Vargas Llosa and Latin American Politics Vargas Llosa and Latin American Politics Edited by Juan E. De Castro and Nicholas Birns Palgrave macmillan vargas llosa and latin american politics Copyright © Juan De Castro and Nicholas Birns,2010. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-10529-4 All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin‘s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe, and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-28969-1 ISBN 978-0-230-11359-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230113596 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Vargas Llosa and Latin American politics / edited by Juan E. De Castro and Nicholas Birns. p. cm. Includes index. 1. Vargas Llosa, Mario, 1936—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Vargas Llosa, Mario, 1936—Political and social views. 3. Latin America—Politics and government. I. Castro, Juan E. De, 1959- II. Birns, Nicholas. PQ8498.32.A65Z945 2010 863'.64—dc22 2010011095 Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: October 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Transferred to Digital Printing in 2011 Contents Acknowledgments vii Timeline ix Introduction 1 Juan E. De Castro and Nicholas Birns I Mario Vargas Llosa and the Neoliberal Turn 1 Mr. Vargas Llosa Goes to Washington 21 Juan E. De Castro 2 The Wars of an Old-Fashioned (Neoliberal) Gentleman 29 Fabiola Escárzaga 3 “Let’s Make Owners and Entrepreneurs”: Glimpses of Free Marketeers in Vargas Llosa’s Novels 47 Jean O’Bryan-Knight II The Writings of the 1980s and 1990s 4 Appropriation in the Backlands: Is Mario Vargas Llosa at War with Euclides da Cunha? 71 Nicholas Birns 5 Mario Vargas Llosa, the Fabulist of Queer Cleansing 85 Paul Allatson 6 Going Native: Anti-indigenism in Vargas Llosa’s The Storyteller and Death in the Andes 103 Ignacio López-Calvo 7 The Recovered Childhood: Utopian Liberalism and Mercantilism of the Skin in A Fish in the Water 125 Sergio R. Franco vi contents III Mario Vargas Llosa in the Twenty-First Century 8 Sex, Politics, and High Art: Vargas Llosa’s Long Road to The Feast of the Goat 139 Gene H. Bell-Villada 9 Humanism and Criticism: The Presence of French Culture in Vargas Llosa’s Utopia 159 Roland Forgues IV Mario Vargas Llosa, Man of Letters 10 Vargas Llosa’s Self-Definition as “The Man Who Writes and Thinks” 173 Sabine Köllmann 11 Vargas Llosa and the History of Ideas: Avatars of a Dictionary 189 Wilfrido H. Corral Works Cited 213 Contributors 227 Index 229 Acknowledgments We want to thank our colleagues at Eugene Lang College, Professor Laura Frost and Dean Neil Gordon, for their encouragement and for creating an environment that promotes research and scholarly production. Salmagundi and Revista de Estudios Hispánicos generously permitted the inclusion of revised versions of essays they had previously published.1 Nicholas Birns thanks Larry Birns, his father, and Margaret Boe Birns, his mother, for their affection and support and for having introduced him to Latin America. Juan De Castro is grateful for the support of his wife, Magdalena, during the writing and editing of this book. We both thank the colleagues who kindly contributed their essays. Without their enthusiasm, dedication, and patience, this book would not have been possible. 1. An early draft of Chapter 5, “Mario Vargas Llosa, the Fabulist of Queer Cleansing,” by Paul Allatson, was first published as “Historia de Mayta: A Fable of Queer Cleansing” in Revista de Estudios Hispanicos 32.3 (Oct. 98): 511–35. An early version of Chapter 8, “Sex, Politics, and High Art: Vargas Llosa’s Long Road to The Feast of the Goat,” by Gene H. Bell-Villada, was published as “The Inventions and Reinventions of Mario Vargas Llosa,” in Salmagundi 153/154 (Winter 2007): 148–57. Timeline 1936 Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa is born in Arequipa, Peru on March 28. 1957 His short story “El desafío” (“The Challenge”) wins a literary competition organized by La Revue Française. The award is a trip to Paris. 1959 Wins the scholarship Javier Prado at the Universidad Com- plutense in Madrid. His short story collection Los jefes (The Chiefs) wins the Leopoldo Alas award. 1963 La ciudad y los perros (The Time of the Hero) is published. 1966 Publishes La casa verde (The Green House). 1967 Publishes Los cachorros (The Cubs). La casa verde receives Rómulo Gallegos Award given to the best Spanish-language novel written during the previous five-year period. His reception speech “La literatura es fuego” (“Literature Is Fire”) is widely disseminated. 1969 Publishes Conversación en La Catedral (Conversation in the Cathedral). 1971 His PhD dissertation at the Universidad Complutense is pub- lished as García Márquez: Historia de un deicidio. Also pub- lishes Historia secreta de una novela, on the writing of La casa verde. The “Padilla affair”—the jailing of dissident Cuban poet Heberto Padilla and some of his collaborators—leads to Vargas Llosa’s permanent break with the Cuban Revolution. 1973 Publishes Pantaleón y las visitadoras (Captain Pantoja and the Special Service). 1975 Publishes La orgía perpetua: Flaubert y Madame Bovary (The Per- petual Orgy: Flaubert and Madame Bovary). 1977 La tía Julia y el escribidor (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter) is pub- lished. Begins writing biweekly essays in a section called Piedra de toque (Keystone) for the Peruvian magazine Caretas. These are currently syndicated by the Spanish newspaper El País. 1981 Publishes La guerra del fin del mundo (The War of the End of the World). Publishes his first play La señorita de Tacna (The Young Lady from Tacna). Publishes Entre Sartre y Camus, a collection x timeline of essays. Broadcasts a TV series in Peru’s Panamericana TV: La torre de Babel. 1983 Publishes first volume of Contra viento y marea, a collection of his political and cultural articles. He will update the collection throughout the decades. Publishes the play Kathie y el hipopótamo (Kathie and the Hippopotamus). Accepts to head a commission investigating the murder of journalists in the Andean town of Uchuraccay. The commission publishes the “Informe sobre Uchuraccay” (“Report on Uchuraccay”). A revised version of his section of the “Informe” was published in the New York Times under the title “Inquest in the Andes” and in Granta as “Story of a Massacre.” 1984 Publishes La historia de Mayta (The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta). 1986 Publishes ¿Quién mató a Palomino Molero? (Who Killed Palomino Molero?). The play La chunga is published. Writes the “Fore- word” to Hernando de Soto’s economic study of the Peruvian informal economy, El otro sendero (The Other Path). It is widely reprinted under the title, “La revolución silenciosa” (“The Silent Revolution”). 1987 Publishes El hablador (The Storyteller). Founds a political move- ment—Movimiento contra la estatización de la banca en el Perú (Movement Against the Nationalization of Banks in Peru)— against the planned state takeover of banking in Peru. 1988 Publishes Elogio de la madrastra (In Praise of the Stemother). Founds the political party Movimiento Libertad (Liberty Move- ment), which allies itself with conservative parties in the Frente Democrático (Democratic Front), also known as FREDEMO. 1989 Becomes the FREDEMO’s presidential candidate. 1990 Loses in a second electoral round to Alberto Fujimori. Publishes collection of literary essays La verdad de las mentiras; republished in an expanded version in 2002. 1991 Publishes A Writer’s Reality, based on a series of lectures. Carta de batalla por Tirant lo Blanc, which collects all his essays on that novel of chivalry, dating back to 1969, is published. 1993 Publishes El pez en el agua (A Fish in the Water), a books of mem- oirs, the novel Lituma en los Andes (Death in the Andes), and the play El loco de los balcones. Threatened by members of the Fujimori government with having his passport taken away, the government of Spain grants him Spanish citizenship. timeline xi 1994 Publishes Desafíos de la libertad. Writes a radio play for the BBC, Ojos bonitos, cuadros feos. Receives the Cervantes Award, the highest literary award in the Hispanic world. 1996 Publishes La utopía arcaica. José María Arguedas y las ficciones del indigenismo (The Archaic Utopia: José María Arguedas and the Fictions of Indigenismo). A selection of his essays is translated into English as Making Waves. 1997 Publishes Los cuadernos de don Rigoberto (The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto) and Cartas a un joven novelista (Letters to a Young Novelist). 2000 Publishes La fiesta del chivo (The Feast of the Goat). 2001 Publishes the essay collection El lenguaje de la pasión (The Lan- guage of Passion). 2003 Publishes El paraíso en la otra esquina (The Way to Paradise) and Diario de Irak, a journalistic study of the war in Iraq. 2004 Publishes La tentación de lo imposible. Víctor Hugo y Los mis- erables (The Temptation of the Impossible: Victor Hugo and Les Misérables). 2005 Publishes in France Dictionnaire Amoureux de l’Amérique Latine (in Spanish Diccionario del amante de América Latina), which organizes alphabetically texts written over fifty years on Latin America. 2006 Publishes Travesuras de la niña mala (The Bad Girl) and Israel/ Palestina. Paz o guerra santa, essays on Israel and Palestine. 2007 Publishes the play Odiseo y Penélope. Publishes Touchstones, a col- lection of essays. 2008 Publishes Wellsprings, a collection of his lectures, the play Al pie del Támesis, and the monograph El viaje a la ficción. El mundo de Juan Carlos Onetti (Journey into Fiction: The world of Juan Carlos Onetti). 2009 Publishes Sables y utopías. Visiones de América latina, a collection of his political essays.