López Obrador attacks Vargas Llosa and says he is “pleased to see his decline”

The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, stated that he is “pleased to see the decline” of the Peruvian Nobel Prize in Literature Mario Vargas Llosa for his support for the Latin American right.

“It gave me pleasure to listen, to observe, to verify the decline of Vargas Llosa because they invite him, the world is also like this, they continue to believe that it is the same, they invite him to the United States to a conference, all those who have a conservative thought in Latin America ”Said López Obrador.

The Mexican president referred to Vargas Llosa’s participation in a seminar of the International Foundation for Freedom in Florida, United States, which was also attended by figures such as former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda and former President of Ecuador Lenín Moreno.

“And he gives a speech explaining what was happening in Latin America, but it is a speech that does not contribute anything, of common places and it is a speech of defeat, a speech without options, without alternatives, even from his positions,” said the leader.

The Peruvian writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in 2010, aroused criticism in 2021 for supporting the candidate Keiko Fujimori in the presidential elections in Peru and later the right-wing José Antonio Kast in Chile.

López Obrador, who has repeatedly shown his affinity for the elected president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, joined in the criticism against Vargas Llosa.

“Chile still hadn’t happened when that speech, about a week or fifteen days before the election in Chile, that he said it would be regrettable if Boric won in Chile,” the president of Mexico ironically said.

López Obrador and Vargas Llosa have already exchanged criticism in the past, such as in 2018, when the writer warned of a “democratic suicide” if the Mexican won the presidential elections that year.

In the last month, the president has criticized Vargas Llosa’s participation in an alleged “dirty war” to remove Castillo.

“It is nothing more to lament (that) Latin America has already been taken over by the left,” López Obrador now commented, who has always refused to comment on the lack of democracy and violation of human rights in Venezuela, arguing the “principle of no intervention”.

The Mexican president also pointed to the recent controversy in France, where a group of French intellectuals showed on December 9 their rejection of the admission of Vargas Llosa to the French Academy of the language.

“He is one of the most famous ideologues of conservatism in Latin America. He had already been appointed or is a member of the Academy of Letters in France and because of these positions, and because he has already lost his imagination and talent, some writers were already withdrawing his recognition, “he said.

It should be noted that Vargas Llosa is not the first foreign writer or non-French mother tongue writer to enter the prestigious literature institution founded in 1635. However, he is the first to occupy one of the seats of the French Academy without having written a only work in that language.

The institution decided to make an exception, with 18 votes in favor and one against, regarding his age. At 85 years of age, the Peruvian widely exceeds the rule that since 2010 requires that candidates meet a maximum age of 75 years.

Vargas Llosa is also the first living Latin American writer to be published in the prestigious collection of the Pléiade publishing house, in 2016.