MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Vargas Llosa warned against making political comments in Venezuela

Mario Vargas Llosa: “I have come to the land of Bolivar, the land of free expression”

Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa was detained Wednesday for more than one hour at the Maiquetía international airport by immigration officials upon his arrival in Venezuela to take part in a Liberal forum of intellectuals hosted by a private organization opposed to the government of President Hugo Chávez.

On leaving the airport, the writer told reporters that a customs officer “warned me with good manners that I, as a foreigner, had no right to make political statements” in Venezuela”.

”I, also politely, replied that, being in the land of (Simón) Bolívar, the Liberator of South America, nobody may put obstacles to free expression, and that I was to talk in full freedom, as usual,“ he commented.

”They checked my whole luggage and made sure that I am not smuggling anything in; no explosive or subversive materials, except for some poetry books,” he added.

The event was similar to what happened to his son, journalist Álvaro Vargas Llosa. Last Monday, he was detained for a couple of hours and finally allowed to enter the country after the authorities reviewed his identity papers.

On Tuesday evening Venezuela’s Minister of Culture Hector Soto had described Vargas Llosa as an “impudent foul mouthed” character.

“This former intellectual must have lost some of his scarce intelligence, if we are to believe the disrespectful way in which he talks” about President Hugo Chavez and other heads of state, said Soto during an interview with the Venezuelan government’s television news channel.

Vargas Llosa who last called in Bogotá, Colombia claimed that “Venezuela invests a lot of money corrupting democratic governments, boosting the most revolutionary sectors of society, thus becoming a source of destabilization for democracies”.

Soto also recalled that Vargas Llosa ridiculed the recently deceased Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti and Bolivian president Evo Morales, thus “loosing his condition of intellectual and free thinker”.

“This impudent foul mouthed character who has visited the country (Venezuela) on several occasions doesn’t even have the sufficient wit so as to not attack icons which belong to the people”, said Soto.

The minister made the statements in the framework of the “Intellectuals gathering in the face of the capitalist crisis”, a kind of counter meeting to the Liberals forum and for which the Venezuelan government has invited writers and analysts from Latinamerica who are aligned with President Chavez.

The “counter” forum will be taking place just a few blocks away from where Vargas Llosa, Mexico’s Enrique Krauze and Colombia’s Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, among other outstanding Latinamerican intellectuals will be discussing the challenges for Liberalism and combating poverty.

Venezuelan authorities have also begun the distribution of five million books, from authors and thinkers authorized by the Chavez administration and directly related to his Socialist approach to domestic and world affairs. On Friday Culture ministers from the ALBA country members are scheduled to hold a meeting.

The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas ALBA is a group sponsored by Venezuela’s Chavez which includes Bolivia, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela.