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In 1990, one of the world's great writers, Mario Vargas Llosa, ran for the presidency of Peru. The prospect of winning must have been daunting: Peru's unemployment was then 50 percent, the inflation rate stood at 3,000 percent and the government was at war with Shining Path, a guerrilla group known for its brutal acts of terrorism. A fervent leftist in his youth, Vargas Llosa had, over the years, moved toward the center. He became, of all things, a Thatcherite (though today he's a big booster of Tony Blair). During the campaign, the opposition portrayed Vargas Llosa--white, of European background--as establishment. In the end, the author lost to another political neophyte--Alberto Fujimori.
Vargas Llosa left Peru for London and got himself a Spanish passport. After Fujimori's "self coup" on April 5, 1992, in which he shut down congress, suspended the constitution, squelched the media, ordered mass arrests and assumed control of the courts, Vargas Llosa became a virulent critic of the new regime. He was branded a traitor, while Fujimori, now a full-fledged dictator, enjoyed high approval ratings, primarily for bringing down inflation and dealing effectively with Shining Path.
Last May, Fujimori was elected to his third team after an election rife with charges of fraud. In September, a video tape was released that showed Vladimiro Montesinos, Fujimori's chief of intelligence and his No. 2, bribing a congressman. Fujimori left the country for an economic conference in Asia, detoured to Japan and resigned from the presidency--by fax. Montesinos fled for Panama, was denied asylum, snuck back into Peru, ended up in the Galapagos Islands by yacht and was last seen in Venezuela, where he may or may not have undergone plastic surgery.
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NEWSWEEK's Michael J. Agovino spoke with Vargas Llosa, author of "The Time of the Hero," "The War of the End of the World" and "The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto" among others, about the situation in his country.
NEWSWEEK: You've been in Lima for a month-long stay, your longest since you left the country after the loss to Fujimori in 1990. What's the mood in Peru right now?
Mario Vargas Llosa: Incredible. There is an incredible freedom. The most radical change has been the opening of the press and the media in general. Six months ago, still people were extremely afraid, but now everybody's talking--as it should be.
In 1997, you predicted that the 2000 election in Peru would be fraudulent. You were right, but did you ever envision this whole rancid mess that unfolded in the months that followed?
Well, I envisioned what is obvious in Latin America. We have a very long tradition of totalitarian regimes and we know exactly what happens with totalitarian regimes--human-rights abuses, rigged elections and corruption. But I must confess in spite of being more or less aware of what would come, I never thought that the corruption would reach these dimensions. We have had many dictatorships, all of them have been very corrupt, but there is nothing that can be compared with this.
Fujimori is back in the land of his ancestry, Japan, after making a big deal during his campaigns about how Peruvian he was. Does this surprise you?
No. I thought that probably he had no alternative. You know, when it was quite obvious that he was implicated in such scandals--corruptions, killings, desaparasidos [disappearances]--he had no alternative but to escape. And he had the very fortunate possibility to reclaim his Japanese nationality, and now he's very well protected there--and a rich man.
We could criticize Fujimori all day, but he did inherit a difficult job…
Very difficult, oh, no doubt about it, yes.
…Specifically with the Shining Path-a very real and elusive threat. If you had been elected, how would you have handled the terrorism of the Shining Path?
Everything that was done was necessary. But what was not necessary was a coup d'etat, a military takeover and the destruction of democracy. That was not acceptable, and that was not a precondition to defeat Shining Path.
But what would you have done to fight the guerrillas?
Well, I would have mobilized the society with the military and at the same time I would have controlled the military in order to demonstrate that the democratic society, the democratic government, had moral superiority over [those] who were killing, destroying, kidnapping people.... The government became a terrorist government exactly like Shining Path.
But you still never envisioned something as bizarre as what happened with these videotapes?
No. No, I didn't. Nobody did. We had a more primitive, you know, idea of a dictatorship. This is the first, let's say, postmodern, very sophisticated, technological dictatorship, a dictatorship that has used technology in a way that had not been seen before in Latin America. The videotape of Mr. Montesinos is really incredible.
Where do you think Montesinos is right now?
Probably in Venezuela… Apparently he established very good links with the Venezuelan military. He had this plastic surgery and escaped very rapidly from the clinic because he thought that he was being chased. And since then he has disappeared. But my impression is that as he is now so well known that if he's not protected by the Venezuelan military or by some influential Venezuelan people, I think he will be caught soon. Or killed by his partners. Anything can happen with him.
Did you know him?
No. Apparently when I was a candidate he tried to meet me, but no, he never reached me.
Was Montesinos essentially running the country?
I think he was. When you have an authoritarian regime, the base of support of the regime is not the civil society anymore. It is the military. And Montesinos had the control of the military. So he was really the czar of the country, he was the master. And Fujimori became a kind of, well, a figurehead, no? There were sectors that were controlled entirely by Fujimori but not the military. The force was controlled by Montesinos. So the last word was his.
Fujimori gets credit for freeing up the economy, but most of those ideas were yours, basically.
Yes. Unfortunately, you know, this is for me the saddest aspect of what has happened. In the late 1980s we did, I think, a very successful battle in Peru to try to make it understood that it was not possible to develop the country, to become a modern country, without opening the economy, privatizing the public sector, creating a very attractive environment for investments, everything that is quite obvious in modern societies. Although in a formal way this was adopted by the government, at the same time it was entirely discredited by the kind of mafia deals that were done within the government with the complicity of entrepreneurs and businessmen who were privileged, distorting the principle of free markets and real competition. You know that for privatizations, the state during the Fujimori dictatorship earned nearly $9 billion, which is a lot of money for Peru.
Where are they? Where are they? Nobody knows: $9 billion dollars have disappeared! Now people hear the word privatization and immediately think of corruption. Probably this would be the worst lasting effect of the eight years of this regime.
How does Peru get its credibility back?
That will take time, you know? What we need now is honest people, clean people. Not only in the government but also in the parliament, in the judiciary, in the administration. There is such mistrust in everything.
You've come out and supported Alejandro Toledo, Fujimori's chief opposition in the last election. Do you think he could still win the presidency?
I hope so. Because my impression is, well, first that he won the election in April and that this election was stolen by the regime. And on the other hand, and I think it's a more important reason to support Toledo, is that if there is a chance in Peru for the cleaning of these ideas of modernization, of market policies, of let's say liberal policies, it's something that probably will come from, not from above, not from the establishment, but from the popular base of society. And I think this is what Toledo represents: He's from a very poor family; he's an Indian who was born in the slums. He believes in private enterprise, and at the same time he's deeply committed to social reforms, because he knows that the major problems in a country like Peru are poverty, discrimination, lack of opportunities for poor people.
In the United States, Lori Berenson is a cause celebre. Her mother has written a book, The New York Times op-ed page has spoken up for her. But many Peruvians believe that she conspired with a violent terrorist group, Tupac Amaru, and that she should remain in jail. What are your thoughts?
I know her case, yes. I believe that all the trials during the dictatorship were deeply contaminated. But I am not in favor of let's say privilege of certain cases--the case of Lori Berenson--over the others. Injustices were committed not only against her--if they were committed--but I know that many cases were absolutely unacceptable and that many, many people were condemned by the military tribunals in trials that lacked the most elementary rights of the defense. So I am in favor of revision, case by case, of these military trials. But I am not for privileges because let's say one of the accused was a foreigner. No. I think in this case justice must be equal for everybody.
Your new novel, "The Party of the Goats," hasn't been translated into English, but I'm told it's a piece of historical fiction on the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic. Was it intended to be an allegory of the Fujimori years?
No, it was not conceived like that. I had the idea of the book a long time before Fujimori.
But you know, if you describe a dictatorship, particularly a Latin American one, you describe all the Latin American dictatorships, because so many share the same ideas.
So when the book was published and presented in Peru, many Peruvians thought that I was describing Fujimori and Montesinos behind Trujillo and his intelligence man, Albert Garcia, who was very, very similar to Montesinos. But it wasn't done deliberately then--but maybe unconsciously.
In your memoir about the campaign, "A Fish in the Water," you pretty much admitted that you weren't political enough to be a politician. What would you have done differently in the campaign to defeat Fujimori?
It's so difficult to say. I thought I made many mistakes, but it was probably more than these mistakes that produced the Fujimori victory. I think it was a mood, a mood in the country and the idea that someone coming from nowhere represented better the popular aspirations and ideals than someone who came from the establishment. I was pictured as someone from the establishment very successfully by my adversaries. And so probably that was the main reason for my defeat. Fujimori was thought to be representative of the popular Peru, of the victims of discrimination, of injustice. That was not the case. Actually, Fujimori was a richer man than myself, as we discovered later. I think I was a very bad politician. I am not a politician. I am a writer. But I am not against participation in politics. If you want to change things, you must participate in politics. But not necessarily as a candidate.
So it's safe to say, again, as you said in the memoir, that you will definitely not re-enter the political arena?
Never more. No, no. I'll write. I'll keep participating, of course. Writing, intervening, you know. Yes, I think this is part of a writer's obligation, a writer's responsibility, a civic responsibility.
You've written a lot in the past about the government of Peru, the military especially. Will this be a Mario Vargas Llosa novel someday, this whole imbroglio?
Well, who knows? I am now in a very different project. But who knows. Many things are wrong in my country, but at least the material for writing is so rich--the richest in the world.
What are you working on, by the way?
I am working on a novel based on the lives of Flora Tristan, a very, very interesting woman in the 19th century, a French feminist, who had a very adventurous life, denounced discrimination of women, discrimination of children. And she was the great model of Paul Gauguin, the painter. And both were linked to Peru, you know, because her father was Peruvian and Gauguin lived in Peru during his childhood. And it's very, very interesting the way in which Peru has been a strong influence in the life of these two French people, no? It's a very free version of these lives. Particularly exploring what utopia meant for them.
You left Peru, what, three days after you lost the election?
More or less, yeah. Two, three, four days, yes.
And you only returned for very short visits, and barely even that. There was a lot of animosity toward you.
That's right. It was a great animosity. It was very sad. I was considered a traitor because I attacked the government and I said it was a dictatorship. And of course the regime used all this very much against me. I remember I was insulted in the street--you can't imagine. That was very understandable, because the government had the control of the media, the media was totally manipulated. And so they could destroy entirely a reputation, an image. And that was in a way my case.
Has that changed?
Yes, now I walk in the streets and people are so friendly and kind. There's been a difference.
You have a very complicated relationship with Peru…
I'll always have a very difficult relationship with my country. Which I think, well, is quite normal with writers.
…You're a son that they're dearly proud of, but it's been a fractured relationship. You're attracted to Peru, Peru's attracted to you, but you've been repelled by each other, too.
I think this is a good description. I was not repelled by my country, but I was repelled by what was happening in those years and deeply saddened by the idea that this was being supported by very large sections of the society.
How do you mend that relationship? Or do you?
Well, this has been changing a lot the last few years ago. The public opinion changed dramatically in Peru against the regime. And I wouldn't say that because of that I became popular, but many people discovered that it was very unjust to consider me a traitor because I was denouncing what now people were denouncing, too.
Will you move back to Peru for good?
No. No, not at all. I'll try to keep all my life between Peru and between Europe. I feel at home in both places. What will change is that now I'll come [to Peru] more frequently and for longer periods of time. I will be back for the elections in April. But I feel also at home in Europe. I can have privacy, you know, and isolation that is impossible in Peru.
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