WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.339 Okay, let's unpack this. Welcome back to another 00:00:03.339 --> 00:00:06.080 deep dive. Today we are tackling a subject that 00:00:06.080 --> 00:00:11.640 feels incredibly heavy, but also absolutely necessary. 00:00:11.919 --> 00:00:15.660 We are looking at the life of a man who was in 00:00:15.660 --> 00:00:18.260 so many ways the last giant standing. Indeed. 00:00:18.809 --> 00:00:20.929 We are talking about Mario Vargas Llosa. And 00:00:20.929 --> 00:00:24.410 as we record this, it is January 2026. The world 00:00:24.410 --> 00:00:26.850 is really still processing his death, which happened 00:00:26.850 --> 00:00:29.789 less than a year ago, back in April of 2025. 00:00:30.370 --> 00:00:32.750 It feels like the closing of a massive chapter 00:00:32.750 --> 00:00:34.869 in literary history, doesn't it? Oh, absolutely. 00:00:35.030 --> 00:00:37.509 It's like the final curtain call on a specific 00:00:37.509 --> 00:00:39.990 era of greatness. Right. You know, when we talk 00:00:39.990 --> 00:00:41.729 about the Latin American boom, that explosion 00:00:41.729 --> 00:00:44.630 of literature in the 60s and 70s that completely 00:00:44.630 --> 00:00:47.750 changed how the whole world reads fiction. Vargas 00:00:47.750 --> 00:00:49.810 Llosa was one of the central pillars. Maybe the 00:00:49.810 --> 00:00:51.549 sturdiest pillar. I think you could argue that. 00:00:51.689 --> 00:00:54.969 And with his passing, that era has definitively 00:00:54.969 --> 00:00:57.030 moved from living memory into the history books. 00:00:57.270 --> 00:00:59.310 We are no longer living in the time of the boom. 00:00:59.409 --> 00:01:02.609 We're now living in its aftermath. And our mission 00:01:02.609 --> 00:01:06.450 today is to unpack a life that was frankly exhausting 00:01:06.450 --> 00:01:08.969 just to read about. I mean, this guy wasn't just 00:01:08.969 --> 00:01:11.969 a writer. Yeah. He was a politician, a literal 00:01:11.969 --> 00:01:16.079 nobleman, a marquess, a brawler. a Nobel Prize 00:01:16.079 --> 00:01:19.620 winner, and a man whose personal life was just 00:01:19.620 --> 00:01:21.920 as dramatic as any of his novels. It's true. 00:01:22.200 --> 00:01:24.900 If you wrote his biography as a work of fiction, 00:01:25.060 --> 00:01:27.739 an editor would tell you to tone it down. They'd 00:01:27.739 --> 00:01:30.400 say it's too implausible. Exactly. He was often 00:01:30.400 --> 00:01:33.819 described as a cartographer of power. That was 00:01:33.819 --> 00:01:35.980 actually part of the citation when he won the 00:01:35.980 --> 00:01:37.939 Nobel Prize. A cartographer of power. I like 00:01:37.939 --> 00:01:40.459 that. It's perfect for him. He mapped out how 00:01:40.459 --> 00:01:43.420 authority, rebellion, and defeat work in the 00:01:43.420 --> 00:01:46.040 human soul. But what makes him so fascinating 00:01:46.040 --> 00:01:47.760 to study is that he didn't just write about these 00:01:47.760 --> 00:01:50.079 things from a desk in Paris or London. No, he 00:01:50.079 --> 00:01:52.739 lived them. He lived them. His life mirrored 00:01:52.739 --> 00:01:55.060 the turbulent history of Latin America in the 00:01:55.060 --> 00:01:57.319 20th and 21st centuries. He was in the trenches. 00:01:57.719 --> 00:02:00.060 Exactly. We have a massive stack of sources here. 00:02:00.500 --> 00:02:03.129 Biographical records, detailed breakdowns. of 00:02:03.129 --> 00:02:05.489 his literary works, reports on his political 00:02:05.489 --> 00:02:09.469 shifts and coverage of his global impact. Yeah. 00:02:09.610 --> 00:02:11.270 And we need to parse through all of it because 00:02:11.270 --> 00:02:13.710 depending on who you ask, he was a hero of liberty 00:02:13.710 --> 00:02:16.169 or a traitor to the left. Right. He was a disciplined 00:02:16.169 --> 00:02:18.650 artist or a tabloid scandal waiting to happen. 00:02:18.770 --> 00:02:21.330 He was all of it. And that tension is exactly 00:02:21.330 --> 00:02:23.469 where we should start. I mean. If you want to 00:02:23.469 --> 00:02:25.710 understand Vargas Llosa, you have to look at 00:02:25.710 --> 00:02:27.849 the central conflict that defined his entire 00:02:27.849 --> 00:02:30.770 life, the individual versus the oppressive structure, 00:02:31.009 --> 00:02:33.430 whether that structure was a military academy, 00:02:33.870 --> 00:02:37.370 a dictatorship, a fanatic ideology, or even his 00:02:37.370 --> 00:02:40.189 own family. He spent 89 years fighting against 00:02:40.189 --> 00:02:42.210 anything that tried to put him in a cage. Right. 00:02:42.289 --> 00:02:44.229 So let's rewind. Let's go all the way back to 00:02:44.229 --> 00:02:46.789 the beginning. Because his origin story has a 00:02:46.789 --> 00:02:48.330 plot twist that sounds like something out of 00:02:48.330 --> 00:02:50.860 a soap opera or a telenovela. To be precise. 00:02:51.000 --> 00:02:54.319 It really does. So he was born in Arequipa, Peru 00:02:54.319 --> 00:02:58.919 in 1936 to a middle class family. But the defining 00:02:58.919 --> 00:03:01.259 event of his childhood happened before he could 00:03:01.259 --> 00:03:03.759 even remember it. His parents separated just 00:03:03.759 --> 00:03:05.680 a few months before he was born. And this is 00:03:05.680 --> 00:03:07.400 where the deception comes in. This isn't just 00:03:07.400 --> 00:03:09.780 a quiet separation. It's a full on cover up. 00:03:09.879 --> 00:03:12.800 It's a total cover up. He was raised by his mother 00:03:12.800 --> 00:03:16.020 and her family, the Yosis. They lived in Arequipa. 00:03:16.039 --> 00:03:18.120 Then they moved to Cochabamba in Bolivia and 00:03:18.120 --> 00:03:21.259 later to Piura in northern Peru. And for the 00:03:21.259 --> 00:03:24.280 first 10 years of his life. Mario was told a 00:03:24.280 --> 00:03:27.360 lie. A huge lie. He was led to believe that his 00:03:27.360 --> 00:03:29.560 father was dead. Can you just imagine that? You're 00:03:29.560 --> 00:03:31.879 growing up, you're surrounded by this nurturing 00:03:31.879 --> 00:03:35.240 maternal family. His grandfather, who managed 00:03:35.240 --> 00:03:38.219 a cotton farm, basically sustained them. Right. 00:03:38.280 --> 00:03:40.879 He's the center of attention, surrounded by aunts 00:03:40.879 --> 00:03:43.699 and a doting mother. He has this image of a father 00:03:43.699 --> 00:03:46.539 who is gone, maybe a tragic figure, maybe a hero 00:03:46.539 --> 00:03:48.759 in his mind, but definitely absent. And then, 00:03:48.840 --> 00:03:52.849 at age 10... The reveal. It happened in Piura 00:03:52.849 --> 00:03:56.569 in 1946. He needs his father, Ernesto Vargas 00:03:56.569 --> 00:03:59.389 Maldonado, for the very first time. And it turns 00:03:59.389 --> 00:04:02.610 out not only is his father very much alive, but 00:04:02.610 --> 00:04:04.509 his parents have decided to get back together. 00:04:04.789 --> 00:04:07.590 That has to be traumatic. You go from my father 00:04:07.590 --> 00:04:11.129 is a ghost to my father is this stranger standing 00:04:11.129 --> 00:04:14.289 in the living room. Yeah. And from what I've 00:04:14.289 --> 00:04:16.769 read, Ernesto wasn't exactly father of the year 00:04:16.769 --> 00:04:20.500 material. No, far from it. And it wasn't a happy 00:04:20.500 --> 00:04:23.360 reunion for young Mario at all. The family moved 00:04:23.360 --> 00:04:26.180 to Lima, specifically to the suburb of Magdalene 00:04:26.180 --> 00:04:28.969 del Mar. And the whole environment shifted. He 00:04:28.969 --> 00:04:30.949 went from a pampered, affectionate environment 00:04:30.949 --> 00:04:32.629 in his grandfather's house where imagination 00:04:32.629 --> 00:04:34.689 was encouraged, where books were a good thing, 00:04:34.790 --> 00:04:37.050 to living with a father who was authoritarian, 00:04:37.550 --> 00:04:40.050 harsh, and frankly resentful of Mario's literary 00:04:40.050 --> 00:04:43.110 interests. Wow. This sudden imposition of discipline 00:04:43.110 --> 00:04:45.889 and, you know, this very toxic masculine authority 00:04:45.889 --> 00:04:48.629 was a complete shock to his system. It sounded 00:04:48.629 --> 00:04:50.930 like his father viewed Mario's love of reading 00:04:50.930 --> 00:04:53.009 and poetry as a weakness, like it was something 00:04:53.009 --> 00:04:55.079 that needed to be beaten out of him. That's a 00:04:55.079 --> 00:04:57.720 very accurate way to put it. His father feared 00:04:57.720 --> 00:04:59.939 his son was becoming effeminate because he was 00:04:59.939 --> 00:05:03.879 raised by women. So when Mario was 14, his dad 00:05:03.879 --> 00:05:06.040 decided he needed to be straightened out. He 00:05:06.040 --> 00:05:09.339 needed a dose of real manhood. Yes. And here 00:05:09.339 --> 00:05:12.040 is where the origin story turns into, well, kind 00:05:12.040 --> 00:05:14.519 of a horror movie for a sensitive kid. This is 00:05:14.519 --> 00:05:17.680 a huge moment. In 1950, his father sent him to 00:05:17.680 --> 00:05:21.959 the Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima. Leoncio 00:05:21.959 --> 00:05:23.839 Prado. You should keep that name in mind because 00:05:23.839 --> 00:05:25.550 it is... going to come up again in a very big 00:05:25.550 --> 00:05:28.170 way. It was a boarding school and by all accounts, 00:05:28.410 --> 00:05:31.230 just a brutal environment. It was a microcosm 00:05:31.230 --> 00:05:34.610 of Peruvian society at its worst. How so? Well, 00:05:34.730 --> 00:05:36.709 you had boys from all different social classes 00:05:36.709 --> 00:05:38.810 and races thrown together, but ruled by this 00:05:38.810 --> 00:05:42.170 rigid, violent hierarchy. Bullying was rampant. 00:05:42.449 --> 00:05:45.269 Hazing was basically institutionalized. For a 00:05:45.269 --> 00:05:47.790 sensitive boy who loved to read, it was hell. 00:05:48.009 --> 00:05:49.170 But if we're looking at this from a literary 00:05:49.170 --> 00:05:51.250 perspective, this was the foundational trauma, 00:05:51.389 --> 00:05:53.759 wasn't it? This is the crucible. Absolutely. 00:05:54.180 --> 00:05:58.199 This specific event being thrust from that maternal 00:05:58.199 --> 00:06:02.060 world into this harsh, violent, masculine military 00:06:02.060 --> 00:06:05.019 world, it gave him the raw material for his first 00:06:05.019 --> 00:06:07.620 masterpiece. He learned about power dynamics 00:06:07.620 --> 00:06:10.079 there. Right. He learned how the strong crush 00:06:10.079 --> 00:06:12.620 the weak and how institutions protect the strong. 00:06:12.819 --> 00:06:14.779 He hated every second of it, but it made him 00:06:14.779 --> 00:06:16.759 a writer. But he didn't just sit there and take 00:06:16.759 --> 00:06:19.220 it. He started rebelling pretty early on, right? 00:06:19.240 --> 00:06:21.579 Oh, yeah, he did. He actually withdrew from the 00:06:21.579 --> 00:06:23.420 academy before graduation. graduating and finished 00:06:23.420 --> 00:06:25.920 his studies back in Piura. But the rebellion 00:06:25.920 --> 00:06:28.279 took other forms, too. He started working as 00:06:28.279 --> 00:06:30.759 a journalist at age 16 for a local paper called 00:06:30.759 --> 00:06:35.740 Law Industria. 16. 16. And then in 1953, when 00:06:35.740 --> 00:06:37.720 he went to university at San Marcos in Lima, 00:06:37.920 --> 00:06:41.560 he did what many young, angry intellectuals did 00:06:41.560 --> 00:06:44.740 at the time. He embraced communism. Which makes 00:06:44.740 --> 00:06:46.459 a certain kind of sense. You look around at the 00:06:46.459 --> 00:06:48.879 corruption and inequality in Peru, and you look 00:06:48.879 --> 00:06:50.899 for a system that promises to fix it all. Of 00:06:50.899 --> 00:06:52.980 course. If the establishment is your abusive 00:06:52.980 --> 00:06:55.319 father in that horrible military school, then 00:06:55.319 --> 00:06:57.399 the anti -establishment must be the solution. 00:06:57.819 --> 00:07:00.819 Exactly. He joined a small communist group, a 00:07:00.819 --> 00:07:03.620 cell named Cahuayde. It was a reaction to the 00:07:03.620 --> 00:07:06.519 endemic inequality he saw everywhere. But his 00:07:06.519 --> 00:07:09.180 rebellion against authority also bled into his 00:07:09.180 --> 00:07:11.600 personal life. Well, this is a big one. At age 00:07:11.600 --> 00:07:14.220 19, he did something that shocked his family 00:07:14.220 --> 00:07:17.740 even more than the communism. He married Julia 00:07:17.740 --> 00:07:20.680 Urquidy. And we have to clarify who Julia was. 00:07:20.800 --> 00:07:23.680 Because the family tree gets a little tangled 00:07:23.680 --> 00:07:26.519 here. It does. She was his maternal uncle's sister 00:07:26.519 --> 00:07:28.759 -in -law. Okay, so let's be crystal clear. Not 00:07:28.759 --> 00:07:32.009 a blood relative. No genetic issues here. but 00:07:32.009 --> 00:07:34.129 definitely family in the social sense of the 00:07:34.129 --> 00:07:36.069 word. And she was older. Significantly older. 00:07:36.250 --> 00:07:39.170 Ten years older. He was 19. She was 29 and divorced. 00:07:39.490 --> 00:07:42.990 In conservative Catholic Lima in the 1950s, this 00:07:42.990 --> 00:07:45.930 was a massive scandal. It was a huge act of defiance. 00:07:45.970 --> 00:07:48.709 The biggest. It was a massive defiance of family 00:07:48.709 --> 00:07:51.949 norms, of social expectations. It was him asserting 00:07:51.949 --> 00:07:53.970 his independence in the most dramatic way possible. 00:07:54.170 --> 00:07:56.329 He was basically shouting, I choose who I love, 00:07:56.370 --> 00:07:58.389 regardless of what any of you think. It sounds 00:07:58.389 --> 00:08:00.959 chaotic. but it also seemed to fuel his work 00:08:00.959 --> 00:08:03.339 ethic like he had to prove everyone wrong. It 00:08:03.339 --> 00:08:05.839 absolutely marked the beginning of his serious 00:08:05.839 --> 00:08:08.360 literary grind. He was working multiple jobs 00:08:08.360 --> 00:08:10.839 to support them. He was a radio news editor. 00:08:11.120 --> 00:08:13.800 He was cataloging names on tombstones. Wait, 00:08:13.899 --> 00:08:16.120 really? On tombstones? Yes, whatever he could 00:08:16.120 --> 00:08:17.819 do to pay the bills. And then he was writing 00:08:17.819 --> 00:08:20.779 short stories all night trying to find his voice. 00:08:21.079 --> 00:08:23.079 And finding that voice didn't take long. Yeah. 00:08:23.180 --> 00:08:25.740 Let's jump to the 1960s. This is the era of the 00:08:25.740 --> 00:08:27.839 Latin American boom. And we throw around this 00:08:27.839 --> 00:08:29.699 term, the boom, but we need to really explain 00:08:29.699 --> 00:08:32.799 what that meant in the 1960s. Before this, Latin 00:08:32.799 --> 00:08:35.120 America was seen by the West essentially as, 00:08:35.200 --> 00:08:37.059 you know, a banana farm that occasionally had 00:08:37.059 --> 00:08:40.600 coups. Cultural backwater. Exactly. Europe and 00:08:40.600 --> 00:08:42.759 the U .S., they weren't reading books from Peru 00:08:42.759 --> 00:08:46.019 or Colombia. Barely. And then suddenly you have 00:08:46.019 --> 00:08:47.500 this explosion. It wasn't just that the books 00:08:47.500 --> 00:08:49.360 were good. It was that they were new. They were 00:08:49.360 --> 00:08:51.279 doing something different. They took the modernism 00:08:51.279 --> 00:08:54.019 of Europe, you know, Faulkner, Joyce, and they 00:08:54.019 --> 00:08:56.940 mixed it with the brutal political reality and 00:08:56.940 --> 00:09:01.570 the mythology of Latin America. Exploding onto 00:09:01.570 --> 00:09:04.090 the scene is this young Peruvian guy with a book 00:09:04.090 --> 00:09:06.789 called The Time of the Hero, or in Spanish, La 00:09:06.789 --> 00:09:10.289 Ciudad y los Perros. Published in 1963, and remember 00:09:10.289 --> 00:09:13.870 Leoncio Prado, the military academy. Oh, I remember. 00:09:14.169 --> 00:09:16.129 The place where he was sent to be straightened 00:09:16.129 --> 00:09:18.450 out. This book was a direct fictionalization 00:09:18.450 --> 00:09:21.190 of his time there. It portrayed the academy not 00:09:21.190 --> 00:09:23.509 as a place of honor and discipline, but as a 00:09:23.509 --> 00:09:26.629 snake pit of bullying, corruption, gambling, 00:09:26.809 --> 00:09:29.309 and cruelty. So he just aired all the dirty laundry. 00:09:29.570 --> 00:09:32.460 All of it. He showed how the institution mocked 00:09:32.460 --> 00:09:34.779 the very moral standards it was supposed to uphold. 00:09:35.080 --> 00:09:38.480 And the reaction in Peru was, well, was it explosive? 00:09:38.740 --> 00:09:41.019 To put it mildly, critically, it was a smash 00:09:41.019 --> 00:09:43.759 hit. It won the Premio de la Critica Española. 00:09:43.860 --> 00:09:46.480 But the Peruvian military establishment, they 00:09:46.480 --> 00:09:49.480 were absolutely furious. Generals publicly attacked 00:09:49.480 --> 00:09:51.919 the novel. They called it the work of a degenerate 00:09:51.919 --> 00:09:54.000 mind. I love this detail. They claimed he was 00:09:54.000 --> 00:09:56.299 paid by Ecuador to undermine the Peruvian army. 00:09:56.669 --> 00:09:58.889 That was the official accusation. You have to 00:09:58.889 --> 00:10:01.470 remember, Peru and Ecuador have had border conflicts 00:10:01.470 --> 00:10:04.350 for decades. So accusing him of being a paid 00:10:04.350 --> 00:10:06.909 agent of Ecuador was a very specific way to paint 00:10:06.909 --> 00:10:09.409 him as a traitor. It's so over the top. And they 00:10:09.409 --> 00:10:11.649 even burned copies of the book in the courtyard 00:10:11.649 --> 00:10:15.289 of the academy. A public book burning. They burned 00:10:15.289 --> 00:10:18.490 the books. I feel like if you're a writer, having 00:10:18.490 --> 00:10:20.470 the army burn your books is basically the best 00:10:20.470 --> 00:10:22.429 marketing campaign you could ever ask for. It 00:10:22.429 --> 00:10:24.590 kind of is, isn't it? It proves you matter. It 00:10:24.590 --> 00:10:26.789 proves your words have power. And it established 00:10:26.789 --> 00:10:29.610 his role immediately. He wasn't just a storyteller. 00:10:29.669 --> 00:10:31.970 He was a public enemy of established authority. 00:10:32.370 --> 00:10:35.090 He was willing to tell the ugly truth about sacred 00:10:35.090 --> 00:10:37.950 institutions. He was dangerous. So he's on the 00:10:37.950 --> 00:10:40.730 map. He's famous. And then he follows it up with 00:10:40.730 --> 00:10:44.289 the greenhouse in 1965. Now, looking at our notes 00:10:44.289 --> 00:10:46.370 on his writing style, this is where things get 00:10:46.370 --> 00:10:49.590 technically very complicated. Critics talk about 00:10:49.590 --> 00:10:52.360 this technique he used. interlacing dialogues, 00:10:52.700 --> 00:10:56.259 or vasos communicantes. Right. The Greenhouse, 00:10:56.440 --> 00:11:00.159 or La Casa Verde, is a dense, complex novel. 00:11:00.399 --> 00:11:03.639 It's set in two places, the desert city of Piura 00:11:03.639 --> 00:11:06.299 and the Amazon jungle. But what makes it such 00:11:06.299 --> 00:11:09.120 a landmark of the boom is that technique. Okay, 00:11:09.159 --> 00:11:12.100 hold on. I read notes on this, and complex feels 00:11:12.100 --> 00:11:14.759 like an understatement. You compared it to movie 00:11:14.759 --> 00:11:17.210 editing in our pre -show chat. But isn't it more 00:11:17.210 --> 00:11:19.230 aggressive than that? Much more aggressive. In 00:11:19.230 --> 00:11:21.769 a movie, you see a cut. You have a visual cue 00:11:21.769 --> 00:11:24.529 that you've changed scenes. In Vargas Llosa's 00:11:24.529 --> 00:11:26.490 prose, you don't. So what does that feel like 00:11:26.490 --> 00:11:28.610 for the reader? Well, you might be reading a 00:11:28.610 --> 00:11:31.470 sentence spoken by a character in 1945 in some 00:11:31.470 --> 00:11:34.370 remote jungle outpost. And the very next sentence, 00:11:34.409 --> 00:11:36.450 with no paragraph break, sometimes in the same 00:11:36.450 --> 00:11:38.870 line, is a response from a completely different 00:11:38.870 --> 00:11:41.830 character 20 years later in a city brothel. So 00:11:41.830 --> 00:11:43.919 he's collapsing time. He's just... mashing different 00:11:43.919 --> 00:11:46.440 timelines together. Exactly. He's forcing you 00:11:46.440 --> 00:11:49.100 to experience time not as a straight line, but 00:11:49.100 --> 00:11:52.519 as a simultaneous event. It is disorienting by 00:11:52.519 --> 00:11:55.080 design. He had this idea of the total novel, 00:11:55.240 --> 00:11:57.720 a book that consumes reality from all sides at 00:11:57.720 --> 00:11:59.799 once. He didn't want you to just read a story. 00:12:00.360 --> 00:12:02.600 He wanted you to feel the chaos of a society 00:12:02.600 --> 00:12:04.980 where the past is constantly intruding on the 00:12:04.980 --> 00:12:07.399 present, where everything is connected. That 00:12:07.399 --> 00:12:09.860 sounds absolutely exhausting to read. It demands 00:12:09.860 --> 00:12:12.679 an active reader. You can't just passively consume 00:12:12.679 --> 00:12:15.480 the text. You have to work at it. But once you 00:12:15.480 --> 00:12:17.600 get the rhythm, it's hypnotic. And the critics 00:12:17.600 --> 00:12:20.529 loved it. They went wild for it. This book won 00:12:20.529 --> 00:12:23.330 the first ever Romulo Gallegos Prize in 1967, 00:12:23.830 --> 00:12:27.110 competing against giants like Onetti and Garcia 00:12:27.110 --> 00:12:30.090 Marquez. It solidified his place in the canon. 00:12:30.210 --> 00:12:33.090 He was no one -hit wonder. And then, just to 00:12:33.090 --> 00:12:36.110 cap off this incredible decade, he releases what 00:12:36.110 --> 00:12:38.929 many people think is his greatest work, Conversation 00:12:38.929 --> 00:12:42.320 in the Cathedral in 1969. Many critics, and even 00:12:42.320 --> 00:12:44.559 Vargas Llosa himself at times, consider this 00:12:44.559 --> 00:12:47.480 his monumental masterpiece. It's a massive, bitter, 00:12:47.679 --> 00:12:50.340 sprawling novel. The plot sounds deceptively 00:12:50.340 --> 00:12:52.779 simple on the surface. It's just a conversation 00:12:52.779 --> 00:12:55.419 at a bar, right? On the surface, yes. It's a 00:12:55.419 --> 00:12:58.179 four -hour conversation between Santiago Zavala, 00:12:58.379 --> 00:13:01.620 who is the disillusioned son of a government 00:13:01.620 --> 00:13:04.820 minister, and Ambrosio, who was his father's 00:13:04.820 --> 00:13:07.120 chauffeur. They happen to meet at a dog pound, 00:13:07.259 --> 00:13:09.179 and they go to a dive bar called The Cathedral. 00:13:09.870 --> 00:13:11.909 But through this one conversation they're basically 00:13:11.909 --> 00:13:15.070 dissecting an entire era of Peruvian history. 00:13:15.250 --> 00:13:17.490 Exactly that. They are peeling back the layers 00:13:17.490 --> 00:13:20.429 of the Odria dictatorship, which ruled Peru in 00:13:20.429 --> 00:13:23.490 the late 40s and 50s. Santiago is searching for 00:13:23.490 --> 00:13:25.509 the truth about his father's role in the murder 00:13:25.509 --> 00:13:27.990 of a notorious underworld figure. But the real 00:13:27.990 --> 00:13:30.330 theme is bigger than that. Oh, much bigger. The 00:13:30.330 --> 00:13:33.190 broader theme is about how dictatorship corrupts 00:13:33.190 --> 00:13:35.049 everything. It doesn't just kill people. It destroys 00:13:35.049 --> 00:13:37.549 families. It destroys trust. It creates this 00:13:37.549 --> 00:13:39.909 pervasive sense of hopelessness that seeps into 00:13:39.909 --> 00:13:42.289 every corner of life. It's described as his most 00:13:42.289 --> 00:13:45.620 bitter novel. It is, because at the end of Santiago's 00:13:45.620 --> 00:13:48.580 quest, there's no redemption. He finds only dead 00:13:48.580 --> 00:13:51.980 ends and moral ambiguity. It portrays a society 00:13:51.980 --> 00:13:54.399 where integrity is impossible because the system 00:13:54.399 --> 00:13:57.080 relies on complicity from everyone. And there's 00:13:57.080 --> 00:13:59.159 that famous line from the book. At what precise 00:13:59.159 --> 00:14:02.000 moment had Peru fucked itself up? That question 00:14:02.000 --> 00:14:03.860 just haunts the whole novel. It's the central 00:14:03.860 --> 00:14:06.960 question. So by the end of the 60s, he's the 00:14:06.960 --> 00:14:09.500 undisputed master of this serious, political, 00:14:09.720 --> 00:14:13.179 structurally complex novel. But then... In the 00:14:13.179 --> 00:14:17.639 70s, he takes this huge left turn, or maybe a 00:14:17.639 --> 00:14:20.179 funny turn. The discovery of humor. Yes, it's 00:14:20.179 --> 00:14:23.480 a fascinating shift. After the heavy, dark tone 00:14:23.480 --> 00:14:26.399 of conversation in the cathedral, he writes Captain 00:14:26.399 --> 00:14:30.080 Pantoja and the Special Service in 1973. And 00:14:30.080 --> 00:14:31.940 this book sounds hilarious. It's about the army 00:14:31.940 --> 00:14:34.940 hiring prostitutes for soldiers. It is a satire, 00:14:34.940 --> 00:14:37.600 but what's amazing is that it's based on reality. 00:14:38.320 --> 00:14:40.139 Vargas Llosa had actually witnessed this, the 00:14:40.139 --> 00:14:42.500 Peruvian army trying to service its soldiers 00:14:42.500 --> 00:14:45.360 in remote jungle outposts to prevent them from 00:14:45.360 --> 00:14:47.279 harassing the local women. So what does he do 00:14:47.279 --> 00:14:49.559 with that idea? He creates this character, Captain 00:14:49.559 --> 00:14:51.639 Pantoja, who is the most efficient by the book 00:14:51.639 --> 00:14:53.639 officer you can imagine. And he's assigned to 00:14:53.639 --> 00:14:55.820 set up a special service of prostitutes. And 00:14:55.820 --> 00:14:58.220 he writes it as a bureaucracy. That's the joke. 00:14:58.360 --> 00:15:00.759 He treats it with the same administrative seriousness 00:15:00.759 --> 00:15:04.440 as a supply chain for boots or ammunition. The 00:15:04.440 --> 00:15:07.539 book is filled with memos, requisitions, efficiency 00:15:07.539 --> 00:15:10.299 reports on the prostitutes. It's a brilliant 00:15:10.299 --> 00:15:12.899 parody of his own earlier work, like The Greenhouse. 00:15:13.080 --> 00:15:16.080 He takes the same themes, military, prostitution, 00:15:16.360 --> 00:15:19.639 the jungle. But instead of tragedy, he plays 00:15:19.639 --> 00:15:22.240 it as farce. Which shows incredible range. And 00:15:22.240 --> 00:15:24.480 then he minds his own life for comedy with Aunt 00:15:24.480 --> 00:15:27.559 Julia and the scriptwriter in 1977. This is a 00:15:27.559 --> 00:15:30.860 fan favorite for a reason. It's a semi -autobiographical 00:15:30.860 --> 00:15:33.600 novel about his first marriage to Julia Urquidy. 00:15:33.779 --> 00:15:36.080 His aunt -in -law. Right. It mixes the story 00:15:36.080 --> 00:15:38.179 of their forbidden romance, the young writer, 00:15:38.379 --> 00:15:41.000 the older divorced aunt -in -law, with the story 00:15:41.000 --> 00:15:43.919 of a crazy radio soap opera writer who starts 00:15:43.919 --> 00:15:46.179 losing his mind and mixing up the plots of his 00:15:46.179 --> 00:15:48.539 10 different shows. But this one had real world 00:15:48.539 --> 00:15:51.559 fallout, didn't it? Oh, yes. Julia Urquidy was 00:15:51.559 --> 00:15:54.139 not happy at all. She felt he exaggerated the 00:15:54.139 --> 00:15:56.480 negatives of their relationship and really minimized... 00:15:56.490 --> 00:15:58.549 how much she supported him when he was a nobody. 00:15:58.750 --> 00:16:00.809 So she wrote a book in response? She did. She 00:16:00.809 --> 00:16:03.070 actually wrote a rebuttal memoir called What 00:16:03.070 --> 00:16:06.250 Little Vargas Didn't Say. Ouch. The literary 00:16:06.250 --> 00:16:09.029 clapback. It's a rare thing to see, the subject 00:16:09.029 --> 00:16:11.450 of a famous novel writing a rebuttal. But it 00:16:11.450 --> 00:16:14.009 showed that using real life as raw material, 00:16:14.269 --> 00:16:17.009 you know, it has consequences. Speaking of conflict, 00:16:17.210 --> 00:16:19.769 here is where it gets really interesting. We 00:16:19.769 --> 00:16:21.600 have to talk about the feud. The feud of the 00:16:21.600 --> 00:16:23.860 century. Yes. We mentioned the Latin American 00:16:23.860 --> 00:16:26.419 boom was this tight -knit group. Vargas Llosa 00:16:26.419 --> 00:16:28.720 and Gabriel Garcia Marquez were best friends. 00:16:28.899 --> 00:16:32.059 They were neighbors in Barcelona. Vargas Llosa 00:16:32.059 --> 00:16:35.200 even wrote his doctoral thesis on Garcia Marquez. 00:16:35.320 --> 00:16:38.480 He called it story of a day aside. They were 00:16:38.480 --> 00:16:40.860 inseparable. They were the two pillars of the 00:16:40.860 --> 00:16:44.200 boom. And then in 1976, at a theater in Mexico 00:16:44.200 --> 00:16:48.580 City, it all ended in a single moment. The punch. 00:16:48.759 --> 00:16:51.539 The punch. Vargas Llosa walked up to Garcia Marquez, 00:16:51.600 --> 00:16:53.779 who opened his arms to hug him, and Vargas Llosa 00:16:53.779 --> 00:16:56.659 just punched him square in the face, knocked 00:16:56.659 --> 00:16:58.679 him down, gave him a massive black eye. There's 00:16:58.679 --> 00:17:00.539 a famous photo of Garcia Marquez with that black 00:17:00.539 --> 00:17:02.659 eye. There is, and they never spoke again. Never. 00:17:02.840 --> 00:17:05.519 A 30 -year silence until death. So what happened? 00:17:05.640 --> 00:17:07.599 I mean, do we actually know? Well, neither of 00:17:07.599 --> 00:17:09.460 them ever publicly explained it. They took the 00:17:09.460 --> 00:17:12.420 secret to their graves. But mutual friends have 00:17:12.420 --> 00:17:15.400 filled in the gaps over the years. The consensus 00:17:15.400 --> 00:17:18.329 is that it was personal. And it involved Vargas 00:17:18.329 --> 00:17:21.829 Llosa's second wife, Patricia. Patricia, who 00:17:21.829 --> 00:17:24.400 was also his cousin. Yes. After he divorced Julia 00:17:24.400 --> 00:17:27.380 in 1964, he married his first cousin, Patricia 00:17:27.380 --> 00:17:30.680 Yosa, in 1965. The story goes that while Vargas 00:17:30.680 --> 00:17:33.240 Yosa was away, some sources say he was pursuing 00:17:33.240 --> 00:17:35.420 another woman on a cruise ship. Patricia was 00:17:35.420 --> 00:17:38.140 distraught. And Garcia Marquez tried to console 00:17:38.140 --> 00:17:40.980 her. When Vargas Yosa returned, Patricia told 00:17:40.980 --> 00:17:42.960 him something about Garcia Marquez's behavior, 00:17:43.220 --> 00:17:46.380 or maybe his advice to her, that caused the explosion. 00:17:46.779 --> 00:17:49.339 Consoling can be interpreted in many ways, I 00:17:49.339 --> 00:17:51.700 suppose. Indeed. But there is a deeper layer 00:17:51.700 --> 00:17:54.279 here. The punch wasn't just personal. It was 00:17:54.279 --> 00:17:57.539 symbolic. By 1976, they were standing on opposite 00:17:57.539 --> 00:18:00.220 sides of a massive ideological canyon. This is 00:18:00.220 --> 00:18:02.319 the second act of his life. And honestly, this 00:18:02.319 --> 00:18:04.720 is the part that confuses people the most. How 00:18:04.720 --> 00:18:06.920 does the guy who wrote the ultimate anti -military 00:18:06.920 --> 00:18:09.039 novels, who was an early supporter of Fidel Castro, 00:18:09.279 --> 00:18:11.740 end up running for president on a platform of 00:18:11.740 --> 00:18:15.180 radical capitalism? That is a wild swing. It 00:18:15.180 --> 00:18:17.339 looks wild from the outside. But if you look 00:18:17.339 --> 00:18:20.240 closer, there is a consistent thread. And that 00:18:20.240 --> 00:18:23.609 thread is liberty. Vargas Llosa was always obsessed 00:18:23.609 --> 00:18:26.289 with liberty. In the 50s and 60s, he thought 00:18:26.289 --> 00:18:28.750 the main threat to liberty was the bourgeoisie 00:18:28.750 --> 00:18:31.509 and American imperialism. So he goes left, he 00:18:31.509 --> 00:18:33.730 supports the Cuban Revolution. Right. But then 00:18:33.730 --> 00:18:37.769 comes 1971, the Padilla affair. Explain this, 00:18:37.829 --> 00:18:39.869 because it seems to be the absolute pivot point 00:18:39.869 --> 00:18:42.230 for him and so many other intellectuals. It was. 00:18:42.329 --> 00:18:45.829 The Castro regime arrested a poet named Gilberto 00:18:45.829 --> 00:18:48.869 Padilla. They imprisoned him, essentially, for 00:18:48.869 --> 00:18:50.950 writing poems that were deemed critical of the 00:18:50.950 --> 00:18:54.789 revolution. They forced him to perform this Stalinist 00:18:54.789 --> 00:18:57.210 -style public confession where he admitted to 00:18:57.210 --> 00:18:59.269 being a traitor and even denounced his own wife. 00:18:59.390 --> 00:19:01.250 And for Vargas Llosa, that's not just politics. 00:19:01.450 --> 00:19:03.890 That's personal. That's a writer realizing, wait 00:19:03.890 --> 00:19:05.910 a minute, this system comes for people like me. 00:19:06.220 --> 00:19:08.619 Exactly. He realized that a dictatorship of the 00:19:08.619 --> 00:19:11.440 left silences you just as effectively as a dictatorship 00:19:11.440 --> 00:19:14.319 of the right. He was horrified. He signed a famous 00:19:14.319 --> 00:19:16.460 letter of protest and Fidel Castro called him 00:19:16.460 --> 00:19:18.680 and the other signatories traitors. That was 00:19:18.680 --> 00:19:21.220 the break. The friendship was over. And he didn't 00:19:21.220 --> 00:19:24.180 just drift to the center. He went full. classical 00:19:24.180 --> 00:19:27.000 liberal. He swung hard. He started reading Karl 00:19:27.000 --> 00:19:29.859 Popper, Friedrich Hayek, Isaiah Berlin. He came 00:19:29.859 --> 00:19:31.880 to the conclusion that the only real protection 00:19:31.880 --> 00:19:33.819 against the structure, whether it's a general 00:19:33.819 --> 00:19:36.920 or a commissar, is individual liberty and the 00:19:36.920 --> 00:19:39.799 free market. So in his mind, it wasn't a betrayal 00:19:39.799 --> 00:19:42.579 of his principles. No, it was an evolution of 00:19:42.579 --> 00:19:45.339 his method for protecting them. The goal was 00:19:45.339 --> 00:19:48.579 always freedom. The enemy just changed. And he 00:19:48.579 --> 00:19:50.740 didn't just write about it. He decided to do 00:19:50.740 --> 00:19:53.710 the most dangerous thing a writer can do. run 00:19:53.710 --> 00:19:56.890 for political office? The 1990 Peruvian presidential 00:19:56.890 --> 00:19:59.349 election. This is such a fascinating case study. 00:19:59.529 --> 00:20:02.630 In 1987, he helped form the Liberty Movement 00:20:02.630 --> 00:20:05.269 to protest the nationalization of banks. And 00:20:05.269 --> 00:20:07.569 by 1990, he was running as the candidate for 00:20:07.569 --> 00:20:09.930 the Democratic Front Coalition, or FREEDOMO. 00:20:10.029 --> 00:20:12.069 And what was his platform? Because this is where 00:20:12.069 --> 00:20:14.769 it gets really controversial. Radical austerity. 00:20:15.150 --> 00:20:18.049 He was brutally honest with people. He told the 00:20:18.049 --> 00:20:20.230 Peruvian people that the economy was completely 00:20:20.230 --> 00:20:23.009 broken, inflation was at thousands of percent, 00:20:23.170 --> 00:20:25.490 and the only way to fix it was a shock therapy 00:20:25.490 --> 00:20:30.150 program. Privatization, free trade, firing legions 00:20:30.150 --> 00:20:33.650 of bureaucrats. Okay, pause. I have to play devil's 00:20:33.650 --> 00:20:36.269 advocate here. That sounds like political suicide. 00:20:37.130 --> 00:20:39.509 You're running for office in a country with massive 00:20:39.509 --> 00:20:42.640 poverty, and your opening pitch is... I'm going 00:20:42.640 --> 00:20:45.640 to make your life much harder for a while. Was 00:20:45.640 --> 00:20:49.500 he naive or just arrogant? That is the million 00:20:49.500 --> 00:20:51.559 dollar question, isn't it? His critics called 00:20:51.559 --> 00:20:53.500 it arrogance. The great intellectual looking 00:20:53.500 --> 00:20:55.700 down from his ivory tower lecturing the poor 00:20:55.700 --> 00:20:58.319 on economics. They said he was totally out of 00:20:58.319 --> 00:20:59.960 touch with the daily suffering of the average 00:20:59.960 --> 00:21:02.640 Peruvian. It feels disconnected. Like it's easy 00:21:02.640 --> 00:21:04.700 to talk about necessary pain when you're a famous 00:21:04.700 --> 00:21:06.460 author living comfortably in London or Madrid. 00:21:06.839 --> 00:21:08.880 And that's a fair point. But from Vargas Llosa's 00:21:08.880 --> 00:21:11.000 perspective, he saw it as a moral imperative. 00:21:11.400 --> 00:21:13.480 He believed that lying to the poor, promising 00:21:13.480 --> 00:21:16.240 them magic solutions that didn't exist, was the 00:21:16.240 --> 00:21:18.680 ultimate form of disrespect. So he wanted to 00:21:18.680 --> 00:21:21.359 treat the electorate as adults. Exactly. He wanted 00:21:21.359 --> 00:21:23.859 to say, this is the medicine we need. It will 00:21:23.859 --> 00:21:26.319 taste awful, but it's the only way to get better. 00:21:26.460 --> 00:21:29.680 Which is noble, sure. But in politics, adults 00:21:29.680 --> 00:21:31.680 usually want to hear that everything is going 00:21:31.680 --> 00:21:34.819 to be fine without any pain. And then along comes 00:21:34.819 --> 00:21:38.930 Fujimori. Alberto Fujimori, an agricultural engineer, 00:21:39.150 --> 00:21:42.230 the son of Japanese immigrants. Literally nobody 00:21:42.230 --> 00:21:44.750 knew who he was. He showed up riding a tractor 00:21:44.750 --> 00:21:46.990 campaigning in the countryside and his slogan 00:21:46.990 --> 00:21:51.210 was simply, no shock. A simple, powerful message. 00:21:51.450 --> 00:21:53.589 And he painted Margus Yosa as the candidate of 00:21:53.589 --> 00:21:56.369 the white, wealthy Lima elite. And it worked. 00:21:56.779 --> 00:21:59.519 It worked brilliantly. Vargas Llosa won the first 00:21:59.519 --> 00:22:01.519 round but didn't get a majority. In the runoff 00:22:01.519 --> 00:22:03.960 election, Fujimori crushed him in a landslide. 00:22:04.099 --> 00:22:05.680 And the irony, and this is the part that always 00:22:05.680 --> 00:22:08.119 gets me, is what happened after Fujimori won. 00:22:08.319 --> 00:22:11.099 It is the ultimate, most bitter irony. Fujimori 00:22:11.099 --> 00:22:13.539 won by campaigning against Vargas Llosa's shock 00:22:13.539 --> 00:22:16.319 plan. But once he took office, Fujimori turned 00:22:16.319 --> 00:22:18.839 around and implemented many of Vargas Llosa's 00:22:18.839 --> 00:22:21.440 exact neoliberal policies. They called it the 00:22:21.440 --> 00:22:24.059 Fuji shock. But he did it while dismantling democracy. 00:22:24.759 --> 00:22:27.619 Yes, he implemented the economic plan while staging 00:22:27.619 --> 00:22:30.200 a self -coup and becoming an authoritarian leader. 00:22:30.460 --> 00:22:33.319 So Vargas Llosa lost the election, but his economic 00:22:33.319 --> 00:22:36.920 ideas won. But they were implemented by a dictator 00:22:36.920 --> 00:22:40.599 he absolutely despised. Precisely. It was a brutal 00:22:40.599 --> 00:22:43.220 defeat. He wrote a fantastic memoir about it 00:22:43.220 --> 00:22:45.940 called A Fish in the Water. And after that loss, 00:22:46.119 --> 00:22:48.940 he largely moved to Madrid, acquired Spanish 00:22:48.940 --> 00:22:52.380 citizenship in 1993, and became this transatlantic 00:22:52.380 --> 00:22:55.910 public intellectual. But even in defeat, he couldn't 00:22:55.910 --> 00:22:58.869 help but speak his mind. We have to talk about 00:22:58.869 --> 00:23:01.069 the perfect dictatorship moment, because in the 00:23:01.069 --> 00:23:03.269 footage of this event, you can practically see 00:23:03.269 --> 00:23:06.529 the heir leave the room. It was 1990, just after 00:23:06.529 --> 00:23:08.470 he lost the election. He was invited to Mexico 00:23:08.470 --> 00:23:10.730 City for this prestigious intellectual gathering, 00:23:10.869 --> 00:23:13.069 and it was being broadcast live on Televisa, 00:23:13.109 --> 00:23:15.069 which was basically the propaganda arm of the 00:23:15.069 --> 00:23:17.029 Mexican government at the time. And the ruling 00:23:17.029 --> 00:23:20.390 party, the PRI, had been in power for 61 years 00:23:20.390 --> 00:23:22.609 straight. And the audience is packed with PRI 00:23:22.609 --> 00:23:25.950 officials. The moderator is Octavio Paz, Mexico's 00:23:25.950 --> 00:23:28.789 great Nobel -winning poet. Vargas Llosa is the 00:23:28.789 --> 00:23:31.029 guest of honor. He's supposed to be polite. But 00:23:31.029 --> 00:23:33.390 he wasn't. Instead, he leans into the microphone 00:23:33.390 --> 00:23:36.349 and just calmly dismantles the entire Mexican 00:23:36.349 --> 00:23:39.890 political system. He tells them, Japan is not 00:23:39.890 --> 00:23:44.109 a dictatorship, but Mexico, Mexico is the perfect 00:23:44.109 --> 00:23:47.339 dictatorship. Wow. Perfect because it doesn't 00:23:47.339 --> 00:23:49.740 look like one on the surface. Exactly his point. 00:23:49.839 --> 00:23:53.119 He said it has the camouflage of democracy. It 00:23:53.119 --> 00:23:55.299 has elections, but you can't win them. It has 00:23:55.299 --> 00:23:58.539 a press, but the press is bought. It suppresses 00:23:58.539 --> 00:24:01.359 dissent, not with gulags, but with jobs and bribes 00:24:01.359 --> 00:24:04.109 and subtle pressure. I read that Octavio Paz 00:24:04.109 --> 00:24:06.049 actually tried to cut him off. He was panicking. 00:24:06.190 --> 00:24:08.410 He tried to do damage control immediately. It 00:24:08.410 --> 00:24:11.390 was incredibly awkward on live TV. Imagine walking 00:24:11.390 --> 00:24:13.450 into someone's house for dinner, and while they're 00:24:13.450 --> 00:24:16.049 serving the soup, you announce to the whole table 00:24:16.049 --> 00:24:18.349 that the host is a con artist. That is Mario 00:24:18.349 --> 00:24:20.690 Vargas Llosa. He embarrassed everyone, but the 00:24:20.690 --> 00:24:23.410 phrase stuck. For decades, the perfect dictatorship 00:24:23.410 --> 00:24:26.309 became the defining description of 20th century 00:24:26.309 --> 00:24:28.809 Mexican politics. It just shows that he could 00:24:28.809 --> 00:24:31.329 not help himself. He had to speak what he saw 00:24:31.329 --> 00:24:33.750 as the truth. regardless of the setting or the 00:24:33.750 --> 00:24:36.109 consequences. That is the core of his character, 00:24:36.250 --> 00:24:38.970 the absolute refusal to be polite when liberty 00:24:38.970 --> 00:24:41.630 is at stake. So he's lost the election. He's 00:24:41.630 --> 00:24:43.650 living mostly in Europe. You might think his 00:24:43.650 --> 00:24:45.750 best writing days were behind him at this point, 00:24:45.789 --> 00:24:48.369 but he actually enters this incredible new phase 00:24:48.369 --> 00:24:51.789 of literary masterpieces. It does. And this phase 00:24:51.789 --> 00:24:54.569 is marked by a deep, almost obsessive exploration 00:24:54.569 --> 00:24:57.809 of fanaticism. If his early work was about military 00:24:57.809 --> 00:25:00.589 and state dictatorships, his later work asks, 00:25:01.279 --> 00:25:04.000 Why do human beings follow irrational causes? 00:25:04.299 --> 00:25:06.559 Why do we kill for an idea? Let's talk about 00:25:06.559 --> 00:25:08.460 The War at the End of the World, published in 00:25:08.460 --> 00:25:10.599 1981, so actually before his presidential run. 00:25:10.720 --> 00:25:12.799 But it really signals this shift in his focus. 00:25:13.059 --> 00:25:15.420 This is his first major novel set outside of 00:25:15.420 --> 00:25:18.240 Peru. It's set in 19th century Brazil. And it's 00:25:18.240 --> 00:25:21.380 based on a real and truly insane historical event, 00:25:21.900 --> 00:25:24.559 the War of Canudos. Set the scene for us. What 00:25:24.559 --> 00:25:27.000 was this war? It's the backlands of Bahia. A 00:25:27.000 --> 00:25:29.980 harsh, dry, impoverished region. And you have 00:25:29.980 --> 00:25:32.380 this millenarian cult that springs up, led by 00:25:32.380 --> 00:25:34.660 a charismatic figure called the Counselor. He 00:25:34.660 --> 00:25:36.339 preaches that the end of the world is coming 00:25:36.339 --> 00:25:39.259 and that the new Brazilian Republic is the Antichrist. 00:25:39.380 --> 00:25:42.180 And people follow him. Thousands of poor, desperate 00:25:42.180 --> 00:25:44.240 people flock to him and they build this city 00:25:44.240 --> 00:25:46.970 from scratch called Canudos. So it's the state 00:25:46.970 --> 00:25:49.690 versus a cult. Yes, but this is the genius of 00:25:49.690 --> 00:25:52.289 the book. Vargas Llosa shows the fanaticism on 00:25:52.289 --> 00:25:54.890 both sides. The religious zealots are irrational. 00:25:55.150 --> 00:25:57.910 Yes, they are waiting for the apocalypse. But 00:25:57.910 --> 00:26:00.940 the secular Republicans in Rio. They are also 00:26:00.940 --> 00:26:04.420 blinded by their own ideology. How so? They refuse 00:26:04.420 --> 00:26:07.259 to see these people as human beings with legitimate 00:26:07.259 --> 00:26:10.519 grievances. They see the cult as a monarchist 00:26:10.519 --> 00:26:13.599 conspiracy funded by the British. They are just 00:26:13.599 --> 00:26:15.960 as fanatical in their belief in progress and 00:26:15.960 --> 00:26:18.420 reason, so they send the army to wipe them out. 00:26:18.539 --> 00:26:21.720 And the result? is a massacre. A total slaughter. 00:26:22.019 --> 00:26:25.059 It's a massive Tolstoyan novel about how blind 00:26:25.059 --> 00:26:28.119 belief on any side leads to catastrophe. It shows 00:26:28.119 --> 00:26:30.980 that the civilized soldiers can be just as barbaric 00:26:30.980 --> 00:26:33.359 as the fanatics they are trying to destroy. And 00:26:33.359 --> 00:26:36.339 then, in 2000, he drops The Feast of the Goat. 00:26:36.400 --> 00:26:39.039 La Fiesta del Chivo. This is arguably his greatest 00:26:39.039 --> 00:26:40.740 late career work. It's about the Dominican Republic 00:26:40.740 --> 00:26:43.559 and the dictator Rafael Trujillo. Trujillo is 00:26:43.559 --> 00:26:47.000 a monster. An absolute monster. A true monster. 00:26:47.259 --> 00:26:50.480 He ruled for 31 years. He renamed the capital 00:26:50.480 --> 00:26:53.440 city after himself. He orchestrated the Parsley 00:26:53.440 --> 00:26:55.779 Massacre, killing thousands of Haitians. And 00:26:55.779 --> 00:26:58.480 the novel structures this horror through three 00:26:58.480 --> 00:27:02.400 interwoven strands. You have Urania Cabral, a 00:27:02.400 --> 00:27:04.480 woman returning to the island after 30 years 00:27:04.480 --> 00:27:07.339 to finally confront her father, who was one of 00:27:07.339 --> 00:27:10.630 Trujillo's cronies. You have the assassins waiting 00:27:10.630 --> 00:27:14.190 in a car on a dark highway to ambush and kill 00:27:14.190 --> 00:27:17.299 Trujillo. And you have Trujillo himself. in his 00:27:17.299 --> 00:27:20.180 final pathetic days. So it's a psychological 00:27:20.180 --> 00:27:22.900 study of power. And of the rot that power creates. 00:27:23.180 --> 00:27:26.059 It explores how authoritarianism isn't just about 00:27:26.059 --> 00:27:29.039 force, it's about humiliation. Trujillo maintained 00:27:29.039 --> 00:27:31.779 power by systematically humiliating the men around 00:27:31.779 --> 00:27:34.240 him, making them complicit in his crimes so they 00:27:34.240 --> 00:27:36.039 couldn't possibly turn against him. How did he 00:27:36.039 --> 00:27:37.599 do that? He would sleep with their wives and 00:27:37.599 --> 00:27:39.880 daughters, force them to do degrading things 00:27:39.880 --> 00:27:42.240 in public, and they would have to smile and thank 00:27:42.240 --> 00:27:44.359 him for the honor. It's a terrifying, brilliant 00:27:44.359 --> 00:27:46.599 book about the psychology of tyranny. We should 00:27:46.599 --> 00:27:48.940 also touch on the controversy regarding the Uchiraca 00:27:48.940 --> 00:27:50.880 Commission, because that also influenced his 00:27:50.880 --> 00:27:52.779 writing during this period. This was back in 00:27:52.779 --> 00:27:56.180 1983. The Peruvian president, Fernando Belalonde, 00:27:56.299 --> 00:27:59.019 asked Vargas Llosa to lead a commission investigating 00:27:59.019 --> 00:28:01.980 the murder of eight journalists in the remote 00:28:01.980 --> 00:28:05.180 Andes. What did they find? The commission concluded 00:28:05.180 --> 00:28:07.980 that indigenous villagers had killed the journalists, 00:28:08.279 --> 00:28:10.960 mistaking them for terrorists from the Shining 00:28:10.960 --> 00:28:13.380 Path, the Maoist guerrilla group that was terrorizing 00:28:13.380 --> 00:28:16.119 the country. And the backlash was severe. Extremely. 00:28:16.119 --> 00:28:18.680 The left accused him of a government cover up. 00:28:18.940 --> 00:28:20.579 that he was protecting the military who were 00:28:20.579 --> 00:28:23.240 also in the area. Anthropologists accused him 00:28:23.240 --> 00:28:25.220 of paternalism and of fundamentally misunderstanding 00:28:25.220 --> 00:28:28.299 Andean culture. It was a really bruising experience 00:28:28.299 --> 00:28:31.759 for him. But being Vargas Llosa. He turned it 00:28:31.759 --> 00:28:34.539 into art. It directly inspired his novel Death 00:28:34.539 --> 00:28:37.259 in the Andes. It seems like every single trauma 00:28:37.259 --> 00:28:40.240 in his life, public or private, eventually became 00:28:40.240 --> 00:28:42.220 a novel. That is the mark of a great writer. 00:28:42.380 --> 00:28:45.019 Nothing is ever wasted. So we arrive at 2010, 00:28:45.339 --> 00:28:48.400 the Nobel Prize in Literature. Finally. Yes, 00:28:48.480 --> 00:28:51.420 long overdue, many would say. The Swedish Academy 00:28:51.420 --> 00:28:54.000 cited his cartography of structures of power 00:28:54.000 --> 00:28:56.359 and his trenchant images of the individual's 00:28:56.359 --> 00:28:59.460 resistance, revolt, and defeat. That cartography 00:28:59.460 --> 00:29:01.900 of power again. It's the perfect summary. And 00:29:01.900 --> 00:29:04.160 in his acceptance speech, he got very emotional. 00:29:04.359 --> 00:29:06.920 He did. He spoke about carrying Peru deep inside 00:29:06.920 --> 00:29:09.519 me. But he also spoke of his love for Spain. 00:29:09.700 --> 00:29:13.740 He said, I am a Peruvian citizen and I am a Spanish 00:29:13.740 --> 00:29:17.420 citizen. He was truly a man of two worlds. And 00:29:17.420 --> 00:29:19.980 speaking of two worlds, his personal life took 00:29:19.980 --> 00:29:24.099 one last very public, dramatic turn in his twilight 00:29:24.099 --> 00:29:27.339 years. Yes. After 50 years of marriage to Patricia, 00:29:27.519 --> 00:29:31.319 who was basically his manager, his anchor, the 00:29:31.319 --> 00:29:33.700 mother of his three children, he left her. In 00:29:33.700 --> 00:29:37.259 2015, he was 79 years old. He was 79. He left 00:29:37.259 --> 00:29:39.460 her for Isabel Preissler. And for those of our 00:29:39.460 --> 00:29:41.039 listeners who don't follow Spanish celebrity 00:29:41.039 --> 00:29:44.339 culture, Isabel Preissler is... A big deal. She 00:29:44.339 --> 00:29:46.259 is the queen of hearts, the queen of the gossip 00:29:46.259 --> 00:29:48.880 magazines, a massive socialite in Spain, the 00:29:48.880 --> 00:29:51.500 ex -wife of singer Julio Iglesias. It was a huge 00:29:51.500 --> 00:29:53.759 shock. Vargas Llosa went from the serious literary 00:29:53.759 --> 00:29:56.960 pages to the cover of Hola magazine. Right. He 00:29:56.960 --> 00:29:58.859 was suddenly walking red carpets, living this 00:29:58.859 --> 00:30:01.779 very high profile, glamorous life in Madrid mansions. 00:30:01.839 --> 00:30:04.240 Did it last? It lasted until 2022. They split 00:30:04.240 --> 00:30:07.099 up. But it showed that even in his 80s, he was 00:30:07.099 --> 00:30:09.539 still chasing something, passion, novelty, life. 00:30:09.839 --> 00:30:12.319 He refused to just sit in a rocking chair and 00:30:12.319 --> 00:30:14.619 be the old writer. And he also became a literal 00:30:14.619 --> 00:30:17.740 nobleman around this time. Yes. King Juan Carlos 00:30:17.740 --> 00:30:20.440 I of Spain made him the Marquess of Vargas Llosa 00:30:20.440 --> 00:30:24.460 in 2011. So you have a man who started as a middle 00:30:24.460 --> 00:30:27.500 class boy in Arequipa, became a communist revolutionary, 00:30:27.759 --> 00:30:30.599 then a neoliberal politician, and ended his life 00:30:30.599 --> 00:30:32.779 as a Spanish Marquess. You can't make it up. 00:30:33.119 --> 00:30:34.920 Let's talk about his politics in these final 00:30:34.920 --> 00:30:37.579 years, because he didn't mellow out at all. If 00:30:37.579 --> 00:30:39.480 anything, he seemed to get even more controversial. 00:30:39.740 --> 00:30:42.400 He became a staunch, and I mean staunch, defender 00:30:42.400 --> 00:30:45.299 of what he considers liberal values, but what 00:30:45.299 --> 00:30:47.880 many people saw as a drift to the hard right. 00:30:48.059 --> 00:30:51.099 He supported neoliberalism aggressively. He endorsed 00:30:51.099 --> 00:30:54.079 figures like Javier Millet in Argentina and José 00:30:54.079 --> 00:30:56.799 Antonio Kast in Chile. And the Keiko Fujimori 00:30:56.799 --> 00:30:59.220 situation in Peru. That was the most painful 00:30:59.220 --> 00:31:01.299 dilemma for many of his followers. Remember, 00:31:01.599 --> 00:31:05.119 Alberto Fujimori was his nemesis. Teiko is Alberto's 00:31:05.119 --> 00:31:08.660 daughter and political heir. In 2011, Vargas 00:31:08.660 --> 00:31:11.400 Llosa called her the worst option for Peru. But 00:31:11.400 --> 00:31:14.539 then he changed his mind. In 2021, she was in 00:31:14.539 --> 00:31:17.519 a runoff against Pedro Castillo, a far -left 00:31:17.519 --> 00:31:20.380 teacher with a Marxist party behind him, and 00:31:20.380 --> 00:31:23.220 Vargas Llosa endorsed Keiko. He called her the 00:31:23.220 --> 00:31:26.619 lesser of two evils. He did. He genuinely believed 00:31:26.619 --> 00:31:29.579 that Castillo represented a path to Venezuelan 00:31:29.579 --> 00:31:32.640 -style socialism, a catastrophe which he feared 00:31:32.640 --> 00:31:35.660 more than the corruption and authoritarian tendencies 00:31:35.660 --> 00:31:39.160 of the Fujimori clan. But it cost him a lot of 00:31:39.160 --> 00:31:42.119 prestige. A huge amount, especially among centrists 00:31:42.119 --> 00:31:44.640 and the left. He was accused by intellectuals 00:31:44.640 --> 00:31:47.119 in France and elsewhere of contributing to political 00:31:47.119 --> 00:31:49.480 polarization. But he stuck to his guns. Always. 00:31:49.599 --> 00:31:52.480 He believed that silence was the worst. sin for 00:31:52.480 --> 00:31:54.759 an intellectual. He would rather be wrong and 00:31:54.759 --> 00:31:57.579 loud than right and silent. And that brings us 00:31:57.579 --> 00:32:01.640 to the end. April 13th, 2025 in Lima, Peru. He 00:32:01.640 --> 00:32:04.519 died at age 89. His son Alvaro announced he was 00:32:04.519 --> 00:32:06.880 at peace and surrounded by family, including 00:32:06.880 --> 00:32:08.839 his ex -wife Patricia. It's interesting that 00:32:08.839 --> 00:32:11.559 he died in Lima. Despite living in Madrid for 00:32:11.559 --> 00:32:13.579 so long, despite the Marquez title, he went home. 00:32:13.720 --> 00:32:16.559 He did. And the reaction was massive. National 00:32:16.559 --> 00:32:19.440 mourning in Peru, treats from world leaders like 00:32:19.440 --> 00:32:22.460 Macron and Pedro Sanchez, and from leaders all 00:32:22.460 --> 00:32:25.019 across the Latin American spectrum. Even those 00:32:25.019 --> 00:32:27.559 who completely disagreed with his politics acknowledged 00:32:27.559 --> 00:32:30.460 his literary genius. And he didn't leave us without 00:32:30.460 --> 00:32:34.000 one last gift. His final novel, Le Derico Mi 00:32:34.000 --> 00:32:37.039 Silencio. which translates to I give you my silence. 00:32:37.299 --> 00:32:40.019 It was published in 2023 and announced as his 00:32:40.019 --> 00:32:42.799 last work of fiction. So looking back at this 00:32:42.799 --> 00:32:46.700 massive, contradictory, brilliant life. What 00:32:46.700 --> 00:32:49.619 is the legacy? I mean, he was a giant who brought 00:32:49.619 --> 00:32:51.640 Latin American literature to the world stage. 00:32:51.720 --> 00:32:54.259 That's undeniable. But beyond the books, I think 00:32:54.259 --> 00:32:56.759 his legacy is the very stance of the intellectual 00:32:56.759 --> 00:32:59.420 in public life. The public intellectual. Yes. 00:32:59.660 --> 00:33:02.599 He was a man who refused to stay in his lane. 00:33:02.740 --> 00:33:04.740 He changed his mind from Marxist revolutionary 00:33:04.740 --> 00:33:08.180 to aristocratic liberal Marquess, and he did 00:33:08.180 --> 00:33:10.859 it all publicly, loudly, and fearlessly. He forced 00:33:10.859 --> 00:33:12.859 you to argue with him. We'll leave our listeners 00:33:12.859 --> 00:33:14.440 with a final thought, a question to chew on. 00:33:14.799 --> 00:33:17.500 Fargus Yosa once said that literature was fire, 00:33:17.700 --> 00:33:20.319 an act of rebellion against the imperfections 00:33:20.319 --> 00:33:24.259 of life. Yet he ended his life as the ultimate 00:33:24.259 --> 00:33:29.079 insider, a Nobel Prize winner, a Marquess, a 00:33:29.079 --> 00:33:32.039 member of the Académie Française, the establishment 00:33:32.039 --> 00:33:34.500 personified. So it raises the question, does 00:33:34.500 --> 00:33:37.779 the rebel inevitably become the institution or 00:33:37.779 --> 00:33:39.859 did he somehow manage to change the institution 00:33:39.859 --> 00:33:42.549 from the inside? That is something to think about. 00:33:42.569 --> 00:33:44.150 If you haven't read them, don't let the size 00:33:44.150 --> 00:33:46.049 of the books scare you. Pick up The Feast of 00:33:46.049 --> 00:33:48.250 the Goat or The Time of the Hero. Go see that 00:33:48.250 --> 00:33:50.730 cartography of power for yourself. It's definitely 00:33:50.730 --> 00:33:53.529 worth the journey. Thanks for listening. Keep 00:33:53.529 --> 00:33:54.069 diving deep.