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Epoch Times
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
Mario Vargas Llosa: The Man Who Broke From the Tribe
Commentary In one of the many interviews I had with Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, he said he hoped death would surprise him with a pen in his hand. I can't say whether that dream came true, but what is certain is that Llosa likely had little left to write—the world had already been captured in his books. Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-2025) died on April 13 in Lima. And with him, one of the most lucid, courageous, and brilliant voices—not only of the Spanish language but of all humanity—has left us. Llosa, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010, will be remembered for many things. But I'll remember him for his courage above all else, which was exemplified by his defiance of the dominant trends of his time. More Than a Novelist Born in Arequipa in 1936 and raised in Cochabamba, Vargas Llosa had little chance of becoming one of the most important writers in the world. In his autobiographical work ' 'Marito,' as he was called in his youth, began doing business with his writing at a very early age. He sold his first 'little novels' for cigarettes to his classmates. He also wrote love letters on commission for other cadets, and the money he earned allowed him to enjoy small pleasures on weekends. Like many young people in Latin America during the post-war era, Mario Vargas Llosa found himself increasingly drawn to Marxist ideas. In his autobiography, the Peruvian writer describes how, while studying at San Marcos University—the first university founded in continental America and a breeding ground for Marxist movements in the South American nation—he joined discussion groups that viewed communism as the ultimate solution to the world's problems. He wrote: Related Stories 4/30/2025 4/24/2025 'We were chatting in the courtyards of San Marcos ... and we talked about very serious things: the abuses of the dictatorship, the great ethical, political, economic, scientific, and cultural changes that were being forged over there in the USSR, or in that China of Mao Zedong that had been visited and about which that French writer — Claude Roy — had written so many wonders in Keys to China, a book we believed word for word.' After several trips to Cuba, however, he came to understand the horror behind communism. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not turn a blind eye. He broke with the revolution and dared to say out loud what others only whispered in private: that there was no freedom on the island, that the regime persecuted dissidents, imprisoned homosexuals, and executed opponents. Vargas Llosa was never just a novelist—and that was his power. He could build entire worlds through fiction, then turn around and write essays that cut to the core of human nature and political delusion. He understood power. He understood the tyranny of collectivism, which made him not merely a dissident, but a heretic in a literary world steeped in political orthodoxy and the romance of revolution. He had once been seduced by the myth of Castro's Cuba. But he woke up—sharply, irrevocably—when reality revealed its face. A Breaking Point It was not an isolated event. Llosa clashed with García Márquez. He confronted Mario Benedetti. They called him a traitor, a bourgeois, a sellout to imperialism. All for the crime of rejecting totalitarianism. While his old friends applauded Castro, Chávez, Evo Morales, and Daniel Ortega, Vargas Llosa exposed them one by one. He denounced authoritarianism disguised as benevolent socialism, and the misery caused by planned economies full of bureaucrats and 'wealth redistribution.' His ideological evolution was not opportunistic—as claimed by those who have never read Hayek or Popper—but deeply rational. Llosa understood that liberalism is not just another ideology, but the only system that guarantees respect for human dignity, private property, and freedom of thought. He made that clear in his essay ' In 'The Call of the Tribe,' Vargas Llosa skillfully explored the ideas of Adam Smith, Hayek, Popper, Berlin, Aron, Revel, and Ortega y Gasset. In them, he found the intellectual tools to build a coherent defense of the individual against the collectivist Leviathan. In that essay—perhaps one of his most important—he made it clear that liberalism is not a closed ideology, but an open doctrine, always ready for debate, criticism, and constant refinement. Beyond expressing his political views in essays and weekly columns, his novels also explored (some might say exposed) human nature and the harsh realities of a region plagued by centralism, collectivism, poverty, and authoritarianism. In 'Conversation in the Cathedral,' he opens with a question: 'At what precise moment had Peru [expletive] itself up?' In 'The Feast of the Goat,' he takes us to the Dominican Republic to tell the story of dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo—a work that could easily describe many of the dictatorships in Latin America, where some men play at being gods and end up becoming demons. For these reasons, Vargas Llosa distanced himself from the Latin American Boom—a literary movement that flourished in the 1960s and 1970s and included fellow Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, Argentina's Julio Cortázar, and Mexico's Carlos Fuentes. He broke away from this literary elite, which, despite earning international acclaim and awards, often justified the executions ordered by Castro and Che Guevara, as well as the regimes that followed in their wake. The Peruvian writer chose to be a free man rather than an ornamental intellectual. He opted to focus on the people oppressed by the state, not the oppressors with their 'inclusive' rhetoric. He decided to write from a place of truth, not propaganda. A Giant on a 'Fragile Good' Mario Vargas Llosa died as what he truly was: a great man—free, honest, morally unblemished, and proudly reborn as a classical liberal without complexes. He was a moral giant in an age of ideological dwarfs. What remains is his work, his example, and the urgent task of continuing the battle he never abandoned. Because as Vargas Llosa himself said: 'Freedom is a fragile good that only prospers if it is defended every day.' Today, more than ever, we must defend it. From the Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Mint
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Mint
Why Llosa is essential reading for marketers and brand builders
Mario Vargas Llosa, an aristocrat of Spanish ancestry, was sent to Lima's military academy to sweat the love of literature out of him. Instead, the experience gave us his first novel, The Time of the Hero . Among the greatest literary figures of our times, the Peruvian novelist and liberal died on 13 April, aged 89. I was introduced to his work in 2001 whilst I lived in Aliso Viejo in Southern California and have read much of his work since then. Llosa's pen charted the psychological, political and social transformations of Latin America with a rare combination of intellectual rigour and narrative brilliance, but his legacy goes beyond the obvious. He offered more than storytelling. His imagination was like an SOS. As Roger Scruton said, 'Consolation from imaginary things is not an imaginary consolation." What made Llosa's voice unique was his fearless engagement with power in all facets—its seductions, hypocrisies and consequences. He dissected dictatorships and democracies alike, drawing from the political chaos of Latin America not just to critique, but to understand. His lessons were applicable to all mankind. Llosa's 2010 Nobel Prize was not just in recognition of literary merit, but also of a lifetime spent confronting uncomfortable truths. Whether writing about the terrifying charisma of strongmen or the quiet resilience of individuals, Llosa fused journalism, fiction and philosophy with rare precision. He evolved from a youthful revolutionary sympathizer to a staunch defender of liberal democracy. It is this ideological evolution that drove Llosa and his friend Gabriel Garcia Márquez apart. 'Gabo' stayed with the revolutionary left in Castro's Cuba, while Llosa joined the Western liberal mainstream. To Llosa, a writer's role is not to please, but to provoke, challenge and awaken. My professional career has gained from Llosa's example. Marketers can learn a great deal from Llosa—not just about storytelling, but about the power of narrative to shape perception, culture and identity. Stories are not just entertainment; they are how people make sense of the world. For marketers, this translates into a crucial lesson: facts may inform, but stories persuade. Llosa didn't sell plots and characters, but entire worlds. Brands, too, must create immersive and believable narratives that tap emotions and aspirations. Another key lesson is complexity. Llosa never flattened characters into caricatures, even in depictions of despots or revolutionaries. He showed that human beings are self-contradictory, complex and driven by competing desires. Great marketing embraces this nuance. Instead of reducing consumers to mere stereotypes, demographics or personas, marketers who take a Llosa-like approach look for inner tensions—between status and simplicity, tradition and progress, freedom and belonging—that make people care. Authenticity emerges from acknowledging and resolving complexity, not avoiding it. Llosa teaches that credibility comes not from rigid positioning, but from clarity and the courage of conviction in principles. Marketers can take a cue from his intellectual honesty: speak with conviction, adapt with humility and always root communication in a deeper understanding of the historical, cultural and emotional context. Finally, attention is earned, not granted. His viscous prose demands engagement; it's rich, ambitious and unapologetically intelligent. It reminds me of Nirad C. Chaudhuri. Marketing that respects the audience's intelligence—by telling deeper stories, refusing to oversimplify and inviting interpretation rather than dictating it—builds loyalty and trust. Brands that eventually win are not the loudest, but the ones that say something worth remembering. Llosa is more relevant than ever in today's polarized world because he championed the enduring value of truth, freedom and critical thinking. His novels dissected the dangers of authoritarianism, fanaticism and blind ideology—forces that are resurgent globally. Llosa believed in literature's power to illuminate complexity and challenge complacency. His intellectual journey underscores the importance of evolving convictions through reason. In an age that often rewards outrage over nuance, Llosa's life and work remind us that real engagement with politics, people and art requires courage, curiosity and moral clarity. He was a chronicler of history, a critic of complacency and a craftsman of language whose influence spanned the globe. In honouring Llosa, we honour the enduring power of literature to shape our conscience. Only a handful of businesses and brands can claim that for themselves. In homage to a man of letters, let me offer an epitaph: 'Here lies Mario Vargas Llosa, a titan of literature whose pen carved truth into fiction and gave voice to the soul of Latin America. Nobel laureate, fearless critic and eternal storyteller, he challenged power and celebrated freedom. His words live on—bold, brilliant and unyielding—etched in the hearts of readers across generations. A life of letters, never forgotten." Llosa is dead but his ideas will live forever. The author is CMO, Tata Motors CV
The Hindu
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Mario Vargas Llosa's weakness for realism
Mario Vargas Llosa, who died at 89 on April 13, 2025, was once described by John King, his translator and editor, as 'art critic, football commentator, film buff, polemicist, political essayist, literary critic, playwright, chronicler, short story writer…' Llosa's Nobel Prize was a couple of decades in the future then; so too were half his 50-odd books. A later editor might add: '...womaniser, failed Presidential candidate, political traveller from left to right, writer of erotica who once succumbed to the censor in Franco's Spain, lapsed Catholic, and above all, a great writer…' In the end, that last is all that matters. Llosa was the most accessible among the 'Latin American Boom' writers (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar, Carlos Fuentes were the others). Although he did indulge, he didn't care much for magic realism, saying in his 1993 memoir A Fish in the Water, 'I have a weakness for realism.' That was the register he operated in, initially inspired by three diverse writers: Gustave Flaubert, William Faulkner and Jean-Paul Sartre, although he was later disillusioned with Sartre's tendency 'to think that laughter was forbidden in any literature that sought to be profound'. In 1964, Fuentes wrote to Llosa, 'The future of the novel is in Latin America, where everything is yet to be said and to be named.' Latin America, replied Llosa, has 'the energy, the myths, the stories capable of saving the genre'. The four writers were friends (till Llosa punched Marquez in the face — perhaps over a woman. In Barcelona, they had once lived on the same street!). They were conscious of their roles in the vanguard of the literary movement in the 1960s and 70s. Now, all are gone. The grouping may have been a media convenience — Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, the Cuban Alejo Carpentier, Miguel Asturias of Guatemala were already experimenting with similar techniques in the 1940s and 50s — but the Boom writers brought the sensibility to its maturity. Dislike for nationalism Of the two influences on the group, one was a writer and the other a politician. Borges and Fidel Castro. Marquez remained Castro's lifelong friend. Llosa, initially inspired by the Cuban revolution, fell out with Castro over the latter's jailing of the dissident poet Heberto Padilla. In Half a Century with Borges (2020), Llosa wrote he read Borges 'not only with the exaltation that a great writer awakens, but also with an indefinable nostalgia and the feeling that something of that dazzling universe of his imagination… will always be denied me, no matter how much I admire and enjoy it with him.' Of political engagement, he said, 'When I started to write, we were totally convinced that literature was a kind of weapon.' It was a weapon he trained on autocrats, dictators, the corrupt, the rich. In his Nobel Prize speech in 2010, he said that without literature, we would 'be less aware of the importance of freedom for life to be liveable, the hell it turns into when it is trampled underfoot by a tyrant, an ideology, or a religion'. Llosa was 26 when he wrote The Time of the Hero (1963) about bullying and snobbery in the army. The War of the End of the World (1981) was a search for utopia while The Feast of the Goat (2000; his last masterpiece according to some, although The Way to Paradise written three years later is superior) was on the monstrous regime of the Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. The Bad Girl (2006) reminded his country of the misrule of Alberto Fujimori to whom he had lost the election. Material was always close at hand for the four writers of whom Llosa was probably the least parochial having lived in France, Spain and England. 'Although I was born in Peru, my vocation is that of a cosmopolitan and an expatriate who has always detested nationalism,' he wrote in his memoir. Total mastery Llosa the essayist gave reign to his range and humour (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977) is his best-known novel in the genre). Dealing with mice in his room in London, the dalliance of his son with Rastafarians, Maradona and the football World Cup, art exhibitions, all converted life lived into literature. The apparently casual newspaper columns on his diverse interests often revealed the person behind the prose not immediately discernible in more 'serious' writing. Great novelists are seldom great critics too. Llosa was both. The Perpetual Orgy (1975), on Flaubert and Madame Bovary (which he called the first modern novel), is a masterclass. Llosa understood 'total football'; he was master of the 'total novel' that used a variety of viewpoints, looked at society from all angles and studied the influence of social and political forces on his characters (and vice versa). In an essay on Ernest Hemingway, he wrote, 'The most important thing was not to live, but to write.' Llosa did both, and at a pitch few did. The reviewer's latest book is 'Why Don't You Write Something I Might Read?'.
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Liberal Legacy of Mario Vargas Llosa
Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian writer and Nobel laureate who died this past Sunday, spent the better part of his literary career novelizing the history of Latin America. It's curious, then, that when he reflected on Latin America's traumatic past in a 1995 essay for Reason, Llosa diagnosed its root cause as an excess of fiction. Llosa agreed that when Spanish inquisitors set about suppressing the novel in their new colonies, they were targeting a subversive art form. A classical liberal through and through, he saw only problems and unintended consequences resulting from this government prohibition. "In repressing and censoring the literary genre specifically invented to give 'the necessity of lying' a place in the world, the Inquisitors achieved exactly the opposite of what they wanted," wrote Llosa. "Theirs was a world without novels, yes, but also a world into which fiction had spread and contaminated practically everything: history, religion, poetry, science, art, speeches, journalism, and the daily habits of people." The result of this "revenge of the novel" wasn't a good thing. "In fiction, which is my field, it is always possible to pretend that certain historical events did not take place, to project our fantasies into the past, to imagine utopias," he continued in the same essay. "But it is not possible or desirable to do that when coping with social and economic problems that are all too real." Across his long career, Llosa would attempt to put fiction back in its place by chronicling dreamers and dictators, revolutionaries and reactionaries, and their disastrous attempts to rule the real world according to their fantasies. Latin American history offers endless examples of such failures, on the left, right, and center. As a politically homeless free market democrat, Llosa was able to see the lies in all. In The War at the End of the World, a novelized account of a pious peasant uprising in 19th-century Brazil, we see the country's reforming republican government unleash extreme violence on the unwashed masses they were allegedly trying to save. The Feast of the Goat is an unflinching portrait of the aging and impotent Dominican "anti-communist" strongman Rafael Trujillo, and the petty and personal humiliations he used to prop up his own alleged greatness. The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta novelizes a hopeless revolution launched by starry-eyed communist revolutionaries against the dictator ruling 1950s Peru. It ends in disaster when the oppressed Indians it was launched on behalf of prove stubbornly unmotivated by Trotskyist doctrine. Llosa was a man with deep ideological convictions himself. His early political activism put him firmly on the socialist left. The devolution of Cuba's revolution into abject authoritarianism sparked a conversion to liberalism in the vein of Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek. He'd eventually run for president of Peru in 1990 as a free market reformer—and lose to soon-to-be dictator Alberto Fujimori. Nevertheless, Llosa's novels are remarkably unpolemical. Other 20th-century libertarian writers like Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein were never afraid of commandeering their characters' voices for a political lecture or two. Llosa was always much more interested in the interpersonal and psychological struggles that ultimately drove politics. He was a better novelist for this individualism. The bourgeois agnostic was able to find a sympathetic humanity in zealous Christian peasants pining for the return of Brazil's emperor. The arch-capitalist managed to relate to communist revolutionaries taking to the jungle. Curiously, the whiggish optimism about the possibility, if not inevitability, of liberating social change that Llosa expressed in his political writings rarely showed up in his fiction. Semi-autobiographical sex comedies aside, his novels are dark, tragic, and backward-looking. Nevertheless, Llosa's belief in the futility of power politics lent itself to a view that a justice of a sort awaited anyone sufficiently dedicated to obtaining power. His penultimate novel, Harsh Times, follows the Guatemalan military officers who overthrow the country's democratically elected president, only to fall victim to subsequent coups and leftist reprisals. In a dissection of Llosa's legacy, Compact's Geoff Shullenberger describes him as "the great neoliberal novelist." It's a term Llosa would have hated. "To say 'neoliberal' is the same as saying 'semiliberal' or 'pseudoliberal.' It is pure nonsense," he wrote in a 2001 essay for Reason. "One is either in favor of liberty or against it, but one cannot be semi-in-favor or pseudo-in-favor of liberty, just as one cannot be 'semipregnant,' 'semiliving,' or 'semidead.'" Shullenberger's essay, and much of the other commentary following Llosa's death, focuses on his endorsement of various right-wing candidates in Latin America in recent years—allegedly a marked shift away from his prior support for freedom in all its forms. These claims are nothing new. Pick a point in Llosa's career, and you'll find plenty of essays from left-wing critics arguing the author's professed liberalism had at last given way to right-wing reaction. The accusations are hard to square with even his late-career work. His aforementioned 2018 novel Harsh Times offers a remarkably sympathetic (and arguably ahistorical) assessment of Guatemala's land reforms of the 1950s as ultimately an effort to turn the country into a middle-class capitalist democracy in the mold of the United States. The one time I saw him speak at a Cato Institute event in 2017, on the heels of Donald Trump's first election, his remarks focused on the dangers of populism on both the left and the right. His very late-in-life, and very begrudging, endorsements of Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro or Peru's Keiko Fujimori as lesser evils than their far-left opponents hardly erase his legacy as one of the erudite defenders of freedom. Indeed, one could argue that to the degree Llosa did look more favorably on right-wing candidates in his later years, this was simply a reflection of reality. For the first several decades of Llosa's literary career, Latin America was one of the poorest places on the globe, where dictatorship was the norm, and civil war was common and bloody. In fits and starts, this has given way to a continent of middle-income market economies and real, if flawed, democracies that have slowly made more room for economic growth and personal freedoms. The countries most immune to this trend are the left-wing regimes of Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. It's hard to imagine how any classical liberal wouldn't look with alarm at far-left candidates promising similar programs for their countries. Llosa had a keen understanding that while freedom offered promise for everyone, it was also a fragile thing. The people who loved liberty wholly and for its own sake were always a minority. Past traumas would always leave their mark. The future is still unwritten. RIP. The post The Liberal Legacy of Mario Vargas Llosa appeared first on
Gulf Today
15-04-2025
- Politics
- Gulf Today
Mario was a worthy literary rival to Gabriel
With the death of Peru's novelist and Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa at the age of 89 in Lima on Sunday, another star from the constellation of shining Latin American writers falls off. The other was Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The two were friends and ideological rivals. While Marquez was a much celebrated author in literary circles across the globe for his 'magical realism', Llosa was read, appreciated and respected for his literary genius among many readers in the same literary circles. Llosa's style did not practise magical realism, but his narrative style was bold and brisk, touched the raw nerve of the reader to the quick, and told tales with a touch of casualness but there was nothing casual about them. Llosa practised the serious art of telling an important story with realistic overtones and moral implications, which were nuanced and even grey. This has to do with his relations to politics, which was more complicated than of Marquez. Marquez had stuck to the generally acceptable leftist political spectrum, of critiquing capitalism with a gentle touch and with his innate sympathy for the poor and the oppressed. The touchstone of the writer's political commitment in Latin America was one's attitude towards the Cuban Revolution of 1960 and its leader Fidel Castro. Marquez remained an unwavering friend of Castro till the last. Llosa supported the Cuban Revolution and Castro. But he turned against Cuba, Castro and leftist politics because of the meaningless violence unleashed by the Shining Path, a leftist guerrilla movement in Peru. Llosa entered politics and fought the Peruvian presidential elections on the issue in 1980. He lost the election to the political outsider Alberto Fujimori. Fujimori managed to curb the violence of Shining Path, and restored political and economic stability in Peru. But this came at a price. Fujimori became ruthless and killed people illegally and without compunction in the name of putting down leftist violence. He also became corrupt. He was tried and convicted, and later allowed to leave prison due to his age and he died in 2024. Fujimori becomes a factor in Llosa's public life. Llosa was deeply disappointed by his electoral defeat, but it is not clear how he intended to tackle the leftist violence of the Shining Path. But Llosa soon recovered from his political trauma and realised that his calling was literature and not politics. And he remained the supreme master of his art. He continued to write stories that held the attention of the reader because of the unfailing verve in his narration. He depicted the joie de vivre of life. It is not surprising that the conservative establishment in Peru and in Latin America loved him. It would not be right to call him a rightist because he was one in politics but not in literature. His novels do not gloss over the moral ambiguities of life. This was best portrayed in his novella, 'In Praise of My Step-Mother' where evil and eroticism cast a long shadow. The narration mesmerises but the uneasiness in the mind of the reader remains. This requires an artist who sees clearly the many shades of life. Like a true artist, Llosa had the ability and capacity to look at life with clear eyes. This is what makes him a great writer. Latin American countries have been through political storms through the 20th century, and these unstable times threw up literary masters like Marquez and Llosa. It is a matter of great satisfaction that they viewed things from different political perspectives. As a result, we have novels very different from each, each one of them brilliant.
