Editing Mario Vargas Llosa (section)

==Political career==

=== Turn to liberalism ===
[[File:Enrique Peña Nieto y Mario Vargas Llosa.jpg|thumb|Mario Vargas Llosa with Mexican president [[Enrique Peña Nieto]] in 2014]]

Like many other Latin American intellectuals, Vargas Llosa was initially a supporter of the [[Cuban Revolution|Cuban revolutionary]] government of [[Fidel Castro]].<ref name="Kristal xi">{{Harvnb|Kristal|1998|p=xi}}</ref> He studied [[Marxism]] in depth as a university student and was later persuaded by [[communism|communist]] ideals after the success of the Cuban Revolution.<ref>{{Harvnb|Setti|1989|p=140}}</ref> Gradually, Vargas Llosa came to believe that [[socialism]] was incompatible with what he considered to be general liberties and freedoms.<ref>{{Harvnb|Setti|1989|p=141}}</ref> The official rupture between the writer and the policies of the Cuban government occurred with the "Padilla Affair", when the Castro regime imprisoned the poet [[Heberto Padilla]] for a month in 1971.<ref>{{cite news |author=Bohlen, Celestine |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/28/arts/heberto-padilla-68-cuban-poet-is-dead.html |title=Heberto Padilla, 68, Cuban Poet, Is Dead |work=The New York Times |date=28 September 2000}}</ref> Vargas Llosa, along with other intellectuals of the time, wrote to Castro protesting the Cuban political system and its imprisonment of the poet.<ref>{{Harvnb|Setti|1989|p=142}}</ref> Vargas Llosa identified himself with liberalism rather than extreme left-wing political ideologies thereafter.<ref>{{Harvnb|Morote|1998|p=234}}</ref> After he relinquished his earlier leftism, he opposed both left- and right-wing authoritarian regimes.<ref>{{Harvnb|Vincent|2007|p=1}}</ref>

=== Investigatory Commission ===
[[File:Sabatovargasllosa.jpg|thumb|Argentine writer [[Ernesto Sabato]] (left) with Mario Vargas Llosa (right) in 1981]]

With his appointment to the Investigatory Commission on the {{Ill|Uchuraccay massacre|es|Masacre de Uchuraccay}} in 1983, he experienced what literary critic [[Jean Franco]] calls "the most uncomfortable event in [his] political career".<ref name="franco56">{{Harvnb|Franco|2002|p=56}}</ref> Unfortunately for Vargas Llosa, his involvement with the Investigatory Commission led to immediate negative reactions and defamation from the Peruvian press; many suggested that the massacre was a conspiracy to keep the journalists from reporting the presence of government paramilitary forces in [[Uchuraccay]].<ref name="Kristal151" /> The commission concluded that it was the indigenous villagers who had been responsible for the killings; for Vargas Llosa the incident showed "how vulnerable democracy is in Latin America and how easily it dies under dictatorships of the right and left".<ref>Qtd. {{Harvnb|Kirk|1997|pp=183–184}}</ref> These conclusions, and Vargas Llosa personally, came under intense criticism: anthropologist Enrique Mayer, for instance, accused him of "paternalism",<ref>Qtd. {{Harvnb|Kokotovic|2007|p=172}}</ref> while fellow anthropologist Carlos Iván Degregori criticized him for his ignorance of the Andean world.<ref>Qtd. {{Harvnb|Kokotovic|2007|p=177}}</ref> Vargas Llosa was accused of actively colluding in a government cover-up of army involvement in the massacre.<ref name="Kristal151" /> American [[Latin American literature]] scholar Misha Kokotovic summarizes that the novelist was charged with seeing "indigenous cultures as a 'primitive' obstacle to the full realization of his Western model of modernity".<ref>{{Harvnb|Kokotovic|2007|p=177}}</ref> Shocked both by the atrocity itself and then by the reaction his report had provoked, Vargas Llosa responded that his critics were apparently more concerned with his report than with the hundreds of peasants who later died at the hands of the [[Sendero Luminoso]] guerrilla organization.<ref>Qtd. {{Harvnb|Kristal|1998|p=231}}</ref>

=== Presidential candidacy ===
{{Main|1990 Peruvian general election}}
In 1987, he helped form and soon became a leader of the centre-right party [[Liberty Movement|Movimiento Libertad]].<ref name="Bolland8">{{Harvnb|Boland|Harvey|1988|p=8}}</ref> The following year his party entered a coalition with the parties of Peru's two principal conservative politicians at the time, ex-president [[Fernando Belaúnde Terry]] (of the [[Popular Action (Peru)|Popular Action]] party) and [[Luis Bedoya Reyes]] (of the [[Partido Popular Cristiano (Peru)|Popular Christian Party]]), to form the tripartite centre-right coalition known as ''[[Democratic Front (Peru)|Frente Democrático]]'' (FREDEMO).<ref name="Bolland8" /> He ran for the [[List of Presidents of Peru|presidency of Peru]] in 1990 as the candidate of the FREDEMO coalition with the support of the United States.<ref name=":112">{{Cite journal |last=Mitchell |first=Timothy |date=2005 |title=The work of economics: how a discipline makes its world |journal=European Journal of Sociology |volume=46 |issue=2 |pages=299–310 |doi=10.1017/S000397560500010X |doi-access=free |s2cid=146456853}}</ref> Many of Peru's political elite in the 21st century began their careers in FREDEMO.<ref name=":5">{{Cite news |title=Mario Vargas Llosa: Why the 2010 Nobel Prize winner stirs controversy in Peru |work=[[Christian Science Monitor]] |url=https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2010/1007/Mario-Vargas-Llosa-Why-the-2010-Nobel-Prize-winner-stirs-controversy-in-Peru |access-date=31 July 2023 |issn=0882-7729}}</ref> He proposed [[neoliberal]] policies—similar to those later adopted by Alberto Fujimori—that included a drastic economic [[austerity]] program that frightened most of the country's poor; this program emphasized the need for privatization, a market economy, free trade, and most importantly, the dissemination of private property.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Iber|first=Patrick|date=15 April 2019|title=The Political Lives of Mario Vargas Llosa|language=en-US|work=[[The Nation]]|url=https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/mario-vargas-llosa-sabres-and-utopias-book-review/|access-date=19 April 2021|issn=0027-8378}}</ref><ref name="emilyparker">{{Harvnb|Parker|2007}}</ref>

Vargas Llosa, according to Rospigliosi, inspired some of the objectives drafted by the [[Peruvian Armed Forces]] in the [[Plan Verde]], specifically in the volume titled ''Driving Peru into the XXI century'', which outlined Peru becoming a neoliberal country and called for the extermination of vulnerable populations deemed as economically burdensome.<ref name=":16">{{Cite book |last=Rospigliosi |first=Fernando |title=Las Fuerzas Armadas y el 5 de abril: la percepción de la amenaza subversiva como una motivación golpista |publisher=Instituto de Estudios Peruanos |year=1996 |location=Lima, Peru |pages=28–40}}</ref> Members of the [[Peruvian Armed Forces]] who drafted the Plan Verde initially expected Vargas Llosa to win the presidency and support their objectives.<ref name=":10">{{Cite journal |last=Avilés |first=William |date=Spring 2009 |title=Despite Insurgency: Reducing Military Prerogatives in Colombia and Peru |journal=[[Latin American Politics and Society]] |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |volume=51 |issue=1 |pages=57–85 |doi=10.1111/j.1548-2456.2009.00040.x |s2cid=154153310}}</ref><ref name=":16"/> Although Vargas Llosa won the first round with 34% of the vote, he was defeated by a then-unknown agricultural engineer, [[Alberto Fujimori]], in the subsequent run-off.<ref name="emilyparker" /> Vargas Llosa included an account of his run for the presidency in the memoir ''[[A Fish in the Water]]'' (''El pez en el agua'', 1993).<ref>{{Harvnb|Larsen|2000|p=155}}</ref>