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conflicts apparently shows two opposing ideas about the development for Peru. The main conflicts precisely reveal that there were internal conflicts in Peru
between those who supported development and those who refuse it for the sake of natives‘ lives.
3. Mario Vargas Llosa’s Nationalism
From the representation of setting of place and social circumstances, The Storyteller
to some extent can uphold nationalism. It represents Peru as a national imagination for Peruvian as well as represents his background. It is true that the
Peruvian are so multicultural and inherited from many ancestors such as Spaniards, Incas, Indians.
However, through the ironies put in the setting of time, setting of place outside Peru, and the conflicts depicted, Llosa precisely criticizes nationalism
itself. Through the setting of time Llosa spotlights the representation of Peru in the era of capitalists and economic growth. Moreover, he refers also to
consumerism happening in the capital. The setting of time he chose apparently described how Peru still underwent its glory in economic which certainly
benefitted to upper class group. This is somehow connected to the conflicts presented. The conflicts are about two different ideas related to development
versus traditionalism. The proof can be seen in the below quotation. In the sixties and seventies―the years of student revolt against a consumer
society―many middle-class young people left Lima, motivated partly by adventure-seeking and partly by disgust at life in the capital, and went to
the jungle or the mountains, where they lived in conditions that were frequently precarious Llosa, 1989: 242.
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It seems that through the depiction of setting of time and conflicts, Llosa wants to question about nationalism imagined by the rest of Peruvian. It is easy
for middle class and upper class of Peruvian societies such as mestizos to imagine Peru as a whole. They certainly can define the meaning of nationalism
through education and script language that can connect them with their brother and sisters. However, this imagination is not easy for the natives who live in the
jungles and only care for their daily life. Borrowing Anderson‘s opinion, there are
still many people illiterate. But even though the sacred languages made such communities as
Christendom imaginable, the actual scope and plausibility of these communities cannot be explained by sacred script alone: their readers
were, after all, tiny literate reefs on top of vast illiterate Anderson, 1991: 15.
This condition is somehow depicted also in the story of Jum once the
narrator visited Aguaruna community. The story was about some linguists from Summer Institute of Linguistics who tried to make the natives literate. But then
their program seems to benefit much to the Peruvian upper class. They seem to use this chance to open a link for doing trade transaction with natives and
exploited them. It is seen in the below quotation. The program did not attain the goal it had set
—making the Amazonian Indians literate
—but, as far as Jum was concerned, it had unforeseeable consequence
s. His stay in Yarinacocha, his contacts with ―civilization‖ caused the cacique of Urakusa to discover
—by himself or with the help of his instructors
—that he and his people were being iniquitously exploited by the bosses with whom they traded Llosa, 1989: 75.
In the story, Llosa described that some people warned the narrator that Summer Institute of Linguistics was such an imperialistic project which attempted
to teach English to natives before they could speak Spanish. ‗A number of
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conservatives disapprove of the presence of the Institute in Peru for nationalist and Hispanist reasons,‘ 1989: 71. However, it is described in the story of Jum
that the ones exploiting the natives were not only foreigners but also Peruvian people, such as mestizos.
A party of whites and mestizos from Santa María de Nieva —a trading post
on the banks of the Nieva River that we had also visited, put up in a Catholic mission
—had arrived in Urakusa a few weeks before us. The party included the civil authorities of the settlement plus a soldier from a
frontier post. Jum went out to meet them, and was greeted by a blow that split his forehead open. Then they burned down the huts of Urakusa, beat
up all the Indians they could lay their hands on, and raped several women. They carried Jum off to Santa María de Nieva, where they submitted him
to the indignity of having his hair cut off. Then they tortured him in public. They flogged him, burned his armpits with hot eggs, and finally hoisted
him up a tree the way they do paiche, large river fish, to drain them off. They left him there for several hours, then untied him and let him go back
to his village Llosa, 1989: 74.
The conflicts presented underline Llosa‘s criticism for those Peruvian who
hates their former conquerors, the Spaniards, and foreigners but they are somehow hypocrites for they keep on doing the cruelty to the natives by exploiting them. It
is his way to deliver that such kind of nationalism is shortsighted and less altruistic to the marginalized people in Peru. He delivers that in this way.
Such criticism, to be just, should be self-criticism. Because when we gained our independence from Spain two hundred years ago, those who
assumed power in the former colonies, instead of liberating the Indians and creating justice for old wrongs, continued to exploit them with as
much greed and ferocity as the conquerors and, in some countries, decimating and exterminating them. Let us say this with absolute clarity:
for two centuries the emancipation of the indigenous population has been our exclusive responsibility, and we have not fulfilled it. This continues to
be an unresolved issue in all of Latin America. There is not a single exception to this ignominy and shame http:www.nobelprize.org, May
24, 2012.
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Thus, to some extent The Storyteller can be called as nationalistic novel. However, through the ironies in setting of time and conflicts, Llosa precisely
reveals that nationalism as imagined community may be just a matter of ideology. Thus through The Storyteller he argued that people need not to be so extreme
about nationalism since it is an abstract thing that people such Indians would not care about ra
ther than their daily needs. This seems to reflect Llosa‘s argument related to nationalism when he was giving a Nobel lecture.
I despise every form of nationalism, a provincial ideology – or rather,
religion – that is short-sighted, exclusive, that cuts off the intellectual
horizon and hides in its bosom ethnic and racist prejudices, for it transforms into a supreme value, a moral and ontological privilege, the
fortuitous circumstance of one‘s birthplace http:www.nobelprize.org, May 24, 2012.
Llosa presents his nationalism on the way showing that Peruvian people should also care about the lives of marginalized people in their country. Besides,
Llosa also seems to deliver the understanding that nationalism can also be experienced
by those who are far from ‗home.‘ This is seen from the placement of setting place outside Peru. Llosa created imagination of Peruvian territory as well
as some other countries such as Firenze, Madrid, and Paris. This apparently reflect his experiences going around the world but still has his heart for Peru as well as
his love to other countries. I never felt like a foreigner in Europe or, in fact, anywhere. In all the
places I have lived, in Paris, London, Barcelona, Madrid, Berlin, Washington, New York, Brazil, or the Dominican Republic, I felt at home.
I have always found a lair where I could live in peace, work, learn things, nurture dreams, and find friends, good books to read, and subjects to write
about. It does not seem to me that my unintentionally becoming a citizen of the world has weakened what are called ―my roots,‖ my connections to
my own country
– which would not be particularly important – because if
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that were so, my Peruvian experiences would not continue to nourish me as a writer and would not always appear in my stories, even when they
seem to occur very far from Peru http:www.nobelprize.org, May 24, 2012.
Moreover, he delivers this idea for some people who judged him as a
traitor to his country when he changed citizenship after failed the Peruvian President election. For him, going away from his country cannot erase his heart
from Peru. Thus, he criticizes those who think that nationalism is a matter of ‗inside‘ ideology of loving nation.
I carry Peru deep inside me because that is where I was born, grew up, was formed, and lived those experiences of childhood and youth that shaped
my personality and forged my calling, and there I loved, hated, enjoyed, suffered, and dreamed. What happens there affects me more, moves and
exasperates me more than what occurs elsewhere. I have not wished it or imposed it on myself; it simply so. Some compatriots accused me of being
a traitor, and I was on the verge of losing my citizenship when, during the last dictatorship, I asked the democratic governments of the world to
penalize the regime with diplomatic and economic sanctions, as I have always dome with all dictatorships of any kind, whether of Pinochet, Fidel
Castro, the Taliban in Afganistan, the Imams in Iran, apartheid in South Africa, the uniformed satraps of Burma now called Myanmar
http:www.nobelprize.org, May 24, 2012.
Thus, Llosa, through The Storyteller, delivers his nationalism in three ways. First, he reveals the setting of place inside Peru and the setting of social
circumstance to create national imagination of Peru. Second, he delivers that feeling of nationalism should come along with justice for marginalized people,
such as Indians, through the ironies in the setting of time and main conflicts. Third, through the setting of place outside Peru, he wants to deliver that his
experience as a cosmopolitan who goes around the world cannot erase his nationalism to his country. To sum up, he advises in this way.
