Mario Vargas Llosa, jurist
By: Luis Beltrán Guerra G. - 25/05/2025
Share:
I met the Nobel Prize winner in literature, along with his son Álvaro, through our friends Beatrice Rangel, Carlos Alberto Montaner, and the prominent Bolivian politician, Carlos Sánchez Berzain, founder of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.
For the occasion, I had already read some of his books, almost memorizing "Hard Times," whose pages, according to recognized experts, brilliantly narrate "the lie that changed the history of a continent." It reads that "the military coup perpetrated by Carlos Castillo Armas overthrew the government of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala, elected Prime Minister by popular vote, an event that, in the writer's opinion, "changed the future of Latin America." The reason given, essentially phantasmagorical, is that Arbenz would lead the entry of Soviet communism into the continent. In the novelist's opinion, it was the creation of a hoax by businessmen who exploited the production and marketing of bananas on Guatemalan soil, of course, paying peanuts to farmers displaced from their own lands. He also adds that the terrible event postponed the democratization of the continent for decades, but that, in addition, it led to the popularization of the "myth of the armed revolution" and of "a presumed socialism," which is still difficult to define.
The person writing these lines had the opportunity to visit Buenos Aires, and was fortunate enough to have purchased at the Paidos Bookstore the compendium "Revolutions: Legal Theory and Sociological Considerations," written by Ulises Schmill Ordóñez, professor of General Legal Theory at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM). It has caught our attention, even more now than then, that Mario Vargas Llosa is the author of the chapter "The Meaning of Democracy: Stasis versus Democracy." The extremely important considerations he raises have been precisely those that have led us to classify Mario Vargas Llosa as a "jurist." And even more so when we turn to linguistics to enlighten us regarding the meaning of the word "Stasis," we conclude that we South Americans would have felt more identified with the term "The Meaning of "Stagnant" Democracy versus True Democracy," since it is more revealing of our political failures. The epigraph of the writer's essay alone reveals the depth of the analysis by the man who was first a "jurist" and later a Nobel laureate. Let's read it: "Unlike what happens in France or Latin America, revolutions in the United States are peaceful; they are not carried out on barricades but at the ballot box, and not with bombs or bullets but with votes and words (well, often slogans)." And this is further confirmed in the determining ideas of this native of Arequipa: 1. In democracy and in “stasis” we find discord and the formation of groups with contradictory purposes that fight each other, 2. There are notable differences between both social processes, since “stasis” is antithetical to the democratic one, whose fundamental purpose is the preservation of peace and the avoidance of war, 3. The latter has as its main function to establish a specific metric of the relative strength of social groups, 4. To postulate, consequently, a procedure as a ritualization of the struggle, 5. To peacefully determine the winner in a war at a symbolic level and 6. To avoid falling into the counterfactual plane, inexcusably, of a “stasis”. All of this, logically, as long as “the democratic principle” governs (End of epigraph).
Let us not ignore the fact that the distinguished writer specifies that the overthrow in Guatemala of a popularly elected First Magistrate led to banners that we have carried throughout the decades and that today decisively feed "compansas", in the opinion of a few, "banderillas of professional politicians", ignorant, even, of "socialism", encompassing, without their knowledge, the "utopian" and that have only reached "literary fantasy".
It is said, by the way, that Thomas More, in a burst of fantasy, tried to define "utopia" as that "imaginary country" (consistent in our underdeveloped Latin America) where the ancient Atlantis was located, a legendary city where private property did not exist, authorities were elected, including the king, and whose social base was the family of 40 members and two slaves. A society (if it could be called that) without an army and with absolute tolerance of cults. For Plato, "a rich and advanced civilization, whose real existence, as we read, raises more questions than answers. Fortunately, it provokes writing, those who have appropriated the voice of the people on our continent, for the most part, must be unaware of "Atlantis," because otherwise, they would be offering it in their false proposals."
Intellectual concerns, whose satisfaction takes, by the way, more time than dealing with them themselves, at least, so that they don't upset you too much, led us to buy a few years later in Santiago de Chile a compendium, fortunately 57 pages long, but with a cast of socialist academics, whose ideas, if we analyzed them rationally, would lead to a kind of "negotiation", that is, "a negotiation in which an agreement is sought", through which, for the sake of methodology, the researchers Domingo Vidal, utopias; Ignacio Ramonet, Needs of utopia; Serge Halimi, Our utopia against theirs; Álvaro Ramis, Corporate social responsibility: Utopia or make-up?; Eric Dupin, Degrowth, among the ideas that are making their way; Emile Guyonet, The utopia of the perfect son; Marx strikes back; Luvien Seve and Cornelius Castoriadis, The Privatized Individual, title of the aforementioned collection "Utopias: Old and New Dreams" (Monde diplomatique, Publisher "We Still Believe in Dreams", 2010). It's not inappropriate to flip through the pages of "Utopias," combining them with the expressions of Pepe Mujica, the sui generis socialist of the century, who, almost hours before his death, said, "I belong to a generation that thought socialism was just around the corner; my youth belongs to the world of illusion. The passage of history has shown us that it was much more difficult. And we learned that, to have a better humanity, the cultural question is as important, if not more so, than the material. You can change the material, but if you don't change the culture, there is no change. True change is inside the mind. Many who were socialist in their convictions emigrated to capitalism, and then there are others, like me, who try to manage what we can of capitalism. But the solution is not capitalism; we must find something else, other paths. We belong to that search" (Martín Caparros, El País, Spain).
The compendium "Utopias," which is certainly interesting, contrasts, as can be seen, what might be described as "pure theorizing" with the exaggeratedly realistic "pragmatism" analyzed by Nobel Prize winner Vargas Llosa with the pen provided by Providence. Two "panas" (cronies / Drae) looking for something to do in the dynamic city of New York, the more urbane one decides to dedicate himself to "lobbying" (actions to influence public decisions, usually in the political and legislative sphere, through meetings with authorities or representatives, but also through the promotion of public policies). The second, slightly less pretentious than the first, but no less avaricious, is dedicated to the planting, cultivation, and marketing of bananas in Guatemala and other Central American countries, given the vocation of their lands for the production of the coveted fruit. Both earn a lot of money, but the banana producer considerably more. He fears the alleged leftist leanings of the Arbenz government, so he entrusts the lobbyist with a campaign (lobbying, of course) to prevent the electoral victory. He fails, however, and does succeed in getting him removed from the government, three years later, to which he had been democratically elected. The Nobel Prize winner's wise pen glides into pages that make your hair stand on end, not only because of the fact, but because of the cumulative history of dictatorships in most of Latin America. The writer doesn't mention the amount of fees involved, but it must be assumed that it must have been considerable and in hard currency. Not bananas.
The Nobel Prize, it should be noted, brings to mind the Austrian jurist and philosopher Hans Kelsen, the author of the Pure Theory of Law, who, in his opinion, "rules out that the principle of majorities can be derived from the concept of political equality." Kelsen, therefore, in the opinion of Vargas Llosa, postulates a concept of subjectivist freedom: I am free if I participate in the process of formation of the state's will (law or norm) and this has a content that coincides with that of my will. I am free if there is a coincidence between my will and the social order. The writer considers that although the derivation of the principle of majorities from the concept of equality may be described as "shocking," for him it is the path to understanding democracy. The philosophical considerations between Kelsen and the writer, of course, should not have been present at all between the "lobbyist and the banana king," regarding the coup overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz, described as "the final death blow to democracy in Guatemala," but also to that of neighboring countries.
The sad chapter of Jacobo Arbenz's overthrow seems to lead us, perhaps, to insert ourselves into "the scenario of pragmatism," believing that "lobbying," just as it is useful for demolishing the freedom of peoples and condemning them to their own destinies, can also be used to rescue "democracies cornered" by vines imbued with skepticism, such as the so-called "methodology of the big stick," the only way to discipline those of us fortunate enough to be born and live in these communities. When faced with what could be a challenge between surrender and struggle, one must be sure that both present obstacles, such as those faced, for example, by "Sisyphus," a character in Greek mythology. His eternal punishment is "spending his days pushing a huge boulder to the top of the mountain, but the boulder falls and rolls back to the bottom." Could this be the hypothesis of political freedom in today's world? The question remains pertinent. The answer is complex, and even more so if we look at history.
Vargas Llosa, as you can read, was once asked, "When did Latin America go to hell?" It's said that initially, with irony, he was induced to write "Conversation in the Cathedral" with "Hard Times," to which he replied, "A country doesn't go to hell in a day. It's been a long process in which many opportunities have been lost. Bolívar's dream failed, the little dictators stayed, and our responsibility is enormous... My novel shows a Latin America of horror, of barbarism and violence, a world much attracted to fiction, but not to real life. The figure of Jacobo Árbenz is worth studying and vindicating."
Vargas Llosa, in his role as a jurist and even a philosopher, argues that "the concept of freedom" has been the counterpoint to all social speculation, just as "the state of nature" has been postulated in order to build, through the social contract, the balance between the social and the state. Freedom, he adds, is more inextricably linked with equality, so it must be understood that they govern together in social reality.
Thanks to those who introduced me to the genius from Arequipa. And my admiration for his son, Álvaro, for his words, "Funeral eulogy for my father Mario Varga Llosa (I share with the readers the essence of what I said at his body)," published in El Pais (Spain). The son used to call his father "My dear Varga Llosa."
Comments welcome.
«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».