LITERATURE / PRIZE POLITICS : Mexico’s Paz: Ideology Rift?

The outspoken and irascible Mexican poet Octavio Paz has long demonstrated a talent for making headlines as well as art, but never has he been more publicly debated and dissected than in the last week after the Swedish Academy awarded him the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Paz, 76, has received an outpouring of praise and congratulations for the coveted award. The applause, however, has been qualified by a barrage of snide digs from Mexico’s predominantly left-of-center intellectual community, with which he has had a contentious relationship in recent years over Latin American politics and socialism.

Some admirers went as far as to crown Paz “the universal Mexican.” But other articles were filled with double entendres: “The Nobel: Finally, Octavio Paz,” the progressive weekly Proceso declared ambiguously on its cover. Did that mean Paz had finally received what he deserved, or was the magazine testily saying that Paz had been a perennial Nobel bridesmaid?

Paz had been mentioned as a potential Nobel candidate since the 1960s, and detractors annually accused him of campaigning for the prize. Supporters feared he would be denied it because of his perceived conservative political outlook. That’s apparently what happened to Argentine novelist Jorge Luis Borges, a master of the Spanish language who once defended his country’s military governments.

A FALLING OUT: Paz was never as conservative as Borges was. In fact, the Mexican left once hailed him for resigning as ambassador to India to protest the army’s massacre of student demonstrators in Tlaltelolco Plaza on Oct. 2, 1968.

Paz’s falling out with the left began over his opposition to Cuban President Fidel Castro, and the chasm widened in the 1980s with his repudiation of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

That earned him scorn as a supporter of U.S. policy at a time when Latin nationalism was seen to be under assault from Washington.

Several articles and editorials have taken pains to point out that the Nobel Prize honored Paz for his brilliant literary achievements, not his politics.

KUDOS AND CRITICISM: “No one has ever disputed the very high artistic merits of Paz,” said an editorial in Excelsior newspaper’s Sunday cultural supplement, El Buho. “His poetic work is enlightening and his essays the most refined of precise prose and original ideas. . . . We will continue admiring his magnificent poetry, watching with attention for his lucid essays, and at the same time (for he has been an example in the fight for freedom and democracy) we will continue differing with him when we believe he is not right.”

Others wrote that the academy’s decision was political, that Paz and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Nobel Peace laureate, were chosen for their work towards burying communism.

In recent years, Paz has also been criticized for his ties to the establishment of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). He is friendly with President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and so close to the king of the Televisa empire, Emilio Azcarraga, that critics call him “Pazcarraga.” Televisa, which broadcasts the only private television in Mexico, is widely denounced for its unquestioning support of the PRI, which has governed for 60 years, and its intolerance of opposition viewpoints.

Paz told Proceso that the Mexican left has been too “passionate and excessive” in its attacks on him. When the reporter noted that Paz, too, is passionate in his views, he answered: “Yes, but my passions are rational and reasonable. I have always respected my adversaries. I have never pretended that my truth was absolute. . . .

“However, this polemic has been resolved by history itself. A part of the Mexican intelligentsia supports that which no one (else) in the world supports.”