Literature was a strong and important source of protest against the administration of Pinochet. While most of the obvious criticism was written by Chileans in exile some pieces of literature such as the drama Tres Marias y Una Rosa were able to send messages to the audience that circumvented the censorship process. Novels written by those in exile spoke explicitly about the true oppression and torture taking place in Chile and spoke out against the myth of the golden exile.
Throughout the years of Pinochet and after the genre of testimonial literature has become more common. The authors write in order to inform others of the atrocities committed. Atrocities that are not represented in official history. They each write their own experience, their own truth so that the collective truth can be understood. As Ariel Dorfman said
“Each testimony—and above all, all of them together, their extraordinary abundance extends a certain concept of man and of woman opposite to the one exercised and cultivated by the torturers. Having fulfilled their duty, having given a sense and a reason to the rage and to the humiliation they have suffered, becomes in the secret source of all the accounts, a very concrete form to reiterate their ethical superiority in the face of teotalitarianism.”
In a society that is still coming to terms with the truth about the years under Pinochet the genre of testimonial literature is important. Each sub genre of drama, fiction, and non fiction serves as important mediums for expanding collective memory. As said by Sola Sierra, the president of the families of the disappeared, memory helps people prevent the same crimes from being repeated.
Theatre Through out the dictatorship the theatre produced works in opposition to Pinochet's military regime. The use of drama as a form of protest was significant for Chile as it was one of the few public forums where writers could sneak messages of opposition into the discourse. The government did not openly censor the scripts as they did with television, radio and other forms of literature. Instead they used other methods such as funding restrictions and taxes to control the content of the dramas. Despite their efforts to censor the theatre troups through passive aggressive actions the dramatists produced many successful plays.
The first attempt the government made to control theatre was to make funding difficult to obtain. Before the coup d'etat the university would fund theatre productions without regulating the content of the productions or the success of individual productions. However, the Pinochet administration determined that the universities could only present the productions if the drama sold enough tickets to pay itself. If they could not cover their costs, the university was reprimanded for losing money. As a result universities were hesitant to produce lesser known dramas.
The second method of censorship was the implementation of a tax. The administration used indirect or passive aggressive tactics to enforce censorship. Before a university could produce a drama they had to submit a copy of the script to the government. The government would then send a policeman to screen each drama. If the drama was determined to be "cultural" then the univeristy's theatre troupe could resume the production. If it was not deemed cultural then the university would have to pay 20% of all of it's ticket sales as a tax. Naturally, the government did not have a written guide to explain what it considered cultural. The ambiguous definition of cultural was tacitly left at the discretion of the officer viewing the drama. At times the officers disagreed with the content to the extent that they would threaten the theatre troupes. Parra recalled that once an officer told him that while he enjoyed the play, it would be dangerous for him to perform it. This was his not so subtle way of warning the director that he would be harmed if he produced his work. The actors and directors were not the only ones threatened during productions. The audience was at risk as well just for watching a potentially subversive drama.
Hojas de Parra por Nicanor Parra fue uno de los primeros dramas contra el gobierno. Mientras que no habló contra el gobierno directamente todavía agarró su atención. Fue realizado en una carpa de circo en Santiago. Después de una semana de demostraciones acertadas la carpa quemó “accidentalmente.” Era también durante este tiempo que un grupo de estudiantes de medicina formó una compañía del teatro llamada Agrupación Católica Universitaria (el ACU.) Noguera dice que eran el mejor grupo de ese tiempo. Sus dramas estaban claramente contra el gobierno. Muchas de la juventud de la ciudad vinieron mirar sus funcionamientos. Claramente el gobierno no estaba feliz con su éxito pues comenzaron a cortar la electricidad a medio camino funcionamientos. Cuando la gente se fue la policía batiría la y dispararía el gas lacrimógeno en las muchedumbres.
Another important drama that was clearly a protest against the regime was Tres Marías y una Rosa by David Benavente. It is unusual that the play passed censorship since its central theme was arpilleristas. Arpilleristas were women who created tapestries that told told stories about life under the dictatorship. These tapestries are called arpilleras which comes form the Spanish word for burlap. The burlaps were considered subversive contraband because they detailed the human rights abuses and protests. To learn more about arpilleras and the arpilleras see the page titled Arpilleras.
The drama Tres Marías y una Rosa centers around four women from a shantytown who form an arpillera workshop. The female protagonists are called Maruja, María Ester, María Luisa and Rosita. The entire drama takes place in an arpillera workshop within Maruja's house. Her husband lost his job because he was a union leader during the Allende years. He is significant to the drama because his voice is the only male character. He is never seen onstage but the audience can hear him shouting abuse at the women from offstage. His wounded role as head of the household left him in a constant bad mood which he took out on the women. The drama evaluated women's changing role in society. Throughout the drama the women discuss the disadvantages of their roles as wives and mothers. They were confronting the double standard of a man not wanting to be supported by his wife. The drama highlights the changing dynamics of families during the Pinochet years. As the drama unfolds the audience witnesses how the patriarch hierarchy has failed the women and ultimately the families.
The drama is divided in four equal parts in which the women's voices reflect the daily scenes of the repression of a urban/marginalized Chile. The first act opens with a new member, Rosa, in the workshop. She is very young, naïve and recently married. She wants to learn how to make arpilleras as a means for income. Unlike the other women, her husband is employed however, the factory that he works for does not have funds so they pay him in products created in the factory instead of money. It was common to be paid in products during those difficult economic times. However, his payment is useless to him and others because his factory makes toys. It is almost comical that he receives Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck stuffed toys as mode of payment instead of the money to support his family. Rosita explained to the women that her husband violently forces her to sell the toys even though no one ever buys them. Throughout their discussions the audience learns about the husbands that they never see on stage.
By the end of the first act the women were in despair to learn that the central body has decided to suspend the buying of arpilleras because they have a surplus of work to sell. In order to survive Maria Luisa y Maria Ester decided to defect because they desperately need money to survive. Neither of the women could rely on their husbands for support. The husband of Maria Esther had some money but it came from his daughter and from the shopkeeper he is having an affair with. Both sources were humiliating for Maria Esther. She preferred an honorable income from making arpilleras. The husband of Maria Luisa had a job abroad but he never sent any money to Maria Luisa. She mentions that he only sends her postcards. So in order to survive the women decide to sell their work to a boutique which sells the arpilleras as artwork to the affluent citizens of Santiago.
The women returned to the taller de Maruja during the second act because they could adhere to the strict guidelines and limitations. The boutique would only buy happy themed arpilleras. The women did not like the restrictions because an arpillera is meant to be a denunciation of the pain inside of them. The bourgeois owner was most likely one of the many from the upper class who thought the oppression and suffering was a conspiracy created by Marxist terrorists. By the end of the drama the women were asked to make a large arpillera for a "gringo" priest.
The drama lasted 15 months in the theatre El Angel de Santiago and was considered by many a success (Miranda). The script and actors managed to avoid censorship and taxes however, the director of the drama did not avoid controversy completely. Before the opening of the drama the military police ordered the playwright and the director to go to his office. They were scared because it was an unusual request. In the police station they waited for hours to be seen. During the delay the police threw a battered man into the waiting room. Perhaps this was to threaten the men. Eventually the men were summoned to the office of a police officer who read the script. When he finished reading the script he asked David Benavente Pinochet if he was related to the Pinochet family of certain village because David shared the last name. When he answered yes the police explained that his parents were friendly with his parents. He then stated that the script was wonderful and that they could leave. It is possible that the police officer would have been stricter and more aggressive had he not known Benavente's family.
Novels
Unlike dramas, the genre of novelas encountered more censorship and reprimand. Most of the anti-Pinochet literature in this genre was written by exiled Chileans such as Ariel Dorfman and Isabel Allende. Both authors utilized a mix of fact and fiction to create their literary works. “The interplay between history, fiction, and memory is at the heart of any literary work that purports to recover or re-create the past” (O’Connell).
Of Love And Shadows:
Of love and shadows weaves a thread of fact between a love story and the true story of a discovery of fifteen murdered campesinos to create a fictional love story. In the epigraph Allende wrote “This is the story of a woman and a man who loved one another so deeply that they saved themselves from a banal existence… I do, it for them, and for others who have confided their lives to me, saying” Here write it, or it will be erased by the wind.” Like many journalists in that time Allende interviewed many exiles and former torture victims. She took notes and recorded the interviews as often as possible. Censorship in Chile prohibited her from telling their stories in the media until she was an exile. Allende stayed in Chile for fifteen months after the coup and actively participated in the opposition to the regime. Allende adapted many elements of her experience as a journalist and activist into Of love and Shadows. She decided to exile after the military and DINA started harassing her. She was one of nearly one million Chileans who went into exile during the Pinochet years (agosin). Or in other words, ten percent of the Chilean population in 1989. She exiled to Venezuela and later the United States where she wrote Of love and Shadows.
Officially the novel takes place in an unnamed country under an unnamed dictatorship but it is recognizably Chile during the years of Pinochet. Allende wanted it to remain open ended so that more people could identify with the story. When it was written the majority of Latin America was involved in Operation Condor leaving hundreds of thousands of exiles. The protagonist of in love and shadows is a young female journalist named Irene Beltrán. Allende has been asked in several interviews if Irene is based on her but she insists that Irene “is the synthesis of three Chilean women, journalists like her who worked at investigating the frightful reality of the dictatorship" (Zapata). Irene is surprisingly humble and caring considering her bourgeois childhood. Her humanitarian spirit is displayed in her interactions with the elderly people who live in the center below her home. Her mother, Beatriz, is the opposite of freespirited Irene. Her main concern is staying beautiful and keeping her youthful figure. Her father is presumed to be one of the many detained/disappeared however her mother prefers to tell people that he has run away with a younger woman to avoid the scandal of being labeled a communist. There is nothing worse than a communist according to her mother. Her attitude was not uncommon amongst middle and upper class women. Most believed every word said by Pinochet. Those who were not affiliated with the socialist or communist parties were largely un-impacted and so were able to deny the atrocities taking place. Beatriz often repeated that no one had disappeared in her country. Those who claimed otherwise were being paid by the Marxist government in Moscow. Beatriz recalls with pride that she was one of the women who helped end the presidency of Allende. Even within the lower class and affected middle class there was little discussion about the detained and disappeared. The conditions under Pinochet made people afraid of each other. No one wanted to talk about the violence or the disappeared and so many members of the association felt isolated from their families and communities (Agosin).
After the disappearance of her father Irene and her mother needed a new source of income. Beatriz had too much pride to admit they were in trouble so Irene convinced her to run an old-age home on the lower level of their home as a humanitarian gesture. “Now that so many families are leaving the country but can't take their parents and grandparents with them, I think we'd be doing them a favor by looking after them" (41). The Beltrán women represent the real dilemma that many Chilean women faced after the disappearance of their husbands or fathers. Men were traditionally the breadwinners while the women took care of the family and house. Families were presented with a new crisis when the male breadwinner was detained by the secret police. Estimates indicate that the unemployment rates were as high as 35% during the administration of Pinochet (Blake). Underemployment was also common throughout the dictatorship. Hours or salaries were cut below what families needed to sustain themselves. Or like the family of Rosa from Tres Marias y una Rosa, the workers were paid in goods that they could not sell. The economic struggles combined with the violent state oppression pushed women to find sources of income and means for survival.
In the course of her work Irene met freelance photographer Francisco Leal. Leal is the son of an exiled Spanish couple. There were several thousand Spanish exiles living in Chile during that time. Poet and consulate of emigration Pablo Neruda had helped many Spanish exiles seek asylum in Chile after the Spanish civil war which was between the nationalists and the Marxists. Leal's father had not lost his revolutionary thinking even after seeing leftist movements fail twice in lifetime. Leal and Irene grew closer after they did a story together on the mysterious supernatural powers of a fifteen year old peasant girl named Evangelina. Her later disappearance prompted Irene and Fransisco to investigate her abduction. The clues ultimately lead them to discovering a mass grave in an abandoned mine in the desert. An idea that Allende got from an actual discovery in Chile. In 1978 the Catholic Church revealed that they had found 15 corpses in an abandoned lime kiln. The mass grave was proof that the government was murdering subversives. The exposure by the church prevented the military from covering up the massacre again (Zapata 58). Allende kept a copy of the article that detailed the discovery which later served as part of the plot in her novel.
After returning from the clandestine grave the couple told of their discovery to the Leal family. For hours they debated on how they should proceed. They knew they could not o directly to the authorities. “Justice was an almost forgotten term, no longer mentioned because, like the word liberty it had subversive overtones” (203). Eventually they decided their best hope for protection was to contact the church. The brother of Francisco was involved with the church so he took the photos and information to the Cardinal. The church was well known to be a sympathizer to the victims of Chile. The church formed an organization called the Vicariate de Solidaridad which organized arpillera workshops, provided victims with exile assistance and provided other forms of humanitarian aid to those in need.
Shortly after the revelation Irene was shot. She survived but had to stay in the hospital while she recovered. Her mother insisted that the bullets were meant for someone else. Despite the front page coverage on the discovery of disappeared in the mine she continued to believe that the government of Pinochet was just. She recalled with pride that she had participated in the downfall of the socialist president. Many women from the upper and middle class worked together to discredit the administration of Allende. They orchestrated protests and strikes. One of their most effective protests was the “banging of the pots.” The irony was that like Beatriz, the women banging pots to protest the rationing of food were the upper class women who had a pantry full at home (Baldez 12).
Irene decided that she would release a recording of the interviews she conducted in order to serve as evidence at the trial. She and Francisco knew that their lives were still in danger and so they decided that they had to exile. The mother of Francisco suggested that the young couple return to the home in Spain that they abandoned when Franco rose to power. It was not difficult for them as Francisco, his brother and a friend had long been a part of a secret group that helped smuggle political refugees out of the country. Their friend Mario helped alter their appearance and arranged for fake passports. The novel ends with Irene and Francisco crossing into a neighboring country.
The media portrayed exile as a glorious life abroad which created an image of what has been called the “golden exile.” Allende's novels show how much it pained Chileans to leave their home country. In her autobiography Paula she described the pain of living away from her family and home. In fact her first novel La Casa De Los Espiritus was intended to be as a letter to her grandfather on his deathbed because she was unable to go back to Chile to say goodbye to him.
Non Fiction There is some disagreement in the literature world as to whether some testimonial books should be considered fiction or non-fiction. Critics argue that novels based on torture and/or detainment cannot be taken as fact because they are based on damaged memory. Torture was specifically designed to make memory and mental state faulty (Klein). A perfect example of such debate is Tejas Verdes by Hernan Valdes. The novel is a diary of his experience as a prisoner in a concentration camp in Chile in the early years of the dictatorship. He wrote the novel shortly after his release to comprehend what happened to him and to share his experience with others. He prefers for his novel to be considered a testimonial work that “might use a few literary devices.” In the preface he explained that he has attempted to reconstruct his time at Tejas Verdes as accurately as possible to allow others to understand the experience of a prisoner. His novel is exceptional in that it attempts to be as chronological as possible. Typically testimonial literature is not horological because it is too painful for the victim to relive their experience in its entirety. Writing out of sequence allows them to share their experience without dwelling on it as a whole. In the preface to his novel, Valdes disclosed that it distressed him greatly to recount his experiences but that it was a necessary evil.
Tejas Verdes Synopsis:
The novel begins with Hernan being arrested. The police barged into his apartment and insisted that he had harboured Miguel Enriquez in the apartment. Hernan Valdes did not know Enriquez personally but he had heard of the MIR leader. Accusations of harbouring Enriquez or attending conspiratory meetings with him were a common starting point for most interrogations. Despite Valdes’ protests that he did not personally know Enriquez the police arrested him. At the detention center he was tied to a chair and blindfolded. He was furious and confused that he was not interrogated or officially charged with anything. The next morning the guards beat him, asked more questions about Miguel Enriques then transferred him to Tejas Veres without any explanations.
In Tejas Verdes he was finally able to remove his blindfold and talk to the other prisoners. They informed him that they had been held for several weeks without being interrogated or charged. No one seemed to understand why they had been arrested. Everyone had similar stories of the police barging in with accusations of being confidants of Miguel Enriques. In each diary entry Valdes describes the agony of not knowing why he was being held and of the boredom of being locked in a small room all day. He learned from prisoners in another building that everyone would eventually be either released or transferred to a prison following an interrogation. However, during the interrogation they would be tortured. Valdes and the other prisoners spent each day both hoping they would be called and dreading the moment they heard their name.
Eventually the day came when Valdes was called for his interrogation. He and a few other prisoners were transported to another secret prison to be interrogated. He wrote in his novel that he was trembling from fear and from the damp of the secret police station. The interrogation began with the guards slamming him into a door. The torturers claimed they wanted answers but were never content with the true answers Valdes gave. They beat and electrocuted him until he confessed to things he did not do. Valdes made up a conspiracy meeting and listed his friends and acquaintances to make the torture stop. Many prisoners falsely give names just to end the torture. That is why confessions obtained during torture are not reliable. Valdes expressed guilt and shame in his novel for being too weak to resist. He wanted to contact the people that he had denounced but when he was finally released the guards warned him that if he contacted anyone they would come back for him. With that in mind he headed straight to the embassy where his ex-girlfriend worked to go into exile. He did not return to his apartment because he was afraid another branch of the military would come for him. It is well known that the different branches of the military and the secret police did not communicate with each other and competed for jurisdiction over prisoners.
Throughout the years of Pinochet and after the genre of testimonial literature has become more common. The authors write in order to inform others of the atrocities committed. Atrocities that are not represented in official history. They each write their own experience, their own truth so that the collective truth can be understood. As Ariel Dorfman said
“Each testimony—and above all, all of them together, their extraordinary abundance extends a certain concept of man and of woman opposite to the one exercised and cultivated by the torturers. Having fulfilled their duty, having given a sense and a reason to the rage and to the humiliation they have suffered, becomes in the secret source of all the accounts, a very concrete form to reiterate their ethical superiority in the face of teotalitarianism.”
In a society that is still coming to terms with the truth about the years under Pinochet the genre of testimonial literature is important. Each sub genre of drama, fiction, and non fiction serves as important mediums for expanding collective memory. As said by Sola Sierra, the president of the families of the disappeared, memory helps people prevent the same crimes from being repeated.
Theatre Through out the dictatorship the theatre produced works in opposition to Pinochet's military regime. The use of drama as a form of protest was significant for Chile as it was one of the few public forums where writers could sneak messages of opposition into the discourse. The government did not openly censor the scripts as they did with television, radio and other forms of literature. Instead they used other methods such as funding restrictions and taxes to control the content of the dramas. Despite their efforts to censor the theatre troups through passive aggressive actions the dramatists produced many successful plays.
The first attempt the government made to control theatre was to make funding difficult to obtain. Before the coup d'etat the university would fund theatre productions without regulating the content of the productions or the success of individual productions. However, the Pinochet administration determined that the universities could only present the productions if the drama sold enough tickets to pay itself. If they could not cover their costs, the university was reprimanded for losing money. As a result universities were hesitant to produce lesser known dramas.
The second method of censorship was the implementation of a tax. The administration used indirect or passive aggressive tactics to enforce censorship. Before a university could produce a drama they had to submit a copy of the script to the government. The government would then send a policeman to screen each drama. If the drama was determined to be "cultural" then the univeristy's theatre troupe could resume the production. If it was not deemed cultural then the university would have to pay 20% of all of it's ticket sales as a tax. Naturally, the government did not have a written guide to explain what it considered cultural. The ambiguous definition of cultural was tacitly left at the discretion of the officer viewing the drama. At times the officers disagreed with the content to the extent that they would threaten the theatre troupes. Parra recalled that once an officer told him that while he enjoyed the play, it would be dangerous for him to perform it. This was his not so subtle way of warning the director that he would be harmed if he produced his work. The actors and directors were not the only ones threatened during productions. The audience was at risk as well just for watching a potentially subversive drama.
Hojas de Parra por Nicanor Parra fue uno de los primeros dramas contra el gobierno. Mientras que no habló contra el gobierno directamente todavía agarró su atención. Fue realizado en una carpa de circo en Santiago. Después de una semana de demostraciones acertadas la carpa quemó “accidentalmente.” Era también durante este tiempo que un grupo de estudiantes de medicina formó una compañía del teatro llamada Agrupación Católica Universitaria (el ACU.) Noguera dice que eran el mejor grupo de ese tiempo. Sus dramas estaban claramente contra el gobierno. Muchas de la juventud de la ciudad vinieron mirar sus funcionamientos. Claramente el gobierno no estaba feliz con su éxito pues comenzaron a cortar la electricidad a medio camino funcionamientos. Cuando la gente se fue la policía batiría la y dispararía el gas lacrimógeno en las muchedumbres.
Another important drama that was clearly a protest against the regime was Tres Marías y una Rosa by David Benavente. It is unusual that the play passed censorship since its central theme was arpilleristas. Arpilleristas were women who created tapestries that told told stories about life under the dictatorship. These tapestries are called arpilleras which comes form the Spanish word for burlap. The burlaps were considered subversive contraband because they detailed the human rights abuses and protests. To learn more about arpilleras and the arpilleras see the page titled Arpilleras.
The drama Tres Marías y una Rosa centers around four women from a shantytown who form an arpillera workshop. The female protagonists are called Maruja, María Ester, María Luisa and Rosita. The entire drama takes place in an arpillera workshop within Maruja's house. Her husband lost his job because he was a union leader during the Allende years. He is significant to the drama because his voice is the only male character. He is never seen onstage but the audience can hear him shouting abuse at the women from offstage. His wounded role as head of the household left him in a constant bad mood which he took out on the women. The drama evaluated women's changing role in society. Throughout the drama the women discuss the disadvantages of their roles as wives and mothers. They were confronting the double standard of a man not wanting to be supported by his wife. The drama highlights the changing dynamics of families during the Pinochet years. As the drama unfolds the audience witnesses how the patriarch hierarchy has failed the women and ultimately the families.
The drama is divided in four equal parts in which the women's voices reflect the daily scenes of the repression of a urban/marginalized Chile. The first act opens with a new member, Rosa, in the workshop. She is very young, naïve and recently married. She wants to learn how to make arpilleras as a means for income. Unlike the other women, her husband is employed however, the factory that he works for does not have funds so they pay him in products created in the factory instead of money. It was common to be paid in products during those difficult economic times. However, his payment is useless to him and others because his factory makes toys. It is almost comical that he receives Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck stuffed toys as mode of payment instead of the money to support his family. Rosita explained to the women that her husband violently forces her to sell the toys even though no one ever buys them. Throughout their discussions the audience learns about the husbands that they never see on stage.
By the end of the first act the women were in despair to learn that the central body has decided to suspend the buying of arpilleras because they have a surplus of work to sell. In order to survive Maria Luisa y Maria Ester decided to defect because they desperately need money to survive. Neither of the women could rely on their husbands for support. The husband of Maria Esther had some money but it came from his daughter and from the shopkeeper he is having an affair with. Both sources were humiliating for Maria Esther. She preferred an honorable income from making arpilleras. The husband of Maria Luisa had a job abroad but he never sent any money to Maria Luisa. She mentions that he only sends her postcards. So in order to survive the women decide to sell their work to a boutique which sells the arpilleras as artwork to the affluent citizens of Santiago.
The women returned to the taller de Maruja during the second act because they could adhere to the strict guidelines and limitations. The boutique would only buy happy themed arpilleras. The women did not like the restrictions because an arpillera is meant to be a denunciation of the pain inside of them. The bourgeois owner was most likely one of the many from the upper class who thought the oppression and suffering was a conspiracy created by Marxist terrorists. By the end of the drama the women were asked to make a large arpillera for a "gringo" priest.
The drama lasted 15 months in the theatre El Angel de Santiago and was considered by many a success (Miranda). The script and actors managed to avoid censorship and taxes however, the director of the drama did not avoid controversy completely. Before the opening of the drama the military police ordered the playwright and the director to go to his office. They were scared because it was an unusual request. In the police station they waited for hours to be seen. During the delay the police threw a battered man into the waiting room. Perhaps this was to threaten the men. Eventually the men were summoned to the office of a police officer who read the script. When he finished reading the script he asked David Benavente Pinochet if he was related to the Pinochet family of certain village because David shared the last name. When he answered yes the police explained that his parents were friendly with his parents. He then stated that the script was wonderful and that they could leave. It is possible that the police officer would have been stricter and more aggressive had he not known Benavente's family.
Novels
Unlike dramas, the genre of novelas encountered more censorship and reprimand. Most of the anti-Pinochet literature in this genre was written by exiled Chileans such as Ariel Dorfman and Isabel Allende. Both authors utilized a mix of fact and fiction to create their literary works. “The interplay between history, fiction, and memory is at the heart of any literary work that purports to recover or re-create the past” (O’Connell).
Of Love And Shadows:
Of love and shadows weaves a thread of fact between a love story and the true story of a discovery of fifteen murdered campesinos to create a fictional love story. In the epigraph Allende wrote “This is the story of a woman and a man who loved one another so deeply that they saved themselves from a banal existence… I do, it for them, and for others who have confided their lives to me, saying” Here write it, or it will be erased by the wind.” Like many journalists in that time Allende interviewed many exiles and former torture victims. She took notes and recorded the interviews as often as possible. Censorship in Chile prohibited her from telling their stories in the media until she was an exile. Allende stayed in Chile for fifteen months after the coup and actively participated in the opposition to the regime. Allende adapted many elements of her experience as a journalist and activist into Of love and Shadows. She decided to exile after the military and DINA started harassing her. She was one of nearly one million Chileans who went into exile during the Pinochet years (agosin). Or in other words, ten percent of the Chilean population in 1989. She exiled to Venezuela and later the United States where she wrote Of love and Shadows.
Officially the novel takes place in an unnamed country under an unnamed dictatorship but it is recognizably Chile during the years of Pinochet. Allende wanted it to remain open ended so that more people could identify with the story. When it was written the majority of Latin America was involved in Operation Condor leaving hundreds of thousands of exiles. The protagonist of in love and shadows is a young female journalist named Irene Beltrán. Allende has been asked in several interviews if Irene is based on her but she insists that Irene “is the synthesis of three Chilean women, journalists like her who worked at investigating the frightful reality of the dictatorship" (Zapata). Irene is surprisingly humble and caring considering her bourgeois childhood. Her humanitarian spirit is displayed in her interactions with the elderly people who live in the center below her home. Her mother, Beatriz, is the opposite of freespirited Irene. Her main concern is staying beautiful and keeping her youthful figure. Her father is presumed to be one of the many detained/disappeared however her mother prefers to tell people that he has run away with a younger woman to avoid the scandal of being labeled a communist. There is nothing worse than a communist according to her mother. Her attitude was not uncommon amongst middle and upper class women. Most believed every word said by Pinochet. Those who were not affiliated with the socialist or communist parties were largely un-impacted and so were able to deny the atrocities taking place. Beatriz often repeated that no one had disappeared in her country. Those who claimed otherwise were being paid by the Marxist government in Moscow. Beatriz recalls with pride that she was one of the women who helped end the presidency of Allende. Even within the lower class and affected middle class there was little discussion about the detained and disappeared. The conditions under Pinochet made people afraid of each other. No one wanted to talk about the violence or the disappeared and so many members of the association felt isolated from their families and communities (Agosin).
After the disappearance of her father Irene and her mother needed a new source of income. Beatriz had too much pride to admit they were in trouble so Irene convinced her to run an old-age home on the lower level of their home as a humanitarian gesture. “Now that so many families are leaving the country but can't take their parents and grandparents with them, I think we'd be doing them a favor by looking after them" (41). The Beltrán women represent the real dilemma that many Chilean women faced after the disappearance of their husbands or fathers. Men were traditionally the breadwinners while the women took care of the family and house. Families were presented with a new crisis when the male breadwinner was detained by the secret police. Estimates indicate that the unemployment rates were as high as 35% during the administration of Pinochet (Blake). Underemployment was also common throughout the dictatorship. Hours or salaries were cut below what families needed to sustain themselves. Or like the family of Rosa from Tres Marias y una Rosa, the workers were paid in goods that they could not sell. The economic struggles combined with the violent state oppression pushed women to find sources of income and means for survival.
In the course of her work Irene met freelance photographer Francisco Leal. Leal is the son of an exiled Spanish couple. There were several thousand Spanish exiles living in Chile during that time. Poet and consulate of emigration Pablo Neruda had helped many Spanish exiles seek asylum in Chile after the Spanish civil war which was between the nationalists and the Marxists. Leal's father had not lost his revolutionary thinking even after seeing leftist movements fail twice in lifetime. Leal and Irene grew closer after they did a story together on the mysterious supernatural powers of a fifteen year old peasant girl named Evangelina. Her later disappearance prompted Irene and Fransisco to investigate her abduction. The clues ultimately lead them to discovering a mass grave in an abandoned mine in the desert. An idea that Allende got from an actual discovery in Chile. In 1978 the Catholic Church revealed that they had found 15 corpses in an abandoned lime kiln. The mass grave was proof that the government was murdering subversives. The exposure by the church prevented the military from covering up the massacre again (Zapata 58). Allende kept a copy of the article that detailed the discovery which later served as part of the plot in her novel.
After returning from the clandestine grave the couple told of their discovery to the Leal family. For hours they debated on how they should proceed. They knew they could not o directly to the authorities. “Justice was an almost forgotten term, no longer mentioned because, like the word liberty it had subversive overtones” (203). Eventually they decided their best hope for protection was to contact the church. The brother of Francisco was involved with the church so he took the photos and information to the Cardinal. The church was well known to be a sympathizer to the victims of Chile. The church formed an organization called the Vicariate de Solidaridad which organized arpillera workshops, provided victims with exile assistance and provided other forms of humanitarian aid to those in need.
Shortly after the revelation Irene was shot. She survived but had to stay in the hospital while she recovered. Her mother insisted that the bullets were meant for someone else. Despite the front page coverage on the discovery of disappeared in the mine she continued to believe that the government of Pinochet was just. She recalled with pride that she had participated in the downfall of the socialist president. Many women from the upper and middle class worked together to discredit the administration of Allende. They orchestrated protests and strikes. One of their most effective protests was the “banging of the pots.” The irony was that like Beatriz, the women banging pots to protest the rationing of food were the upper class women who had a pantry full at home (Baldez 12).
Irene decided that she would release a recording of the interviews she conducted in order to serve as evidence at the trial. She and Francisco knew that their lives were still in danger and so they decided that they had to exile. The mother of Francisco suggested that the young couple return to the home in Spain that they abandoned when Franco rose to power. It was not difficult for them as Francisco, his brother and a friend had long been a part of a secret group that helped smuggle political refugees out of the country. Their friend Mario helped alter their appearance and arranged for fake passports. The novel ends with Irene and Francisco crossing into a neighboring country.
The media portrayed exile as a glorious life abroad which created an image of what has been called the “golden exile.” Allende's novels show how much it pained Chileans to leave their home country. In her autobiography Paula she described the pain of living away from her family and home. In fact her first novel La Casa De Los Espiritus was intended to be as a letter to her grandfather on his deathbed because she was unable to go back to Chile to say goodbye to him.
Non Fiction There is some disagreement in the literature world as to whether some testimonial books should be considered fiction or non-fiction. Critics argue that novels based on torture and/or detainment cannot be taken as fact because they are based on damaged memory. Torture was specifically designed to make memory and mental state faulty (Klein). A perfect example of such debate is Tejas Verdes by Hernan Valdes. The novel is a diary of his experience as a prisoner in a concentration camp in Chile in the early years of the dictatorship. He wrote the novel shortly after his release to comprehend what happened to him and to share his experience with others. He prefers for his novel to be considered a testimonial work that “might use a few literary devices.” In the preface he explained that he has attempted to reconstruct his time at Tejas Verdes as accurately as possible to allow others to understand the experience of a prisoner. His novel is exceptional in that it attempts to be as chronological as possible. Typically testimonial literature is not horological because it is too painful for the victim to relive their experience in its entirety. Writing out of sequence allows them to share their experience without dwelling on it as a whole. In the preface to his novel, Valdes disclosed that it distressed him greatly to recount his experiences but that it was a necessary evil.
Tejas Verdes Synopsis:
The novel begins with Hernan being arrested. The police barged into his apartment and insisted that he had harboured Miguel Enriquez in the apartment. Hernan Valdes did not know Enriquez personally but he had heard of the MIR leader. Accusations of harbouring Enriquez or attending conspiratory meetings with him were a common starting point for most interrogations. Despite Valdes’ protests that he did not personally know Enriquez the police arrested him. At the detention center he was tied to a chair and blindfolded. He was furious and confused that he was not interrogated or officially charged with anything. The next morning the guards beat him, asked more questions about Miguel Enriques then transferred him to Tejas Veres without any explanations.
In Tejas Verdes he was finally able to remove his blindfold and talk to the other prisoners. They informed him that they had been held for several weeks without being interrogated or charged. No one seemed to understand why they had been arrested. Everyone had similar stories of the police barging in with accusations of being confidants of Miguel Enriques. In each diary entry Valdes describes the agony of not knowing why he was being held and of the boredom of being locked in a small room all day. He learned from prisoners in another building that everyone would eventually be either released or transferred to a prison following an interrogation. However, during the interrogation they would be tortured. Valdes and the other prisoners spent each day both hoping they would be called and dreading the moment they heard their name.
Eventually the day came when Valdes was called for his interrogation. He and a few other prisoners were transported to another secret prison to be interrogated. He wrote in his novel that he was trembling from fear and from the damp of the secret police station. The interrogation began with the guards slamming him into a door. The torturers claimed they wanted answers but were never content with the true answers Valdes gave. They beat and electrocuted him until he confessed to things he did not do. Valdes made up a conspiracy meeting and listed his friends and acquaintances to make the torture stop. Many prisoners falsely give names just to end the torture. That is why confessions obtained during torture are not reliable. Valdes expressed guilt and shame in his novel for being too weak to resist. He wanted to contact the people that he had denounced but when he was finally released the guards warned him that if he contacted anyone they would come back for him. With that in mind he headed straight to the embassy where his ex-girlfriend worked to go into exile. He did not return to his apartment because he was afraid another branch of the military would come for him. It is well known that the different branches of the military and the secret police did not communicate with each other and competed for jurisdiction over prisoners.