MARIO VARGAS LLOSA
363
history coexist, autonomous and different, without invading or usurping
each other's domains and functions .
In closed societies, the reverse is true. And, for that reason, perhaps the
best way to define a closed society is by saying that in it fiction and history
are no longer different things and have started to become confused and to
supplant each other, changing identities as in a masked ball.
In a closed society, power not only takes upon itself the privilege of
controlling the actions of men-what they do and what they say-but also
aspires to govern their fantasy their dreams and, of course, their memory.
In a closed society the past is, sooner or later, subject to manipulation with
a view to justifying the present. Official history, the only one tolerated, is
the stage for these magical transformations which the
Soviet Encyclopedia
made famous (before
perestroika):
protagonists who appear or disappear
without a trace, according to whether they are being resurrected or purged
by the powers that be, and the actions of the heroes and villains of the past
that, from edition to edition, change their meaning, their valency and their
substance as they are accommodated and reaccommodated by the ruling
committees of the present. This is a practice that modern totalitarianism
has perfected but not invented; its origins are lost in the dawn of civiliza–
tions which, until relatively recently were always vertical and despotic.
To organize collective memory to change history into an instrument
of government for the purpose of legitimating the ruling powers and pro–
viding alibis for their misdeeds, is a temptation inherent in all forms of
power. Totalitarian states can make this temptation a reality.
In the past, innumerable civilizations behaved in this way. My ancient
compatriots, the Incas, for example. They carried out this policy in a power–
ful
and theatrical way. When the emperor died, there died with
hinl
not only
his wives and concubines, but also his intellectuals, who were called
amautas,
wise men. Their wisdom was fundamentally applied to the trick of turning
fiction into history. The new Inca assumed power with a new court of
amau–
tas
whose mission was to reform official memory, correct the past,
modernizing it one might say, in such a way that all the achievements, con–
quests and buildings that were formally attributed to his forebear, were from
that moment transferred to the curriculum vitae of ilie new emperor. His
predecessors were gradually swallowed up by forgetfulness. The Incas knew
how to make use of the past, transforming it into literature, so that it could
help to immobilize the present, the supreme aspiration of every dictatorship.
They banned individual truths, which are always contradictory in favour of an
official truth which was coherent and not subject to appeal. (The result is that
the Inca empire is a society without history, at least without narrative histo–
ry, because no one has been able to reconstruct in a reliable way this past that
has been so systematically dressed and undressed like a striptease artist.)
