mattered to him. He became a first-rate essayist instead."

Vargas Llosa also became identified with abandoning Latin America for Spain, which is what the author did, taking Spanish citizenship after losing the 1990 election. This move was also seen as a betrayal in some intellectual circles. His open and expressive affinity for Spain, which he's reiterated in interviews since Thursday's prize announcement, doesn't win Vargas Llosa points among those who regard him as antagonistic -- or at least indifferent -- to indigenous-rights movements in Latin America.

The author is quoted as saying in 2003, while commenting on indigenous movements in Latin America in general (link in Spanish): "Development and civilization are incompatible with certain social phenomenons, the principle being collectivism. [...] The indigenism ... that appears to have been forgotten is now behind phenomenons such as the señor Evo Morales in Bolivia."

Two years later, Peru's neighbor Bolivia elected Morales, its first indigenous president in history -- a moment regarded as a victory for long-oppressed indigenous groups in the Andean region. Vargas Llosa was unimpressed, dismissing Morales in 2008 as a "typical Latin American criollo [Spaniard born in the Americas], a Spanish-speaking mestizo, who is finishing off Bolivia." (Link in Spanish.)

(Morales, for the record, is an Aymara Indian.)

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Author Mario Vargas Llosa campaigns for Peru's presidency in 1990. Credit: El Pais

Mario Vargas Llosa: Nobel prize-winner punched Gabriel Garcia Marquez to make a political point

The writer Mario Vargas Llosa, a leading figure of the so-called "Boom" in Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s and an outsize political figure in his native Peru, has won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Swedish Academy, announcing the award early Thursday, said Vargas Llosa took this year's prize for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat." Vargas Llosa, 74, is the first Latin American and Spanish-language writer to win the award since Mexican essayist and poet Octavio Paz, who won the Nobel in 1990. The last South American author to win the award, in 1982, is Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Here is Vargas Llosa's official website, and the Nobel's official page on this year's award, with live "greetings" to the author from fans around the world.

Born in 1936 in the provincial Peruvian city of Arequipa, Vargas Llosa was sent to a military school before going on to study law and literature in Lima and Madrid. He later worked as a journalist in Paris for Agence France-Presse. His early experiences in a military setting inspired his first novel, "La cuidad y los perros" (1963), which appeared in English as "The Time of the Hero." The book was hailed for its literary innovation but sparked controversy and condemnation by Peru's military.

Vargas Llosa went on to write more than two dozen titles in fiction, nonfiction, drama, and journalism, and he continues to write and publish.

He first heard he had won the award early Thursday morning from a Peruvian radio station that reached the author in New York. Vargas Llosa initially thought the call was a prank, the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio reported (link in Spanish). When he was read the Swedish Academy's reasons for awarding him the Nobel, the author reportedly remarked: "Look, how nice. I hope it's true."

Politics have defined Vargas Llosa's life and literary output. He supported the Cuban Revolution but by the 1970s had become one of the sharpest critics of Fidel Castro. In 1990, in a conversation with Paz live on Mexican television, he coined the now-famous phrase describing Mexico's quasi-authoritarian regime under the Institutional Revolutionary Party as "the perfect dictatorship."

In 1990, at the height of the bloody Shining Path guerrilla insurgency, Vargas Llosa ran for the presidency of Peru as a "reform-minded, center-right candidate," Reuters notes. "He proposed budget-cutting and free-market policies, which appealed to wealthy conservatives but alarmed the poor." The author lost the election to Alberto Fujimori, and disappointed many in Peru when he left the country for Spain.

In recent years, Vargas Llosa has traded barbs with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. In an infamous incident in a Mexico City theater in 1976, Vargas Llosa punched his former friend Garcia Marquez in the eye over personal and political disputes. The two have been estranged ever since.

On Thursday, Peruvian President Alan Garcia called the Nobel announcement a "great day for Peru" and dubbed Vargas Llosa a "universal Peruvian" (link in Spanish). El Comercio has an interesting Google Maps feature pinpointing locations throughout the world where Vargas Llosa has lived or been honored. The direct link, in Spanish, is here.

In an 2002 interview with The Guardian, Vargas Llosa gave some insight on his view of the writer's role in society: "I think a writer has some kind of responsibility at least to participate in the civic debate. I think literature is impoverished, if it becomes cut from the main agenda of people, of society, of life."

Vargas Llosa currently lives in New York while he lectures at Princeton University. Here is a summary of five essential novels by Vargas Llosa. His newest book, El Pais reports, is titled "El Sueño del Celta," or "The Celtic's Dream," and described it as an "adventure that begins in the Congo in 1903 and ends in a jail in London in 1916."

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Author Mario Vargas Llosa. Credit: El Pais

Mexico's giant mustachioed statue spotted in unglamorous conditions

In the afterglow of Mexico's lavish bicentennial celebrations in mid-September, The Times' Ken Ellingwood told us about the popular intrigue surrounding an enormous sculptural statue that was key to the official party on the night of Sept. 15. The "Paul Bunyanesque" Colossus statue, or El Coloso, was lifted in segments to its 60-feet height on the Zocalo square in Mexico City during the climactic "grito" for Mexico's Independence, a figure meant as an anonymous homage to Mexico's heroes.

Since then, conspiracy-minded Mexicans couldn't stop talking about the thing. From Ellingwood's story:

Was El Coloso modeled after (mustachioed) former President Vicente Fox? Ranchera crooner Vicente Fernandez? Slain presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio?

Maybe it's the effect of the country's drug war, but some people insist he resembles Jesus Malverde, patron saint of narco-trafficking. Someone suggested playfully via Twitter that the statue was really a Trojan horse — once inside the security perimeter of the plaza, or Zocalo, drug-gang hit men would come pouring out.

The questions remained, and also the criticisms. Mexico spent about $54 million on the bicentennial celebrations. And keep in mind, 2010 is also the centennial of the Mexican Revolution, so expect another big party when that date hits in November.

But what happened to El Coloso?

Last week the Mexico City daily El Universal went with an update on the status of the statue, publishing a photograph that showed El Coloso in less-than glorious circumstances: broken apart, draped over, and languishing like a castaway in a construction lot belonging to the federal education ministry, which organized the bicentennial events.

Education officials have said there are still plans to one day display El Coloso in a public place. But the mustachioed giant will apparently have live a bit unglamorously until that day comes.

(In case you missed the big party last month in Mexico, the Boston Globe has some fantastic images worth revisiting.)

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: El Coloso, rising over the Zocalo square in Mexico City on Sept. 15. Credit: Getty Images

The 1985 Mexico City earthquake, remembered

Mexico City on Sunday marked 25 years since a powerful earthquake devastated the Mexican capital, killing thousands and sparking a grassroots civilian rescue effort that helped lead to the demise of the one-party state.

The magnitude 8.1 quake shook Mexico City at 7:19 a.m. on Sept. 19, 1985, lasting between three and five minutes. It toppled hundreds of buildings across the densely settled former lake bed, including several hospitals. An estimated 10,000 people were killed, and tens of thousands were injured or left homeless.  Many children were orphaned.

Here's a YouTube clip of live Televisa newscast footage as the quake hits, where the anchor attempts to remain calm, telling viewers, "It's shaking just a teensy bit. Don't be scared."

The quake, which struck on Mexico's Pacific coast, exposed a crippling ineptitude in the response of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. The government seemed unprepared and unable to organize itself to respond to the quake, so ordinary people did it themselves.

There were prominent victims, such as famed rocker Rodrigo "Rockdrigo" Gonzalez, and miraculous rescues, such as the three "miracle babies" who were pulled alive from the crumbled Juarez Hospital a full seven days after the quake (link in Spanish).

The quake also exposed the endemic corruption that had come to define the PRI state. Bribery and lax oversight allowed buildings to be erected without proper earthquake safety measures. In another manner, the earthquake jolted the press in Mexico. Without a state apparatus functioning properly in the aftermath, journalists were left to fill the role of transmitting vital information as well as the growing grievances of the survivors, as this YouTube video clip demonstrates (in Spanish)

Mexico City then experienced an exodus. Many middle- and upper-class families, seeing the city almost destroyed and unable to function, relocated to provincial cities and towns or to the United States.

Three years later, a rumbling electoral revolt suggested the PRI would finally lose power, partly because of  outrage over the earthquake response. But another PRI candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, aided by almost certain vote fraud, won over leftist Cuauhtemoc Cardenas when "the system went silent," or, as most Mexicans remember it, when "the system crashed" (link in Spanish). The PRI was finally booted from power in 2000.

On Sunday, President Felipe Calderon oversaw a solemn flag ceremony on the Zocalo plaza, and Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard dedicated a 25th anniversary plaque for the quake's victims at Solidarity Plaza, a small square near the Alameda Central where the Regis Hotel once stood. The famous hotel was destroyed in the earthquake.

Many of the civil rescue and neighborhood survival groups formed after the quake are still active today. One squad, Los Topos, participated in the rescue effort after Haiti's earthquake early this year (link in Spanish). Today, the city held its annual earthquake-preparedness drill, timed each year for the quake's anniversary (link in Spanish).

El Universal has an interactive multimedia gallery of quake images, audio and graphics. And here's a photo archive by the U.S. Geological Survey.

For readers interested in learning more about the 1985 earthquake, check out the books "No sin nosotros," by Carlos Monsivais; "Nada, Nadie. Las Voces del Temblor," by Elena Poniatowska; and more recently in English, the earthquake-related sections of "El Monstruo" by John Ross.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Top, a collapsed building in the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. Credit: U.S. Geological Survey / Center: The collapsed Regis Hotel in downtown Mexico City. Credit: Agence France-Presse file / Bottom: Hard hats and candles at a memorial plaque for victims of the 1985 earthquake. Credit: Associated Press

Fidel Castro takes 'responsibility' for persecution of Cuban gays

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro called years of official persecution of homosexuals under his Communist regime an "injustice." In an interview published this week in a Mexican newspaper, he said he takes responsibility for the repression.

"If someone is responsible, it is me," Castro told Carmen Lira, editor of the left-leaning daily La Jornada. Here's the second part of the Castro's interview in Spanish. La Plaza reported on the first part here.

After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the Communist government arrested gays and sent many to labor or "re-education" camps. Homosexuality is no longer criminalized on the island nation and Castro's niece, Mariela Castro (daughter of current President Raul Castro), is a prominent activist for expanding gay rights in Cuba.

Numerous books and films have depicted the period of persecution, including the novel Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas, later adapted into a film. Here's a video by the Guardian newspaper on the contemporary gay and transgender culture in Cuba.

In the interview, Castro said the repression against gays occurred in a tumultuous period while the Communist government was defending itself against "traitors" and the CIA. "But in the end, after all, if someone must assume responsibility, I offer my own," Castro told Lira. "I cannot blame anyone else."

— Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Former Cuban President Fidel Castro. Credit: Associated Press

 

On Mexico's Carlos Monsivais: 1938-2010

He was known as Mexico's finest chronicler, its "last public intellectual," its "conscience," and as the only literary figure around who was said to be recognized by regular folks on the street. With the death on Saturday of Carlos Monsivais, Mexico lost a voice that for nearly 50 years was considered unrivaled in his ability to cut to the core of the issues and personalities of his day.

Mourners, from high-profile politicians to everyday workers, swarmed the writer's casket at two public wakes over the weekend. People waved, cheered and chanted for the man millions knew simply as "Monsi."

Monsivais was a journalist, a critic, a cinephile, a collector of historical and pop ephemera (which led eventually to the founding of a museum) and a tireless activist for minority rights and the political left. In hundreds of articles and columns, more than two dozen books, countless appearances on television and radio, at conferences and demonstrations, Monsivais represented for many Mexicans an enormously erudite man of letters who never lost touch with ordinary people, or with the tragicomic nature of life here.

His work is characterized by its acerbic intellect, humor and wit, as well as the toughened perspective he formed in the San Simon Ticumac neighborhood in the Portales area of Mexico City, a barrio with which he is famously identified (links in Spanish).

Monsivais, born on May 4, 1938, in Mexico City, died just before 2 p.m. Saturday of lung disease. He was 72.

Haiti fundraiser in Echo Park on Saturday will feature music, readings

This Saturday at 7 p.m. in Echo Park, writers and musicians will perform at Trópico de Nopal Gallery in a fundraiser for Haiti. For $10 (or more if you can afford it), guests will hear words from novelist Percival Everett, poet Doug Kearney and others; there will be live music by Ceci Bastida (formerly with Tijuana No!), Domingo Siete and DJ sets. Be warned: This is one reading that will require dancing shoes.

The event was organized by writer Ben Ehrenreich, an occasional Los Angeles Times books contributor. He traveled to Haiti in 2006, reporting on its political and economic future for LA Weekly. All proceeds from the benefit will go to Partners in Health, the nonprofit founded by Dr. Paul Farmer that has been working in Haiti for more than 20 years.

While there was a big, fancy TV benefit last weekend, this is one of few artist-driven live events happening in Los Angeles. The complete reading roster is Will Alexander, Gloria Alvarez, Tisa Bryant, Ben Ehrenreich, Percival Everett, Sesshu Foster, Veronica Gonzales, Jen Hofer, Doug Kearney, Chris Kraus, Maggie Nelson and Abel Salas. DJs on tap are Glenn Red, Concise, and Gomez Comes Alive.

Trópico de Nopal Gallery is located east of Alvarado Street at 1665 Beverly Blvd., just about a half-mile from Haitian restaurant Tigeorges Chicken at 309. N. Glendale Blvd., the perfect place to fuel up before a reading/dancing Haiti benefit.

-- Carolyn Kellogg reporting for LAT books blog Jacket Copy

Image credit: Detail of Haiti benefit flier by Arturo Romo-Santillan

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Film based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez book prompts protest in Mexico [Updated]

If you look at the culture pages in Mexico’s newspapers these days, there is little question about what’s the talk of the town in literary circles — old men having sex with young girls, writes Andres Oppenheimer.

He's referring to a debate currently raging here in Mexico about whether a planned movie based on Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez's book "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" would glorify the sexual exploitation of children.

As the Huffington Post reports, the Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean filed a criminal complaint with Mexico's attorney general's office on Oct. 5.

The complaint does not specifically name Garcia Marquez, but instead "whoever is responsible for acts that could be constituted as the crime of condoning child prostitution."

Coalition Director Teresa Ulloa told the Associated Press that a movie adaptation of the Colombian author's novel would promote pedophilia and be accessible to a wider audience.

Read the full column from Oppenheimer here and go here for more from the Huffington Post.

[Updated at 11:57 a.m.: An earlier version of this post said the Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean had filed a criminal complaint with Mexico's attorney general's office today. It was filed Oct. 5.]

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Henry Ford's utopian adventure in the Brazilian rain forest

Historian Greg Grandin has taken what heretofore seemed a marginal event -- Henry Ford's failed attempt to establish a gigantic agricultural-industrial complex in the heart of Brazil's Amazon Basin -- and turned it into a fascinating historical narrative that illuminates the auto industry's contemporary crisis, the problems of globalization and the contradictions of contemporary consumerism.

For all of that, this is not, however, history freighted with political pedantry. Grandin is one of a blessedly expanding group of gifted American historians who assume that whatever moral the story of the past may yield, it must be a story well told.

"Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City" is precisely that -- a genuinely readable history recounted with a novelist's sense of pace and an eye for character. It's a significant contribution to our understanding of ourselves and engrossingly enjoyable.

Read the rest of Tim Rutten's review of Greg Grandin's book Fordlandia.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Prominent Mexican women, private thoughts, in 2nd volume of essays

When political scientist Denise Dresser had the seemingly simple idea to invite 38 Mexican women to write a series of personal essays, the book that resulted was a surprise best-seller. Now, five years later, Dresser has released a second volume of “Gritos y susurros” (“Cries and Whispers”) with another batch of women (39 of them, this time).

The point, Dresser says, is to give voice to the harrowing, humorous and intimate experiences of women in a country that remains socially conservative and staunchly Roman Catholic. “I hope this will be read by the partners, the children, the colleagues of these women,” Dresser said, “to better understand the experience of the Mexican woman.”

Dresser spoke at the book’s formal launch here in Mexico City, to a standing-room-only audience at the Lunario, a concert hall that is part of the National Auditorium. The 39 women — politicians, writers, activists, a chef — whose essays fill the book also attended, all dressed in black and assembled on a stage decorated with white gladiolas.

Many of the essays are candid and unexpected. Hard-charging journalist Lydia Cacho, known for her crusading and often dangerous reporting, writes about the delight of falling in love at the age of 40. (“Even the words smile as I fling them to paper,” she writes.) And prominent feminist Maria Teresa Priego writes, with great difficulty and emotion, about enduring an abusive husband: “I am afraid to try to understand that woman who I was. … I’ve never known whether I forgave her.”

“Gritos y susurros II” is in Spanish, runs 490 pages and is published by Aguilar Althea Taurus Alfaguara.

— Tracy Wilkinson in Mexico City

Image: Denise Dresser, from Quien.com