The Ministry of Culture jury has voted to award Peruvian Nobel Literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa the Pedro Henriquez Urena International Award. The jury based its decision on Vargas Llosa’s “defense of humanitarian values, including human dignity and freedom, democracy, tolerance, the right of human beings to culture, reading, and enjoyment and development of imagination. Culture Minister Jose Antonio Rodriguez made the announcement accompanied by commissar of the award Luis O. Brea Franco and Valentin Amaro, general director of books and reading at the Ministry.
The award is made in recognition of a writer’s body of work.
The jury members were Minister Jose Antonio Rodriguez, Sonia Henriquez Toledano, Luis O. Brea Franco, Liliana Weinberg, Nestor E. Rodriguez, Miguel D. Mena and Ramon A. Victoriano Martinez.
The previous winners of the award founded by the Dominican government in 2013 are Puerto Rican author Luis Rafael Sanchez (2013), Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal, Uruguayan journalist and novelist Eduardo Galeano (2014) and literary critic Beatriz Sarlo from Argentina (2015).
In 2013, Mario Vargas Llosa and his son were very critical of the Constitutional Court ruling 168-13, leading to calls from sectors of society to declare him and his son, Gonzalo Vargas persona non-grata. His son Gonzalo Vargas Llosa was the country representative of the UNHCR, the UN refugee office that opened in the Dominican Republic following the 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince. The office will be closed this year.
In an article published at the time in the Spanish daily, El Pais (Los Parias del Caribe), Vargas Llosa compared the DR to Nazi Germany for maintaining the constitutional requirement of granting nationality to people born to a Dominican parent or from a foreigner with legal status in the country.
http://www.listindiario.com/la-republica/2016/02/03/406359/dice-escritor-ha-pisoteado-dignidad-nacional
