Word: peruvians
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...least 100 degrees in the noonday sun. Mario Vargas Llosa stands on an outdoor stage draped with sewn-together sheets pinned with red and white paper flowers. He is in Bagua, a dusty town in the north Peruvian jungle known more for its rice growing than for its literary sophistication. As the primarily Indian audience of several thousand watches, a partially toothless man wearing sunglasses and a pale blue guayabera hoarsely yells, "Mario, Presidente! Mario, Presidente!" Then the candidate speaks, promising, if he is elected this coming Sunday, to bring prosperity to the Amazonas province. "In this region," he proclaims...
...doing this otherwise!" Vargas Llosa says with a laugh. He is not exaggerating. Peru suffers from an inflation rate of nearly 3,000% a year. Ten people are killed daily in political violence in Peru, the majority by the Maoist terrorist group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path). The average Peruvian's standard of living has dropped more than 50% since 1985. Corruption thrives in the bloated, inefficient state bureaucracy. Only Vargas Llosa seems to want the job of managing the nearly unmanageable country. Even for those who oppose him and his politics, which are supported by the country's wealthy conservatives...
Vargas Llosa is not the most natural of candidates. In style, he is the exact opposite of incumbent Alan Garcia Perez, a fiery speaker whose high- profile antics wore thin as he ran the Peruvian economy into the ground. When Garcia tried in 1987 to nationalize the banks, Vargas Llosa successfully rallied against the move. He has been in the limelight ever since. In fact, the handsome 54-year-old novelist is openly disdainful of the occupation that engages him. "Politics is intimately related to human mediocrity," Vargas Llosa observes wryly. So far, this attitude has been to his advantage...
...kept the author from building the alliances, particularly with leftist groups, that he needs to govern Peru effectively. Instead, they say, he relies on advice from a small cadre of confidants that includes his wife Patricia, 43. "He is very alone out there," says Hernando de Soto, a leading Peruvian economist and onetime friend...
Nevertheless, Vargas Llosa tries to steal two or three hours in the mornings for reading, writing and contemplation. Mostly he reads poetry for its quick burst of language, but he admits that he finds it hard to concentrate these days. No doubt Peruvian reality rivals even the most artful and engaging of his novels. In Conversations in the Cathedral (1969) and The War at the End of the World (1984), the two books of which he is proudest, Vargas Llosa explored fanaticism, apocalypse and corruption. If he is elected President, Vargas Llosa will have to contend more directly with these...