LATINOAMÉRICA OPINIÓN POLÍTICA
Perú despierta y Vargas Llosa agoniza
LATIN AMERICA POLITICAL OPINION
Peru wakes up and Vargas Llosa is dying
By José Steinsleger 9 Junio, 2021
Some experts in psychoanalysis and psychiatry describe as schizophrenia the condition that prevents the distinction between fiction and reality, and considering that it is a serious mental illness.
On the other hand, when political issues are discussed colloquially, the term is often used loosely to disqualify those who deny or misrepresent reality. Unfair and unpleasant rapture that undeniably calls into question good manners.
Example: since La ciudad y los perros, I have read almost all of Vargas Llosa's fictional works, and a good part of his political articles, in which he developed, in my opinion, a tortuous vision of reality. Conclusion: unmatched mastery to travel from reality to fiction and vice versa.
Despite this, more than half a century of reading Vargallosian has not been enough for me to solve a dilemma that, I suspect, no disciple of Freud or Lacan could solve: when did Mario Vargas Llosa screw up?
Tributary to the ex-pongo and today Marquis, the Andean-indigenous-mestizo culture has produced unique writers, although marked by their inferiority complex compared to colonial culture. Emblematic case: Alcides Arguedas (1879-46), paid writer for the tin magnate, Simón Patiño. In 1909, Arguedas published Pueblo Sick in Barcelona, making clear his reasoned contempt for Bolivian society..
In Pueblo Sick, the author regrets that the mixture of fatal biological laws, historical reasons and environmental circumstances have made the indigenous a stunted and diseased race. Celebrated by the great Miguel de Unamuno, the book is no longer read. But its contents make it possible to unravel the chronic racial hatred of those who (not only in Bolivia and Peru) are scared when they see that the peoples begin to break the chains of colonialism.
In the antipodes of the Bolivian Arguedas, the Peruvian José María Arguedas (1911-69) and a book published shortly before his suicide: The fox from above and the fox from below, a deep reflection on Peru that Vargas Llosa despises to such a degree, that in 1996 he dedicated a long essay to him: The archaic utopia and the fictions of indigenismo.
The fox above and the fox below alludes to the foxes of indigenous legends collected in Quechua at the end of the 16th century, and they tell of a world divided into two: the coastal zone and the mountainous area, which were the center of the history of the country in pre-Columbian times, as well as the coast would be from the conquest.
Observations that for some mysterious reason, shot me after reading On the Tightrope, Vargas Llosa's latest article, published on the eve of the ballot that just took place in Peru (El País, 5/6). Quickly, I underline themes and passages related to a continent that, according to the master of fiction and reality, seems determined to resurrect the Marxism-Leninism that Europeans and Asians have been in charge of burying.
Brazil: “The judges have released Luiz Inácio da Silva […]. If foreigners could vote, Lula, his darling, would sweep away. Brazilians are more cautious: they remember above all that several sentences weigh on him, for taking advantage of power and for corruption ”.
Chile: “in this country that seemed to have done its homework and grown to distance itself from the rest of Latin America and reach European levels, now it is absolute chaos… with young people of both sexes dreaming of a uniformed nation, with a state-controlled economy that would ruin a a society that seemed to be the first in Latin America to end underdevelopment ”.
Colombia: “[…] It burns everywhere and President Iván Duque is attacked even by his own party and his teacher, former President Álvaro Uribe, accuses him of being weak and of not resorting to the army to appease the violent people who, guided by the Venezuelan hand, they want to take power away ”.
Bolivia: Evo Morales' forces have returned to power and he has a candidate whom he calls brother and cholito… But he is not Bolivian but Peruvian: Pedro Castillo ”.
Peru: “[…] Immediately favorite target for the Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan axis. If Pedro Castillo wins the election, Marxism-Leninism-Mariateguism […] would be the most ferocious and bloodthirsty dictatorship of all that the country has known throughout its history ”.
And the pearl that Ripley cries out for: Political suicide [in Peru], which would close forever, or for a long time, the country's possibility of recovering its old history when it was, in the pre-Hispanic past, the head of an empire that gave of eat everyone, or in the 300 colonial years, when the Peruvian viceroyalty was the most prosperous in America. All this to become an agent at the service of Cuba and Venezuela.
I understand the dialectic of the converted leftist, which tends to be more eloquent and fierce than the reverse option. But if any specialist can confirm the diagnosis of yore, I am willing to qualify my criticisms and, from now on, treat Vargas Llosa as a brilliant mental patient.
By José Steinsleger
https://www.elclarin.cl/2021/06/09/peru-despierta-y-vargas-llosa-agoniza/?fbclid=IwAR3rcbPk72HBEEGmTOgwXakvVQzY4vvyy159uViTVWT48wsrVUJDe38g3vc
