Vargas Llosa's stab
One word can mortally wound a person or a regime. At the “ Vuelta Meeting: The Experience of Freedom,” which we organized in Vuelta magazine in August 1990, Mario Vargas Llosa uttered a lethal phrase: “The perfect dictatorship is not Fidel Castro's Cuba: it is Mexico, because it is a dictatorship so camouflaged that it seems not to be one, but in fact, if you dig deeper, it has all the characteristics of a dictatorship.”
He found no major differences between traditional Latin American dictatorships and the Mexican regime. In the former, a man remained, in the latter, a party was perpetuated. But what was truly characteristic of the PRI was the way it had "recruited the intellectual milieu," subtly encouraging criticism. Vargas Llosa made distinctions: "It's true that there has been very talented, very generous, very courageous internal criticism from many Mexican intellectuals, naturally among them Octavio Paz." Nevertheless, he believed it was his duty to "denounce" the Mexican case: "As this country is opening up to freedom, I want to put it to the test, I want to say it openly here, because I've thought this since the first time I came to Mexico, to this country that, incidentally, I admire and love so much [...] we have experienced for decades, with very particular nuances, the phenomenon of the Latin American dictatorship."
The episode has had millions of views on YouTube, capturing Paz's discomfort, but many omit his thoughtful response: "We can't talk about dictatorships. Mario Vargas Llosa spoke of military dictatorships," he began his remarks. "In Mexico, it's a fact, there have been no military dictatorships," he added, "but, yes, we have suffered the hegemonic domination of one party. This is a fundamental and essential distinction."
That difference aroused suspicion. Some attributed Vargas Llosa's sudden departure from the country to a presidential tantrum or a disagreement with Paz. There was no such thing. They were always colleagues and friends.
At different times, I've asked myself, who was right? And I've believed it was both. Vargas Llosa was right in exposing that co-optation and, with his phrase, provoking the public reaction that contributed to the end of that regime that felt eternal. Paz—quite rightly—felt the generalization excessive and considered the particular omission of independent intellectuals, such as Daniel Cosío Villegas, Gabriel Zaid, and himself, unfair: he had been a vocal critic of the regime since 1968, and had founded the magazine Plural in 1971, which "tended to introduce pluralism into the anomalous Mexican regime and in which Vargas Llosa had been one of the best contributors." And, indeed, the comparison of the PRI with Latin American military regimes (right or left) was, to say the least, imprecise. The organization of the meeting itself, financed with private funds and broadcast on open television, would have been unthinkable in Chile under Pinochet or in Castro's Cuba.
There was a fundamental difference that was not made clear , and that only time—now without Paz as an actor and witness—would reveal. Paz, now free on parole, believed that the comprehensive democratization of the country should follow the internal democratization of the PRI. Vargas Llosa—who had just run and lost in open elections—since then believed that democracy, win or lose, was and is inseparable from freedom.
Paz recorded his disappointment with that government in Itinerario , his autobiographical essay. But even on the threshold of death, a staunch defender of liberty, he feared the sudden arrival of democracy because it could lead to demagoguery.
Vargas Llosa, on the other hand, was a liberal and a democrat until the very threshold of his own death . The people could vote wrong, but the vote had to be defended. The people could scorn freedom, but freedom had to be defended.
Vargas Llosa's blow struck that regime to the core and contributed to the advent of an era of democracy with freedom that seemed definitive. It wasn't. Now, not only in Mexico, but throughout the world, demagoguery disfigures democracy and power suffocates freedom. But even if the West is on the threshold of its death, democracy and freedom are united values. Paz himself had once declared it. And at this very moment, both spell it out: freedom without democracy is a chimera; democracy without freedom is tyranny.
lanacion
