Mario Vargas Llosa and Sergio Ramírez: an interview between “scandalous indignation” in Nicaragua and the “subversion” of the novel

On the opening day of Central America counts, the literary festival born in Nicaragua and which in this edition is held for the first time in Madrid, did not begin by talking about literature. Or yes. The festival director, Sergio Ramírez, has an arrest warrant from the Nicaraguan government against its president, Daniel ortega. The intellectual, writer and former vice-president of his country is accused of acts which promote and incite hatred and violence. As Ramírez himself explained, he is not persecuted as a political leader, but rather for his latest novel, which is published this week in Spain, and “which reveals the abuses, violations of human rights. ‘man, the murder of dozens of unarmed young people in the streets of Managua and other cities in the country in 2018 ”.

It is for this very fact that Mario Vargas Llosa, who participated in the inaugural table of the Counts of Central America with Ramírez and the Colombians Carlos Granes and Pilar reyes, who were the moderators, began by evoking a “scandalous outrage” against his Nicaraguan colleague by the “sinister couple”: the president Daniel ortega and his vice and his wife, Rosario Murillo. “I think we should pay tribute to him. He is a writer but he also participated in a very active way in his country ”, he declared and asked for applause for him. In the Casa de América room, there in Madrid, where the conference was broadcast live and in streaming, the small audience present applauded for more than a minute.

“We would have liked this conversation to be purely literary,” he said. Pillar Reyes, “But politics has crept into the literature.” And he asked: “Why, when we talk about literature, do we end up getting into politics? “These are not easy days. As a writer, my novel has been banned. Fortunately, before my arrest warrant was issued, I was no longer in Nicaragua. Otherwise I would be with the 140 political prisoners who exist today. “Ramírez began to respond. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a Swedish writer or a Finnish writer, where political gentleness reigns and the president rides his bike to work. That in Latin America is surrealism, ”he quipped. “It all went into the novel and became an epic. It is difficult to find a Latin American novel that is not crossed by power, this vice and this ambition which have distorted the possibility of having lasting and credible institutions ”, he declared, adding: “Like Stalin, who erased everyone from the photos, Ortega was left alone in the history of the revolution”.

On the ‘subversion’ of the fictional genre, the Peruvian Nobel laureate commented: “As you know, the novel has been banned for 300 years. During the colony, novels were read in Latin America because smuggling was so important and banned novels circulated. One of my teachers thought he had found one of the books from the first shipment of Quixote in Peru. And they were in a shipment of wine, in disguise. The fictional genre has not been published for 300 years, but no one assumes its prohibition, neither the Church nor the State. There are indications that Spain did not want the indigenous peoples of America to fill their heads with the illusions and nonsense that the novels have, but no one is assuming this ban. It’s a mystery. Historians say that the novel entered as fiction in texts which were historical chronicles or religious texts ”.

“To understand Latin American literature, you have to have an overview, even if it often makes us lose the particular, but the problem is only one”, continued Vargas Llosa. “To a large extent, nations are artefacts, artefacts that Bolivar wanted to put an end to. Through the wars that marked the 19th and 20th centuries, nations asserted themselves, but the problem is the same, as is the language in which our literature is written. Let’s say that borders do not make much sense to establish essential differences like those that exist in Europe in linguistic terms. My generation embraces a literature without borders. And that’s a wealth of Latin American literature: it receives influences from many places, especially people. The case is Borges: a universal Latin American literature. Today there are a lot of Borgian writers even if they did not know Latin America. This is one of the conditions of our literature: not to be conditioned by a tradition but to be linked to individuals rather than to nationalities. For example, Onetti it wouldn’t be Onetti without Faulkner. Rulfo it is also a literature open to influences from around the world. This is what a Danish writer told me: for them, it is impossible to escape their tradition, their past. Not in Latin America; there is a lot of freedom to choose our fonts and be original ”.

“It’s very difficult to be a Latin American writer and not be affected by politics. Literary life often puts the writer in danger in the face of reality. Of course, there are writers who manage to write on the fringes of politics. But it is a minority. If we choose literature as a central activity, we will inevitably fall into politics.“, Declared the Peruvian Nobel, while Ramírez added:” In the United States, for example, it is rare for a writer to devote himself to politics. But in Latin America, it is not the same: deal not only with politics in novels and poetry, but also through personal actions. In Nicaragua a lot of things can be explained because we have lived under dictatorships for a long time. I can give my personal example: I was born with Somoza, I studied under the government of Somoza son and I fought to overthrow another Somoza. And on top of that, now I’m in conflict with another dictatorship. It is a reality that we cannot really escape ”.

“If the ideal of society is to have critical citizens, these citizens must be very good readers of literature, because literature teaches us to be dissatisfied with the world.. The things that cause discontent vary: there are writers who are against good things, but most writers tend to disagree with things that are bad, “said Vargas Llosa, adding:” It is Why, the best literature creates citizens who are very uncomfortable with power, and this is probably the reason why all powers without exception have tried to establish control over literature. They feel it: it is a danger for the powers that be because it creates unease. I have the impression that this is the great contribution of literature: it is a source of enormous discontent creating societies which constantly try to correct what is wrong. All dictatorships without exception create contraband literature that generally exists outside the law. It is a literature in which there is always a protest against the world as it is. And this has existed since the appearance of literature. Literature has to do with the rebellion that exists in every human being. It’s a great function, aside from the fun, of course ”.

“The revolution took me ten years to write,” said the Nicaraguan. “From 1976, when I came back from Berlin where I had a scholarship, until 1985 when I was elected vice-president. So I said to myself: if I stop writing, I will stop being a writer. So I started writing at dawn because the day was busy in my government agenda, which was very unpredictable. It took me hours of sleep and got me writing my most complex novel: God’s punishment. The challenge is to write under the most complex circumstances. During these ten years, what have I lost? I know what I gained as a writer: the experience of power ”. Then he concludes: “I am a writer who does not remain silent. I’m like Voltaire, who invented the term intellectual, which is the one that deals with public life, with what seemed unfair to him. From the struggles for independence, we inherited, in Latin America, the idea of ​​the committed intellectual, of the revolutionary intellectual”.

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