Pride Trumps Politics in Peru for Mario Vargas Llosa

LIMA, Peru (Oct. 7) -- With great pride Peruvians received the news Thursday that their most well-known man of letters, Mario Vargas Llosa, had won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, even if they differ in their assessment of his political activities over the years.

Many, the author included, say the award is long overdue. "It seems to me very justified because I have produced literary works of a very high quality, but only lately has the idea existed of recognizing my work, which was very creative for its time and that has spanned the genres," Vargas Llosa told TV reporters Thursday afternoon in New York.

The Swedish Academy praised Vargas Llosa "for his cartography of the structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt and defeat."

Peruvian-born Vargas Llosa, 74, a nationalized Spanish citizen who writes a regular column in the Madrid newspaper El Pais, was one of the leading figures in the so-called Latin American boom of the 1960s. Along with the writers Gabriel Garcia Marquez of Colombia, Carlos Fuentes and Juan Rulfo of Mexico and Argentina's Julio Cortazar, Vargas Llosa was part of a generation of writers who put Latin American literature on the map.

In more than 30 novels, plays and essays, Vargas Llosa has developed a style of narrating a story from different viewpoints, across space and time, in plots that revolve around fictionalized versions of Latin American dictatorships.

The author, currently a visiting professor at Princeton University, said the works of William Faulkner, the American writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949, and the 19th-century French author Gustave Flaubert expanded his worldview. "If my books do something similar, I suppose it's a massive achievement," he said.

As a young man Vargas Llosa was a left-leaning idealist, but his enthusiasm for the Cuban Revolution faded after Fidel Castro arrested the Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in 1968 and later imprisoned him. He makes frequent use of his El Pais column to denounce Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, several months ago panning him as a "messianic caudillo."

Vargas Llosa's politics makes him something of a divisive figure. "It's about time he wins, it's true!," Peruvian novelist Pedro Casusol, 24, told AOL News. "Especially because many say that because of his political past, he was denied the prize."

"What he has done is very important," Alejandro Toledo, a former president of Peru, told the Spanish news agency EFE. "His opinion has a great weight in the defense of democracy."

Yet Casusol said the author's right-wing politics has diminished his influence among young writers. "In the opinion of young writers and artists, Vargas Llosa sits on a golden toilet," he said. "I reaffirm that, now more than ever."

His political identity as a right-wing critic began in 1987, when he led a mass demonstration against moves by President Alan García, then in his first term (1985-1990), to nationalize the country's banks amid the country's worst economic crisis to date.

That movement evolved into the political party Fredemo, with Vargas Llosa at the helm. He narrowly lost the 1990 presidential election to Alberto Fujimori.

Vargas Llosa became a harsh critic of Fujimori after he shuttered Congress and the judiciary in 1992 and began rule by decree. Fujimori is now serving a 25-year sentence for human rights crimes.

In September, Vargas Llosa resigned from a presidential commission in charge of building a museum to commemorate the victims of Peru's 20-year civil war after President Garcia approved an amnesty law for ex-military officers accused of human rights abuses.

Nonetheless, praise for Vargas Llosa came from all quarters. Speaking from the government palace in Lima, Garcia said the prize was "well-deserved" and long overdue. "This was enormously justified ... we have waited for this since our youth," Garcia said.

Peruvian painter Fernando de Szyszlo, who replaced Vargas Llosa on the museum commission, told CNN en Espanol the prize "is an act of justice and an achievement for all the world's Spanish speakers."

And Peru's culture minister, Juan Ossio, told local Canal N that he would coordinate with the private sector to publish an inexpensive paperback version of all of Vargas Llosa's novels, including the forthcoming "Celtic Dream," due out in November.

Vargas Llosa said Thursday he'd like to be remembered, above all, as a writer.

"I think the Swedish academy gave me this prize for my literary works rather than for my political opinions. But if my opinions in defense of democracy, in defense of freedom and against dictatorships were taken into account by the committee, that makes me very happy," Vargas Llosa said on CNN en Espanol.