Sabers and Utopias

A week ago I read Mario Vargas Llosa’s collection of political and literary essays, Sabers and Utopias, published in 2009.

The political essays exclusively covered the various right and left wing murderous (and often farcical, incompetent) dictatorships that dominated Central and South America countries in the 70s, 80s, 90s, even into the 2000s. To a major extent, many of these dictatorships or their vestiges are still going on, although seemingly not as violent as previous decades.

Some of the dictatorships Llosa wrote about were military coups, others voted in by reasonably fair elections and then the winning candidate suspended or rigged democracy and became a strongman.

As I read these essays, and how Llosa did everything in his literary power to protest/overthrow these dictatorships, I was struck by how the United States of America became very quickly in Trump’s second term, a typical banana Central or South American dictatorship of the elected type. The parallels are obvious:

Fire the civil servants who don’t pledge loyalty.

Take charge of major cultural institutions.

Sue and/or intimidate media critical of the dictatorship.

Issue proclamations that make illegal acts legal. Rule by fiat and decree.

Appoint a cabinet that puts the dictator first and the Constitution second or third or an afterthought.

Align yourself with other sympathetic dictatorships.

Promulgate exotic interpretations of long-standing laws and Constitutional Amendments to implement an agenda.

Appoint a boot-licking judiciary that benefits the corporate class and hates poor people.

Establish a state-run propaganda machine.

Stage lots of galas and make public appearances at big public events.

Seek and destroy political enemies.

Surround yourself with gaudy women.

Graft and more graft.

Appoint generals and admirals sympathetic to the cause.

Introduce bogey-man words and phrases that dumb down the policy debates

I could go on, but you get the idea. It’s happening every day of the week in America.

Reading Sabers and Utopias, I was also struck by the contrast between the protesting Central and South American writers and their American counterparts when it came to speaking out and organizing resistance against the dictatorships. The Americans writers (are any seriously agitating?) against the second Trump administration seem like rank, disorganized amateur hour compared to our Southern neighbors. Of course, Central and South American writers have way more experience protesting dictatorships. We Gringos are green, green, rookies.

What are American writers of conscience supposed to do with their writing to fight this Presidential farce and tyranny? Taking to social media? Writing long, useless, archaic, thought pieces in the legacy magazines. Is their some old fashioned pamphleteering and zine making happening? What are some editorial strategies that might connect to working class people (of all races) who voted for Trump? Or women who voted for him? Or seniors?

What am I doing? I am writing almost exclusively about the homeless. So what? I ask myself this a lot.