PERU: Critics Attack Nobel Author Vargas Llosa For Backing Humala As President.

GUARDIAN/ R. Carroll

  Author "Mario Vargas Llosa compared Peru's presidential candidates to cancer and Aids, but in choosing one over the other the nobel laureate has triggered an angry backlash.
    Commentators and bloggers have criticised Vargas Llosa for backing Ollanta Humala, a populist former army officer, as the lesser evil in the June election.
    The novelist said he would vote for Humala "unhappily and with fear" because the alternative, Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of the disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori, presented an even graver threat to democracy.
    Critics of Vargas Llosa, normally a revered figure in Peru and across Latin America, predicted he would rue his choice if Humala becomes president and emulates his one-time mentor, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez."

ARGENTINA: Book Fair Choice Vargas Llosa Continues To Raise Left's Hackles.

LIVING IN PERU /

   Since Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa was chosen to open Argentina's annual book fair, criticism by intellectuals of President Cristina Fernandez for picking him has been growing.
   Even Cristina's own cabinet chief Anibal Fernandez doesn't like the choice.
   In a recent radio interview, Fernandez called the Peruvian novelist a "reactionary right-winger," and said "Vargas Llosa is an enemy of popular governments, particularly that of Argentina, which he has insulted millions of times gratuitously and for no reason."

PERU: Vargas Llosa Wins Nobel For Literature.

GUARDIAN/
     Peruvian-born novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, 74, (pictured) said he was astonished and delighted to win this year's Nobel Prize for Literature.
    "For years I haven't thought about the Nobel prize at all. They didn't mention me in recent years so I didn't expect it. It's been a surprise, very nice, but a surprise. At first I thought it was a joke," he said.
      He has written more than 30 novels, plays and essays and is South America's first laureate since Colombia's Gabriel García Márquez won in 1982.

 FOR MORE DETAILS, SEE:
 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-07/peru-s-mario-vargas-llosa-wins-2010-nobel-prize-in-literature.html

PERU: President Garcia Revokes Civil War Amnesty Decree.

GUARDIAN/ RORY CARROLL/   Reportedly prodded by angry novelist Mario Vargas Llossa (pictures left) and other activists, President Alan Garcia is revoking an amnesty for officials and soldiers accused of civil war atrocities. Just 2 weeks Alan Garcia personally issued a decree for such protection. Yesterday he asked congress to annul it.

The Kirschners So Love The Poor, They Can't Stop Making Them.

MercoPress.

A writer riffs on Argentina's power couple.