MVLL, just died a few days ago, and I wanted to write the most sincerely version of my thoughts about him. He won many awards, including the Nobel Prize(The only Peruvian in history) and he was a member of the “immortals” in the French Academy or Académie Française, a very successful and rewarded intellectual and writer. He said that art, and the arts are a language from heaven, and I agree, so why didn’t he search for a more refined way to express his huge talent in his works? Why his sexual ideas and orientation took the dominant of his powerful intelligence? Why the primary needs of the human being like going to the toilet, was the ending of Antônio Conselheiro? A man that changing the life of criminals and bad people, and made of them servers of Canudos, this new community of holiness, work and compassion. The foreign world, the capitals and interests pointed their weapons against this land of hope and redemption. Canudos and Antônio Conselheiro were enemies to destroy because hope can’t’ be a realty possible to join for people escaping of the mundane world! But MVLL decided that Antônio Conselheiro, finished his terrestrial life defecating on his clothes. I will never understand. This was a different kind of book, to much to say, to much to give to humanity, could have been like the renewed version of The Canticle of Brother Sun of Saint Francis, but MVLL had his obsession to sell as many books as possible, and he did in more than 33 languages. I never was interested in his love adventures and his marriages, first with his aunt, then with his cousin, to finishing in the arms of the ex of Julio Iglesias, giving her excess money to be part of this jet set circle, more for empty people than for an artist. In his last interview he confirmed that to join politics, creating a party (Fredemo) and loosing the 1990 Peruvian Presidential elections against Alberto Fujimori, was his biggest life mistake. But I think what was worse, to appoint two people like Toledo and Humala, now both ex presidents and in the same jail, condemned for corruption, this was a mistake. He lost against Fujimori and then for years the entire country suffered the anger of MVLL. We made the same university (Universidad Mayor de San Marcos) in different times and eras, but the teachings of our Alma Mater was always the same: Respect for the differences, support to the weak and fragile ones, and an infinite love and dedication serving the art, the culture, and the truth!
