I write about personal development through the lens of product thinking, and about Latin American literature that I read
Here are two critical essays on Vargas Llosa and Borges I wrote during a deep dive into Latin American literature in the summer of 2025. Two of my favourite writers — I was drawn to Vargas Llosa’s surgical analysis of 1950s Peru and Borges’s enigmatic, multidimensional storytelling in ‘The South’. For more on Latin America, product thinking and personal development, follow me on Substack.
Politics, masculinity and the role of the military in Mario Vargas Llosa’s ‘La Ciudad y los Perros’ (‘The Time of the Hero’)
'La Ciudad y los Perros’ presents the lives of cadets and seniors at Leoncino Prado Military Academy in Lima, in the 1950s. This is a time of political and social upheaval in Peru; Mario Vargas Llosa uses the Academy as a backdrop to analyse and critique Peruvian society.
The book follows the lives of cadets: Alberto Fernandez (aka ‘the Poet’), Ricardo Arana (‘the Slave’), ‘Jaguar’ and seniors: Lieutenant Gamboa and Captain Garrido. The plot is ignited by the killing of the Slave during military exercise. The Poet suspects that the Slave was killed intentionally. Cadet Fernandez reports his suspicion to Lieutenant Gamboa, an idealistic and principled serviceman who then tries to investigate the killing. However, Gamboa faces resistance and obstruction of his investigation by the seniors in the Academy, notably Captain Garrido, who wants to cover up the incident to protect the reputation of the Academy.
In ‘La Ciudad y los Perros’ Mario Vargas Llosa presents two conflicting perspectives on morality, military and Peruvian society: idealistic pursuit of justice at all costs, represented by Gamboa, and a cynical, yet more nuanced perspective shown by Garrido. Ultimately, neither of these can resolve the deeply rooted issues in the Academy and society.
We witness a discussion between Gamboa and Garrido that takes place in the aftermath of the killing of the Slave. Gamboa is a firm believer in justice and the importance of discipline and duty he was taught at the Academy. The lieutenant is convinced that these values underpin the very cohesion of the Academy and therefore should be followed at all costs. Otherwise, the order in the Academy will collapse. Gamboa is motivated to uncover the truth because to him, the Army is a paragon of what society should look like (‘The only part of it [society] that stays strong and healthy is the army, because of its structure, its organisation.’) Therefore, the Army should be held to the highest of standards; a cover-up would mean hypocrisy. This is why the lieutenant strongly believes that the killing should be thoroughly investigated and the perpetrators found and dealt with. He is not concerned about the fallout of the investigation and what it would mean for the Academy’s reputation.
Garrido, on the other hand, has a much more pragmatic view on the incident and how the Academy should be run. The captain is more concerned about the damage the investigation would bring to the Academy’s good name and therefore would like to cover up the murder and punish the cadets only ‘for the liquor and the exams’. Garrido’s realism, or even cynicism, likely comes from his age – he witnessed incidents at the Academy before, he experienced ups and downs in his life and saw upheaval across Peruvian society. Throughout all this time, the Academy held up together because it prioritised cohesion over justice. Therefore, Garrido believes that if there is a clash between conflicting values, the need to preserve the Academy’s reputation ultimately prevails. The institution has stood the test of time, but does that mean it does not harbour harmful behaviours and is not in need of reform?
Their contrasting views on politics inevitably spill over into the role of a man in Peruvian society. Gamboa’s version of masculinity is rooted in traditional values of honor and duty. You must follow the rules because these rules uphold the social order (and the Academy). A man is expected to be the mythical Atlas that supports the world on his shoulders. Breaking the rules, especially by covering up a murder, must be severely punished and serve as a warning to others. Gamboa’s version of masculinity is idealised, leaving little room for nuance (i.e., understanding that the men in the Academy are imperfect creatures living in an imperfect institution).
Garrido recognises that nuance. He understands that ‘the first thing you learn in the army is to be a man. And what do men do? They smoke, they drink, they gamble, they fuck.’ The cadets are not mythical Greek gods, paragons of morality, standing firmly and guarding against collapse. They are boys, still unfledged and put into the pressure-cooker environment of the military academy. What matters for Garrido is the ‘survival instinct’: the shrewdness that allows cadets to survive in the Academy: ‘Discipline isn’t enough. You’ve got to have guts, and you’ve also got to have brains’, he argues.
This translates to Garrido’s view on the role of the military. The military should reward that survival instinct and allow cadets to express naturally their atavistic tendencies. Only that way will the cadets develop into the killing machines that win on the front lines. After all, the world of war is without a doubt more brutal than the world of Leoncino Prado.
I would argue that both figures are archetypes of two generations of Peruvian society. Garrido represents the ‘ancien regime’, whereas Gamboa is a face of the new generation that wants to break the old order to fix Peru.
Garrido is aware of the corruption and machismo in Peru. Unlike Gamboa, he is not an idealist, knowing that idealism alone will not resolve the issues in the Academy or Peru at large. By letting it slide and rewarding cadets for being cunning, Garrido prepares them for life in the corrupt world of contemporary Peru.
Gamboa, however, would like to root out the corruption at the Academy, and, in his quixotic quest, likely fix the ills of society as well. He wants to see through the investigation, and even ‘have the whole company court-martialled if he has to.’ Garrido suggests that if Gamboa were to expose the scandal he would kill his career. The lieutenant replies ‘A soldier can’t wreck his career by doing his duty, Sir’, demonstrating his hard-line idealism bordering on naivety. Gamboa, due to his limited life experience, cannot predict the repercussions of his actions.
Vargas Llosa attended the Leoncino Prado Military Academy and was distressed by its systemic violence, corruption and machismo. The author presents the culprit of the murder, Jaguar, not as a cold blooded killer, but as a victim of a broken system and institutionalised violence at Leoncino Prado. In the aftermath of the killing, the author discusses the contrasting ideas on how to lead the institution. Would the pursuit of justice fix the faults of the Academy? Vargas Llosa is aware that it could get you only so far. Ultimately, the system prevails and the perpetuating cycle of injustice continues: Gamboa is reassigned to a remote post by Garrido at the end of the novel.
Through these contrasting characters, Vargas Llosa suggests that meaningful change requires more than lofty idealism or shrewd adaptation – it demands a fundamental transformation that takes time, and above all, willingness to change from the people in power. The true tragedy lies not just in an unnecessary death but in the institutional machinery that suppresses dissent, perpetuates violence and makes sure that such incidents are inevitable and remain uninvestigated.
Novel as a precise game of vigilances, echoes, and affinities, in the context of Jorge Luis Borges’s ‘The South’
In the essay El Arte Narrativo y la Magia, Borges shares a guiding principle of what a novel ought to be – ‘a precise game of vigilances, echoes, and affinities’. What does he mean by this?
Looking at the key themes of Borges’s work, ‘vigilances’ refer to the careful, almost obsessive attention the writer must pay to every element in the text. For Borges nothing should be accidental or merely ornamental. Every detail must serve the story's deeper architecture. This isn't just about avoiding waste – it's about creating a text where each word is placed with surgical precision.
In The South, the specific book that leads to Dahlmann's accident (The Thousand and One Nights) isn't a random choice but connects to themes of storytelling and the juxtaposition of fantasy and reality. Similarly, Dahlmann's mixed heritage (one grandfather was a peaceful minister, the other a brave soldier) serves the story's central tension between urban stability and romantic heroism.
‘Echoes’ suggest the way elements within a story should reverberate and reinforce each other. Borges believed in internal repetition and variation – images, themes or phrases that return transformed. Common elements are mirrors, labyrinths and libraries that recur throughout his work, each iteration adding new meaning to previous appearances.
In the story, the hospital experience ‘echoes’ in the final tavern scene – both involve Dahlmann being vulnerable and out of his element. There is a recurring scholarly theme: a book that instigates the accident and Dahlmann’s identity as a librarian are contrasted with the uneducated gaucho world of the south.
‘Affinities’ point to the subtle connections between disparate elements that form a coherent narrative arc. These aren’t obvious parallels but deeper structural relationships that the reader gradually perceives. Characters might mirror each other across different time periods, seemingly unrelated events might share hidden patterns.
There is an ‘affinity’ between Dahlmann’s fevered hospital dreams and his final tavern experience – both may be unreal, both involve him being passive and acted upon by forces beyond his control. Another ‘affinity’ exists between The Thousand and One Nights and the gaucho mythology – both represent romanticised, literary constructions of reality rather than authentic experience.
Borges provides more context in his essay, writing that ‘every episode in a careful narrative is a premonition’, before presenting two narrative styles: one driven by natural causality, the other by magic. ‘In the novel’, he argues, ‘the only possible integrity lies in the latter’. Indeed, these episodes – or ‘vigilances, echoes and affinities’, serve their purpose in The South.
In the story, the vigilances, echoes and affinities interact in a ‘precise game’, where Borges constructs the entire story so that every element – the accident with The Thousand and One Nights, the hospital stay, the ancestral heritage, the journey south, the tavern confrontation – works together to create a situation where the ending becomes both inevitable and ambiguous. The ‘precision’ lies in how all these carefully chosen details (vigilances) reinforce each other (echoes) and connect in subtle ways (affinities) to create a unified effect: Dahlmann gets the heroic death he romanticised, but we can’t be sure if it’s real or imagined.
Borges provides this theoretical framework; however, he leaves it to the reader to discover how it operates in practice, making the ‘precision’ something we must deduce from the text’s internal relationships, not something explicitly stated.
On the other hand, The South contains evidence that refutes the ‘precise game of vigilances, echoes, and affinities’ principle.
Arguably, if the framework requires ‘precision’, then The South’s ambiguity about whether Dahlmann’s journey is real or a dying hallucination directly contradicts this. Instead of creating clear ‘vigilances’, Borges deliberately obscures what we should be vigilant about. The uncertainty undermines the kind of systematic control the ‘precise game’ seems to require.
Moreover, Borges’s essay focuses specifically on novels and their need for sustained magical causality across extended narratives. The South is a short story, a fundamentally different form that operates by different principles. The text’s examples (Morris’s The Life and Death of Jason, an epic, Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, a full-length novel, Joyce’s Ulysses, an expansive novel) suggest the theory applies to works that need architectural complexity to maintain a reader’s belief over time.
In his argument, Borges explicitly dismisses ‘the ponderous psychological variety’ of a novel that ‘attempts to frame an intricate chain of motives similar to those of real life’. Yet The South is precisely concerned with psychological realism: Dahlmann’s identity crisis, his relationship with his ancestry, his urban intellectual’s romantic fantasies about gaucho life. The story operates through recognisable human psychology, not through the ‘primeval clarity of magic’, which is Borges’s preferred narrative style.
The essay emphasises that magical causality creates systematic interconnection where ‘every episode is a premonition’. But many details in ‘The South’ resist this interpretation; the story leaves a number of unknowns: why the specific hospital procedures? A skeptic might ask why The Thousand and One Nights and not a different book? Some elements seem accidental rather than prophetic, suggesting natural over magical causality. Furthermore, The South contains substantial realistic elements – the Buenos Aires setting, the medical procedures, the detailed train journey; all seem to follow naturalistic and not magical logic. In the essay, Borges argues that natural logic should be left to psychological simulations, not novels. Does he see a short story as more of a psychological simulation than as a novel?
Does The South follow the principle of ‘a precise game of vigilances, echoes, and affinities’? Some aspects of the short story definitely do, whereas others stand in contrast to Borges’s framework. Was Borges contradicting himself, then? I would argue that he wasn’t – the text Narrative Art and Magic was written in 1932, during Borges’s early period, when he was prescriptive about literary theory. The South was published in 1944, and the twelve years that passed allowed Borges to develop a more sophisticated and paradoxical approach to narrative. The South was an evolution of his position on narrative art.
What is clear is that The South retains the key characteristic of Borges’s work – it is ambiguous and deliberately open to interpretation. In this aspect, the short story represents postmodern literature, where the truth is intersubjective – subject to change and can only appear through discussion.