This review was first published in Upside Down World here.
Ariel Dorfman was thirty-one years old and working as a cultural advisor to President Salvador Allende when Augusto Pinochet's military coup abruptly destroyed the socialist revolution. The actions of the dictatorship created a reign of macabre realities which would split Chilean narratives into opposing memory camps. Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile (HMH Books, 2011) is an eloquent memoir which fluctuates between reflections on death and exile - the meaning of not having died next to Allende in the presidential palace La Moneda, and Dorfman's own exile, a decision enforced by Allende’s advisors and which very possibly saved his life, yet which has assailed Dorfman with a tenacious need to question his own role and actions within that particular era of Chilean history.
The book moves rapidly from one event to another, disrupting chronology whilst creating an intense discussion of contrasts – death and exile, the revolutionary and the exile, the desaparecidos and the exile, language and exile. Exile becomes a single constant which, as time passes, exudes a certain inevitable detachment from the reality that is Chile. There is no reconciliation with the revolutionary past in exile – an issue which Dorfman struggled against for many years in various countries as he futilely sought to aid the Chilean resistance from abroad during the first years of exile in Paris and Amsterdam.
El pueblo unido – the people united in a socialist revolution under the banner of the Unidad Popular disintegrated in exile. A hierarchy developed within the exiled community, leading to strife within the movement struggling to develop a resistance movement against Pinochet. Dorfman recounts how his family had been promised an apartment in Paris by Carlos Iturra, author of the famous hymn Venceremos, at “solidarity rental rates.” The family moved their belongings to the apartment, only to discover a few days later that Iturra had received threatening phone calls from dictatorship sympathisers. The location was presumably unsafe. However, upon collecting their luggage from the apartment, it became evident to the family that the hierarchy of the Communist Party had negotiated with Iturra to reside in the apartment. Iturra was, at that moment, organising a vacation in the Alps for children of Chilean exiles. The sense of a community united in a revolutionary stance had deteriorated.
“Exile destroys children along with the parents.” Dorfman recounts how his children, Rodrigo and Joaquin struggle with identity and history in exile. Whilst the eldest, Rodrigo, gradually eliminates traces of Chile in his art, Joaquin seemingly fails to absorb the Chilean identity. Dorfman describes how the Andes Mountains feature prominently in Chilean children’s artwork – a characteristic which holds no fascination for Joaquin, born in exile. However, both sons are affected by the consequences of dictatorship and exile. Rodrigo has imbibed a rebellious streak which leads him to a return to Chile and subsequent filming of protests. Joaquin is haunted by the stories of the desaparecidos and the terror inflicted upon Chileans, such as the story of Rodrigo Rojas – a young man who, along with his girlfriend Carmen Gloria Quintana, had been doused with paraffin and torched. Their bodies were dumped in a ditch – at the exact location where three dissidents were discovered with slit throats only a year earlier. Dorfman admits an inconsistency between the lies designed to protect children from the horrors of the dictatorship and the children’s absorption of the truth.
The ramifications of exile flow into metaphorical prose. Dorfman distinguishes between various facets of exile – the actual departure from Chile, and the indefinite aspect – which lead the author to hold on to a library inside their house in Chile which was being used as a safe house for the MAPU, instead of acquiring new books. Exile created contradictions, ambiguity and barriers, as Dorfman realises that the revolutionary who joined the struggle for a socialist revolution, who was present when Allende saluted the people a week prior to the military coup, had distanced himself from his compañeros in Chile. After a long process in which he persisted in identifying with the resistance in exile and aiding the movement, Dorfman’s evolution veers towards the intellectual writer whose memories and stories are festering within an increasingly permanent exile and the still imagery of the revolutionary past.
Dorfman struggles with the truth as the exile commences in Buenos Aires. Narrating the case of Victor Jara, he tells of how a writer described Victor having his hands cut off by the lieutenants – an erroneous statement which portrayed how legends mingled with truth to construct a false reality. Another experience of false memory is Dorfman’s recollection of a photograph of him taken a week before the coup in front of La Moneda. His memory is of him in revolutionary stance, fists in the air. When the photo resurfaces, Dorfman discovers a pensive version of himself next to writer Antonio Skarmeta. The illusion of el pueblo unido had vanquished the actual memory – exile implants images in the mind of the exile and constructs an alternative reality.
It is not only actual memories that abscond from the exile. Pinochet’s reign contaminated language and society by referring to torture as ‘excesses,’ whilst the dictatorship was described as a ‘regime.’ The euphemisms contributed toward the cycle of impunity and infiltrated social circles where new alliances were being forged, with some former socialists seeking to gain elite status by liaising with the right wing – a phenomenon which Dorfman states was blatantly portrayed in the social pages of newspaper El Mercurio.
The book is also replete with stories of people from Chile. Carlos - the carpenter who hid Allende’s poster behind the boards in his workshop until Pinochet was arrested in London. Patricia, the wife of a right wing thug who used her husband’s status as a cover to transport Allende supporters to safety in a car gifted to her husband by DINA. Susana Weiner, who worked as a courier for MAPU, played a role in saving the lives of dissidents, including Dorfman, and was entrusted with transcribing notes describing torture in detention centres and smuggling them out of Chile. Their experiences, combined with the stories of the detenidos desaparecidos and President Patricio Aylwin’s initiative during the transition to establish the Truth and Reconciliation Commission urged Dorfman to contribute towards furthering the struggle, resulting in two particular publications written in exile.
Widows (1978) is a novel which deals with a group of women who refuse to hand over a body which washed ashore. As the novel was published, the first desaparecidos were being discovered in Chile. In the memoirs, Dorfman describes the act of disappearing people as an aberration on existence. “Disappearance was an outrage against the chemistry and structure of life itself. The bodies of the missing were wrenched out of the normal progression of existence ...” The outrage of the discovery contrasts sharply with another discovery of bodies in 1990, where younger Chileans born after the coup were less interested in the process. According to Dorfman, this discovery was a disruption in their lives which necessitated excavation and destruction of a football pitch.
However, in his renowned play entitled Death and the Maiden, Dorfman shows how torture survivors were side-lined by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Paulina – a torture survivor whose husband is a lawyer working on behalf of the Commission, kidnaps the man she believes to be her torturer and subjects him to a trial, appointing her husband as her oppressor’s defence lawyer. Paulina insists she wants the truth – a truth which till now wallows in impunity as torturers and victims walk side by side on Chilean streets, depriving torture survivors of their right to justice and the opportunity to inscribe their testimonies.
Dorfman describes how torture tarnishes universal expression such as music. The last scene features Paulina listening to Schubert in a concert – the music played during her torture session. The reconciliation with her favourite music was brought about after the confession was extracted from her torturer – the right to truth as opposed to sacrificing one’s self for the better of the democratic transition.
In the fragments of Dorfman’s diary of his return to Chile in 1990, the author grapples with the realisation that his experiences and that of the Chilean nation have diverged so greatly, it is impossible to nurture the dream of returning to live in Chile. The fragile transition, which sought to reconcile, rather than call for justice in order to avoid disruptions in the process, differed greatly from Dorfman’s vision of returning to the people united in a collective struggle. Exile further split the left wing memory camp, as those who remained in Chile looked upon exiles with certain resentment, contrasting the suffering they had endured with the relative comfort of escaping the horrors of the dictatorship.
Dorfman, unable to harmonize the experience of different memory camps on the left, decided to seek refuge in the US and later become a citizen of the same country which had conspired with Pinochet to overthrow Allende. He states that the desire to return was vanquished by the necessity to adjust, bringing to an end a previous personal conflict concerning language. Renouncing imperialism during the years of Allende’s presidency and the first years of exile also meant renouncing the English language, which Dorfman was familiar with since childhood, having lived in the US when his father and the family fled from Argentina. Throughout the course of exile and the subsequent return to Chile, Dorfman realises that language as a universal medium holds the power to navigate political borders and memory. Also, in Dorfman’s own words, acquiring US citizenship meant “I will never again go into exile.”
Personified by writers such as Milan Kundera, who Dorfman describes as “the saddest man I have ever seen,” and Antonio Skarmeta, author of Il Postino, who predicted Dorfman would never return to live in Chile, exile became the ultimate choice of survival, creating a refuge within another complex realm of loyalties.
Whilst the book might have benefited from a more chronological order, and the metaphorical prose might seem daunting for some readers, Dorfman has masterfully created a narrative so intricate and yet simple in its message. He lays bare the complexities of memory, made easier to follow once the reader acknowledges that memory knows no chronology but is rather a series of events that profoundly impacted the rememberer’s life, and the act of remembering is a process of cunningly implanting additional images and obliterating others. Most importantly, Dorfman furthers the split memory narrative by adding the memory of the exile, the desaparecidos and the torture survivors to the usual general divide between the supporters of Allende and those of Pinochet. As compromising as it may seem, Dorfman acknowledges the importance of embracing ambivalence in order to construct a narrative which berates, glorifies and wallows in despondency. The book emanates the turmoil of Dorfman’s complicated yearning to regain Allende’s years, and his unrepentant decision to seek shelter in a nation known for its oppression, in order to avoid repeating his own history.
This interview was first published in Upside Down World here.
Chile’s supreme court of appeals has temporarily suspended the exile sentence imposed upon an ex-militant of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR). Hugo Marchant was detained in 1973 for distributing leaflets containing anti-Pinochet propaganda and later became a member of the (MIR) while in exile. Marchant entered Chile clandestinely in 1980 as part of a guerilla group opposing Pinochet’s dictatorship.
Accused of involvement in the killing of Santiago General Carol Urzúa Ibáñez, Marchant and his family were arrested and tortured by Centro Nacional de Intelligencia (CNI) agents. Following nine years of imprisonment, Marchant’s sentence was commuted to exile during Patricio Aylwin’s presidency. Founded in 1965 by left-wing students, MIR quickly established support in Santiago, especially from working class neighborhoods. MIR supported Salvador Allende; however the group expected more radical social reforms. Nevertheless, prior to the military coup, MIR began contacting junior officers within the army, urging them to support the civilian elected government. With Allende overthrown by Pinochet’s military dictatorship in 1973, MIR were targeted and thousands of members, including the leaders, were arrested and killed, with those surviving the clampdown fleeing from Chile.
Marchant's previous attempts to enter Chile were quickly repudiated by the Chilean authorities. Now nearing the end of his first exile sentence, Marchant’s renewed attempt to enter Chile brought about a legal triumph. Upon presenting his passport, Marchant found himself detained by the police and subsequently deported to Buenos Aires, where he awaited the final decision of Chile’s supreme court of appeals. Echoing Marchant’s adamant opinion that legalities were in his favour, the judiciary declared the temporary lifting of the exile, granting Marchant fifteen days, starting on December 29, 2011 at 9:30am, to visit Chile and be reunited with his family.
The appeal has garnered a lot of media attention as well as support from human rights and activists groups. It is estimated that between 1500 – 2000 MIR militants have been killed, exiled or disappeared by the Pinochet dictatorship. A few ex-militants remain exiled; their sentences will be nearing completion between 2012 and 2014.
The supreme court declared that Chile had transgressed the 1993-1994 American Convention of Human Rights (Article 22:5) and the Pact of Civil and Political Rights (Article 12:4) which specifically states that no one can be banished from national territory and no one can arbitrarily prevent anyone from re entering one’s own country.
Ramona Wadi: How did you become involved in MIR?
Hugo Marchant: I was a member of Frente de Estudiantes Revolucionarions (FER) during my years as a student at the military high school. FER was the students’ social front of (MIR). In 1977 I entered the party while in exile.
RW: What was your role within the movement?
HM: I was to enter Chile clandestinely in November 1980, as part of the Central Force in the area of logistics.
RW: At what point during Pinochet's dictatorship were you and your family arrested?
HM: On Tuesday September 7, 1980 at 13:45pm I was stopped by a score of Central Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI) agents in the San Pablo con Bandera province. My family was arrested by the same intelligence body in Serrano. The agents arrested my wife, Silvia Sepulveda Aedo, my daughter Javiera who was eight months old, and my son Pablo, aged 4. My son, Simon, was hidden by neighbors for three days in the attic of a neighbouring house. My wife held Javiera in her arms while Pablo played with a little car in a cell at the CNI headquarters. The memory of these moments – the interrogation and torture, is so horrendous I cannot bear to talk about it.
RW: How did your memory of Chile alter during the nine years in prison and the subsequent nineteen years exiled in Finland?
HM: The nine years of imprisonment and nineteen years of banishment, exile, have not alienated me from my country or the struggle for Chile. Through the press, the reading of several testimonies has allowed me to retain the reality. The cruelty of this enforced exile is the emotional upheaval. I cannot walk with my kids and my wife through the streets which witnessed our struggles. I have been unable to mourn at the graves of my fallen comrades in battle. I failed to attend my mother’s funeral. Exile has prevented me from standing with the Mapuche people who are under military occupation of their land by the government in power. I have also been unable to accompany the students in their struggles. And during each day which passes in exile, I know I am suffering a wrongful conviction since fighting injustice and oppression is a legitimate cause.
RW: Did the Valech Commission* report have any effect on your case?
HM: The Valech report notes the violation of human rights committed in Chile and supports our defense. However, a new trial never materialized for me.
RW: What was the response from the government with regard to your case?
HM: The government’s response was a resounding 'NO'. Not even the unanimous decision from the Commission of Human Rights in parliament, neither the authorisation allowing us time to file an appeal at the Appeals Court, were an impediment for the government to express its hatred for our history.
RW: Has your case created more awareness about the plight of exiled political prisoners in Chile?
HM: The strategy of attempting direct entry into Chile through the airport has been effective in demonstrating the injustice of exile. The laws of the state are in our favor, however the government reacted violently and expelled us. The publicity generated by the media garnered the attention of various social and political groups both nationally and internationally, effectively extending our campaign to terminate this exile. Social movements in Chile have expressed support in a concrete way for our cause. On an international level, a complaint is being filed with the Inter American Court of Human Rights since the state of Chile is violating international treaties to which it is supposed to adhere to.
RW: What do you think will influence the final decision of the appeal? The government or the judiciary?
HM: This is clear – a look at the history of political prisoners and judicial proceedings will show that the judiciary is the only way through which the political confrontation between the popular sectors in struggle and the state of domination or governance can be expressed. With our campaign, political facts have been installed in the political scene. Therefore if we continue accumulating the social and political support with our campaign, we will achieve a force that allows us to realize major actions. Meanwhile our people’s advances in pursuing the fight for human rights will change the legal results. At the international level it is important to perform specific tasks to raise awareness and opposition, such as sending letters to the Judiciary, the Ministry of Interior, The President of the Republic and repudiating manifest injustices such as banishment, exile and forced exile. Collection of signatures should be sent to Comite Fin Al Destierro Ahora – our committee which campaigns to end exile. Every initiative in favor of human rights, every stand against banishment, is a necessary initiative.
*The Valech Commission report is a record of abuses committed in Chile between 1973 - 1990, documenting over 38,000political prisoners - most of them tortured.
This interview was first published in Upside Down World here.
Founded in May 1967, Chilean nueva canción group Inti Illimani quickly became popular in Chile and other neighbouring countries. Inti Illimani willingly involved itself in transmitting the message of Salvador Allende’s Unidad Popular to Chileans, bringing the social aspect of politics to the people through music. As Jorge Coulon told Upside Down World, nueva canción artists supported Allende “completely unselfishly”, perceiving in Allende an opportunity for society to flourish and regain its dignity.
Inti Illimani happened to be on tour in Europe when Pinochet overthrew Allende’s government in a military coup. In a relentless drive to eliminate all traces of socialism, the nueva canción was banned, tapes, records and musical instruments related to the nueva canción were destroyed and artists were imprisoned, exiled or even murdered, as happened to Victor Jara. Inti Illimani took up residence in Italy where they remained for fifteen years until 1988, when Chile’s borders were declared open. The group returned to Chile on September 18, 1988, soon becoming involved in a campaign that rejected the notion of another eight years under Pinochet’s dictatorship.
Following the return from exile, some musicians left the group and were replaced by others. However the band split in the last decade, with three former members of the initial Inti Illimani retaining the same name with the addition of (Historico), in order to be distinguished from Inti Illimani, who retained the original name.
Inti Illimani has been involved in many concerts paying homage to the people who sacrificed their lives for Chile and socialism, reviving the memory of Victor Jara and Salvador Allende. Next October, Inti Illimani will be joined by two other nueva canción groups, Quilapayun and Illapu, in a concert which unites the singers in performance for the first time ever in Chile.
Ramona Wadi: What role did Inti Illimani play in Chilean society prior to the military coup of Augusto Pinochet? Was it a political or a social role?
Jorge Coulon: Sometimes, the role that artists have played in Latin America is difficult to explain in a European cultural, social and political context. In the Chilean society (and Latin American as well) of the 20th century, artists and intellectuals have played some political and social roles many times. This is probably due to the huge differences in the social aspect and because of the scandalous contrast between the wealth of a very few and the poverty of the vast majority of the people.
In a very vast majority, the artists were part of political movements looking for a deep social change. Inti-Illimani was a part of these movements. But above all of that, Inti-Illimani's role was the music, the searching of a deeply rooted musical language among the popular traditions in Latin America and the projection into the future of a multicultural society in the middle of an ever changing world. Inti-Illimani had the feeling of developing the musical language of the new cultural reality that was rising in South America.
RW: How did the nueva canción artists support Allende's Unidad Popular? Was it a coincidence due to the circumstances or a natural role to fulfill due to the character of the song?
JC: The support given by the artists of nueva canción to Allende's government was absolutely and completely unselfish. We all felt that Allende's government was in fact our government, a unique chance in history to build a society based on justice and equality. Of course, the administration of Salvador Allende was the crowning achievement of a century involving workers and intellectuals struggling to achieve a country free of outrages, exploitations, corruption, a country in which citizens were really equal in the eyes of the changes and the law.
RW: Being abroad, what is your memory of experiencing the news of the military coup, the assassination of Victor Jara? How did the distance affect your recollections of Chile?
JC: I remember I felt surprise, pain, uncertainty, anger, despair, disappointment ... there were a lot of different feelings and they all were combined in our thoughts, in our conversations. The distance and the exile distort the image of one's own country. You live in some kind of schizophrenic state, not only related to these two parallel realities but also in a third dimension which is the memory distorted by nostalgia. For the one living in exile, it's hard to accept that your reality is just the one of the country you're living in and that your relationship with your own homeland is completely virtual, illusory, unreal, at some extent imaginary, because it doesn't matter how much information you have, how much interest you have in the events happening in your country, your country is not really present in your daily life - in the smell, the flavours...For us, Chile was somehow an abstract idea and Italy was our daily reality.
RW: How did exile influence your reality and what was the impact of exile on the music of Inti Illimani?
JC: I lived in exile between the ages of 25 to 40, so my formation as an adult person was the reality of the exile, the feeling of being separated from my roots together with a permanent obsession for our far-away country. Of course, these feelings were translated into music in two different ways: first of all, we enhanced our interest and our passion for Latin American music and we assessed its qualities even more and we recognised its multiple influences better. Secondly, we added to our music the resonance that we encountered because of the exile in our daily life, the meeting of other musicians and artists and music from all around the world.
RW: Do you still view the nueva canción as a necessity in the present?
JC: What was known as the nueva canción movement was a phenomenon of the searching of a musical identity belonging to a generation that grew up in a continent that had nothing, that had lost its wealth, its freedom, its liberty, its justice. The necessity of embracing identity and dignity guided us to look for our realities and our time's sounds; first in popular roots and then in the crossbreeding.
A major part of that searching is still very important. Latin America is realizing that in the current "Globalization" it's necessary to have a strong identity through which one can relate to the rest of the world; because that's the only way you can have your own place in this "global" world. A person who doesn't have a clear and strong identity is like the air in this ‘globe balloon’ which a lot of people blow up but just a few are able to play with.
RW: Is there any collaboration between Inti Illimani and other nueva canción artists?
JC: I'm not sure if the word "collaboration" is adequate in this context, but there is some contact and some involvement and friendship with some of them. From time to time there are some encounters like the one next October 14 - 15 with Inti-Illimani, Illapu and Quilapayún at the Caupolican theatre in Santiago. The concert is called Juntos, aquí estamos (We are here together) and all groups will be together on stage for the first time in Chile. I think what is most important is to be in contact and collaborating with the new musicians and popular singers, so the nueva canción won't resemble an isolated planet doomed to disappear but given the opportunity to transform into the seeds of a movement that will renew and grow in the new generations, with the natural changes in time and history.
RW: Are there any other projects in mind for the future and do you view them as a continuation of the nueva canción?
JC: We have a lot of projects, which are not easy to undertake when considering we have a 44 year human and musical history. With such a long history, we work on condition that each project should be an original contribution which retains both continuity and renewal of the musical language. Of course, since this is Inti-Illimani, it's all about an ideal continuity of what it's known as nueva canción (New Song), a name that's a contradiction in itself, for every new thing is doomed to become old over time.
