MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Vargas Llosa is “an enemy of Argentina and all populist governments”

Argentine cabinet chief did not spare words to refer to the Nobel Prize

In spite of President Cristina Fernandez instructions to scale down the controversy over the attendance of Literature Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa to Buenos for the opening of the Book Fair, the exchanges continued Wednesday.

Vargas Llosa wife Patricia assured that her husband was not coming to Argentina “to make trouble”. Earlier, Argentine Cabinet Chief Aníbal Fernández called the Peruvian author “an enemy of Argentina” and an “extreme right reactionary”.

“This whole thing is absurd. In no way is Mario trying to go to Argentina in order to start a controversy or make trouble,” Patricia Vargas Llosa said.

At the same time, she said that her husband doesn’t have a Facebook account, for which the alleged statements in which he was seen saying that the wanted to come to Argentina to “reply to the Kirchnerites.”

Earlier, Cabinet Chief Aníbal Fernández criticized the Nobel Prize winner. “He is an enemy of Argentina and all populist governments,” the minister said during a radio interview.

Furthermore, Fernández commented that the Peruvian writer “hasn’t missed an opportunity to gratuitously insult our government on several occasions”, and added, “I don’t question the literary level of Vargas Llosa, I have read his books, what would be naive is not to observe his condition of a true sample of the most reactionary right (wing) that has ever been seen.”

After such harsh words, the official also recognized the request President Cristina Kirchner made to National Library Director Horacio González to immediately withdraw his petition asking for the Nobel Prize winner not to be invited to inaugurate the fair in order to guarantee there is “freedom of expression” within the country, thus trying to ease up on the current political polarization that society is being dragged to as part of a we-they dichotomy.

“I agree with the President’s request but I can’t stop from saying what I personally think about Vargas Llosa”, Fernández concluded.

Political ideals are always present in Vargas Llosa’s speeches and took him to run for president of Peru in 1990.

During his recent appearance after receiving the Literature Nobel Prize, the author had made clear where he stands in terms of ideologies and his stance on the civilization or barbarism cultural dichotomy: “I defended the moral, democratic and civic ideals of liberalism, and stand against regimes like the Cuban one. I defend civilization.”

Furthermore, the writer was quoted as saying in 2003, while commenting on indigenous movements in Latin America in general that “Development and civilization are incompatible with certain social phenomenon, the principle being collectivism. [...] The indigenism ... that appears to have been forgotten is now behind phenomenon such as the señor Evo Morales in Bolivia”.

When Morales was elected president of Bolivia, the Peruvian writer told Spanish newspaper El País that Morales was lying when he presents himself in Europe as an indigenous president, and dismissed the former coca workers' unionist as a ”typical Latin American criollo (someone born in the Americas with Spaniard backgrounds), a Spanish-speaking mestizo, who is finishing off Bolivia”.