We have discussed at length Vargus Llosa's book, Lituma en los Andes and briefly the scenario in which he wrote the book.
With no experience in politics before, he was an outsider to both the leading parties at the time but was more of a prestigious image in the eyes of the people. This was the edge he required and to a large extent won the trust of the people.
However, he was increasingly seen as a dreamer, unable to make pragmatic choices and his public reluctance at running for the presidency was a huge setback.
His highly Utopian views on repairing Peru's economy was very unpopular with the rural peasants who would lose thousands of jobs as a result of harsh austerity programs that he eschewed. While these were in theory, the right way to move forward, they were politically not feasible. It was these policies that gave a little known Japanese descent contender - Fujimori the advantage in the form of support by the Andean peasants.
After a long hiatus from writing he lashed out at the ignorant peasants of the Andes by releasing two books,
Who killed Palomino Molero? and Death in the Andes.
Vargus Llosa however is much more than a failed presidential candidate of Peru. He is more a writer (he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010) who got pulled into politics by chance rather than a failed politician who happened to stumble into writing. He was initially a staunch leftist and vocally supported Castro's Cuba until Heberto Padilla's imprisonment. This turned him into a conservative or at best a moderate "rightist".
"But whence the Thatcherite drift of a man who had been an enthusiast for Fidel Castro in his youth? Salman Rushdie detected it as early as 1984 in the novel The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (1984), deeming the book Vargas Llosa's "first overtly right-wing tract", but in truth he had drifted rightwards long before then: in 1971 he broke with his earlier enthusiasm for the Cuban revolution and mocked García Márquez as "Castro's courtesan"".- The Guardian, 2012
With no experience in politics before, he was an outsider to both the leading parties at the time but was more of a prestigious image in the eyes of the people. This was the edge he required and to a large extent won the trust of the people.
Yet his very inexperience as a politician is one of his strengths because all other likely contenders are associated with political parties that have contributed to the present crisis. He is also the beneficiary of Latin America's tradition of looking to its literary figures as ''national consciences'' who are expected to provide moral leadership during times of disarray.- The New York Times, 1988
However, he was increasingly seen as a dreamer, unable to make pragmatic choices and his public reluctance at running for the presidency was a huge setback.
Unsurprisingly, with cartoonists showing the tall, slim, elegant writer as an aloof preppie figure lost in an alien world, many of Mr. Vargas Llosa's friends are already wondering aloud whether he has the thirst for power necessary to keep going on the 20-month march to elections.
His highly Utopian views on repairing Peru's economy was very unpopular with the rural peasants who would lose thousands of jobs as a result of harsh austerity programs that he eschewed. While these were in theory, the right way to move forward, they were politically not feasible. It was these policies that gave a little known Japanese descent contender - Fujimori the advantage in the form of support by the Andean peasants.
After a long hiatus from writing he lashed out at the ignorant peasants of the Andes by releasing two books,
Who killed Palomino Molero? and Death in the Andes.
Nice post! I like the fact you laid out Llosa's political attempt and how it turned out to be a failure. You analyzed the political, cultural and economic factors that contributed to his failure and displayed some important aspects of Peru as a country. Good job!
ReplyDeleteKe Xu
I like how you focused on the political history of Llosa and all the research you put into this blog. It definitely gave me a better understanding of Llosa but you could have referred to the book. Maybe you could have spoken about how these events or ideals of Llosa are shown in Death in the andes
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