Saturday, June 23, 2007

Saturday morning with Vargas Llosa

The Wall Street Journal gives an interview with Mario Vargas Llosa. There is no need to present the man, of course. But by any means, if you have some time today sit down with a cup of something and enjoy. Some teasers:

"We have a big problem with Chávez. He's a demagogue and a 19th century socialist. He is a destabilizing force for democracy in Latin America, but what he thought would be so easy hasn't been so easy. There has been a lot of resistance.

[RCTV] For me, most important was that the protests in Venezuela were very strong, in particular the sectors that were once very sympathetic to him, for example the students in the Central University of Venezuela, not only the students in the private universities."

This all sounds true enough, but in a dictatorship, wouldn't literature be censored as well? "In undeveloped countries, censorship doesn't reach that point of subtlety, as it did in Spain for example," Mr. Vargas Llosa explains. "Because in undeveloped countries, the dictators are, well, functioning illiterates that don't think that literature can be dangerous."

See, I knew you would enjoy it.

-The end-

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