Mario Vargas Llosa, advocate of freedom in Cuba and everywhere else, wins Nobel Prize in literature

This is a surprise. Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru, an eloquent advocate of freedom and opponent of Fidel Castro’s oppression, has been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.

Reason reports:

His insistence that all aspects of liberty - political, economic, and cultural - are inextricably linked is as powerful as it is rare among writers of his stature.

Congratulations, Mr. Vargas.

Could the Castro mob be crumbling for lack of appeasers?

In 1995, Vargas wrote:

Prominent intellectuals continue to cast a shadow of doubt and skepticism on liberty and democracy, but this is an aberration. Liberty is nothing to be ashamed of. It ought to be cherished with the fervor of those who have lost it, or have just regained it. Like the young people of the former East Germany who in 1989 tore down the wall in Berlin, one of the tasks for men and women of the new generation is to tear down the ideological walls of the prison houses of thought and culture still prevalent in so many free nations.

And in 2001, he said:

Some governments are embarrassed to confess that [they have benefited from deregulating their economies], and others -- including some real Tartuffes -- cover their bases by spewing out volleys of rhetoric against neoliberalism. Nevertheless, they have no other recourse than to privatize businesses, liberalize prices, open markets, attempt to control inflation, and try to integrate their economies into international markets. They have come to learn -- the hard way -- that in today’s economic environment, the country that does not follow those guidelines commits suicide.

Individual resistance. In announcing Vargas’ Nobel Prize yesterday, Swedish Academy secretary Peter Englund said the honor was “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.” Englund seemed to speak vaguely, as if he feared any candidly detailed account would reveal Vargas’ political incorrectness.

Vargas is one of those rare, genuine intellectuals who unmasks the self-deception of those who claim, against all evidence, that a benevolent elite can give us something better than freedom. There is nothing better than freedom.

Frank Warner