PRESS RELEASE

On the death of Mario Vargas Llosa, Peruvian patriot, Nobel laureate, scholar and democracy advocate

18th International Management Discussion 1988: Writer and politician Mario Vargas Llosa at the symposium. Photo by Regina Kühne

Center for a Free Cuba. April 16, 2025. Washington DC. The death of Mario Vargas Llosa in Lima, Peru is a great loss for Cubans in the island and around the world who benefited from his tireless efforts to denounce the crimes of Cuban communism. It is also a loss for millions of people worldwide whose struggle for human rights he defended in his many books, columns, and thousands of articles that appeared in major newspapers on three continents. Mario Vargas Llosa was a champion for the victims of oppression, and he urged the international community to assist them.

At a time when it was not fashionable to denounce tyrants in Havana, Moscow, Managua, or Caracas –and indeed in many other countries, Mario Vargas Llosa was a steadfast advocate for freedom and human dignity.

He was a Peruvian writer, university professor and politician. Vargas Llosa was the recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature and is considered one of the leading writers of his generation. He has a large international audience and worldwide impact. Vargas Llosa has long been vocally opposed to the Castro dictatorship in Cuba. In 1971 following the imprisonment of Cuban poet, Heberto Padilla, Vargas Llosa, Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Susan Sontag and other world-renowned intellectuals, wrote to Fidel Castro on April 9, 1971 protesting his unjust detention.

The intellectuals’ first statement provoked Fidel Castro’s response, “gentlemen, bourgeois intellectuals and libellers and CIA agents (…) the shameless pseudo-leftists who want to win laurels by living in Paris, London, Rome,” closing the doors of Cuba to them forever.

Vargas Llosa and a larger number of  world-renowned intellectuals wrote to the Cuban dictator a second time on May 21, 1971 following Padilla’s confession charging that it had been obtained through methods reminiscent of Stalinist repression.

This exchange made the front pages of newspapers around the world, and the attention provided protection to the Cuban poet.

The Center for a Free Cuba has included Mario Vargas Llosa in its Legion of Honor since 2016.

The Legion of Honor represents men and women from all parts of the world who came to the assistance of the Cuban people oppressed by the communist regime when many others chose to ignore their tragic plight. Cuban mothers, like mothers everywhere , teach their children to say, “thank you.” José Martí Cuba’s revered patriot and poet wrote that “Honrar, honra.” In Martí’s words, when we honor someone, we honor ourselves. It is our hope that when freedom arrives in Cuba, the name of Mario Vargas Llosa will be listed at an appropriate place in the Parliament of a Free Cuba.

The selection of the members of the Legion of Honor is made by a commission formed by members of the Cuban diaspora and includes nominations received by victims of repression in Cuba. This honor includes men and women who were leaders, human rights activists, journalists, and men and women of goodwill, no matter their station in life, who opened their hearts to Cubans seeking refuge from the Castro brothers’ dictatorship which we believe will soon come to an end.

The Center for a Free Cuba extends its deepest condolences to his family, colleagues and friends.

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