The scene of a toast and libertarian laughter on the Havana coast will no longer be able to materialize.
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 14 April 2025 — The last time we spoke was in his native Peru. After sharing the stage and reflecting on literature, authoritarianism in Latin America, and the paths of journalism, Mario Vargas Llosa and I parted, joking about a possible lecture he might offer at the University of Havana. I remember telling him that the Aula Magna would surely be too small, Plaza Cadenas would be filled with young people, and all of La Colina would be packed with Cubans who had read him despite the publishing censorship imposed on his books. But the return to the island never happened.
In 2000, while working on my thesis, Words Under Pressure: The Literature of the Dictatorship in Latin America, I received from the Peruvian the greatest literary gift I could have hoped for. The publication of The Feast of the Goat was not only a delight for the ardent reader of his work I had long since become, but also reinforced the hypothesis of my thesis: literature on the dictatorship has not been exhausted on this continent, as the satraps continue to taint our lands with repression and authoritarianism.
Vargas Llosa had the ability to touch my life, twisting and turning it with some of his works. In 1993, spurred by the desire to read a novel by that son of Arequipa, blacklisted by Cuban publishing houses and universities, I found myself in the office of an irreverent journalist estranged from his profession. From that encounter, I gained two experiences that shaped my life: immersing myself in The War at the End of the World and meeting Reinaldo Escobar, the person with whom I share my life, dreams, and a son to this day.
Vargas Llosa had the ability to touch my life, twist it and turn it with some of his works.
Another earthquake, but this time an academic one, was the inclusion of that book about Rafael Leónidas Trujillo in the list of works analyzed in my thesis. Mario had managed not only to portray the Dominican dictator with his excesses and moral decadence, but he had also drawn a map that made it possible to track any tyrant. It was very difficult not to find analogies between the capricious Chapita and the fickle Fidel Castro, who would embark on a pharaonic sugar harvest or economically devastate the island just as easily as he would imprison a poet for his sharp verses against power.
The Feast of the Goat was about one leader, but at the same time, it affected them all, because tyrants share more traits than meets the eye. Most lack a sense of humor, reject public debate with their opponents, locking them in dark dungeons or shooting them, and turning their omnipresence in every aspect of national life into a way of controlling everything from the uniform children wear to the best-selling ice cream flavor.
Approaching the dark depths of the personality of El Jefe, El Benefactor de la Patria Dominicana, or El Perínclito, as he was known, also evoked the tenebrous depths of the Commander who, in January 1959, initiated the destruction of the Cuban nation in all its aspects—economic, ethical, educational—and condemned its population to an unprecedented mass exodus.
Those similarities between Trujillo and Castro were not only evident to me as I read the book
Those similarities between Trujillo and Castro were not only evident to me as I read the book, which was covered with a page from a pro-government magazine to ward off informers and extremists. The panel evaluating my graduation thesis also noted those overlaps and was annoyed, especially because I included as the main author of that work the “black beast of Latin American literature,” according to the narrow confines of revolutionary cultural politics.
It wasn’t easy to earn my diploma after that daring act. The thesis discussion proved to be a test to avoid the humiliations and provocations that sought angry responses from me and thus cancel my graduation. I resisted. I clung to the character of Urania, who had been locked in a room with El Chivo and had seen his perversions, his excesses of power, but also his human fragility. I swallowed hard, defended my work, and they gave me that card with Gothic letters stating that I was now a philologist. That same day I buried my profession. I didn’t want to dedicate myself to words in a country where so many of them were prohibited.
Years later, when I managed to travel to Spain after almost a decade of being banned from leaving Cuba, I was able to meet Mario. Talking to him was far better than reading him, if anything can surpass the joy of delving into the thousands of pages he wrote throughout his life. A loquacious interlocutor, he also had a gift for listening and asking good questions. He was generous with his personal anecdotes, his literary advice, and his extensive political knowledge. He treated the group of Cuban activists and journalists who spent several days with him at Casa de América with deference and respect. By then, he was a Nobel Prize winner in Literature.
In 2014, when the newspaper 14ymedio’was born, he showed us his loving and enthusiastic support.
One of those days, I asked him to let me know when he published his next book: I wanted to prepare for the earthquake those pages were going to cause in my life. “Thanks to you, I found the love of my life, and I was on the verge of not graduating from university, so I need to make the necessary arrangements for the next cataclysm that a title from yours will cause,” I told him. He laughed like a child, with that mischievous little snicker reminiscent of Fonchito, the angelic, yet demonic boy in his Elogio de la madrastra In Praise of the Stepmother .
We met again on several occasions. He always wanted to know what had become of some of the places, officials, and writers he had met on those trips to Cuba, when, like so many other Latin American intellectuals, he saw the Cuban Revolution as an emancipatory and libertarian process. That idyll didn’t last long, and Vargas Llosa’s keen sense of smell soon detected Fidel Castro’s authoritarianism, his allergy to artists, and the totalitarian drift of the regime he built through censorship and firing squads.
In 2014, when the newspaper 14ymedio was founded, he showed us his loving and enthusiastic support. He was as good a journalist as he was a novelist, so he fully understood the importance of a free press to cement a democratic opening in Cuba. He offered us an interview at his home in Madrid. I heard that childish laugh again, and we fantasized about sitting on the wall of Havana’s Malecón on a starry night, where, together with thousands of people, we would celebrate the fall of Castroism.
This Sunday, Mario Vargas Llosa died. The scene of a toast and libertarian laughter on the Havana waterfront will no longer be realized. Nor will the predicted talk in the Aula Magna at La Colina come to fruition, packed with young people who would bring their novels, no longer having to cover them to hide the author’s name, for the Peruvian to sign.
However, I am convinced that in a future closer than we can imagine now, the name of the author of Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Conversation in the Cathedral, and The Green House will grace chairs, research centers, literary competitions, and faculties on the Island. Graduation theses on his work will be countless, and no student will feel pressured for including it in their bibliography. That day, perhaps I will take my philology degree out of the drawer and return to a profession that Mario helped shape, like so many other things in my life.
____________
COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
