By Jeremy Morgan
Latin American Herald Tribune staff

CARACAS – It wasn’t the happiest of 25th anniversaries for Cedice Libertad, a conservative intellectual group committed to democratic ideas, when the National Guard turned up the day before a forum organized to mark the occasion.

Cedice Libertad Director Rafael Alfonzo said “irregularities” took place after the guardsmen’s sudden appearance. But having said that, he seemed to want to downplay the incident, saying that the only result had been to increase interest in the forum, he claimed.

That said, Alfonzo expressed hope that foreign guests invited to attend wouldn’t have any difficulties in doing so. But this is exactly what one of them said had happened to him on his arrival Monday at Simón Bolívar International Airport at Maiquetía.

Peruvian journalist Álvaro Vargas Llosa, son of the famed Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, was reported to have claimed that he’d been held for three hours at the airport, during which time his passport had been taken away.

Later, he was let through, reports said. However, he appeared to be in some confusion about what had taken place and why, and his status as a result of it.

“I don’t know whether I’m detained -- they confiscated my passport,” he said. “They haven’t given me a better explanation.”

Having arrived with the status of a tourist, he added, he was told he had no right to express a political point of view. He’d come to Caracas to attend an event “that has much importance for all of us who believe in liberty,” he said.

An evidently irate Interior and Justice Minister Tarek El Assaimi reacted to this by accusing the journalist of lying. “We see that he communicated with a private media company to lie,” he roundly declared. “He wasn’t stopped, he wasn’t detained, and nor was his identity document taken away.”

All that had taken place had been completely normal, the minister insisted. “This person arrived in the country and an ordinary procedure was completed.”

Whether or not the Peruvian was out to make mischief, El Assaimi seemed convinced this was so. “We’re not going to fall into the provocation of these sectors. They have neither shame nor morality,” he declared. “The person received a correct and dignified treatment. We respect the human being.”

Last week, Novelist Mario Vargas Llosa – who is also expected to attend the forum – said in an interview with a Peruvian newspaper that he intended to come to Venezuela to express his ideas about liberty and nobody had reason to be frightened.

His remarks were sparked by a statement by David Medina, a spokesman for the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), that Vargas Llosa could be expelled from the country if he set out to disparage President Hugo Chávez.

“I have my ideas and I’m going to expound them with all the freedom there is,” Vargas Llosa Senior said in response to this. “I’m invited by the Venezuelans, by an institution that defends the same ideas as I defend: democracy, liberty, pacific co-existence, the rejection of all forms of violence in human relations and political activity. And I believe these ideas are respected in whatever country, including Venezuela.”

Asked about the possibility of being kicked out, he said he hoped things wouldn’t come to that. “Venezuela has always been a very hospitable country and I hope it continues to be so.” What was going to happen was a meeting where ideas would be discussed, he added, “and there’s nothing in this to scare anybody.”

Medina evidently thought otherwise. “Mario Vargas Llosa is coming here to provoke, and the PSUV will support whatever decision’s taken by the government,” he told reporters. “We want to warn these intellectuals that are coming to the country -- these people who come to provoke, set up a scandal, and in some way integrate themselves with a campaign of disparagement in the name of liberty of expression.”

Also due to attend the forum are former Bolivian President Jorge Quiroga, Colombian writer Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Mexican historian Enrique Krauze and the former Mexican foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda.


Venezuelan President and Writer Romulo Gallegos with Mario Vargas Llosa