The Nobel Committee: "Next year we'll give it [the Nobel Prize for Literature] to Juan Ramón Martínez"
Juan Ramón Martínez, like Mario Vargas Llosa, is a known writer in Honduras and a "political analyst", whose articles are published and endorsed by Honduran corporate media, in the same way Vargas Llosa's are published by right-wing media in the continent and in Spain(his son's in The Washington Post). He has repeatedly written articles which reveal him as a staunch defender of the coup regime, the structures of power, and the status quo in Honduras in the same way Vargas Llosa defends the same -neoliberalism- in the whole continent and will predictably use the canonization the Nobel Prize Committe has granted him as a platform for him to go on assailing Hugo Chavez, any leftist leader that appears in the continent, and every single tiny trace of left that can be detected on anyone.
Some people might argue that one must separate art/literature from politics(consider how laughable it would be to apply the same logic to Picasso's Guernica, to name one example), that this award was given to a writer to promote his literary work, not his political views, as if he didn't actually write political and reactionary articles for Spain's most read newspaper, El País, along other widespread Latin American ones.
Unfortunately, saying that this prize is given to exclusively acknowledge the works of an outstanding novelist would be more than a bit miopic (to be polite and not call it the blatant lie it is), since it is hardly arguable that receiving the Nobel Prize, the highest award given in the Western World, legitimizes him as a prolific thinker and intellectual figure, not only as the prolific writer he is already known to be for some decades now. Hence people will not only listen to his thoughts, his political views, but follow them, in view the prize has consolidated his person in the same way it did with Obama and his "peace" mission executing two simultaneous wars in Irak and Afghanistan, installing 7 US military bases in Colombia, and, as if that weren't enough, threatening with another one in Iran, canonizing and ratifying all his actions into unquestionably peaceful ones, as happened with Henry Kissinger,the Peace Nobel Laureate who was the principal American architect of the September 11, 1973 Chilean coup d'état against President Salvador Allende, which installed the brutal dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.
Ongoing events can't be isolated from their context and it is widely known that most of Latin America has now given a turn to the left for the first time in decades, before Plan Condor was executed to change its course in order to recover "lost territory" and "to prevent the Cuba model from propagating itself". The Nobel Prize for an outspoken apologist of the right who constantly attacks the left in Latin America at this point in history, where coup d'états have been attempted against ALBA presidents (Hugo Chávez in 2002, Evo Morales in 2008, a successful one against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras in 2009, and the most recent attempt in September 30, 2010 against Rafael Correa of Ecuador) is not merely coincidence, but an indispensable action for the falling West, an act of desperation to regain lost territory.
Furthermore, Mr. Vargas Llosa wrote an article about the coup d'état in Honduras on June 28, 2009 some days after it took place which describes the event as "the masses of the Honduran population declared themselves against turning into a country dependent on Hugo Chávez, that is, into a little populist dictatorship,enfeoffed to the Venezuelan caudillo". Despite him calling once in the article the illegal Micheletti regime "the de facto government", the rest of the article is a blatant coup apology with a slight touch of make-up.
He goes on saying,
"Perhaps even more than for the action itself of assaulting the residence of the Honduran head of state, it would be necessary to reproach the military and the judges who gave the order to do it, that, with such crime, they converted into a victim of democracy and a little less than in a heroe of liberty, an irresponsable demagogue as Mel Zelaya, who in flagrant violation of the Constitution he had sworn to respect, he resolved to carry out a referendum to make himself become reelected, an aspiration that was condemned by the Supreme Court and the Public Prosecutor of the country, and for which the Honduran Congress had initiated a process to remove him from his post as head of State."Firstly, to say that the poll to ask the population whether we wanted or not a fourth ballot in the election where Zelaya was not participating and where Lobo would have resulted elected anyway (but would have been the one responsible to call for the Constituent Assembly, in case both polls resulted successful: if the first June 28 non-binding poll resulted successful which would enable the second binding poll that would have taken place during the elections through a fourth ballot, the first ballot is where Lobo was elected ), would have led directly to Zelaya's reelection is not only a strawman argument, ridiculous, but physically impossible and is the same argument the putschists used to justify Zelaya's ouster and second, the Honduran Congress has no faculty to depose a President or to execute the law and the Supreme Court owed him due process. His son hasn't only echoed his same arguments through articles published by a huge media outlet such as The Washington Post, in particular that the coup was Zelaya's own fault, but has gone as far as being one of the main international apologists of the coup to the point of coming to Honduras to earn publicity and public sympathy for the de facto government and to support and promote the illegal militarized elections sponsored by the same criminals who broke constitutional order, fraudulent elections taking place under numerous human rights abuses by the police and military which have continued with the Lobo Sosa coup government continuation in order to whitewash the coup, even intending to play down their criminal actions by reassuring and intending to confirm their honesty and honor by saying "Nobody in the current government is interested in a fraudulent election, nor is one likely given safeguards that include a widely respected national electoral tribunal and Supreme Court. The authorities seem eager to have the burden of international censure lifted by keeping their promise to hand power over to an elected president.". Unluckily, for Mr. Alvaro Vargas, neither the OAS, the European Union, the United Nations nor any official international organization came to observe those elections.
While ironically the Nobel Committee claims to award Vargas Llosa for his "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat"., it is very clear for Vargas Llosa, as the cartographer of the structures of power that he is, as well as for that Committee, that the Nobel Prize itself is an integral part, a tool of that same machinery of the structures of power to maintain, consolidate, and reassure their place in the world.
Nobel a platform for outspoken Vargas Llosa
AP – Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa attends a news conference Thursday, Oct. 7, 2010, in New York. The …
CARACAS, Venezuela – The Nobel Prize in literature brings a long-awaited accolade to Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, and also a new platform for him to assail leftist leaders Hugo Chavez of Venezuelaand Fidel Castro of Cuba.
The 74-year-old writer has been a combative political activist in denouncing what he views as threats to democracy and freedoms in Latin America. As he basked in praise for winning the prize Thursday, he pointedly singled out Venezuela and Cuba during a news conference in New York, saying those two countries represent a step backward for a hemisphere emerging from an era of strongman leaders.
"That trend, which is an authoritarian, anti-democratic trend, is a trend that seems on its way out, for which there is less support all the time,"Vargas Llosa told reporters.
"I'm going to keep defending the ideas I have, the defense of democracy, the defense of freedom ... criticisms of all forms of authoritarianism," he said.
Vargas Llosa has regularly directed barbs at Chavez, denouncing him as autocratic. When the novelist visited Venezuela last year to attend a pro-democracy forum, he was stopped by authorities at the airport for nearly two hours. He said he was questioned and told that as a foreigner he didn't "have the right to make political statements" in Venezuela.
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