Venezuela Protests News: Mario Vargas Llosa Says He Hopes Opposition, Government Talks Are ‘More Than A Mere Exercise’

Mario Vargas Llosa, the Nobel-winning novelist from Peru and one-time presidential candidate, visited Caracas this week to attend a forum held by a free-market think tank. In comments made to journalists shortly after his arrival, the author reiterated his sharp criticisms of the government of Venezuela’s socialist president Nicolás Maduro and said he hoped that current talks between an opposition coalition and the government would turn out to be “more than a mere exercise in rhetoric,” according to Venezuela’s Panorama.

Vargas Llosa praised the idea of the talks, which involve leaders with the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) but exclude those from the fiercest and most conservative sectors, but added that they should be used to “make basic corrections” to the current economic and political model in Venezuela, according to El Universal. “The dialogue must be genuine, authentic and seek out a compromise which could bring peace to the country,” he said, “but I think that can only come through a correction of basic measures to avoid, for example, scarcity [of goods].” Since Maduro’s arrival in office last April, Venezuela has seen shortages in the domestic production of goods as basic as toilet paper.

The author, a leftist as a youth whose turn to the right in the 1970s was provoked largely by what he saw as the failures and abuses of Cuba’s Communist leadership, has been an outspoken critic of Maduro and his late predecessor Hugo Chávez, who forged close friendships with the Castro brothers. During a trip in 2009 to another event sponsored by the same think tank, he was reportedly held up in the Caracas airport for two hours before customs officials let him enter the country -- reports which Chávez denied were true.