Chile - Politics & Government, Filmmakers - General & Miscellaneous - Biography, Latin America & the Caribbean - Travel Essays & Descriptions - General & Miscellaneous, South America - General & Miscellaneous - Travel, Chile - History

Clandestine in Chile

Name: Clandestine in Chile
Author: Asa Zatz
ISBN: 9780805009453

by Asa Zatz

Write a review

Overview

In 1973, the film director Miguel Littín fled Chile after a U.S.-supported military coup toppled the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. The new dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, instituted a reign of terror and turned Chile into a laboratory to test the poisonous prescriptions of the American economist Milton Friedman. In 1985, Littín returned to Chile disguised as a Uruguayan businessman. He was desperate to see the homeland he’d been exiled from for so many years; he also meant to pull off a very tricky stunt: with the help of three film crews from three different countries, each supposedly busy making a movie to promote tourism, he would secretly put together a film that would tell the truth about Pinochet’s benighted Chile—a film that would capture the world’s attention while landing the general and his secret police with a very visible black eye.

Afterwards, the great novelist Gabriel García Márquez sat down with Littín to hear the story of his escapade, with all its scary, comic, and not-a-little surreal ups and downs. Then, applying the same unequaled gifts that had already gained him a Nobel Prize, García Márquez wrote it down. Clandestine in Chile is a true-life adventure story and a classic of modern reportage.

About the Author, Asa Zatz

Gabriel García Márquez (b. 1928) was born in Aracataca, Colombia. He began working as a reporter while studying law at the University of Cartagena and published his first book, the novella The Leaf Storm, in Bogota in 1955. Among his best-known subsequent works are the novels One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Love in the Time of Cholera, and The General in His Labyrinth. In 1986 he wrote Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littín, about an exile’s return to the repressive Chile of General Augusto Pinochet. The political revelations of the book led to the burning of almost 15,000 copies by the Chilean government. García Márquez has lived primarily in Mexico since the 1960s, and in 1982 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Asa Zatz was born in Mexico and has translated nearly one hundred books. He lives in New York.

Francisco Goldman is the author of four novels, The Long Night of White Chickens, The Ordinary Seaman, The Divine Husband, the forthcoming Say Her Name, and one work of nonfiction, The Art of Political Murder.

Biography

Gabriel García Márquez is the product of his family and his nation. Born in the small coastal town of Aracataca in northern Colombia, he was raised by his maternal grandparents. As a child, he was mesmerized by stories spun by his grandmother and her sisters -- a rich gumbo of superstitions, folk tales, and ghost stories that fired his youthful imagination. And from his grandfather, a colonel in Colombia's devastating Civil War, he learned about his country's political struggles. This potent mix of Liberal politics, family lore, and regional mythology formed the framework for his magical realist novels.

When his grandfather died, García Márquez was sent to Sucre to live (for the first time) with his parents. He attended university in Bogotá, where he studied law in accordance with his parents' wishes. It was here that he first read The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and discovered a literature he understood intuitively -- one with nontraditional plots and structures, just like the stories he had known all his life. His studies were interrupted when the university was closed, and he moved back north, intending to pursue both writing and law; but before long, he quit school to pursue a career in journalism.

In 1954 his newspaper sent García Márquez on assignment to Italy, marking the start of a lifelong self-imposed exile from the horrors of Colombian politics that took him to Barcelona, Paris, New York, and Mexico. Influenced by American novelist William Faulkner, creator of the fictionalized Yoknapatawpha County, and by the powerful intergenerational tragedies of the Greek dramatist Sophocles, García Márquez began writing fiction, honing a signature blend of fantasy and reality that culminated in the 1967 masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude. This sweeping epic became an instant classic and set the stage for more bestselling novels, including Love in the Time of Cholera, Love and Other Demons, and Memories of My Melancholy Whores. In addition, he has completed the first volume of a shelf-bending memoir, and his journalism and nonfiction essays have been collected into several anthologies.

In 1982, García Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In his acceptance speech, he called for a "sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth." Few writers have pursued that utopia with more passion and vigor than this towering 20th-century novelist.

Good To Know

Gabriel José García Márquez' affectionate nickname is Gabo.

García Márquez' first two novellas were completed long before their actual release dates, but might not have been published if it weren't for his friends, who found the manuscripts in a desk drawer and a suitcase, and sent them in for publication.

Reviews

There are no reviews yet. Log in to write one.

Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In 1973, Chilean film director Miguel Littin was exiled during the turmoil that followed the assassination of President Salvador Allende. Twelve years later, disguised as an Uraguayan businessman, he returned to his country and spent six weeks ``making a film that made fun of the dangers of military power.'' In Nobelist Marquez's hands, this is a scary, exhilarating and sometimes hilarious tale of bizarre coincidences, hairbreadth escapes and ludicrous foul-ups (getting a shave and haircut in Concepcion, Littin discovers afterward that his meticulous disguise has been ruined). His brashness is impressive: at one point he manages to shoot some footage inside Gen. Augusto Pinochet's private office. In the end he escapes by air, fantasizing that the dictator will soon be ``dragging behind the 105,000-foot donkey's tail of film we had pinned on him.'' A rousing adventure story, this is also the best reportage available about conditions in Chile today. Illustrations. (June 30)

Library Journal

After 12 years of exile, well-known movie director Miguel Littin returns to Chile clandestinely to film a documentary on life under the Pinochet regime. In the skilled hands of Nobel laureate Garcia Marquez, the first-person account (based on taped conversations) becomes a chilling thriller. The story holds the reader in suspense until the final escape with a 105,000-foot ``don key's tail'' of film Littin intends to pin onto the dictatorship. It forcefully demonstrates that fear and repression now reign in a country once so dedicated to democratic ideals. The trans lation is simple and readable. Highly recommended. Louise Leonard, Univ. of Florida Lib., Gainesville

School Library Journal

YA Miguel Littin secretly returned to Chile in 1985 after having been exiled 12 years earlier following the death of Salvador Allende. The purpose of his trip was to make a film of Chile today, which he did with six film crewsnone of whom knew of the existence of the other five. Garcia Marquez met Littin in Madrid in 1986 and felt the account of the filming needed to be told. He interviewed Littin for 18 hours, and the result is this exciting book. In order to avoid arrest, Littin underwent a complete physical transformation. Placing himself in the role of a wealthy Uraguayan business man, he experienced the bittersweet pain of returning to his homeland, yet not being able to reveal his identity. Garcia Marquez is a master storyteller who admits that Littin's thinking is not his own, but who believes that the story must be told. Elaborate passwords, film smuggled to Europe, and fear of being followed make for a daring adventure that has the wonderful advantages of being true and providing the best examples of character, patriotism, and courage. The film was shown on television and has been edited and released for movie theaters. Barbara Weathers, Duchesne Academy, Houston