Touchstones

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  This opening up of information is very important in cultural as well as political terms. The technological revolution in the field of communications also opens up enormous possibilities, without historical precedent, for the diffusion of ideas, literature, science and arts, that is, for the democratisation of culture, putting it within reach of large sectors of humanity who, until relatively recently, due to their isolation, marginalisation and poverty were culturally excluded.

  It is true that the large media organisations do not always use the hypnotic power that they have over their vast audiences with sufficient creativity and rigour, and that the majority of the most popular programmes could not be called cultural. But let us not confuse the effect with the cause. If television and the Internet do not enrich our sensibilities, imagination and knowledge, choosing instead to pander to the most vulgar and tasteless common denominator, it is because the audiences that they are aimed at lack the basic spiritual and aesthetic refinement to spurn these offerings and demand instead more worthwhile and better-made programmes. In any event, the means are there, and it is up to us to make sure that the content improves and enhances us intellectually and as citizens, instead of dulling our minds, drowning us in what Flaubert called ‘received ideas’, in stereotypes and prejudices.

  It is necessary to democratise culture, but that also has its risks, if that means that we make ideas banal in order to make them accessible to everyone. That is not democratising culture, but rather corrupting it and replacing it with a caricature. The democratisation of culture can only be understood as the creation of conditions that facilitate and promote access to culture for those who are prepared to make the necessary intellectual effort to enjoy and enhance their lives through culture. And democratisation must ensure that everyone should have this opportunity.

  Let me offer a brief illustration. In the sixties, for almost seven years, I lived in France, earning my living as a journalist, first in the France-Presse Agency and later in French Radio-Television. One of the stories that I had to cover, and I always remember it because it was so innovatory and stimulating, was a series of public readings that a group of writers were giving in different locations which appeared at first sight to have little to do with literature: mining centres, factories, offices, sports clubs, army barracks. I don’t remember what institution sponsored this initiative; but I do remember that it wanted to find out whether it was possible to present successfully the best of literature to relatively uninformed audiences. The writers did not read their own works, but rather the works of their favourite authors. And they were asked to make no concessions with regard the difficulty of the pieces. I went to two of these sessions and I have a vivid and splendid memory of what happened when a well-known critic and novelist – Michel Butor, if my memory serves – read some stories by Borges (a difficult and highbrow writer if ever there was one) in a factory. Helped by his very clear explanations, a clever selection of texts and the engaging way he read them, his audience was fascinated by the baroque stories of the author of El Aleph, and I am sure that they had a very good time. That initiative, to my knowledge, was a one-off, never repeated. But it showed me, at least, that good literature is, in addition to many other things, a source of incomparable pleasure; and that, however complex it might be, it can soon captivate large audiences. The same can be said of culture in general.

  It should not be seen as strange that these finely wrought, unusual stories dreamed up on the other side of the world by an Argentine writer should excite for a few hours the imagination of those French workers (who were doubtless not used to reading literature). If literature is good, it knows no borders; or rather, it is one of best ways to bring down the barriers between people and allow them to communicate and feel part of a single community. Don Quixote began his adventures riding through La Mancha, but now he rides throughout the world and in almost all the languages of the earth, just as the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet brings a tear to the eyes of most of humanity, and the voices of Tolstoy, Dante, Homer and Molière are a heritage that everyone who has heard, read or reread their characters’ adventures and misfortunes, and has embraced them, can claim for themselves. Many centuries before we heard the word globalisation, the great artistic and literary creations had already begun systematically to break down the borders that kept people apart, establishing a common denominator between cultures.

  The worst disasters that humanity has suffered have always been the result of a lack of communication between countries or societies, which used confrontation and violence instead of dialogue. If you want to confront enemies with the utmost conviction and force, then it is essential to dehumanise and demonise them. This is an eminently cultural task: to replace an objective perception of reality with mirages that reflect our fears and hatred, replacing human beings with phantoms, depriving them first of their true nature and then of their lives themselves. Religion, ideologies and nationalism have traditionally supplied arguments and pretexts for dehumanising adversaries, a first stage that can lead to the genocides and holocausts that have stained world history with horror and blood.

  Culture is the most effective antidote we have to this behaviour, allowing us to recognise the humanity of the other, of others above and beyond the differences that exist between the different ethnicities, creeds and languages that give the world its rich and stimulating diversity. It allows us to discover beneath the differences in clothes, customs, beliefs or geography an underlying community of interests between people. This should create a sense of community that would make wars and killings impossible. But we know that this is not the case, and that, instead, despite the prodigious development of knowledge and technology, in many parts of the globe religious or political antagonisms (or the two mixed together) continue to wreak havoc, as in the Middle East, while in other places, like the border between India and Pakistan, the old territorial disputes keep millions of people on tenterhooks, threatened with a nuclear apocalypse.

  If it continues spreading to, and including, all the countries of the world in a web of exchanges and common interests and responsibilities, globalisation is likely to be the most effective method that humanity has to end armed conflict, begin disarmament and work towards peace in the world.

  This ideal is possible as long as this process of integration that we call globalisation is not primarily economic, as a narrow definition of the process might have us believe. Of course, if it is confined to trade, to opening up world markets for all products, then the most pessimistic predictions about the consequences of globalisation could become a reality. Purely economic globalisation would be sterile and indeed impossible. Open and competitive markets are not those that are left to the whims of buyers and sellers, investors and consumers. They are clearly and fairly regulated, by efficient and honest courts, that make sure contracts are in place and sanction those who violate other people’s rights. And the only political system that guarantees the existence of independent judges is democracy. For that reason, it is not a coincidence that the most strident opponents of globalisation are also opposed to democracy. These are the people who feel nostalgic for the vertical, totalitarian systems of the extreme right and the extreme left. For globalisation to be beneficial to the world, it is fundamental that, alongside markets, it should look to globalise political democracy.

  There are some tenacious prejudices in the cultural sphere that are opposed to globalisation. The argument goes that, if globalisation becomes a reality, then all the cultures of the world will disappear, flattened by Anglo-Saxon culture which, in the hands of the superpower, the United States, will impose conformity on all the countries of the planet, in a new form of cultural colonialism.

  I would like to explore in some detail this cultural argument against globalisation, which goes along these lines:

  The disappearance of national frontiers and the establishment of a world connected by international markets will deal a death blow to regional and national cultures, to the traditions, customs, mythologi
es and modes of behaviour that determine the cultural identity of every community or country. Unable to resist the invasion of cultural products from developed countries – or rather from the superpower, the United States – which inevitably come in the wake of the big multinationals, US culture will end up taking over, making the entire world uniform, destroying the rich variety of cultures that are still thriving. In this way, all the other communities, not just those that are small and weak, will lose their identity – their soul – and become the colonised people of the twenty-first century, slavish followers, zombies or caricatures modelled by the cultural values of the new imperialism that will rule the world not just through its capital, technology, military power and scientific knowledge, but also by imposing on others its language, its ways of thinking, its beliefs, pastimes and dreams.

  This nightmare or negative utopia of a world which, through globalisation, has lost its linguistic and cultural diversity, and become instead a uniform Americanised culture is not, as some people think, an idea developed just by political minorities of the extreme left who feel nostalgic for Marxism, Maoism and Third World Guevarism, a sort of persecution mania allied to a hatred and bitterness towards the American giant. It can also be found in developed countries, culturally highly developed countries, and is shared by people on the left, on the right and in the centre. Perhaps the most striking example is France, where governments of different political orientation periodically start up campaigns in defence of French ‘cultural identity’, that is supposedly threatened by globalisation. A great swath of intellectuals and politicians become concerned that the land that produced Montaigne, Descartes, Racine and Baudelaire and set the standards for fashion, philosophy, painting and cooking, and in all matters of the intellect, might find itself invaded by McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken, rock and rap, Hollywood movies, blue jeans, sneakers and polo shirts. This fear has meant, for example, that France has massively subsidised its local film industry, and there have been numerous campaigns demanding a system of quotas limiting the screening of US films and guaranteeing that of a certain percentage of local films. That is also the reason why there have been strict municipal regulations (although, if you walk round Paris, they do not seem to be strictly observed) imposing heavy fines on advertising that denationalises the language of Molière by using Anglicisms. And let’s not forget that José Bové, the farmer turned crusader against malbouffe (bad eating), who smashed up a McDonald’s, has become something of a popular hero in France.

  Although I think that the cultural argument against globalisation is not acceptable, one has to recognise that at its heart there is an unquestionable truth. The world that we are going to inhabit in the century that is just beginning will be much less picturesque, much less full of local colour than the century that we are leaving. Fiestas, clothing, ceremonies, rituals and beliefs that in the past offered a great folkloric and ethnological variety will start to disappear, or be confined to very small groups, while the bulk of society will give up these forms and take on others that are more appropriate to the times we are living in. This is a process that all the countries of the globe are going through, some more quickly, others more slowly. But this is not due to globalisation, but to modernisation, and is an effect, not a cause. We can, of course, regret that this is happening and feel nostalgia for the passing of forms of life from the past which, especially if seen from the comfortable perspective of the present, seem to us graceful, original and colourful. But I think that what we cannot do is avoid this happening. Not even countries like Cuba or North Korea, which are fearful that openness will destroy the totalitarian regimes that govern them, and thus close in on themselves and look to keep modernity at bay with sanctions and censorship, can halt this process, keep it from undermining their so-called ‘cultural identity’. In theory, a country could perhaps preserve this identity were it to live, as happens with certain remote tribes in Africa or the Amazon, in total isolation, cutting off any form of exchange with other nations and being totally self-sufficient. A cultural identity preserved in this sway would take that society back to the times of prehistoric man.

  If it is true that modernisation causes many forms of traditional life to disappear, it is also true that it opens up opportunities and offers, in broad terms, a great stride forward for humanity. This is why when people can choose freely, they choose modernisation, without hesitation, often against the wishes of their leaders or of traditional intellectuals.

  The argument in favour of ‘cultural identity’ and against globalisation is based on a conception of culture that is resistant to change and which has no basis in history. What cultures have remained identical over time? We would need to find them among primitive magical-religious communities, beings living in caves, adoring thunder and wild beasts, beings that because of their primitive nature are more and more vulnerable to exploitation and extinction. All other cultures, above all those that have the right to be called modern, living cultures, have been evolving to such an extent that they are now merely a remote reflection of what they were even two or three generations ago. This is precisely the case of countries like France, Spain and Great Britain, where, in the last fifty years, the changes have been so profound and spectacular that today a Proust, a García Lorca or a Virginia Woolf – whose works of literature did so much to bring about these changes – would scarcely recognise the societies in which they were born.

  The idea of ‘cultural identity’ is dangerous because, from a social point of view, the term is conceptually weak, and from a political point of view, it might jeopardise that most precious of all human achievements, which is freedom. Of course, I am not denying that a group of people that speak the same language, have been born and live in the same area, confront the same problems and have the same religion and the same customs, share common characteristics. But this collective denominator cannot define what is specific to each member of the group, the attributes and distinctive traits that differentiate them from others. The concept of identity, when it is not used to define individuals, but rather to represent a group, is reductive and dehumanising. It is a magical-religious sleight of hand that makes abstract everything that is creative and original in men and women, everything that has resisted inherited values or geography or social pressure, in the name of individual freedom.

  In fact the notion of collective identity, the breeding ground of nationalism, is an ideological fiction. It is a concept that many ethnographers and anthropologists argue cannot be applied to the most archaic communities. For, however important shared customs and beliefs are for the defence of the group, there is always a great margin for initiative and creation among its members, outside the group, and individual differences are more important than collective features when we examine individuals on their own terms and not as mere secondary to the collective. And one of the great advantages of globalisation is that it greatly extends the possibilities that each citizen on this interconnected planet – the motherland of everyone – has to construct their own cultural identity, in accordance with their own preferences and inner motivation, and through their own voluntary action. Because now they are no longer forced, as in the past, and still in many places in the present, to comply with an identity that, like a straitjacket, obliges them to take on the language, the religion and the customs of the place where they were born. In this sense, globalisation should be welcomed because it greatly increases the scope of individual freedom.

  Perhaps Latin America is the best example of how artificial and unreal, if not downright absurd, it is to try to establish collective identities. What would a Latin American cultural identity be? Could we identify a unique and coherent set of beliefs, customs, traditions and mythologies? Our history is full of intellectual polemics – some of which have been very fierce – that have sought to answer this question. Perhaps the most famous was the polemic in the 1920s between Hispanists and Indigenists that reverberated throughout the continent. For Hispanists such as José de la Riva
Agüero, Víctor Andrés Belaunde and Francisco García Calderón, Latin America was born when, through Discovery and Conquest, it entered into a relationship with Europe, when, through the Spanish and Portuguese languages brought over by discoverers and conquistadors, and through the adoption of Christianity, it became part of Western civilisation. The Hispanists did not look down on pre-Hispanic cultures, but for them, these cultures were just a substratum – and not the most important substratum – of a historical and social reality that took on its final form and definition thanks to the revitalising influence of the West.

  The Indigenists, by contrast, rejected, with moral indignation, any supposed benefits that the Europeans might have brought to America. For them, our identity had its roots and its soul in pre-Hispanic cultures and civilisations whose development and modernisation were brutally checked by violence and subject to iniquitous censorship, repression and marginalisation, not only throughout three centuries of colonisation, but also after Independence. And, according to the Indigenists, the authentic American expression (to borrow a phrase from Lezama Lima) could be found in all the cultural manifestations – from native languages to beliefs, rituals, arts and popular customs – that had resisted Western cultural oppression and survived to our times. A famous historian of this school, the Peruvian Luis E. Valcárcel, went so far as to say in one of his books – Ruta colonial del Perú (The Colonial Route of Peru) – that churches, convents and other colonial architectural monuments should be destroyed because they represented the ‘Anti-Peru’, an imposition, a negation of pristine American identity, that could only be based on Indian foundations. And one of the most original novelists of Latin America, José María Arguedas, narrated, in stories of great delicacy and vibrant moral protest, the discreet, heroic survival of Quechua culture in the Andean world despite the suffocating and distorting presence of the West.