Vargas Llosa: it would be “suicide” for Republicans to elect Donald Trump

Celebrated Peruvian writer and Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa Monday accused Donald Trump of defending “racist” concepts and added that it would be a “suicide” if the Republican Party elects him as presidential candidate.

Trump’s derogatory statements on Mexican immigrants in June were “clearly racist” and were made by a “person who has chosen a histrionic line,” said Vargas Llosa, himself a presidential candidate for Peru in 1990.

The writer Monday participated in a forum on relations between U.S. and Latin America at the New York headquarters of Instituto Cervantes, along with former presidents of Chile and Mexico, Sebastian Piñera and Felipe Calderon, respectively.

In June Trump launched his election campaign with a controversial statement: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best (...) They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,” remarks that led to a wave of protests.

Vargas Llosa described Trump’s comments as a “minor episode but worrying, no doubt,” and will not have consequences for the U.S. primaries ahead of the presidential elections next year.

“I think it would be a suicide for the Republican Party to have Donald Trump as candidate and, in case he is, he would have no possibility of winning the elections,”, he said.

Calderon expressed his fear that the line defended by Trump in criticizing illegal immigration reflects a large segment of American society, which supports some principles that the tycoon “has manipulated.”

He also said that Trump defends the “WASP supremacy” (White, AngloSaxon and Protestant) and “whether he wins or not he is poisoning the environment, public opinion and relations between U.S. and its southern neighbors.”

According to Piñera, “it is possible that Trump says what he thinks; the problem is he does not think what he says, and the consequences can be very severe.”

Participants in the forum also spoke about the role that immigration has played in the building of United States and the defense of tolerance and democracy in this nation, few principles that contradict the positions of Donald Trump.