“Cynicism inoculates you against suffering but immunizes you against happiness” : Santiago Roncagliolo

CHANGE: In 2006 it appears red april with which he wins the Alfaguara prize and is later published the fourth sword, where the main character is Abimael Guzmán. What led you to write, first, about the entire crisis that Fujimoriism meant and its fight against Sendero Luminoso and then about the historical leader of this guerrilla as a literary figure?
S. R.: I was very interested in the fact that he was an intellectual of terror. He didn’t shoot, he didn’t plant bombs. He was in an office and wrote his complete works (I think there were 39 volumes if I remember correctly), projects, campaigns, details, slogans; what was there to paint on the walls, where to hit them. I was interested in a character with the training he had in Law and Philosophy, but with the rage he carried for being the illegitimate son who would never be accepted in his class and how he could know, understand, detect all the weak points of the state, know which ones They were the gaps, education, for example, and sending teachers to indoctrinate for years because the state was not doing it and from then on, without money, without international support, the state was about to blow up. All of that was pretty impactful on the character. Deep down, in both stories, I’m trying to investigate my war and why my childhood was the way it was. And when am I going to present Peru? red april They invite me to present it in the prisons that I had tried to enter to do a report, but no one spoke to me because I was going as a journalist, but if you went to a cultural event like that the matter was something else. Everyone could go see you and you could stay there talking, ask, ask and ask. So Red April gave me access to information that later became The Fourth Sword.