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Prize
Goes to the Dogs and Cats
Humberto
Márquez
CARACAS, (IPS) - This year's Rómulo
Gallegos International Prize for the
Novel, awarded by the Venezuelan
state, could be among the strangest in
its history, with the 100,000 dollars
in prize money ending up in the hands
of a foundation that protects the dogs
and cats on the streets of Caracas.
The prize's international jury,
designated by the governmental Rómulo
Gallegos Centre for Latin American
Studies, chose Colombian author
Fernando Vallejo, 61, as the winner.
He then opted to donate the money to
Venezuela's Mil Patas (thousand paws)
Foundation, which operates in the
outskirts of Caracas and cares for 140
dogs and 110 cats.
The jury recognised Vallejo for his
novel ”El desbarrancadero” (The
Precipice), which ”achieved an
unprecedented renovation of Spanish
language literature.” But despite
such praise, the author pledged that
he would no longer dedicate himself to
fiction..
”El desbarrancadero” is
characterised by the violence of the
story it tells and by its language.
Narrated as a monologue, the novel is
centred on a house in the Colombian
city of Medellín that is crumbling, a
metaphor for Colombia itself, and
inhabited by two brothers, one of whom
is dying of AIDS.
Christopher Domínguez Michael, of
Mexico, and member of the jury for
this edition of the Rómulo Gallegos
Prize, says Vallejo's narrative voice
”is that of a desperate man who
annuls the traditional Latin American
argumentativeness, because it is in a
language in which he concentrates all
of his powers.”
The other members of this year's jury
were Fernando Ainsa, of Uruguay, Víctor
Bravo, of Venezuela, Marcela Serrano,
of Chile, and Enrique Vila-Matas, of
Spain, winner of the prize in 2001.
Domínguez Michael described ”The
Precipice” as the ”most unnerving
aesthetic wager of the works in
competition and, at the same time, the
one that most jarringly reflects the
shadows that are cast across Latin
America today.”
”Through Fernando Vallejo, the novel
once again becomes -- as it was in the
best moments of our literary tradition
-- a critique of life.”
But in his acceptance speech on Aug.
2, Vallejo completely ignored the
literary theme, contrary to custom at
such events, and instead spoke of
defending the animals.
”They are our companions in the
horrors of life. We must respect them.
They are our 'other',” he said.
The writer, known for his anti-clericism,
also took advantage of the moment to
speak out against the three major
monotheistic religions, and against
Pope John Paul II in particular,
because ”he does not recognise the
souls of animals.”
”At the rate we're going, within a
few years this planet will only be
inhabited by humans. Then we won't
have anything to eat, and in keeping
with our most intimate vocation we
will eat each other. And the Pope.
What will he eat? Let him eat a
bishop!” exclaimed Vallejo.
In conversations prior to the
presentation of the award, Vallejo
said he wrote novels ”to forget,”
and insisted to journalists and fans
that he will not return to the
narrative form.
”I already buried that madman,” he
said.
He asserted that he had quit reading
literature when he began writing, two
decades ago, and that he is currently
dedicated to studying the physics of
light.
But Vallejo did venture to say that
Gabriel García Márquez, Nobel
literature laureate and fellow
recipient of the Rómulo Gallegos
Prize (1972) is ”a minor prose
writer, poor in vocabulary and
syntactic structure. And above all,
counter to what is believed, he is not
very original. He writes in third
person, which is the most worn path of
the novel.”
Vallejo's contribution to the Mil
Patas Foundation is a reminder of the
first commotion related to the Rómulo
Gallegos Prize, 30 years ago, when
García Márquez, winner for his
acclaimed ”100 Years of Solitude”,
donated the prize -- then 26,000
dollars -- to the recently created
Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), an
offshoot of the Communist Party of
Venezuela.
For years, García Márquez proclaimed
himself a ”MAS militant, even though
I'm not Venezuelan.”
”The government suffered a
disconcerting moment,” literary
critic Tulio Hernández told IPS,
pointing out that MAS was founded as
”a leftist democratic party,” but
back then was ”still marked by the
guerrilla past of its founding
leaders.”
This year's disturbance was related to
the recipient's choice for donating
the prize money and to his
renunciation of fiction, his
criticisms of a literary star like
García Márquez, not to mention the
pope.
The Rómulo Gallegos Prize for the
Novel, given in honour of the
Venezuelan author of ”Doña Bárbara”
and ”Canaima”, was first awarded
in 1967 to Peru's Mario Vargas Llosa.
He was followed by García Márquez,
the Mexicans Carlos Fuentes (1977) and
Fernando del Paso (1982) and
Argentina's Abel Posse (1987).
Next came Colombia's Manuel Mejía
Vallejo (1989), Venezuela's Arturo
Uslar Pietri (1991), Argentina's Mempo
Giardinelli (1993), Spain-s Javier Marías
(1995), Mexico's Angeles Mastretta
(1997), Chile's Roberto Bolaños
(1999) and Spain's Vila-Matas in 2001.
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