A very famous Peruvian writer died, and this Time obituary is very colorful:
Reading this article, I was struck by this section:
In his teens, Vargas Llosa joined a communist cell
Followed by:
In 1990, he ran for the presidency of Peru, a reluctant candidate in a nation torn apart by a messianic Maoist guerrilla insurgency and a basket-case, hyperinflation economy.
Although an early supporter of the Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro, he later grew disillusioned and denounced Castro’s Cuba.
By 1980, he said he no longer believed in socialism as a solution for developing nations.
In a famous incident in Mexico City in 1976, Vargas Llosa punched fellow Nobel Prize winner and ex-friend Garcia Márquez, whom he later ridiculed as “Castro’s courtesan.” It was never clear whether the fight was over politics or a personal dispute, as neither writer ever wanted to discuss it publicly.
There must be many other examples, such as Thomas Sowell - who, although an economist, is also a great writer of witty quotations.
Of course, no good deed goes unpunished by the interest groups:
As he slowly turned his political trajectory toward free-market conservatism, Vargas Llosa lost the support of many of his Latin American literary contemporaries and attracted much criticism even from admirers of his work.
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Instead, he should have transitioned to a woman. That way, all the kooks would have continued to love him/her/them. Trannies are near the top of the grievance hierarchy. Too bad this guy got confused about the kind of transition.
As for Tom Sowell, while he has issued some pithy quotes, he remains a blank-slate acolyte. Thus, he never abandoned the core of leftist ideology.
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You raise a fascinating subject which I ve often thought about, after reading Garcia Marquez and Isabelle Allende and Pablo Neruda.
Spain and Portugal colonized central and South America. I think it was in Marquez’ writing that I first became aware of what the Conquistadors meant/ mean to …shall we say “Latin Americans”? of Spanish descent. He said they regard the Conquistadors the way we anglophone people look back on King Arthur.
Why isn’t there a “United States of South America”?
I mean, Brazil is Portuguese, and when you visit Portugal you see examples in architecture of Portugal’s enduring love for its still-Portuguese speaking erstwhile colony.
But N. America was colonized by several countries too: Holland, France, England, Spain. The anglophones prevailed, they kicked out the Dutch and…well, a combo of defeating and buying out the French.
I’m not sure how this fits into my point here. But in Guatemala about a decade ago, we visited a shop or storehouse where the festival masks and mannequins were stored. I doubt that “stout Cortez with his eagle eyes” was blond and blue-eyed. Yet so he and the other Conquistdors are represented now.
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