Peru has declared a national day of mourning with flags flying at half -mast at the Government’s facilities in memory of the writer and the Nobel Prize Mario Vargas Llosa.
Vargas Llosa died at the age of 89 on Sunday in the Peruvian capital, Lima, surrounded by her family. His body will be cremated and “a public ceremony will not be carried out,” according to his wishes and instructions, said his family.
“His departure will be sad to his family, his friends and his readers worldwide, but we hope they find comfort, as we do, in the fact that they enjoy a long, adventurous and fruitful life, and leave a message ALV a message about X, also signed by their brothers Gonzalo and Morgana Vargas Llosa, on Sunday.
It is with a deep sadness that we announce that our father, Mario Vargas Llosa, died peacefully in Lima today, surrounded by his family.@Morganavlll pic.twitter.com/c6hgefyaie
– Álvaro Vargas Llosa (@alvarovargasll) April 14, 2025
Vargas Llosa was a main light in the rise of Latin American literature of the twentieth century, which also included Gabriel García Márquez Colombiano, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010 for works such as Aunt Julia and the Fins War and Value.
Born from middle -class parents in Arequipa, Peru, on March 28, 1936, Vargas Llosa frequently extracted from personal experience and their family, sometimes inserting characters based on their own lives in their talks.
His acclaimed debut novel, The Time of the Hero (1963), was based freely on his teenage life as a cadet in a military academy in Lima, while his 1993 memoirs, a fish in the water, focused on his 1990 presidential career.
Other works expressed a deep concern for their country. The narrator (1987) deals with the clash of indigenous and European cultures in Peru, while death in the Andes (1993) tells the disturbing and bloody years of the hard line movement of the bright road.
“An author’s work feeds on his own experience and, over the years, he becomes richer,” Vargas Llosa told the Reuters news agency in an interview in Madrid in 2001.
The Nobel Committee said in 2010 that he was granting him “for his cartography of power structures and his trenches of resistance, revolt and defeat of the individual.”
When paying tribute to his colleague, his fellow Peruvian writer Alfredo Bryce Echenique praised the “farm” of Vargas Llosa. He told the RPP Peruvian radio that his friend’s death was “a pain for Peru.”
In a publication about X, the president of Peru, Dina Boluarte, calls the “most illustrious Peruvian of all time.”
“His intellectual genius and permanent work will continue to be an eternal legacy for future generations,” he added.
Vargas Llosa’s works also translated into about 30 languages.
The Undersecretary of State of the State of the United States, Christopher Landau, said: “Labeling it as a Peruvian would be a bad service because their issues and interests were timeless and universal.”
“He will live on my shelves and many others in Latin America and worldwide,” Landau wrote in X.
Political incursions and denouncing Castro
In addition to authorizing books, Vargas Llosa was also Franco on political issues.
Altheghe, one of the first defenders of the Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro, then disappointed and denounced Cuba de Castro. By 1980, he said he no longer believed in socialism as a solution for developing nations.
In 1990, Vargas Llosa ran for President of Peru, saying that he wanted to save his country from economic chaos and a Marxist armed rebellion.
He, however, lost in the runoff against Alberto Fujimori, a then recognized agronomist and university professor who defeated the armed rebels, but was then imprisoned for crimes of human rights and corruption.
Frustrated by his loss, the writer moved to Spain, but remained influential in Latin America, hardly criticizing a new wave or strident leaders of the left led by the then Venelabulano president Hugo Chávez.
“Actually, I never had a political career,” said Vargas Llosa once.
“I taught part in politicians in very special circumstances … and I always said that if I won or lost the elections, I returned to my literary and intellectual work, not politics.”