Thursday, March 1, 2007

(off topic) Reading up on Perú

As should be well-known by now, I'm turning a bit into a Perú-o-phile or whatever you want to call it. As a result, I have been reading books about this country, both fiction and non-fiction. There is one writer you really cannot get around: Mario Vargas Llosa (often abbreviated as MVLL). He's both a good writer and a good (ex-)politician, and both in his fiction and non-fiction books he paints a picture about Perú that shows the spirit of the era, region, or events through his eyes. Although there is no such thing as a "monopoly on truth", his impression is often representative of the mood of the era, even if one doesn't always agree with his point of view or desired outcome.

Through him, and a well-known Peruvian economist by the name of Hernando de Soto, I am discovering a few things about Perú and myself. Most importantly, I have discovered that though I have a passion for trying to solve poverty and social issues, I am not a socialist in any sense of the word. I don't believe in redistribution of wealth because this will make the average wealth go down instead of up. I believe in creating opportunities and circumstances in which people can take advantage of opportunities. I fundamentally believe in a person's ability to fence for him/herself and to get ahead when the circumstances allow. But I also believe that creating these circumstances and taking care of those who do fall through the cracks is not a socialist activity; au contraire, it's enabling an economy to grow from the bottom up and prosper. And I believe that it is in the direct interest of the "rich" part of the population to make this happen: by stimulating the economy to grow from the bottom up, it creates a wide populus of consumers that allow overall economic growth.

To give you my recent booklist, read over the last 6 months:
  • (finished) MVLL, A Fish in the Water (in English). MVLL's memoir about his youth and about his unsuccessful run for the Peruvian presidency in 1990. Highly recommended.
  • (finished) MVLL, La Tia Julia Y El Escribidor (in Spanish). A half fiction, half truth novel about MVLL's relationship with "Aunt Julia" and his interactions with a colleague scriptwriter named Pedro Camacho at Radio Central in Lima, where MVLL worked in the 1950. Highly recommended
  • (finished) MVLL, La Fiesta del Chivo (in Spanish). A novel around the assassination of the Dominican dictator Trujillo. Highly recommended.
  • (finished) MVLL, Travesuras de una niña mala (in Spanish). A novel about a Peruvian guy that lives in Paris and his on/off obsessive relationship with his first love. I was a little disappointed by it because of its repetitive flow that made it ever more predictable what was going to happen next. Of course, this was intentional by MVLL to show the bourgeois character of the main personality, but still...
  • (halfway through) MVLL, Lituma en los Andes (in Spanish). A story about a police lieutenant and his sidekick, investigating the disappearance of three workers from a mining operation in the Andes. Gives a good insight about life in the Andes in the 1980s, with lots of Shining Path terrorism going around, however staying lighthearted. Until now-- highly recommended
  • (halfway through) Hernando de Soto, El Otro Sendero (in Spanish). A non-fiction, economic work on how the Peruvian informal economy worked in the 1980s, and how diminishing "red tape" and formalization of property and business by providing titles can help the poor break the vicious cycle of poverty. Hard to read for someone who is not an economist and speaks Spanish as fifth language, but extremely interesting. Note that although some of the ideas and truths he describes are controversial, but his research into "how did it happen" is fascinating. Until now, highly recommended.
  • (still to read) MVLL, La ciudad y los perros (in Spanish). A fictive story about life in the Leoncio Prado Military Acadamy, a military highschool in Lima that MVLL attended for a year in the 1950s.
  • (still to read) MVLL, La Historia de Mayta (in Spanish). The story of a Peruvian revolutionary and his failed uprising in the 1950s.

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