Mario Vargas Llosa
74-year old Vargas Llosa is the first Latin American to receive the Nobel Prize for literature since 1990, when it was bestowed on Octavio Paz of Mexico. The prize is given “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat.” King Philip of Spain considered it “fantastic news,” while Colombian Nobel laureate (1982) Gabriel García Márquez commented on the Twitter “we are even.” A long time ago good friends, García Márquez and Vargas Llosa now are poles apart on politics. Vargas Llosa is a non-interventionist in the factual sense of the word, and is a firm believer of open market, freedom of speech and right to know. He has been advocating the de-criminalisation of cocaine and marijuana, produced in Latin America for long time. He believes, “war on drugs” will never be winnable, and that the billions of dollars, spent on banning and arming often exploitative government security forces, should instead be used to educate people about the dangers of drug abuse and for treating addicts. He has never been far away from politics like most Latin American writers. At 15, he was a night-owl crime reporter. Still in his teens, he joined a communist cell. His prolific works include plays, essays, novels that range from historical to detective mysteries, comedy and political thrillers, and also newspaper columns and articles. Congratulations to Mario Vargas Llosa.
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