1st Test Met, Peru Favorite Back in Race : Conservatives Heal Rift but Vargas Llosa Faces Stiff Challenges

Novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, the writer-turned-front-runner for the presidency, has been through his rite of initiation in the icy waters of Peruvian politics and is still afloat.

But no Peruvian doubts that the campaign ahead, and the presidency itself, if he should win it, will pose far greater challenges than the squabble that briefly took him out of the race almost as soon as it began.

Vargas Llosa, 52, rejoined the campaign this month as the nominee of the conservative Democratic Front Movement, 10 days after resigning and flying off to Europe.

He quit when the two largest parties in the coalition refused to agree on candidates for mayoral races in November, raising the prospect that conservative candidates would run against each other. Reluctant to lose their figurehead, who has given the coalition a commanding lead in opinion polls, the parties settled their differences, and Vargas Llosa then announced from Spain that he was back in the race.

Strengthened by Showdown

The novelist’s supporters contend he has emerged strengthened from the showdown with his veteran partners in the front, former President Fernando Belaunde Terry of the centrist Popular Action party and former Lima Mayor Luis Bedoya Reyes of the rightist Christian Popular Party.

But others ask how a newcomer to politics such as Vargas Llosa can cope with the overwhelming problems in a nation that is suffering advanced symptoms of disintegration.

President Alan Garcia, who enjoyed immense popularity when he was elected in 1985, is staggering through his final year of office in an incalculable crisis. Violence by the Maoist guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and a smaller pro-Soviet group has left nearly 15,000 dead since 1980 and terrorized much of the country. Inflation has surged to 5,000% a year, and buying power has fallen by half since austerity measures began last September.

Constant Strikes

Angry trade unions stage constant strikes, common crime has soared and the inefficient state, never fully in control of the whole country, has been crippled by the guerrillas in numerous districts. Peruvian intelligence officials have estimated that more than 35% of the population won’t even be able to vote in the presidential election next spring because of the turmoil.

“Whether Vargas Llosa has the stomach for it, I don’t know,” mused a Western diplomat.

Although Belaunde and Bedoya recognize that they need Vargas Llosa, the author’s supporters also realize that they lack the nationwide political machinery of the two established parties. Vargas Llosa’s Liberty Movement, founded last year, has been little more than a group of conservative friends from well-to-do sections of Lima, scarce on experience and contact with the vast, poor countryside and urban shantytowns.

Thus the Liberty Movement has begun creating its own political organization to give Vargas Llosa more muscle within the coalition. More than 25,000 people signed up in the first days of the drive last week, said Miguel Cruchaga, the movement’s secretary general, and the goal is 350,000.

“People were afraid that he could be manipulated by the politicians,” Cruchaga said. In resigning to force concessions, “he showed that he could stand up to them.”

Vargas Llosa, following a Latin American writers’ tradition by entering politics, is regarded by some as the region’s finest author, with works including “The Time of the Heroes” and “Conversations in the Cathedral.” He scorns being labeled rightist, saying his support comes not only from Lima’s tiny upper and upper-middle classes but also from the poor who want the government off their backs.

Divisions in Left

He should benefit not only from his support in the Establishment media but also from divisions within the strident left.

Alfonso Barrantes, a former Lima mayor considered the most likely leftist presidential candidate, is caught up in wrangling among the seven parties of the misnamed United Left coalition. Two small moderate parties have virtually broken away to challenge some of the more extremist groups. Barrantes is caught unhappily in the middle.

“Shining Path wants Vargas Llosa to win so the confrontation will move to a higher level,” said Barrantes, an independent Marxist. “This should be a time of cooperation, not confrontation. Vargas Llosa is encouraging polarization. But we (on the left) are forgetting the principal foe--the right--and are buried in this secondary fight among ourselves.”

Mirko Lauer, a political analyst and publisher, said the left appears more interested in winning a strong parliamentary base than the presidency. “Who wants to be tied to the executive branch and wait for a coup for the next five years?” he said.

Although he dismissed Vargas Llosa as “a media event (without) a party or machinery, Lauer added, “The Vargas Llosa mystique is very strong in this country; everyone is going preppy.”

And now, he said, “Vargas Llosa has been welcomed to the club, like a new boy at boarding school who needs to get into a fight and get his nose bloodied before he is accepted.”

Smith, The Times’ Buenos Aires bureau chief, was recently on assignment in Peru.