Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, better known as Mario Vargas Llosa, died this Sunday, April 13.
The Peruvian writer had a close relationship with Guatemala and in 2019 he published his book RECIOUS TIMES.
Before writing this book, he said he had come twice to Guatemala. He came as a tourist to Petén and visiting the rest of the country, but he had a superficial knowledge of this place, he said.
In 2018 he was in Zacapa where he met with the Zacapaneca Association of Tales and Anecdotes (Azcca) counters (AZCCA)an organization that was born in 1987 by the idea of Julio Morales and Virgilio Cordón, in Gualán, Zacapa.
“If you go to Guatemala, after visiting the Mayan steles and pyramids and that colonial jewel that is old, I beg you to go to the east of the country and stop in the city of Zacapa,” he wrote in a column of the newspaper El País. “This is a less tourist region than others but, scraping a little, it is also full of surprises and wonders,” he said. On that occasion he also visited the Sofos bookstore.
A happiness of the personnel of @sophosenlinea
The academic and writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who was recognized in 2010 with the Nobel Prize for Literature, visited its facilities. @prensa_libre https://t.co/gz7vp6ypdq
– PL scenario (@escenario_pl) May 27, 2018
However, to write RECIOUS TIMEShe commented in the presentation of the book, that he had traveled three times to make the trajectory of Castillo Armas and know the towns where there are fighting. In addition, he was documented reading newspapers and magazines, as he did when he wrote novels based on historical facts.
The novel RECIOUS TIMES The Nobel Prize for Literature (recognition received in 2010) is located in 1954, during the military coup perpetrated by Carlos Castillo Armas, sponsored by the United States through the CIA and overthrew the government of Jacobo Affenz, a change of course for all of Latin America.
“With this book I begin to believe those novelists who say that the themes of their novels do not choose them, but that they are chosen by their songs. I think there is something really,” said Vargas Llosa when he came to present his book to Guatemala, in 2019.
What did he leave RECIOUS TIMES And Guatemala in the life of Vargas Llosa?
The writer describes what his relationship with the country was before writing this book, in addition to some anecdotes and thoughts that have remained in him.
- I always wanted to write with RECIOUS TIMES Not a history book or an essay but a novel. A book with elements of fiction and imagination that prevailed over historical sources. Both in this, as other books that I have written, the story has been present with elements that have been respected.
- The Guatemalans must be proud because when there were dictatorships in Latin America, here there was a democracy, clean elections and the president that the Guatemalans chose wanted to make social reforms in democracy, with freedom, criticism and resistances of those who were affected by those reforms, that is civilized. Guatemala had the honor of being a kind of lighthouse. He was a young university student at that time and saw Guatemala with enormous admiration.
- The fact that the Affenz government failed through the country of democracy: the United States brought a huge disenchantment among young people. The failure of Affenz is the failure of democracy. Guatemala is a pioneer of a single possible model, if we want to leave underdevelopment.
- Before the book I came to Guatemala twice, as a tourist to Petén and visit the rest of the country and had a superficial knowledge of this place. To write “RECIOUS TIMES” I traveled three times, I made the trajectory of Castillo Armas and the localities where it is said that there were fighting and I have documented reading newspapers and magazines, as I do when I write novels based on historical events.
- Affenz is a tragic character, who tries to do something in a certain direction that everything that tries to do is denatured. There is an irresponsible journalism that in his time invents intentions that he did not have or tried to put into practice. A false situation lives and when things go into exile, two of their children commit suicide and never feel comfortable in the countries where they are exiled, whether capitalist or socialist. If I had Affenz in front, he would have hundreds of questions to ask him and fundamentally how he felt once he went into exile from his country and for reasons that did not correspond to anything.
- The consequences with the exit of Arbenz were tragic for Guatemala and overflowed the Central American borders and the effect expanded throughout Latin America. If the story was another, we would not have had those 50 years of frightening tragedies, in which, with the exception of Cuba, there was not a single case of triumphant revolutions. We lived in a very different way. I am glad to have written this novel, among other reasons because I think it is an act of justice to reinvindicate a person as an Affenz, because the division still remains in Guatemala.
- If the United States, instead of attacking Affenz, I would have done it in the reforms I wanted to do, probably that attraction of the armed struggle would not have had that influence in the history of Latin America. I even dare to think that we would have a democratic reform that Cuba had stopped considerably, without reaching the extremist solutions he had.
- When Carlos Castillo Armas assumes power, what happens in Guatemala is terrible and I want it to be known so that it does not happen again: there is a systematic persecution against Adebenz and everything linked to his government. Where was that communism of Affenz that fought? It is a fiction, a fantasy, a Fake News (misinformation) that triumphs because a paranoia is created in the country.
- The Cía had 600 people between Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama … to end the Arbenz government. No one in their right mind can question the intervention of the United States in this overthrow. It is tested by American researchers, a secret operation.
- I would like my book to serve at least for some Guatemalans to change their minds regarding Affenz and begin to respect it, consider it a magnificent president who tried through democracy, of deep reforms, in an environment of freedom to get this country out of the underdevelopment. We are the ones who believe in democracy who have the moral obligation to reinvindicate a character like him. If my book has the possibility of convincing at least a “stab” of Guatemalans, I will feel happy and happy to have worked these two years in this novel.