Just as Vargas Llosa’s proposals for reform seemed removed from everyday reality, his economic analysis largely considers macroeconomic indicators like GDP, despite his admission that internal inequalities make such statistics grossly misrepresentative.

In failing to consider differences at the local level, he ignores some bright spots that have recently cropped up in Latin America. Innovative municipal governance in places like Curitiba, Brazil and Bogotá, Colombia has dramatically improved quality of life, reducing crime while furnishing world-class civic services.

Though cumbersome and fraught with loopholes, even the environmental legislation that Vargas Llosa disdains as creating “diffuse responsibility” shows a shift away from the extractive mentality that has plagued Latin America since European contact.

Civil society organizations increasingly have a role in policy-making, such as the recent sweeping forestry reforms in Peru and Brazil that prioritized sustainability and protection of indigenous territory.

And though bureaucracy frustrated my own work in Peru, I saw grassroots movements of traditionally marginalized groups make unprecedented economic and social progress.

Unfortunately, it seems that in adopting the same sort of paternalistic attitudes he decries, Vargas Llosa cannot see the trees for the forest.