Mario Vargas Llosa: “Putin is a dictator, bloodthirsty”

Writer and Nobel Prize winner for Literature Mario Vargas llosa was alarmed by Vladimir Putin's offensive against Ukraine in an interview published in the Chilean newspaper La Tercera. “We are at a dangerous time because Russia with Putin has once again become a dictatorship. Putin is a dictator, bloodthirsty,” he warned.

According to him, the way in which he is acting in Ukraine “reveals it in all its evil, in all its antiquity, in its lack of modernity”. He explained: “What he reproaches Ukraine is that it is an independent country and not a satellite of Russia and today in the 21st century it cannot be, it is not tolerable. Putin's madness has served to open the eyes of many countries...”

For Vargas Llosa, “no one has made the European Union prosper as much as Putin with the crazy things he is doing.”

In addition, Putin assured “he is a leader with obvious symptoms of insanity as Stalin had them or as he did... as do the satellites he has managed to form around them.”

He warned: “There is always the danger that if he feels defeated or held back in his ambitions, he will try to resort to the atomic factories that Russia has and that could jeopardize the survival of humanity. That would be a catastrophe for humanity, let's hope that such barbarity will not be reached.”

In addition to analyzing the geopolitical scenario in Europe, Vargas Llosa expressed special concern for Latin America. And not only because of the situation in his country, Peru, with a president whom he describes as “illiterate” and “ignorant”, but also because of the general picture of the region. “Our continent is lagging behind at a time when the rest of the world prospers,” he lamented.

Vargas Llosa believes that the pandemic has been more dramatic in the case of Latin America than in Europe or Asia, where there is social and economic development and, above all, a very advanced process of democratization. “On the other hand, in Latin America, unfortunately, populist, demagogic and very irresponsible governments, which above all do not know how to manage a country's economy, have proliferated lately. Then we are right to worry that our continent is lagging behind at a time when the rest of the world is prospering,” he said.

When journalist Juan Paulo Iglesias asked why, the writer said that fundamentally because the best Latin Americans don't do politics, “they despise politics, they have an attitude of rejection towards politics, because political life is a very corrupt life, a life very infected by corruption and, moreover, because let's say they do not feel that they can do important things to make countries progress.”

“Peru is not getting ahead, it is trapped, because it has chosen badly, because it has elected a president who is absolutely illiterate, a person who does not have the necessary information and a government that already shows many symptoms of corruption, mismanagement, irresponsible management. Approximately 70% of Peruvians want him removed,” he said. And he said: “I have the suspicion that he will not end his term.”

For Varga Llosa, the case of Peru is the case of Venezuela, the case of Nicaragua, the case of Cuba, which are totalitarian dictatorships.

He also spoke of Argentina as a very dramatic case because it does not go ahead: “There is a rivalry between the president and the vice president who elected him that does not allow that country to function, which was like the example of Latin America in the time of the liberal presidents.”

And he remembered that in his neighborhood, in Lima, there was no talk of Paris, there was talk of Argentina. “The boys wanted to go to study at Argentine universities. We writers would like to have lived in Argentina. And that Argentina that was a model for Latin America has been disappearing.”

For the writing, the catastrophe has a name: “It is Peronism”. “It is very difficult for me to understand that kind of romanticism that exists in Argentina with Peronism, which has been the source of all its ills,” he said.

In its analysis, regional exceptions are found in Ecuador and Uruguay, which are progressing. “Uruguay much faster than Ecuador, because it has a greater democratic tradition than the rest.”

“But Latin America in general is having a very bad time. It is democratic models that it should follow rather than dedicate itself to that romantic, outdated and inoperative vision of nationalization, of censorship of the press. None of that succeeds,” he said.

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