18/05/2011
http://assets.fundacionfaes.org/Fotos+desarrollo+home/2011/05/PASION_LIB_D1.jpg Mario Vargas Llosa: I think the fact that Mauricio and I have had a similar evolution is the reason he has devoted so much rigor and passion when writing this essay. He lived the difficult learning of freedom from the immersion in the revolutionary utopia which, when I was young and Mauricio was young as well, had taken deep root in Latin America and in many places around the world
It is something which was lived by one or two generations. Then, reality started putting this to the test with such traumatic events as, for example, the attempt to give socialism a human face with the discovery that the Cuban revolution was not that revolution of liberty which we had thought at first, but started to align itself gradually with the vertical and authoritarian model of the USSR, with the discovery that real socialism had little to do with the socialism of trials, of the propaganda and of dreams
Mauricio Rojas responds to the false idea that classical liberalism is just an economic doctrine and also reminds us that being a classical liberal means living insecurely, always willing to look in the mirror and saying 'something is going wrong'; and repeating over and over again that classical liberalism has a primary and principal teacher, which is reality. The experienced reality must decide whether the ideas that we have are good or should be rectified or nuanced. Because there is no doctrine able to fully embrace that very diverse thing which is the experience lived
Esperanza Aguirre: We should recommend this book to all who believe that collectivism, populism, statism or State hypertrophy can help the development and welfare of nations
The civil and ethical boost of Mario Vargas Llosa is still alive. It means ensuring that the lives of the disadvantaged, improves. It means providing more opportunities for everyone to move from misery to poverty, from poverty to dignity, and from dignity to prosperity
The commendable ethical and political career of Mario Vargas Llosa has not limited itself to watching from the sidelines. His commitment to his first homeland (Peru) led him to jump into the arena of politics and stand for elections in Peru in 1990. The book also gives a thorough account of that experience. For an intellectual so chemically pure it surely must have been very hard to embark on a campaign as hard as that one. But Vargas was not daunted by this and worked his fingers to the bone, and the sincerity and honesty of Vargas when appearing before the Peruvians and exposing his election manifesto without subterfuges, may not have helped him to win against the populist Fujimori but I'm sure that many people, afterward, regretted not having voted for him
We could talk for hours about this book and of the evolution of Mario Vargas Llosa's political thinking. Because that evolution is the great political issue of our time. It is very important to emphasize the economic, social, and above all moral, failure of all collectivisms and totalitarianisms and the triumph of the movements that defend the notion that property, freedom, the Rule of Law and market economy are essential for progress
Mauricio Rojas: The rebel is not a revolutionary like those who dream of earthly paradise or new men. No, the rebel acts because of the person we are, that imperfect and limited being, like any human society that we may build. But in any case the rebel is not resigned to what we can and should be: honourable, respected and free
The wild streak of Vargas Llosa has resulted in what has been his (most) constant fight, his true existential predicament from childhood: his hard-line, visceral opposition to authoritarianism, tyranny, and dictatorship. And to its inseparable correlates: despotic patriarch, warlords, commander-presidents, f?hrers of all stripes and ideological alibis. This opposition does not know exceptions, and ranges from the individual sphere to the social one
This is something crucial, since he dissociated himself from this and denounced a suicidal temptation of a certain type of liberalism, not uncommon in Latin America, which reduces the thick green tree that is freedom to economy and, even worse, which has been willing to violate, or at least not condemn, the sacrificing of certain basic freedoms if it be done for the sake of economic reforms considered to be liberalizing
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