I agree with Daniel Dayan that the general commitment to make visible all things hidden is deeply problematic, as I explored in my initial post on WikiLeaks. But, this doesn’t mean that making previously secret things public is always without merit. Political judgment is at issue. Here, Rafael Narvaez, a sociologist originally from Peru, will consider the issue, as it applies to the situation in his native land, and, more generally, third world dictatorships, drawing upon the writing of Mario Vargas Llosa. -Jeff

After receiving the 2010 Nobel Prize for literature, Mario Vargas Llosa gave an interview with Inger Enkvist at the Swedish Academy. Enkvist begins by asking broad questions pertaining to the role of literature, of fantasy, the humanities, etc. He then asks about one of the key themes in Vargas Llosa’s work.

“In your oeuvre one often finds fanatics, characters that are cynics, politically, and also skeptics. And almost always there is a fracture [in your narrative] separating the world of politics and the world of ethics or morality. Can you comment?”

Vargas Llosa, with his usual nonchalant straight-forwardness, answers:

“I come from a world [Peru] where politics, generally and save exceptions, has been in the hands of the worst kind of people […]; a world that has had a very entrenched history of dictatorships that have been very violent and very corrupt; a world where politics seemed to be the monopoly of cheaters [pícaros], of bandits, of the most violent people. Naturally […] there have also been decent people, idealists; but they have been generally defeated, left in the margins –destroyed, in the end. So it is not at all strange that my oeuvre presents a view into political life in Peru and Latin America [which shows] such tradition of violence, of large-scale corruption, of thuggishness […]. In Latin America politics has generally been a terrible source of violence, of corruption, of backwardness. It would have been absurd and unreal for me to describe such political world as it were a world of generous beings, of idealistic characters who work for the common good [begins to . . .

Read more: Mario Vargas Llosa, The Politics of Gesture in Peru and Beyond