Vargas, Manuel

(1952– )

   Bolivian author and editor. Born in Vallegrande, in the province of Santa Cruz, the author has lived in La Paz since the early 1960s. He is the author of several novels and collections of short stories, among them Nocturno paceño (La Paz Nocturnes), a novel set during the dictatorship of General Hugo Banzer Suárez.

   In this work, which remains to be translated into English, the presence of Banzer Suárez is the connecting thread for a series of seemingly loosely connected episodes detailing the experiences of young leftist students living in an atmosphere of terror and fear. Chief among them are Adrian and Erwin, recent arrivals from the provinces, who most experience the psychological effects of living under the regime. The novel, however, evades the pitfalls of easy nostalgia. According to the author, while it details the abuses of the regime—disappearances, torture, detentions—it also points out the disillusionment of the Bolivian left with the revolutionary ideals of previous decades and the tendency of present Bolivian activists to ignore history. While the author rejects the transcendental character usually ascribed to the historical novel, he has mentioned that the failure of the text to name the dictator is an act of an almost mythical power to eradicate evil. Speaking specifically of the absence of named dictators in the novel, Vargas has said that “naming them made me uneasy. In revenge—oh, the power of literature—I made them ‘disappear.’”

   As with earlier Bolivian writers, Vargas seeks to portray the world of Bolivian peasants and their language. Since 1996, he has been an editor of the editorial house Correveidile and of a magazine of the same title. He resides in La Paz.