Ray Sanchez | Direct from Havana
7:21 AM EDT, May 9, 2008
Havana
Peruvuian author Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the most influential writers
in Latin America, said history will not absolve ailing Cuban leader
Fidel Castro.
"The hopes awakened by the Cuban revolution have not been realized,"
Vargas Llosa told the French news agency AFP in New York. "Cuba is today
a poorer country, with huge inequalities between the lives of the
nomenclature, tourists and the average Cuban."
The conservative, 72-year-old author, a onetime candidate for Peru's
presidency, was recently selected as one of the world's top 100 public
intellectuals by Foreign Policy magazine.
"I don't think history will absolve him, instead it will show that Fidel
Castro was the continuation of a long caudillo tradition that has done
so much harm in Latin America," he said.
Author of the critically acclaimed novel "The Feat of the Goat" about
the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, Vargas Llosa said
the socialist island was in period of transition.
"Fidel's death will bring about a psychological change that will
accelerate in some way the reforms being introduced timidly by Raul
Castro and his team, who realize that if Cuba is to survive, it must
evolve," he said.
Raul Castro,76, officially replaced older brother Fidel as president in
late February.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-0509havanadaily,0,4749910.column
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