VARGAS LLOSA: THERE WERE NOT TWO SIDES

In statements to television, Vargas Llosa asserted that in the museum "violence will not be attributed to two 'sides' — terrorists on one side and the Armed Forces on the other. The museum cannot establish that equivalence, which would be immoral. It is not true that there were two sides: there was a primary and greater responsibility in that war, and it belongs to the terrorists — to Sendero Luminoso, to the MRTA, and to all those who supported that bloody madness." He then said, without naming the Armed Forces, that in the struggle "unacceptable abuses were committed in flagrant violation of the law." Let us examine what was said by the unjustly postponed Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. At first glance, several inconsistencies appear: on one hand, he says there were no two "sides," and on the other, that the responsibility for that "war" lies with the terrorists. Can there be a war without two sides fighting? If what Vargas Llosa meant is that on one side fought the bad and on the other the good, we could accept that — especially in this case where the good, the Armed Forces, prevailed for the peace of the nation, and the losers were the bad, the terrorists who initiated the genocide. What is wrong and dangerous is to say there was only one side.