- It is my distinct honor to welcome you all to the last of this 2017 Berlin Family Lectures delivered this year by one
of the most prominent writers of the 20th and the 21st century, the Peruvian, Mario Vargas Llosa. I also want to add my voice of gratitude to the Berlin Family whose generosity has
made this event possible and to Mario Vargas Llosa for having spent these last months here with us
at the University of Chicago. I also want to thank Tom Popelka and all the staff that
made this event possible. I am Agnes Lugo-Ortiz from the Department of Romance
Languages and Literatures. As many of you may be able to tell I am not Victoria Saramago. While Victoria was originally scheduled to introduce today's lecture, we decided that it made more sense to have a Brazilian
introduce a text on Brazil as she did last week for The
War of the End of the World, and a Caribbeanist
introduce today's novel, The Feast of the Goat. This text addresses one of
the most traumatic periods in the history of the Dominican Republic, the 30-year long dictatorship
of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. A brutal regime that began in 1930 and the effects of which
endured well beyond the assassination of the tyrant in 1961. At the end of today's lecture
we will have a Q & A session and this will indeed be
moderated by Victoria so you will see Victoria today. What I would like to talk about today is about an issue that
is absolutely central to Vargas Llosa's work
and that for some reason have not been touch up on thus far. And it's the question
of gender and sexuality in the work of Mario Vargas Llosa. I vividly remember my first encounter with the fiction of Mario Vargas Llosa many years ago when I was
still a college student. Those were the early
days of the development of feminist literary and cultural theories in the halls of American universities. It was a time of exhilaration and profound intellectual restlessness. We were barely beginning to grapple with gender and sexuality as categories for the analysis
of culture and society. And for the understanding
of the formation of personal and political identities. Those were also times important here for the subject at hand today when we were beginning to apprehend how these categories,
gender and sexuality, were not just incidental elements in the making of works
of literature and art, or just matters of ideology. Although certainly, they were also that. In a more complex fashion, we were starting to think
how these categories also carried an aesthetic dimension. One that could be identified
in the very fabric of works of art and literature. Be this in the construction of characters, in the imagining of plots, in the metaphorical overtones of language or in the very structures of narrative. To say differently, we
were conceptualizing gender and sexuality in their sorrow or overt manifestations as part of the linguistic
thinness of fiction. And it was in that
context that I first read or shall I say, that I devoured, La ciudad y los perros,
The Time of the Hero. Vargas Llosa's first major
novel published in 1962 and which helped launch his
international reputation as a writer. I was absolutely perplexed
on reading that text. More than any other text that
I had read up to that point, literary, theoretical or otherwise, that novel was the most exact radiography of the inextricable relationships between militarism,
masculine power and violence in Latin America. Actually, it may not be far-fetched to say that a significant portion
of Vargas Llosa's oeuvre especially of his early novels has been devoted to this exploration. Thus it is significant
that for the lecture series that comes to an end today, Vargas Llosa has chosen to speak to us not about his most recent work that address a variety of topics, but about text that belonged to earlier stages in his career. Text that brought him fame
not just for his brilliant, absolutely brilliant dislocation
of narrative convention but equally important for
his insightful staging of the painful and excruciating drama of Latin American
masculinity in particular. That is the insecurities, vulnerabilities, pettiness and violence that are constitutive of the law of gender and of the fear of castration, played out with great cruelty between men and against women, children and animals. A cultural law that Vargas Llosa has perceptively identified as consubstantial with the continent's centuries-long agonistic experiences with authoritarianism and
military dictatorships, both right and left. In the early novels that he has discussed over the last three weeks, The Time of the Hero from 1962, Conversation in the Cathedral from 1969, The War of the End of the World from 1981. One could say that these
fictional reflections on the state of acception as a course of modern Latin
American political history is nothing but a paroxysm, the most extreme manifestation
of the law of gender and of gender as law. Before Vargas Llosa, another
Latin American writer to my mind has submitted that law to such an implacable critique and has made us feel its weight with such intensity and darkness. And this indeed also the case of the novel that Vargas Llosa will present today, The Feast of the Goat. A relatively recent work
published in the year 2000. In this novel, Vargas Llosa returns with important aesthetic
and ideological twists to the meditation that so passionately obsessed him in his earlier works, and that in all firmness perhaps
he never fully abandoned. A meditation on the
vulnerability of gender power and its relationship
with political violence and authoritarianism. To do so, his mind
traveled to the Caribbean, an area that offers the
historical imagination and rich trove of authoritarian figures, Henri Cristophe and the Duvalier with their Tonton Macoute in Haiti. Gerardo Machado and the
Castro brothers in Cuba. Not to mention, the brutal regimes of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua and Juan Vicente Gomez in Venezuela. But from this colorful repertoire it is Trujillo and the Trujillato that caught his attention, that let him to revisit
some of the core concerns of his earlier works and
to rethink and fictionalize both the political and
the subjective inner world forged under that tyranny. Trujillo who is the object of a whole body of fictional works that are organized under the rubric of La Novela Del Trujillato, The Novel of Trujillato,
a sub genre on its own. He's perhaps, Trujillo,
the most self-aestheticized of all 20th century
Latin American dictators. Elegant, impeccably groomed
and fashionably dressed, he wore special white make up to hide the traces of his black ancestry. And careful staged the scenarios for the elaborate public
displays of his power. In the last years of his life,
however, and to his dismay, Trujillo found himself incontinent and suffering from an
illness of the prostate which make him impotent. Now, he who had made
thousands of people obey with the flick of his finger or at the will of his police force, the one who subjected
women to his violent whims was incapable of controlling
the behavior of his own body. Vargas Llosa picked up on
this bodily vulnerability of the dictator and introduced a very important variant to his fictional account. On like so many novelas del dictador and other sub genre of contemporary Latin American literature, novels that focus specifically on the representation of
a dictatorial character, in this novel and they
are mostly dominated by male characters. In this novel, Vargas Llosa constructed an extremely compelling female
character, Urania Cabral. It is through her voice
that the text reveals some of the most abysmal and abject depth that mark existence under totalitarianism. Why Trujillo? Why and how this extraordinary
character of Urania Cabral? I'm sure Vargas Llosa will illuminate some of these questions. I would like to end by
saying that recent events in the history of the United States have made Vargas Llosa, and I will say actually contemporary 20th century Latin American literature with their profound
reflections upon the nature and mechanics of authoritarianism and its entanglement with gender, a most urgent matter
for American audiences. I cannot think of a more timely moment for this intervention. Please join me in welcoming
again Mario Vargas Llosa. (audience clapping) - Good evening. Thank you very much for this very well-informed and
generous presentation. Well, in 1974 I went for the first time to the Dominican Republic. I went to make a documentary
about the country and I stay there several weeks. Trujillo had been killed 30 years before and the Dominicans were talking with great freedom
about the experience of the 31 years of the
Trujillo dictatorship. I thought at that time that I knew more or less everything about
Latin American dictatorships because the dictators that we have suffered in Peru and because I have been following more or less the so many cases of
dictatorships in Latin America. But during these weeks
in the Dominican Republic I discovered that the 31 years of the Trujillo dictatorship
had something special. It was probably more cruel
than other dictatorships. It was a dictatorship that had make suffer particularly the women in such a way that I don't think there was another case like this one
in the rest of Latin America. Also that the kind of power that Trujillo had over
the Dominican society during those 31 years was really unique. I don't think that any
other among the several military dictatorship that we had in the '30s, '40s, '50s in Latin America was as the Dominican one a case of total control of the life, the mind of the whole of societies. I think during this 31 years, Trujillo had practically
absolute total control of the life of the three
million of Dominicans. I heard many anecdotes and stories about the Trujillo dictatorship
that I couldn't believe were really exact, true. I thought that was a
typical Latin American exaggeration, fantasies. The legions that are created around dictators and hombres fuertes, the big caudillos. And I was particularly surprised, listen by different people that it was quite common
during the travels that Trujillo did periodically
around the country. To receive him as gifts
from particularly peasants, girls, young women who were presented as gifts to him by their families, by their parents. Say to myself this is
absolutely impossible, this is a typical fantasy,
Latin American fantasy around dictators. But I had the opportunity to met during these weeks to one
military assistant of Trujillo. His name was Khalil Ashe. He was very sympathetic, you know? And I asked him, I have
heard this so many times, is that true? It really happened when Trujillo was traveling around the country he received girls from
their parents as gifts? And he told me, "Yes, of course "and that was a big problem for the chief "because he didn't want
to disappoint, you know, "people who brought to him these girls. "But he didn't know what
to do with all these." And I say but it's true. They gave their daughters to Trujillo. Of course. They knew that the chief was a womanizer, that he liked very much women. And of course and they
knew that it was a very generous kind of gift. And he told me, well, the chief what did he do with these girls. Sometimes he married them with soldiers. And I said, "Doctor, that was true?" Poor people, humble people gave their daughters to the generalissimo. He told me, "Yeah. "Well, that was a normal thing." I started to inquire about the testimonies of people who had been living
in the Dominican Republic during these 31 years and I heard really incredible things. And one of the convictions that I had when I left the country was that the probably in
any other dictatorships, women suffered so much as during
the Trujillo dictatorship. Also that the personality of Trujillo was so strong, so powerful. That he had impressed so much the society, the whole of society because his cruelty,
because his contagious will that probably there was no
other case in Latin America of this kind of let's say magical sequestration of a society as it was the
case in the Dominican Republic. I took a lot of books, there were many, many testimonies
of people who had suffered or who have fought against Trujillo and about the martyrs of the who had killed Trujillo in 1961. And who had been exterminated
in an incredibly cruel way by Ramfis Trujillo, by
the elder son of Trujillo. And I started to read and it was like that that the idea of writing a
novel about Trujillo came to me. I work very hard in this novel. I wanted two things. I remember that in
Conversation in the Cathedral, a previous novel, I had written about a
dictatorship as I told you two weeks ago. But that in that novel the dictator, General Odria, never appeared. Only the consequences, the manifestations of the dictatorships at different levels of the Peruvian society. In this book I wanted Trujillo
to be the main character, the hero, let's say the hero in the novel. And secondly, what I wanted
was to describe particularly in one symbolic character
the kind of cruelty that was imposed on the Dominican women during those 31 years. It was true that Trujillo was a womanizer. At the same time he use sex in a way that probably no other Latin
American dictator did. For example, he used to go to bed with the wives of his ministers. But it was very twisted
because it was not, well, not only because
he like it, these ladies, but because he used this to prove the loyalty of his ministers. He went to bed with the ladies and he managed to inform the ministers that he was doing this. Why did he do it? Because he wanted to prove
the loyalty of his ministers. Where see loyal to him that he accepted in a
very machista country to be humiliated by the chief going to bed with their wives. But what was extraordinary was that most of the ministers accepted. They accepted. They accepted by fear. Well, in certain cases yes, it was fear but in many other cases was
because they were convinced that Trujillo was such extraordinary man, that he had the right to abuse them and to humiliate them
even in their families. This was the kind of servility, the abject kind of servility
that he produced around him during those 31 years. It happened with a very great intellectual in the Dominican Republic,
Pedro Henriquez Ureña, one of the great intellectuals
in Latin America. He was young at the beginning
of the Trujillo dictatorship and he was appointed
minister of education. And few weeks after, Trujillo's car stopped at the house of Pedro Henriquez Ureña in the morning. And Trujillo went, rang the house and asked to see Mrs. Henriquez Ureña. He was married with a Mexican, the daughter of Vicente Lombardo Toledano, one of the daughters of
Vicente Lombardo Toledano. And she said, "I'm sorry
but I cannot receive you "because I don't receive visits "when my husband is not here." It was possible to do this at the beginning of the dictatorship, afterwards it was impossible. But at that time it was possible. So, she didn't receive the chief and when Pedro Henriquez
Ureña came to have lunch she told him what had happened. Pedro Henriquez Ureña
resigned the same day and went abroad the
next day with his wife, and he never, never returned
to his country, never. He went to Mexico, to
Spain, to United States and finally to Argentina where he lived the rest of his life. Well, there were so
many stories, you know? I was fascinated by the
story of Anselmo Paulino. Anselmo Paulino who is,
let's say the model of other, of the important characters of the novel, Agustin Cabral minister of Trujillo, very close to him, one of
his closest collaborators is inspiring the case of Anselmo Paulino. Anselmo Paulino was during 10 years the right hand of Trujillo. Prime minister, he was the political mind behind Trujillo. He organized practically all
the important institutions that supported the dictatorship. And a fanatic Trujillista of course. But Trujillo made in the mid '50s a visit to Franco in Spain. And he invited Franco to
visit the Dominican Republic and Franco said something to him that was the tragedy of Anselmo Paulino. He said to him, "I cannot
leave Spain generalissimo "because I don't have nobody
like Anselmo Paulino." So, Trujillo took the plane back to the, to Ciudad Trujillo that was
the name of Santo Domingo, Ciudad Trujillo at that time. And he thought, so there
are people in the world who believe that Anselmo
Paulino could replace me. That's what Franco has said. I cannot leave Spain because
I don't have anything like Anselmo Paulino close to me. When he landed in the Dominican Republic he had decided to destroy
his closest collaborator. One day after the press started
to denounce Anselmo Paulino saying Anselmo Paulino is stealing the public resources of the country. He is a traitor to the chief, to the Generalissimo Trujillo. And the poor Anselmo Paulino couldn't understand what was going on. He understood when he was sent to prison, when all his companies, houses were confiscated by the estates. And during three years he was in a prison like a common criminal
without understanding what had happened to him. Well, the story of Anselmo
Paulino is more or less the model for the story
that in my novel leaves Victor Cabral, the father of Urania Cabral who is the most important
feminine character in the novel. Well, it is said that after three years, Trujillo called Anselmo Paulino, he was taken to the palace
and Trujillo said to him, "Well, now you are going to Switzerland "as a consul Dominicana, "as the consul of the Dominican Republic "and you have here $7
million to compensate you "for these difficult three
years that you had passed." And Anselmo Paulino went as a consul to Dominican Republic to Switzerland with his $7 million where he
died by the way years later. This can give you an idea
of the control that he had over the lives of the
Dominicans during those years. It is true, all the
testimonies coincide that the Dominican Republic was a
very safe country if you were discrete and submitted citoyen. If you didn't intervene in politics, if you had in your house this plaka, plaque that you were obliged to have in which was said in this house Trujillo es el jefe. Trujillo is the chief. All the Dominicans were
obliged to buy this ensign which was produced of course by one of the companies of Trujillo. The economic power that he had we know exactly how much was because all these was
confiscated after his death when the democracy resuscitated
in the Dominican Republic all the companies and the
land that he possessed were confiscated. And all these represented the third of the resources of the country. A third of the resources of the country were his personal possession. It is true that he introduced
reforms and changes that give some kind of order to a society that until then had been deeply chaotic because the civil wars, because the occupation by Haiti
for 22 years of the country. And because the fragility of the, let's say the governments
and even of the dictators that the country had had. But this order was imposed
with such brutality with such violence that
is really unthinkable by comparison with other dictatorships which were also corrupt,
which were also brutal, but none of them, I repeat, had this kind of personality that could control entirely the
life of the whole country. When asked him how was possible that in these conditions there were people so courageous to organize the killing of Trujillo? It was very, very, very
interesting, you know? Only one of the seven who
killed him in '61 survived. All the rest were tortured in a really incredible, incredible way. But General Antonio Imbert survived. And I had the opportunity to talk with him when I was
doing research for my novel. I went several times to
the Dominican Republic, I interviewed many, many, many people. Enemies, adversaries, of
course victims of Trujillo and some collaborators
of Trujillo who were kind enough to tell me
their version of the facts. Antonio Imbert told me the dissatisfaction with the
dictatorship was enormous but the fear that he produced with the repression that immediately
you were facing. If you dare to say
things against the regime or against the family was such that it was very, very difficult to decide to act against him. But I did it because the killing of the three Mirabal sisters. That was one of the most horrendous crimes committed by the dictatorship. The three Mirabal sisters were in the opposition. They were members of what was called the Katorse de junio movement. Because during the katorse
de junio, 14 of June 1960 there was an attempt to
invade the Dominican country by exiles and by Cubans and Venezuelans. There was an expedition in which many Latin American, not
only Dominicans participated but they were completely destroyed. They couldn't really manage to fight. And the repression against
them was absolutely, absolutely unbelievable. And Ramfis had a very strong participation in this, the killings and
tortures of the rebels who try to disembark in
the Dominican Republic. There was a movement,
an underground movement in which these three sisters
participated very actively, particularly Minerva Mirabal. Minerva was a real heroine, a fantastic woman. She had been in prison. Apparently she has been
tortured when she was a student but he was there fighting and Antonio Imbert who
was also participating in this underground movement knew her. And the way in which he
remembered Minerva Mirabal was really moving, very, very moving. He remember that Minerva Mirabal in the underground meetings that they had recommended her comrades to be tortured by themselves in order to be prepared for
what would happen to them if the police took them in prison. And that he told me that the
personality of Minerva Mirabal was so strong that he
could perfectly well lead a popular movement
against the dictatorship. And the two other sisters were also very active in this movement. Well, Trujillo organized the
killing of the three sisters always in a theatrical way. This is a very important aspect of the Trujillo dictatorship, the histrionic dimension
of the dictatorship. He was among other things a showman. He liked shows and he organized ceremonies and ceremonies that were very spectacular. For example, the 25 years of the new era as was called the dictatorship was celebrated in an incredible way. It was like a Hollywood show, you know? Bringing artist from
France, from United States. Organizing festivities during a week in which the Dominican Republic spend millions and millions of dollars. He did things as
incredible as to appointed Ramfis Trujillo, his elder son, when he was nine years old, nine, general of the Dominican Armed Forces in a public ceremony in which
the whole army marched , and in which all the ambassadors
in the Dominican Republic were there with, how to say, frocks. In the hot weather of the
Dominican Republic with frocks for the enthronization of
this boy, nine years old, as general of the military forces. He did such grotesque
things that in an election as United States and the
rest of the world was saying, well, these elections are not serious because there is no opposition. He announced that he will be the opposition candidate to the regime. And it was. He was the opposition candidate
and he won the election. (audience laughing) He won the election of course. It was grotesque. He could do anything
with a country that was modulated by his caprices,
by his arbitrariness. Like a mass of earth, you know? Well, it was very difficult for me with all these extraordinary material, this extraordinary raw
material organize a story. I wrote first as always this big first version which was totally chaotic in which everything was very confused, but in which I put everything I wanted to. And then I started to
organize this material and I decided that it
would be two stories. The story of the killing of Trujillo, the way in which the seven killers of the chief little by
little form this conspiracy. And the repression that was the corollary of the killing. And on the other hand I
would tell another story mixed with that one that would be a case of a woman. A woman in which in a symbolic way I would describe the way in which women were converted in objects, the way in which they
were abused, you know? Violated by Trujillo, by his sons, by the members of the police. A very dramatic, very tragic story that could had this kind of symbolism. And so I started to work. The story of Urania Cabral,
this is an invented story. And like other episodes in the
novel I invented this story and I thought that it
was completely invented. But when the novel was published
very, very interesting, two or three days after the
presentation of the book in Santo Domingo in one of
the newspapers of the country, Listin Diario, one of the most important newspapers in the country. A letter appeared which was sent by the brother of a lady who had experienced
a tragedy very similar to that of the Urania Cabral. And he said, "My family who
was a very Trujillista family "was practically destroyed
by the tragedy of my sister. "My parents, myself went to United States. "We didn't want to stay in this country "after what has happened to my sister. "My mother died very soon afterwards "because the pain that he had "because what had happened to my sister." And he said, "Reading the novel "I had the necessity of make
public what has happened "because I want the
Dominicans to know that "what happens to Urania is something that "could happen and had happened "during the Trujillo dictatorship." I was deeply impressed,
moved by this letter. It was very difficult for me to describe the kind of repression that fall over the seven
killers of Trujillo. And of all the people
who in a way or another had been in the conspiracy. The seven heroes didn't know how large, how vast was this conspiracy because the people who were more linked, all of them in a way or another had been linked to the
system, to the regime. Otherwise it would have been impossible to organize things as they did. And they had been talking with people, convincing people to
participate in the conspiracy. But the others didn't know all the names and because discretion was necessary, so they discover only later when they were already imprisoned the big, big number of people
who were the conspiracy. And most of them of course
members of the regime. It was said that even
Balaguer who was at that time the president of the republic, well the fake president of the republic was part of the conspiracy. This was never proved and because of that Balaguer saves his life. But the most tragic
case of the conspirators was the case of Pupo Roman. Pupo Roman was a general and he was the most important military in the Dominican military forces. He was minister of defense. He was the chief of the army, that means that he was
immediately after Trujillo the most powerful man in
the Dominican Republic. He was married with a sobrina, how do you say, a niece of Trujillo, Minerva, Minerva Trujillo. And all his brilliant military career was the result of this relationship that he had with the
chief because his wife. He was a close friend of one
of the killers of Trujillo and he was part of the conspiracy. He was an essential part of the conspiracy because he said, "If you
show me the body of Trujillo, "I want to see the corpse, "I will act immediately. "I would form a junta, civil and militar "and I would present "the killing of the dictator "as a movement of the military "and of the civilian population." So, he was deeply, deeply
committed to the conspiracy. Why? He was so powerful. He had all the privileges of the closest collaborators of Trujillo. Probably by resentment because he knew that Trujillo despised him
and he showed to him in public the absolutely this despicable feeling that he had for him
considering him nothing, a man without personality, useless. So probably in the psyches of Pupo Roman, of General Roman there was a hatred of Trujillo. And it was because him that
this conspiracy failed. They killed Trujillo but what was supposed to happen after
the death of Trujillo didn't happen because Pupo
Roman did what he did. It's very, very interesting because you can see in his case the kind of control that Trujillo had not
only in the acts of people but also in the minds, in
the souls of the Dominicans. Pupo Roman knew always because he was a member of the regime and he knew how the regime worked. That if he didn't act,
he would be discover as a member of the conspiracy and that he would pay. And he would pay in the Trujillista way so that he would be submitted
to the most monstrous kind of tortures. But in spite of that he couldn't, he couldn't act. When you have the test, when
you read the testimonies about what he did you can immediately understand that he was paralyzed by
something that was not fear. It was paralyze because
Trujillo was a kind of god and you cannot really did
what he wanted to do with god. So what he did was completely
contradictory, stupid. He treason the other
members of the conspiracy, so he condemned these seven killers to the most horrendous tortures and he condemned himself
because he did an act. He did an act and he try to erase the traces of his participation order in the same night of
the killing of Trujillo the killing of political prisoners. He gave orders that people
who were imprisoned because they were supposed to be
members of a conspiracy. They ordered the killing of these people. And he made all kind of
contradictory movements but the testimony of the other captured members of the
conspiracy condemned him and when Ramfis Trujillo
arrived from Paris he did it immediately after
the killing of his father, he was put in prison immediately after the buried of Trujillo. And during four months and a half he was submitted to the most brutal and ferocious tortures
that you can imagine. Everything that I tell in my novel about the tortures that they received during four months and a
half are less than the truth. It was even worst, you know? But so worse that it was impossible to describe in a persuasive manner to be accepted for readers. I renounce, I discovered
that it was impossible that you couldn't make believe something so atrocious, so horrendous. The tortures were made with doctors, with medicine doctors of the sim of the service of intelligence to resuscitate General
Roman when he fainted to continue the seances of torture. It was really horrendous the things that they did to him during four months. And during these four months
he was very courageous, he was very, very courageous. The courage that he had then to produce the revolution that was planned he had it to had to receive the, to face the incredible tortures. The way in which Ramfis Trujillo acted was totally incoherent. It is said that during the repression of the movement of katorse
de junio, 14 of June, he had a psychological crisis
and the Trujillo father send him to a psychiatry
hospital in Belgium. Well, he had the same when
he returned to the country and organized the
repression and the killing of all the people who
were in a way or another linked to the the killers, to the consp. The way in which he acted is like something that only in certain sadic and masochistic
books are conceivable. The reality went much
more than anything than a normal mind can imagine. Let me tell you only one example of this. Luis Miguel Angel Baez who was an important Dominican who had been of course linked to the
regime was put into prison. He was tortured many days and it was in the same
prison that Antonio Imbert, one of the killers, no, no, not Antonio Imbert, his brother. And one day after
several weeks of torture, Miguel Angel Baez and the
brother of Antonio Imbert who were in the same cell
received a dish of meat for the first time since
they were imprisoned. They were with that terrible hunger ate all these and then a soldier come and said to them, and said to him, "Miguel Angel
Baez, General Ramfis Trujillo "want to know if you like
it, the meat of your son." And well he said, "You
are lying! You are lying! "This is not true, this is not true." So the soldier went and came back with the head of Miguel Baez' son. You can see in this example the kind of twisted mind, twisted in
the most brutal cruelty to the limits that Ramfis Trujillo and of course his collaborators acted during those months,
six months exactly. In which he had the total control of the military and the police and Balaguer had the political
control of the country because he was still the president. It was an agreement that they did both to divide the power. I want to talk about
Balaguer a little bit. Balaguer is a fascinating case. He deserves a novel by himself. He was with Trujillo since 1930. In the first election that Trujillo won. Won in a fake way of course. And he started to collaborate
with Trujillo since. And during the 31 years, he was the most close collaborator of Trujillo, he was everything. He was minister of foreign
affairs, of education. He was minister of the interior, he was ambassador of Trujillo in Spain, in United Nations, in several countries and he was the most close
advisor of the chief. He was so astute that
he convinced Trujillo that he had no ambition, that his maximum desire was to collaborate with the chief. And when he was appointed
president of the republic, Trujillo was asked why. Why Balaguer? And he said, "Because
Balaguer has no ambitions. "He's a man without ambitions." Well, this man without
ambitions what was one, president of the republic
during the Trujillo era and he was six times, six, elected president during the republic. He was so astute that he managed after the killing of Trujillo
to convince the Americans and convince many people
in the Dominican Republic that he was the only
one who could transform the dictatorship in a democracy without permitting that
the communist took power. And he did it. He did it. He was as it is described in my novel, so intelligent that he managed
to put the Trujillo family divided and fighting internally because the intrigues that he
organized within the family. He knew that Mrs. Trujillo,
the widower of the chief was very avid for money. Immediately the night itself
in which Trujillo was killed he said to her, "You must take precautions. "you need to preserve your future. "Let me, let me, permit
me to send money to abroad "so you will be protected,
you know, in the future." Nobody knows what will happen
in the Dominican Republic. And Mrs. Trujillo said, "Okay, right. "But, but don't tell anybody "including my sons that
you are doing this." Perfect, that's what Trujillo did. So immediately, Mrs.
Trujillo, widow of the chief was very close friend of Balaguer. He knew that the brothers of Trujillo were poor people, idiots. And he talked with Ramfis who was cruel, brutal but intelligent. He was the only real intelligent after the chief in the family. He talked with Ramfis in a very frank way and he said, "Look, Trujillo is disappear, "Trujillismo is disappear. "If you want to preserve
the dictatorship as it is "the marines will be here "and they will occupate once
again the Dominican Republic. "And remember what
happened when they invaded "the Dominican Republic. "The only way, the only way in which "something can be preserved is myself. "If I convince the Americans that I am "the man who can transform
this in a democracy "you will be safe, you could." And Ramfis who was intelligent said, "Okay "but I am going to have the
total control of the military "because I want to revenge my father "and I am going without any
kind of interference by you "to look for and destroy all
the killers of my father." Balaguer said all right, perfect. And so, during the six months, Trujillo, Ramfis Trujillo was the
military and security, owner of the country and did what he did. Systematically looking
for, capturing, torturing and killed them, all the collaborators. And at the same time Balaguer
was convincing the Americans, the OAS, the Organization
of American States, the United Nations that
things were changing in the Dominican Republic, that democracy had an
opportunity if he was in power, and he did it, he did it. Finally, the Trujillos went abroad and Balaguer was elected in free elections president of the republic, of the new democratic republic. There is a speech, a marvelous speech in United Nations of Balaguer denouncing the horrors of
the Trujillo dictatorship. Fantastic, very well-written, you know, as always. He's a cultivated man, poet. He has written books
in an elegant language and he was a cultivated man. I had three interviews with him when I was writing the novel and I remember once I told him, "Doctor Balaguer, you
are a cultivated person. "You have read so much, you
like so much literature. "What were you doing
among all these gangsters, "ignorant, illiterate, brutal people?" He was very cold listening and he said to me, "You
know, I had eight sisters. "I had to support this
family, this large family. "I wanted to be in politics. "What kind of politics could you do "in the Dominican Republic if you were not "a collaborator of Trujillo? "So, I couldn't go into exile. "What about my eight sisters, you know? "So, I decided to
collaborate with the only man "who would permit me to
do, to be in politics. "But I decided since 1930 two things. "I won't participate in
the orgies of the general "and I won't steal one cent." And he told me, "And I have done that. "In 31 years I never was invited "to one of the orgies of Trujillo, never. "And on the other hand,
I never steal one cent. "I have this house because
Trujillo gave it to me "and it was impossible to say no." And it's true. He never robbed. He didn't like money,
he didn't like women. He never had a lover. What he wanted was power and he had power all his
life until his death. He was still a candidate
for the presidency completely blind, very
old when my book appeared. And the journalist asked him, "What do you say of the book? "What do you say of the book "about Trujillo, about yourself?" And (chuckles) his answer was marvelous. He said, "Well, I think it's a very "instructive book for the Dominicans." (laughs)
Which is marvelous. Well, the book was published finally and when the appeared first in Spain and of course there
were echoes immediately in the Dominican Republic
of the kind of book that was the novel, The
Feast of the Goat and how a novel mixed historical
facts and characters with fictitious, invented characters. And one day in the Listin Diario an advertisement was published and it was signed by Friends of Trujillo. And it was said if Vargas Llosa comes to
the Dominican Republic to present his book, he will receive a galleta. A galleta is a beating. So, I decided to go to Dominican Republic to present the book. I didn't want to receive
a galleta of course but I was curious to see
alive the reaction on there. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. The book was presented
in the Jaragua Hotel which is the scenario of
many episodes in the novel. And I signed the book in many places, in the Santo Domingo, in
Santiago de los Caballeros and I never received
an insult or an attack. The only attack that I
received and this is very funny were in interviews and particularly but a person who had been in the press offices, office of
the Trujillo presidency. And he attacked me furiously everywhere and to my surprise he had
been the best informant that I had when I was collected
material for the novel. Immediately I understood
what was happening. He didn't want to be identified as an informant of myself. In the last interview that I gave in the Dominican Republic
before returning to Spain, I said, "I am so sad that this person "who was my best informant is
now attacking me." (laughs) Thank you very much. (audience clapping) - So, good evening to you all. Thank you Mario for this
four wonder opportunities to hear you speak and have this panorama of these four key novels in your work. And thank you to you all for being here and we would also like to thank the authors of the many
questions that we received in these past weeks. Unfortunately, we will
not have time to ask all the questions we received but we will try to approach
as many topics as possible. And in order to do so we had to adapt and combine some of the questions. I would like to start
with a very general one which is you have published
a large number of books ranging from essays to theater yet the novel stands
out as your main genre. Why novels instead of let's
say poetry or theater? What does it mean to
be a novelist for you? - Well, when I started to write what I wanted to be was a playwright. I love the theater and well, my first let's say serious work was a play. But you know at that time in Peru, this is different now. At that time to write for the theater was a great frustration
because the theatrical movement was very, very small, very sporadic. And so, if you became
a playwright you could have the sad experience of not seeing any of your
works in action, you know? I suppose that what was
pushing me more and more to the narrative. And when I discovered in practical terms what a novel was, the way
in which a novel could invent in another reality
present the essential problems, the desires, the living experiences of a society, the way in which a novel
could project the real world with something else, with something else. I discovered that the novel was well, probably the richest literary genre. And for me, the genre in which I could express myself best, you know? But I have never renounced to the theater. I've written plays and at the same time but if I have to choose one literary genre I would choose the novel. - Thank you, yeah. With that I like to go back to the 1960s and we have here a
question from Randy Berlin, thank you Randy. It is about The Time of the Hero but it could be applicable
to all the novels you wrote in the 1960s. And the question is,
what effect do you seek by confusing the reader
over who is speaking and shuffling the time sequence? So, could you talk a bit about that and I would also ask how do you see the theory of the vasos comunicantes or the communicating vessels today? - When I wrote The Time of the Hero I had already read many modern novels and discovered particularly reading writers like Faulkner or
all the American novelist of the lost generation,
Dos Passos for example. I was so impressed when
I read the Dos Passos. I had discovered not in total clear way but in general terms
that time was something that you had to invent in a novel. That the literary time,
the novelistic time was never, never the chronological time in which we are immersed. That is something different, that is something that had to be organized in function of the story
that you want to tell. And my first experiment with this was The Time of the Hero in which there is an attempt to present the story in a totalizing way. That is things that happen in a sequence in which there is past and present was presented as simultaneous. As if the time were a
space, I think that I said. I used and I started with
the city and the dogs to try time as a space in which events could move freely even broke in the chronological
sequence of the facts. My ideas was that in this way I could introduce a kind of enigma in certitudes about
the order of the events and push the reader to
participate in a most creative way reproducing or establishing
a chronology that is eliminating in the structure of the novel. And in this I think I've
been doing all my novels probably in a most
delicate and invisible way in other novels that in the first one. But in The Time of the Hero this was for me just an experiment. - Thank you. And continuing on this idea of how fiction creates this time, right? You have written in
different moments and essays about the relationship
between fiction and reality, like the referential reality. How do you see the relationship
between them today? Does fiction create its own reality? Does fiction have an impact on reality? - Well, I think fiction by
definition is something invented. It's not a literal reproduction
of the world as it is. No, a novel is made out of words. So, is already from a
linguistic point of view another reality different of the real. But I think all the ingredients, the raw materials with which you build this other reality
which is the literary one comes from the real world, comes from the experience that you had or fantasies that you built
out of real experiences that you have in the world. But I think it's very,
very important for a novel, this is what Flaubert insisted so much. To have this kind of
autonomy or sovereignty in a way that what you tell,
the story that you tell is self-sufficient. Is something that don't
need for you, the reader, to know the world that
inspired this fiction. Otherwise we couldn't enjoy Dostoevsky, Balzac, Dickens, Don Quixote. All writers wrote in a given time using a reality that we don't know. But the way in which they
use these experiences producing a reality of its own is what is literature, what is the literary
expression of the real world. This I understood since I started to read let's say the great writers
of the '50s, of the '60s. And this is a lesson that I think I have used very much to create my own work. - Yeah, thank you yeah. Going exactly, let's go to
the perspective of the reader and I'm thinking about last
Friday here at UChicago when you gave a talk about, in which you talked about
how you try to see your texts through a reader's eyes
while you're writing, right? Remember you said that you
first write the first draft and then you try to, and then you start working on the draft and try to imagine how a
reader would see this text. And I would like to ask you how would you imagine the readers of your writings after you
finish writing the books? And I asked that because
we received a question about a leader of the Columbian FARC, The Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, Carlos Antonio Lozada
who declared to be a fan of The War of the End of the World. And do you think about your readers once your novels are published? How do you see a person like Lozada as a reader of your work? - It's very difficult for me to imagine the kind of readers that I have, you know? I know in Latin America literary readers in great number come
from the middle classes. Not from the upper classes,
not from the lower classes. I think it's in the middle classes where in Latin America
at least we have more or most readers of literature. But this is very general because middle classes
are conformed by very different layers of readers. So, it's difficult for me to imagine the kind of readers that I have. I must confess that I don't
think much in the readers particularly when I am writing a novel. When I am writing a story, yes, I think I try to see
what I am doing with the eyes impartial eyes of the reader. It's difficult but I think all writers are trying to observe what they are doing with the eyes of, the
objective eyes of a reader. But the real readers, the concrete, the humane readers of the novels I cannot devise how they
are, how many they are. Not at all, no. - Yes. Well, but you talked a lot about writers that have influenced your work, right? And with that in mind
I would like to ask you which women writers have
had the biggest impact on your literary trajectory
on your views of (mumbles)? - Many. Particularly one writer of short stories. Well, she wrote also novels but who I think is one of the most extraordinary modern writers. She wrote Seven Gothic Tales. What is her name?
(audience laughing) What is her name? Help me. - [Audience Member] Flannery O'Connor? - Who? - [Audience Member] Flannery O'Connor? - [Victoria] Flannery O'Connor? - Karen Blixen?
- No, not at all. No. A Dutch writer, a marvelous writer, an extraordinary writer. - [Audience Member] Isak Dinesen - Isak Dinesen, of course, yes. Isak Dinesen. I think she was, well when she received the Nobel Prize Hemingway said, "This
award should have been "received by Isak Dinesen." I think she was an extraordinary writer. Her case is absolutely unique because she was Dutch, she never went to school. She belonged to a aristocratic family so she learned English through the private teachers that she had. And then she went to Africa very young, married with a cousin of her and she lived in near where in Kenya where she worked very
hard with her husband in a plantation of coffee. They were ruined. She prevailed after the
death of her husband until she was completely broken and she lost all the money of the family. And it was at that time
that she started to write. And she wrote in English
mostly, not in Dutch and she wrote the most
extraordinary books. Her autobiography which is Out of Africa. And then this book that I
think is a total masterwork, Seven Gothic Tales, in which there is probably the best short story
written in the 20th century which is called The Monkey. It start in Poland during
well, the 16 or 17th century. She was a very strange writer because she had an
imagination which was baroque and at the same time grotesque. She didn't like realism, reality. Her work was a work of
distortion of the real world in characters, in facts, in deeds, in events. And in The Monkey there
is the most extraordinary and difficult episode to narrate. And she managed to do it in
an incredible, incredible way. She is one of the writers
that I admire very much but I admire many, many
women writers, yes. - [Victoria] Yeah, yeah, Out of Africa is extraordinary.
- Out of Africa. Such a beautiful book.
- Yeah, yeah. - [Mario] It's an autobiography in which she tells her story. By the way there is a picture. She was already very, very ill. She was dying and she came to New York. And there is a picture of
her with Marilyn Monroe and she was nothing, she was practically a diminished kind of human being but with a big, big
eyes and so intelligent that in spite of being with Marilyn Monroe is she, Isak Dinesen, which is the great protagonist
of this picture, you know? - [Victoria] Yeah. - Probably you have seen the picture. - Yeah.
- It's a marvelous picture. - [Victoria] Amazing. Yeah, wow. Moving away from Kenya and to Peru. We have a question from a
Peruvian member of the audience who asked, how did you come up with the famous sentence of
Conversation in the Cathedral and I quote, (speaks in foreign language). And the translation would be, at what precise moment
had Peru fucked itself up? - Actually I don't think there is a moment in which a country, how do you say that? How do you translate (speaks
in foreign language)? Let's say it in Spanish. (laughs) - [Victoria] We understood it. (laughs) - Well, I don't think. I think it's a long process in which a country moves to where the, how do you say, to the
abyss, to the abyss. Look Venezuela for example, it's the most tragic country
in our days of Latin America. Tragic. Probably the richest
country in Latin America and is in a total misery, total misery. What happened? A coup d'etat, there was a coup d'etat. Venezuelans were deeply
disappointed with the democracy because the democracy was not fulfilling the desires, the ambitions of the. And it was, there was
corruption of course. Yes, it's true all these. There was a military coup which failed because the military in Venezuela fought against the
rebels and defeated them and Mr. Chavez went to prison. And then what happened? A president, a civilized man by the way, civilized, cultivated, Gave an amnesty. Took out of prison Chavez and Chavez was elected in
free elections president. So, not only once the Venezuelans voted for a military potentially dictator. Five times. Five, he won elections in Venezuela. And the Venezuelans saw
how his country was being systematically destroyed by the stupid and demagogic policies of Chavez. And still they were supporting him until it was too late to do anything. He had already control of the country, elections were not free and the repression started. And with the repression
policies that destroy entirely the Venezuelan economy and now you have a
country which the largest criminality in the world are productive apartheid
which is completely devastated by the demagogy. The money had an inflation that
is the largest in the world and they don't have what to eat, there are no medicines. And the repression is
everyday worst and worst. So, you can see how a country (speaks in foreign
language) little by little. And at the beginning, not now. Now the great majority of the Venezuelans are fighting very courageously (audience member clapping)
against the dictatorship without any doubt. But at the beginning with
the support of a majority, blind people who thought, who thought that the dictator
could solve the problem that democracy could not solve. This is the history of Peru also and of many, many Latin
American countries. Things are changing
fortunately in Latin America. Latin America is much, much better now and it's because there are no more enthusiasm with dictators. Now, Latin Americans have discovered that the mediocre democracy is better than the worst dictatorship. - It just occurred to me
that it would be beautiful to see a novel on Venezuela from you, coming from you in the next years if you ever decide to write about it. Well, but moving back to the
novels that you talked about, I asked questions about
The Time of the Hero, Conversation in the Cathedral and I like to ask a question about The War of the End of the World that also connects with
The Feast of the Goat which is this scene towards
the end of the novel in which the maid servant Sebastiana of Stella and the Baron of Canabrava is raped by the Baron of Canabrava. Which of course connects with the case of Urania Cabral in The Feast of the Goat and we could add other examples such as Bonifacia in The Green House. And I would like to ask you, what is the role of rape and
sexual violence in your works? - Well, the machismo,
you know, is one of the essential ingredients of
Latin American culture. This is also diminishing in
our times without any doubt but this is still there. And what happened with
the Baron de Canabrava who's a civilized person, a
cultivated person in the novel is at the end after
these five or six hours of conversation within
nearsighted journalists, he wants to understand what had been happening in a
country that he thought, that he knew perfectly well. And he's discovered that he didn't know anything real about his country, that things were
happening not in the level in which he moved of course, but in a much more primitive world. And so, it is this who pushed him to do something that he
would never have done in different circumstances. To act like a brutal
primitive man of the Sertao. This episode has been
criticized in my novel in different places but I thought very much and I wanted very much this transformation of
the Baron de Canabrava as a kind of personal sacrifice in which he did was
absolutely something against his principles, his uses, his immerse in order to try to reach
this primitive world which had emerged in
the Canudos phenomenon. - Thank you and thank you. Well, I have a question. I'm sure you were asked
numerous times about which advice you would
give to aspiring writers starting their careers, but I would like to ask you instead considering what you said
about the translation of The Time of the Hero in your first talk about how to translate the dialects of different social classes. And we were talking about the translations of the Brazilian writer
Joao Guimaraes Rosa right before this talk now. And I would like to ask
you which pieces of advice would you give to young translators starting their careers? - Well, I think what is
important in a translation is not the total fidelity
with the words of the original because that may produce a
kind of monster, you know? I think the translator
should try to recreate in his languages or her languages what is done in the original fiction. I think it's a very
interesting case of the Gregory Rabassa. I think he was one of the greatest, maybe the best translator
that Spanish had into English particularly for modern, modern novels. He was not always loyal to the original. He took liberties but the liberties that
he took were so creative that because what he wanted
was to do what I said, to recreate in a different language, let's say in different culture, in a world that reacted
towards in a different way that the original, what was the word that he was translating. I think this is what very, very important. For that reason I don't intervene too much in the translations
particularly if the translators don't want my intervention. If they send me words and expression to of course I answer but otherwise, I don't intervene because first, my knowledge of different language is never the same of the natural born speaker of that language. So there are many layers and words that you may not be aware of. Only if translators want I participate and I collaborate with them. Otherwise I give them total freedom to do the translation as they wish. - Okay, thank you. And I have a last question, we're unfortunately running out of time and the question is, in
numerous moments of your career you have associated literary creation with rebellious attitude either towards the authoritative
figure of the father as you talked about in your first talk or towards the world. Would you see literary
creation as a rebellious act in the world we live in today? And if yeah-- - [Mario] Will you repeat the question. - Sure. Would you see literary
creation as a rebellious act, (speaks in foreign language) in the world we live in today and if yes, how so?
- What kind of rebellion? Like Canudos you mean? - No, like an act of
rebellion against the world or against the authority in its all forms. - I think every novel is an act of rebellion against the world. Writers may not be conscious that they are rebelling
through their novels. But I think a novel is
something by its mere existence an act of rebellion against
the world as it is, you know? Why are you inventing other worlds if you think that this world is well done, is enough, that can
satisfy all your longings? It wouldn't be novels. If you look for this parallel realities that are novels it is because you are not totally satisfied
of the world as it is and you need something else. I think in the case of writers
who consecrate their life to create this parallel realities, the attitude of rejection, secret rejection as the world as it is is a way of life. But it's also a
manifestation of the malaise that people have with the world as it is in the readers of novels. In certain cases, the rejection
of the world is conscious, in other many cases no. And the rejection is not
necessarily political. It can be political but in
many cases it's not political. It's not because the world is badly done. In certain cases it's because the world is too good as it is that they reject it and they want a different kind of world. The (speaks in foreign
language), how do say, modate writers as let's say Celine, the Marquis de Sade who wrote this kind of monstrous book. Apparently re-vindicating
the worst aspect of a human. They rejected the world
not for the good reasons but for the bad reasons. But I think that is what
literature is about. The creation of a parallel world because there is something
in the world as it is that they feel or they know or they are convinced
that the world is not enough for what we would like to be life. - [Victoria] Yeah. - Very well. - Thank you, yeah, it is great. Thank you so much for sharing
your thoughts with us. (audience clapping) And to the staff and you all and the Berlin Family. (audience clapping)
