Mario Vargas Llosa: Outward Bound

"Literature is my vocation," says Mario Vargas Llosa, ever the gentleman in his crisp salmon-coloured shirt and sports blazer, "but I've never liked the idea of being closed off in a world of fantasies. I like having one foot in the street."

One of the leading lights of South American literature, he began his professional life as a 15-year-old crime reporter covering the seedy underworld of the Peruvian capital, Lima, for La Cronica, and continues to work as a journalist to this day, writing a regular column for the Spanish newspaper El Pais, on topics ranging from the Iraq war to the Russian invasion of Georgia. Though he's keen to insist on the distinction between journalism and literature, the time he spent pounding the streets is "fundamental" to his life as a writer.

"When I write, I write with freedom but I need a solid base," he explains.
It's a requirement that will see the 72-year-old writer travel to Congo later this year as part of the research for his next novel. The trip will allow him to "get to know the scenery," he explains, "to smell it, to feel it", but above all will give him a "bedrock of security that allows me to invent and to write. I'm not looking for historical precision but for something to shake me out of my insecurity."
He has always travelled for research, and finds that his experiences tend to dispel any prejudices he may have: "I know that this will happen with Congo because I have read a lot about the area already and I know I will find something different when I am confronted with reality."

He's following in the footsteps of Roger Casement, a British consul turned Irish nationalist who was hanged for treason in 1916 and painted as a paedophile by the British government for what he is said to have written in the so-called Black Diaries. Casement is to be the protagonist of "a novel that will take place in Ireland, Congo, in Berlin and the Amazon, including places I have never been to, such as Ulster," he says, with genuine excitement at the prospect of the journey that awaits.

"Casement was born into a pro-British Protestant family in Ulster and as a boy was fascinated by the great British explorers, and with the idea of empire," says Vargas Llosa. "He went to Africa as a 19-year-old but it was his experiences in Congo that changed him and made him a critic of empire, and an Irish nationalist. And yet at the same time he was a British consul, serving the empire.

"For some he was a hero, but for many people Casement was a villain. And there are still those in Ireland who view him uncomfortably because of his sexuality. There are many areas of shadow in his life, many aspects that are not clear and probably never will be because he was a very secret person, especially in his private life. There is a great debate about his homosexuality and paedophilia that has never been resolved and probably never will be … a highly contradictory character. Perfect for a novel."

He is bullish about the prospect of treading on sensitive territory, both as a white man writing about Africa and a Peruvian writing about Anglo-Irish history, rejecting as racist itself the suggestion that he should not tackle these subjects. "If we believed that," he says, "we would only write about what goes on in our own households."

When Vargas Llosa talks about his trip to Congo, his sense of the civic responibilities of the writer, as both novelist and journalist, is clear. Though he is planning a historical novel, it will have much to say about the present day.

"There are many things that haven't changed in Congo. It is one of the most tragic countries in the world, which endured a terrible colonial experience [at the hands of brutal Belgian king Leopold II]. And it has only got worse since," he says.

"It is calculated that in the last 10 years four to five million people have been killed in Congo, yet it barely gets reported in the newspapers. In many ways the Congolese are still living with the same problems they faced in the era of Conrad and Casement."

Ever since his days as a cub reporter, Vargas Llosa's vision has been turned outwards. His conversion from supporter of Fidel Castro's revolution to an advocate of free-market capitalism was crowned with a failed bid to become president of Peru in 1990, running on a ticket inspired by his political idol, Margaret Thatcher. And now, even in the midst of a global banking crisis he is prepared to defend the market, suggesting that "no liberal economist has denied the importance of state intervention".

"Neo-liberalism is not an ideology, but a doctrine," he says. "It doesn't impose itself on the facts, but rather adapts to reality. In certain circumstances, a small amount of state intervention is not just legitimate but indispensable."

He is not blind to the excesses of the kind of turbo capitalism that caused the markets to tumble and banks to fold, admitting it "clearly isn't fair that taxpayers, who haven't caused the problem, will have to pay for it with increased taxes and mortgages", but argues that Europeans are well-placed to survive the fallout.

"The EU has helped Europe defend itself ... without the euro, this crisis would have hurt Europe much more."

Vargas Llosa has never been one to shy away from controversy: despite initially opposing the invasion, he switched sides to support the Iraq war after a visit in 2003. It's a line he still maintains despite the horrors of the war, saying that the "[it] has been tragic, but the balance is not entirely negative".

"For the first time [Iraq] has an elected government," he says. "My impression is that a Saddam Hussein figure could not return. And I believe that Iraq is advancing towards some kind of pluralistic democracy."

He relishes the prospect of democratic change in the US and the UK, coming out for the "generational change" that Barack Obama represents – "I believe it would be a great thing for the US to vote a black man into the White House" – and displaying no great sadness at the end of the new Labour era, despite his admiration for Thatcher's "true disciple", Tony Blair.

"If you believe in democracy, you believe in the idea of an alternative," he says. "This is a commonplace idea in the UK, which is the most democratic of the many countries I have lived in. Democracy is not just the insititutions, but also a spirit."

It's a spirit he feels is still under threat in Latin America, where he says leaders from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to Evo Morales in Bolivia are "like a broken record that repeats the same concepts, the same clichés and phobias, the same politics". He's more supportive of what he describes as the "democratic left", such as Lula in Brazil and Michelle Bachelet in Chile, arguing that what has changed since his youth is the appetite of the US to meddle in Latin affairs. As the state department's attention turns to Iraq, the Middle East and the rise of China, there is hope that Latin America will be left to plot its own destiny.
As for Chavez and Morales, they are sure to inspire a new generation of novelists, and will have to wait the judgment of literature.

"The book about Chavez will come at some point," he says. "Just give the Venezuelans time to assimilate him."

By Paul Amilos, The Guardian, Saturday 4 October 2008