In his autobiography, Mario Vargas Llosa tells of his failed presidential campaign of 1990. The poor fellow was desperate to talk about the economy in an indigent country ravaged by terrorism. Instead, he found himself in the midst of a religious war. All of a sudden, the Catholic Church decided to support the openly and proudly agnostic Llosa while the Evangelicals rallied against him.
Bishops were going on TV to praise Llosa and explain how his agnosticism was a sign of being even more Catholic than practicing Catholics. The Pope was trying to lure Llosa to visit him in the Vatican. Llosa’s supporters were plotting ways to make a wooden figure of Jesus during a Catholic procession open its mouth and say Llosa’s name. It was 1990, one could easily make Jesus speak with the help of a tape recorder. In the end, the still-stubbornly- agnostic Llosa was begging his comrades to stop blaspheming.
He lost the election to a fellow who disbanded the parliament, canceled future elections, and became a dictator.
Because the hilarious and endearing magic of Latin American reality invariably rests on blood, corruption, and hopelessness.
Clarissa's Blog 
And American intervention in favor of our corporations.
You forgot to mention that.
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The CIA was opposed to Vargas Llosa getting elected. Apparently, it preferred the idiot Fujimori. Dumbasses.
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And by that, I mean that intervention was political, economic, and military.
If you haven’t already, read John Perkins’ “Confessions of an Economic Hitman.”
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Latin Americans fuck things up just as bad with no intervention from anybody. Unfortunately.
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Maybe I should give Llosa a second chance.
Many years ago I had a copy of la ciudad y los perros and thougt about reading it but it was very…. unforgiving at the beginning.
Then a very close friend (one of the smartest people I’ve ever known who had lived some years in the Andes) saw I had the book and kind of sniffed summarizing his work as “rich white people have problems too” which was not anything I was interested in at the time and I put it aside and never returned to anything he did again.
I don’t understand Peruvian politics at all apart from the vicious racism against the indigenous peoples that characterizes most Latin American countries. I had a (gringa) professor who was a Peruvian specialist and claimed to be a major feminist who was infatuated with Alan Garcia and when he turned out to be kind of a dud she sighed “But he was sooo handsome….”
That’s it. I got nothing else on this topic except…. what would a more…. accesible work of Llosa be (in case I run across something)?
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My favorites are La guerra del fin del mundo and La fiesta del chivo. Very powerful.
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La Casa Verde and Conversación en la Catedral.
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These are the least accessible, I’d say. 😃 But they are amazing. I want to drop everything and go reread.
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Ah, but they are the best, which makes them the most accessible! 😀
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