New Book by Peruvian Novelist and Political Commentator Jaime Bayly Reflects on the Corrupting Nature of Power in Latin America
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Issue Aug 01-11 2026: Jaime Bayly’s new novel, Los Golpistas (The Coup Plotters), showcases all the virtues of his characteristic narrative style: its critical edge, its humor, and its biting irony. Dramatizing the arrest of former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez in the wake of the 2002 military coup, it also charts the path that led to Chávez’s dictatorial reign as that country’s president. With this latest literary offering, Bayly once again demonstrates that he is among Latin America’s greatest living novelists, one who possesses an unparalleled ability to turn complex political history into riveting drama.
Gabriel Ruíz Ortega, of La República of Lima, sat down with Bayly to discuss the novel, together with other topics including Mario Vargas Llosa, the political situation in Peru, and the current state of journalism.
Regarding Vargas Llosa, Bayly recalled that both he and the Nobel Prize winner lived in Georgetown in Washington, DC in 1993, and that they would often see each other on weekends for dinner and a film. The latter, he said, gave especially helpful feedback on Bayly’s first novel, suggestions that “enriched the novel.” A devotee of Vargas Llosa’s landmark novel Conversation in a Cathedral, Bayly said that for him writing is how he has earned his living since he was fifteen, and that he writes out of “passion, the love of art, and the love of life.”
As for his new novel, the Peruvian writer said that the hardest challenge was to make Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez “speak in the novel,” adding that it was also difficult to delineate Chávez’s character without “demonizing him.” Regarding the 2002 coup, he opined that it was “laughable,” given that within three days of the event its plotters repented and returned Chávez to power. Indeed, those involved in the conspiracy were “amateurs” who “did not know what to do with power or with Chávez himself: whether to shoot him, send him to Havana, or put him on trial.” In Bayly’s view, Chávez had a “crippled soul” due to the repeated beatings given to him by his mother as a child.
Likewise, Bayly averred that Castro was a “popular and charismatic dictator, while also at the same time being evil and cunning, one who didn’t balk at shooting his friends.” Although he enjoyed widespread support among Cubans during the 1960s and 1970s, he was an “evil genius…a snake charmer, a great seducer, and despite his military training, a talker, a comedian, a television cheerleader, a speaker who loved to listen to himself.” As for the role of ideology in shaping these leaders’ trajectories, Bayly observed that it was not so much ideology as it was the “love of the addictive narcotic that is power.”
As for the current state of politics in Peru, he said that “my impression is that Peruvian politicians, whether left or right, always find a way to disappoint you, to make you ashamed of having voted for them.”
When asked about the “radical changes” that journalism is undergoing, he said that “the good journalist must be brave…must not be afraid of being fired. A journalist who is afraid of being unemployed is lame, crippled. And a good journalist must always be opposed to those in power. A journalist who wants to be president, or deputy, or senator, or minister, or ambassador, is fucked, has committed suicide.”