Luis Sevillano
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Mario Vargas Llosa, on the sexual abuse he suffered as a child: "I completely distanced myself from religion, but boys from my neighborhood never recovered"
A few days ago, Mario Vargas Llosa participated in the Cajamarca Book Fair, Peru. They asked him about his estrangement from religion and, to answer, he made a necessary introduction. He said that at the age of 12 he had “an incident of sexual origin” when one day, when he appeared at the religious school he attended, one of the priests took him to the fifth floor: “This brother, who had been a very good teacher, took out some magazines Mexican women who were naked. Very scared, I began to leaf through them. Suddenly I discovered that this brother was touching my fly, as if he wanted to masturbate me. I started crying and he got really scared, he opened the door for me, let me out and said 'calm down'. I am telling you this because, from then on, I, who had been a very believing child, became disinterested in religion ”. The next day, scandal:“Vargas Llosa confessed that he was a victim of sexual abuse at age 12”, “Vargas Llosa's traumatic revelation”, “Vargas Llosa revealed that he was abused as a child”. But Vargas Llosa does not speak of abuse but of "an incident of sexual origin." When mentioning the priest, he calmly calls him "brother" and clarifies that he was a good teacher. Neither in that story nor in subsequent statements does he indicate that the situation has traumatized him or that he feels a "victim" of anything. Nor did he confess or reveal anything: all that was told with hairs and signs inNeither in that story nor in subsequent statements does he indicate that the situation has traumatized him or that he feels a "victim" of anything. Nor did he confess or reveal anything: all that was told with hairs and signs inNeither in that story nor in subsequent statements does he indicate that the situation has traumatized him or that he feels a "victim" of anything. Nor did he confess or reveal anything: all that was told with hairs and signs in
The fish in the water
, his 1993 memoir, when he was already the author of some of the best novels in the history of literature, and yet no one asked him anything, neither then nor later. Child sexual abuse is an abomination that can leave irreparable damage. But to be unable to distinguish between experience and trauma (something that happened, something that still happens), and to place the label of victim to people who do not feel such, is to reproduce the mechanism of violence that one wants, with nobility, to denounce.