Mario Vargas Llosa

I was not hopeful when we set out from the campground for the fifteen minute stroll to the place where Mario Vargas Llosa was born in 1936. 

The museum of the Andes left me with a sense of irritated disappointment that made me wonder what kind of reception would we get here. I had been looking forward to the Andes museum and the no photography no mummies and lots of fees had rubbed me all backwards. 

Rusty enjoyed his walk not least because he’s much more relaxed when we are both together. He gets anxious when I try to take him on my own. He takes his chief security officer job very seriously while we travel. 

The temperature here at 7400 feet is slightly confusing because the sun is hot but at this altitude it doesn’t heat the air so you get the perfect climate when the sun is up with about 75 degrees. When the sun goes down the temperature plummets. We wake up routinely to 48 degree mornings. 

This museum operated by the Arequipa Regional Government is in league of its own. Rusty was welcomed and made a fuss of while we discussed the author’s works as we waited for the previous tour to get done. I took Dan’s advice and bought “Death In The Andes” and our guide suggested his autobiography “A Fish In The Water.”  I’ve got some Andean literature to get through now.

The house belonged to Vargas Llosa’s grandfather and he was born there because his father insisted his mother go to be with her family for her confinement. He lived here for a year and has no memory by his own account if Arequipa which makes this museum something of an oddity to my mind. Another modern oddity is the talking hologram wherein the Nobel Peize winning author welcomes you warmly and cheerfully. 

Young Mario was born here and a few months later his father vanished for eleven years before reappearing and making his life hell by essentially kidnapping him and making his son live with him in Lima. 

“The City And The Dogs” (also known in English as “The Time Of The Hero”) published in 1963 brought him fame but his life till then had more twists and turns, many different jobs and varied settings than my own so my hat’s off to him. He also prided himself on writing everything, including his Nobel acceptance speech by hand on sheets of paper. Like this: 

Free his birth the family moved to Bolivia encouraged to make the move to silence the malevolent chatter about his abandoned single mother, and he lived a life of joy and privilege in Cochabamba with many friends and a whole bevy of uncles aunts cousins and friends. Arequipa was merely his place of birth. 

His fondest memories of Peru, he says are the wild north coast around Piura where his family moved, the multicolored sands of the desert and the ocean breaking on endless beaches. I found that sentiment quite striking inasmuch as Peru today sells itself as a land of mountains and ruins and Incas and all the advertising we know with llamas and bowler hats and Machu Picchu. Below is a scene from “The Green House” which in his youth in Piura was a bordello. In the story the villagers attack the whores instigated by the village priest: 

We walked through the house stopping in each room to watch a brief video (in Spanish though I believe English speaking guides may be available) about some aspect of his life. It was nicely done and I found interesting but in a way it highlighted how little of Arequipa is in Vargas Llosa. 

His has been an interesting life and just reading his Wikipedia biography will give you a taste of his prolific writing as a journalist, his many down to earth odd jobs to keep himself in funds and his winding political path through life. 

He started out leftist appalled by the poverty on display in Peru after World War Two (and today as far as I’m concerned). He supported Castro in Cuba until Castro locked up a popular Latin American poet and that sent Vargas Llosa in another direction. He says nowadays he opposes dictatorships of any kind but in 1990 he ran for Predidebtvif Peru on the right wing ticket. He lost to Alberto Fujimori who ended up on the run and in exile in Japan accused of appalling corruption so perhaps it’s just as well Vargas Llosa lost. 

He has dual citizenship now and mostly lives in Madrid where he says Spain gave him the platform to make him famous and he spends months at a time in Peru visiting his family. 

He’s won a couple of awards too. 

And as our guide pointed out he is the only person from Arequipa to win the Nobel Prize, seen here in holographic form accepting it, and reading from his hand written speech. 

It was an interesting visit and despite our inability to slow down stop and pause and view things at our leisure it was well worth while. 

I’m not sure what young Rusty thought of the tour but he sat patiently and laid down quietly during the videos and was praised for his perfect manners. As usual. 

And do we three wandered back to the campground through the leafy back streets of Arequipa. 

Funnily enough the leader of the guerilla movement known as “Sendero Luminoso” (Shining Path) whose name is Abimael Guzman was also born in Arequipa. Some say the reason there were no terrorist attacks here during that protracted civil war was owing to the fact that he had a soft spot for the city of his birth. 

The Shining Path were a ghastly bunch of thugs who killed 70,000 people they say and tortured and terrified absolutely everyone. Guzman was a university professor who spent decades planning his uprising but in his Maoist ideology forgot the critical component of a winning revolution: winning the hearts and minds. They slaughtered at will and thus terrified every single Peruvian and ultimately thanks to some solid police work he was caught and arrested and is finishing up his worthless life behind bars. But he sure left his mark on this country. 

Personally I prefer Vargas Llosa’s story and I think I might start digging deeper into his books. I’m not sure why but he has never previously grabbed me. Today he may have got me.