Mario Vargas Llosa was devoted to socialist causes and admired the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s and early 1960s. In the broadest sense, he is a political journalist, and who frequently expressed his views on political events, literature, culture, and the arts are a fixture of this region's intellectual life. He eventually realized that armed revolution was not a viable solution to Latin America's socioeconomic problems, and that gradual reform within a functioning democratic polity was the only way to achieve social justice. During the 1980s, he became personally involved in political activism, eventually running for Peruvian president in the 1990 elections. Vargas Llosa adopted Che's revolutionary strategy “did not work anywhere,” and “thousands of young people adopted it and attempted to put it into practice horrifically sacrificed themselves and opened the doors of their countries to cruel military tyrannies.” This shift in Vargas Llosa's political and social thinking was most forcefully expressed in his two major novels published in the early 1980s: The War of the End of the World (La Guerra del Fin del Mundo [(1981) 1984]) and The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (Historia de Mayta [(1984) 1986b]). Both of these novels deals with ideological opponents' inability to understand their opponents' points of view in different ways. The War of the End of the World is a sprawling novel with a large cast of characters that can be read on many levels.

Key words: Modernity, Military tyrannies, Post war, Historical, Political Activism, Revolution, Authoritarianism, Myopia.