Mario Vargas Losa and his mechanical currency

The death of Mario Vargas Losa and her political impact

the The death of Mario Vargas Losa in 89, Not only leaves the void in the literary world, but it leaves a historical wound in Mexican politics. Behind his novels and articles, Nobel announced in Peru that is a phrase that was distinguished by a generation: “Mexico is the ideal dictatorship.” The sentence that bothered the authority, and the excused exclusive close to the system and has become a symbol of criticism that is still valid after decades.

It was in 1990, in a Forum organized by Octavio Baz And broadcast on national television, where Vargas Losa He released the phrase that would change his relationship with Mexico forever.

“The ideal dictatorship is not communism, it is not the Soviet Union, it is not Videl Castro. The ideal dictatorship is Mexico,” he said.

On the day the elite shook

The forum was entitled Freedom experience He combined the characters of liberal thought such as Francois Fort, Massimo Casari, and Cruz and Salam itself. Vargas Llosa, instead of talking about Eastern Europe as expected, His criticism focused on the Pri system, He accused him of simulating democracy under strong control of power.

Octavio Baz, I was surprised, with the cold: “There is no dictatorship here, there is political dominance and treatment, but civil society has not been destroyed.” From that moment on, the forum lost friendliness. The phrase had already done its work.

From Pri, reactions ranged between contempt and discontent. Senator Manuel Bartlette described the statement at the time as “a provocation based on the country’s ignorance.” Other legislators asked Vargas Llosa to “be better aware before the judgments.”

The official reaction and its cultural resonance

In the official press, he was accused of “intervention” and “intellectual difference”. However, in critical spaces and universities, The phrase is run as gunpowder. It was adopted by young opponents, academics and emerging leaders as a way to describe the Pri system without resorting to technical aspects.

The “perfect dictatorship” not only became media clichies. In 2014, he inspired a satirical movie of the same name, directed by Luis Estrada, who criticized the symbiotic relationship between political power and the media in Mexico. The cultural influence of this phrase was that today it was studied in science courses policyContemporary history and communication.

In 2011, Vargas Llosa returned on this topic: “The dictatorship was not perfect, because it ended,” referring to the end of Pri dominance in 2000. But he also warned that the danger of new authoritarian forms continued.

The new goal to criticize him

In 2018, during the presidential campaign, Vargas Llosa publicly expressed his concern And Intisar, Manuel Lopez Obrador. Without his appointment, he warned of “populism that can undermine democracy from within.”

Indeed, as president, Lopez Obrador responded to the paradox of his morning conference:

“I respect him as a writer, but politically, he is even royal. He has participated.”

This will not be the last time that Nobel has criticized the Mexican government. In recent years, he talked about “authoritarian decline” and “the danger of judgment in a matter of separation as a compass.”

An integrated dynamite phrase

The famous phrase Mario Vargas Losa on Mexico is like “The ideal dictatorship”, He had a profound resonance because it coincided with a moment of lack of confidence in the political system headed by Pri. By that time, the party was governing the country without interruption for 70 years, with an electoral mechanism and media that allowed to maintain a democratic appearance, without real rotation in power.

Several studies, such as the historian Lorenzo Meyer, have documented how the Pri system has organized a customer -based political monitoring system, the participation of opponents and the strategic use of the media.

It was not only the effect of a semantic or rhetorical phrase. According to the press records at that time “Including files from.” joinery–The water gatherings were born in the national intellectual debate. In particular, he divided the academy and press sectors that, until then, was reluctant to rehabilitate the system as authoritarian.

Impact on the academy and cinema

From the National University of Mexico (UNAM), academics such as Rolando Cordera and Dinis Sterir have resumed a concept to analyze what was called “tyranny with the democratic interface.”

Film The perfect dictatorship (2014) by Luis Estrada, whose name takes directly from the phrase Vargas Llosa, was also subject to controversy. Although she has a strong reception – with more than 4 million viewers in Salas, according to the data of the Mexican Institute of Cinema (BOMDINE) – he faced its distribution obstacles, which feed doubts about indirect control.

Vargas Losa’s political and literary legacy

The dependency between Vargas Llosa and left -wing governments in Latin America were not exclusive to Mexico. He was a strong critic of Chavzmo in Venezuela, From Castroni in Cuba and Kirchnerism in Argentina. In his last years, he publicly supported governments and candidates for the liberal and governorate court, such as Kiko Fujimori in Peru and the re -election of Isabel Diaz Ayu in Madrid, which earned him criticism for leaving progressive positions.

In this sense, the words of President Lopez Obrador, described it as “royal”, referred to his general support for Spanish parliamentary property, which Vargas Losa defended as a guarantor of institutional stability against “populism”.

Mario Vargas Losa was the first Spanish linguistic writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in the twenty -first century (2010), who received “mapping of power structures and images of individual resistance, rebellion and defeat,” according to the Swedish jury law.

Floor

His relationship with Mexico, despite political tensions, was large -scale: He lived in the country for several periods, He published with Mexican publishers such as Joaquín Mortiz and participated in the literary symposium and countless festivals.

A few writers managed to change the path of political debate in one phrase. Vargas llosa succeeded. Its diagnosis, despite its discussion, forced the Mexican political class to consider the mirror. It was not a comfortable diagnosis, but yes.

Today, when you say goodbye, not only remember the narrative Mexico, but also remember the intellectual who dared to disturb. An acute phrase is still alive, as a reminder that democracies, to be really, cannot depend on eternal appearances or parties.

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