It eases the pain of seeing our own democracy and culture deteriorate so badly. We can slaughter people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya but can't afford to fund our public libraries and schools!
Corporations, rather than independent and creative thinkers, define our public discussion and aim it at idiocy, ignorance and distracting trivia and gossip--and, above all, at passivity. Our people hunger for ideas, meaningful lives, empowerment as citizens, community and good government and are constantly told, in every way imaginable, that only billionaires matter. We've become a rotten Empire and cannot renew our democracy and culture because of controlling mechanisms such as the corporate-run 'TRADE SECRT' voting machines and corporate/war profiteer control of our public airwaves and all means of communication but this one (and they're working on this one). We are being robbed blind, in ways that are obvious and in ways that most people don't even know about, and stripped of our once prosperous and progressive society.
Meanwhile, countries like Argentina and Venezuela are pouring resources into public libraries and public schools, and are dramatically expanding educational opportunities and high literacy. The Chavez government is printing millions of books of all kinds and providing them at extremely low cost or free, as well as reproducing millions of copies of the Venezuelan constitution and handing them out free and even printing parts of the constitution on grocery bags, to ENCOURAGE public discussion of government, politics and human and civil rights. These societies are, as a consequence, conducting lively public discussions on
real issues and are solving real problems--hunger, poverty, exclusion, inequality, imbalances of power, control by entrenched rich elites, lack of health care, joblessness--and are reversing the ruinous policies of "neo-liberalism," "austerity" and privatization imposed on them by the U.S. They, too, are cursed with corporate-controlled media, but they are finding ways around that corporate control, because the government--LEFTIST government, MAJORITYIST government, REAL democratic government--
wants real discussion.
What a contrast they make to our own ravaged democracy!
I love the Argentine Free Book Movement ("This book has not been lost. It has no owner...".)! What a great idea! Culture doesn't have to be "brought to you by Exxon Mobil." Culture can be brought to you without that baggage, free of cost, citizen to citizen. And you don't have to buy an expensive electronic device, and run up your credit card, for a limited list of corporate-approved books. Books are FREE--at your public library, on a park bench, in a bus depot, anywhere you may be going.
---
"The distinction (for Buenos Aires)
of being designated World Book Capital 2011 was marked by a ceremony at the International Book Fair, a major cultural event that has been held in Buenos Aires every year since 1975. The fair attracts Argentine and foreign authors, and is very popular with the public, drawing an average attendance of over one million people." --from the OP
---
Go, Buenos Aires!
---
"This year's book fair was inaugurated Apr. 20 by the winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru. However, his visit stirred up considerable controversy because of his outspoken criticisms last year of the centre-left Argentine government of President Cristina Fernández." --from the OP
---
Just wanted to comment on Mario Vargas Llosa being his typical asshole self at the book faire. This is what happens in a democracy--in a country that is able to elect leaders who actually believe in democracy. Shit stirrers, too, are encouraged--however rude they may be, however selfish and egotistical, however wrong they are.
Vargas Llosa should attend to conditions in his native Peru, where the U.S. "neo-liberalism" that he advocates--a "free trade for the rich" agreement with the Bush Junta--has ravaged Peru's poor majority and is stripping Peru of its natural resources in particularly damaging and toxic ways. Peru is one of the exceptions to the democracy revolution in Latin America and its cultural renaissances. It is second only to Colombia in corruption and in the discrepancy between rich and poor.
Instead, he attacks a
good government that is making every effort to address real problems and create a decent society--including a
literate society--and a government that has joined and contributed significantly to the larger economic/political integration movement that is transforming Latin America, at long last, into the economic and cultural wonder that it always had the potential to be--savagely suppressed by the U.S. and by fascist elements within, for centuries.
I have to mention this. When word came down from the Bush Junta that Latin American leaders must "isolate Chavez," Cristina Fernandez's husband, former president Nestor Kirchner (now deceased) replied, "But he's my brother!"
Those were possibly the most important four words spoken in Latin America in the last decade--and possibly ever. If Mario Vargas Llosa cannot understand what they mean--nor the viciousness with which the U.S. regards the Kirchner-Fernandez government, and the evil schemes abrew in Washington to topple this government, to "re-divide and re-conquer" the region, and to bring back the "glory days" of U.S.-supported torture and murder, as is evident in the U.S. client states of Colombia and Honduras, and will be evident in Peru again, if Fujimora's daughter is elected president--then Mario Vargas Llosa is no great writer and no great man. He is a merely one of these grandee male literary types that are full of themselves, riding on past glories.
I don't have access to his speech at the book faire, so I can't judge if it was honest criticism, but I suspect that it wasn't. I suspect that--like Oscar Arias--he is using his Noble Prize status to serve the interests of the rich and the corporate. Those interests have made him rich and lauded him. Now he identifies with them.
That he caused controversy does not disturb me (unless he just did it for the controversy--to sell his books to the elite). That he is a shit stirrer does not disturb me. Many a writer has been a shit-stirrer and it is always, always a good thing, even when they are dead wrong (like Ezra Pound and his flirtation with Naziism and advocacy of fascism). The opinion may be atrociously bad. The shit stirring is not. It is always useful. (For instance, with Pound, it provides some understanding of how others could have been so mesmerized by fascist and Nazi ideas and leaders.)
Writers should never, ever be suppressed for their views--no matter how contrarian they are. Bad ideas should be countered with better ideas, not with suppression. So I am not saying, in any way, that he should not have been allowed to speak, nor am I saying that his criticism was unwarranted (since I don't know what it was). I am saying that I suspect that he is not large-minded, that he cannot see the bigger picture in Latin America, which it is possible that I can see better than he does--because I have distance from it. I see it from the perspective of our destroyed democracy and failing culture. I don't think he can do that--because, if he could, then he would have placed his criticism IN CONTEXT. It would have been hearable and understandable to many sectors of society. It would have been useful and constructive, and would not have merely stirred up anger. It would have stirred up thoughtfulness and good discussion. It would have enlarged peoples' understanding of their lives, their country and their region. In other words, I think he is a
limited thinker, like Pound was--not really a great man. The singular feature of truly great writers is that they can rise out of their own egos, and speak to all. Mario Vargas Llosa doesn't seem able to do that, and he thus gets involved in petty political spats and controversies and has become, alas, a rightwing/corporate ideologue.
Here is his wiki bio, worth reading to understand where he is coming from politically and culturally. To me it is a sad story, like Pound's is--so much talent, ultimately diverted into blindness toward the most rancid political philosophy of the day. Vargas Llosa is limited and blind like Pound was, and could have been a bigger-souled and greater man.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Vargas_Llosa------------------
(Edited to add attribution of the quotes.)
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