Ilan Stavans: Mario Vargas Llosa: Enlightenment Over Barbarism
[Ilan Stavans is a professor of Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College. He is general editor of The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, published last month.]
The decision to award the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature to Mario Vargas Llosa is a triumph of reason over the forces of chaos in Latin America. At a time when the region has moved from dictatorship to fragile civilian government marred by corruption, illiteracy, violence (particularly against women), and an abysmal gap between the haves and have-nots, the author of classics like The Green House, Conversation in the Cathedral, and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is an invaluable defender of freedom and democracy. In not just his fiction but also in his newspaper column, he holds them out as the only viable path for the future.
The choice, while long overdue, is surprising. In recent years the Nobel committee has at times used recipients—some obscure, even dusty—as mere puppets to expound its left-leaning politics. At age 74, Vargas Llosa isn't only center-right, he is also a favorite target of radical demagogues in Latin America, especially in Cuba and Venezuela. He has repeatedly challenged the government policies of those countries, as well as all who believe the army is the best response to popular unrest. And in his native Peru, segments of the population detest him. The reasons are manifold, including Vargas Llosa's aristocratic persona and, more prominent, the outcome of his failed presidential campaign in 1990, when, after he and his neoliberal, Thatcherite platform were defeated by the then-unknown Alberto Fujimori, he left the country for Spain, where he was immediately granted citizenship. While he keeps a home in Peru, he lives mostly abroad. The noun traidor—traitor—often follows his name.
That is not necessarily unwelcome to Vargas Llosa, who thrives on polemic. Controversy, he has held, is good for reflection, even if it means that the writer needs to be in the eye of the storm. Indeed, he has been a participant in some of the most significant political and aesthetic debates defining Latin America in the second half of the 20th century. A member of the generation of writers of El Boom, he has challenged Hispanic literary conventions. As important, he is a distinguished representative of the intellectual tradition that sees literature not as entertainment but as an instrument of change....
Read entire article at CHE
The decision to award the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature to Mario Vargas Llosa is a triumph of reason over the forces of chaos in Latin America. At a time when the region has moved from dictatorship to fragile civilian government marred by corruption, illiteracy, violence (particularly against women), and an abysmal gap between the haves and have-nots, the author of classics like The Green House, Conversation in the Cathedral, and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is an invaluable defender of freedom and democracy. In not just his fiction but also in his newspaper column, he holds them out as the only viable path for the future.
The choice, while long overdue, is surprising. In recent years the Nobel committee has at times used recipients—some obscure, even dusty—as mere puppets to expound its left-leaning politics. At age 74, Vargas Llosa isn't only center-right, he is also a favorite target of radical demagogues in Latin America, especially in Cuba and Venezuela. He has repeatedly challenged the government policies of those countries, as well as all who believe the army is the best response to popular unrest. And in his native Peru, segments of the population detest him. The reasons are manifold, including Vargas Llosa's aristocratic persona and, more prominent, the outcome of his failed presidential campaign in 1990, when, after he and his neoliberal, Thatcherite platform were defeated by the then-unknown Alberto Fujimori, he left the country for Spain, where he was immediately granted citizenship. While he keeps a home in Peru, he lives mostly abroad. The noun traidor—traitor—often follows his name.
That is not necessarily unwelcome to Vargas Llosa, who thrives on polemic. Controversy, he has held, is good for reflection, even if it means that the writer needs to be in the eye of the storm. Indeed, he has been a participant in some of the most significant political and aesthetic debates defining Latin America in the second half of the 20th century. A member of the generation of writers of El Boom, he has challenged Hispanic literary conventions. As important, he is a distinguished representative of the intellectual tradition that sees literature not as entertainment but as an instrument of change....