Clandestine In Chile: The Adventures Of Miguel Littín (1987) - Plot & Excerpts
Truth be told, I've never read Marquez before, not 100 Years of Solitude, not Love in the Time of Cholera, nothing. I've always wanted to, of course, because anyone who reads always has a pile of books and authors they will read one day, however, Marquez has always slipped out of my reach for some reason. This book came to me by accident at the library when I was looking for something else; out slipped this thin little book from the shelf from between 2 large tomes on South American and Spanish history. I recognized the author right away and as a lover of film found the premise too enticing to now even remember what I went to the library for in the first place.But what did I think of the book?I'm not sure what to make of this story. The book is billed as non-fiction and since a film was made in Chile during the dictator Pinochet's reign then there's no denying the facts about it. What intrigues me is how Marquez assembled this book and how similar that engineering is to the crafting and editing of a film - in this case over 100,000 feet of a donkey's tail to pin on Pinochet. The book was made after nearly 18 hours of conversation between Marquez and Littin. Marquez then had to pare down all that conversation into 10 chapters about 12 pages each. That's very little material left from an enormous trove of what Litten did talk about. However, Littin too made the same decisions when making his film and cut down over 100,000 feet of film into a 4 hour TV film and then further down to 2 hours for the theatrical version.Both works are documentaries and both are biased because, well, everything is biased. Anyone who tells you there is a state on non-bias is a liar. Littin, being a native Chilean and an exile made all his film editing decisions from that persona - a persona he can't escape because we can never escape ourselves - even if we are forced to flee halfway around the globe. Yet Littin, in making his film, had to take on the persona of a businessman from Uruguay, he had to talk, dress, walk, and behave like a stranger. He hated doing it, he was exiled from his own body while back in his native land. And this is where the bias comes into play. Even with 5 film crews all filming independently of Littin most of the time, Littin still chose what to film and what not to film. Allende and Chilean democracy and September 11, 1973 was always going to be memories of heroism. He would never ACTUALLY see those events through the dispassionate eyes of some foreign businessman. He may take note of how clean the cities now are and how many surface improvements have been made to Chile under Pinochet, but he would always be fighting him.Marquez, in turn, when editing down all Littin told him, made decisions based on what he as an author would make for the best story. He chose to explore repeated themes all through the book that seemed to be speaking to a greater 'truth'. Here Marquez, also against Pinochet, crafted an even more unreal reality of the situation in Chile at the time. Events all seemed destined to happen ("Children are more of a problem when they are grown up"), themes reappear (Love blossoming in the form of hearts carved into an old bench vs. the modern porn cinema and the ugly, naked dancer with the mole), images repeat in clever and subtle ways (the underground resistance vs. the miners who slave underground - the constant close shaves vs. getting the word for requesting a shave at the barber wrong 'afeitar' and not 'rasurar'). This work of reporting has become literature, the film's become art, it's become what the dictator Pinochet tries to burn down or restore in his own image. It's sort of a mobius-strip of 'where's the truth'And that's where my problem came because I was never sure how close to the truth I was. Yes, Pinochet was a terrible, horrible dictator (that's not the issue), but what about Allende? Was he really the hero of Chile? How could such a great politician, one who was reelected so many times that he joked his tombstone would read "Here lies Allende, the future President of Chile."? Worse still was that this was just about Litten trying to make the film. Very little light was shed on the people who helped him, though when the book did go there the characters were all much more interesting than Littin. Strange that a filmmaker was unable to really see his work though the eyes of the people around him and decided only to tell Marquez his own experiences, or strange that if he did tell Marquez, that Marquez chose to edit all that out.Who knows?Maybe what we have here is another book like the one described at the end called 'Chilean Race' that under Pinochet saw revived because it hilariously claimed that Chileans were the actual true direct descendants of the ancient Greeks. Maybe what we have here is counter propaganda?I just wish I knew more about the subject matter to be more critical, but I could never shake the nagging feeling that something seemed a bit to 'artistic' about the whole book. Maybe Marquez was just unable to write himself out of the story, but then, how couldn't he help it? How couldn't Littin be near exploding to get back into his own skin and drop the fake persona?Fascinating to think about, none-the-less.
A most wonderful Marquezian adventure:Clandestine in Chile is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 1986 telling of film maker Miguel Littín’s covert operation in Chile to record day to day life under Pinochet. Although Marquez is best known for his fiction, which cannot be beaten, it is important to remember that he was first and foremost a journalist. To him, journalism was another form of literature, and he always stood by his conviction that “the world is such a mess that only good journalists can save it”. Clandestine in Chile, like Marquez’s News of a Kidnapping are perhaps the finest examples of this message. One of the greatest values of this book is that Marquez manages to record Littín’s account in first person, without compromising either voice. At times one can forget they are reading anything other than a personal report by Littín himself, yet Marquez’s voice creeps in throughout, adding his own richness and playfulness to what is a already an adventure of momentous proportion. This is best demonstrated in the depiction of the individuals Littín met along the way. Perhaps the most memorable, deserving a book to herself, is Clemencia Isaura, who gave up watching soap operas at seventy when she discovered “that her true vocation was the armed struggle, conspiracy, and the headiness of audacious action.” (p.108) Just like Úrsula Iguarán in One Hundred Years of Solitude, in this book Marquez saves his richest descriptions for the wonderful matriarch figure. Her presence providing fundamental support to both the progress of the book, and to Littín’s covert operation.As much as Clandestine in Chile is a documentation of Littín’s time undercover, Marquez equally allows the story to take form in the filmmaker’s complicated journey of losing his self. The identity Littín adopts, that of a Uruguayan businessman, is so different from his true character that throughout the book he feels like he is losing grip on who he truly is. Recorded from personal interviews, Marquez manages to capture the extent of this personal struggle with selfhood.Littín’s oscillating identity issues in many ways feed into the overall narrative of change in Pinochet’s Chile. His crisis embedded in the fact that he has adopted a new personality in a country from which he has been exiled. The book is careful to allow the reader to see both sides of a dictatorship. Some scenes capture the brutality of the Pinochet regime; for instance the account of Sebastián Acevedo, who, following the torture of his son and daughter by the state, set himself on fire and “became a human bonfire.” (p.48) Yet we also find accounts of development and infrastructure entwined within the atmosphere of fear and worry. The success of this book is the symbiosis of two different crafts, that of a writer and that of a filmmaker, working together to undermine the existence of a regime. Metaphorically speaking, these two ventures worked together to stick the middle finger up at a dictatorship that thought it was achieving its goal of suppressing creative dissent. The mere existence, therefore of this book and Littín’s film are a triumph in themselves. However the rich insight this collaboration provided into Chile under Pinochet is truly testimony to the fact that good journalists (and filmmakers) can save the world.
What do You think about Clandestine In Chile: The Adventures Of Miguel Littín (1987)?
من الوهلةِ الأولى بالنظر لعنوان الكتابِ خمنتُ أنني سأرى رحلةَ مغامرٍ مطعمة بألبومِ صور، ولكن الذي حصلَ أنني لم أجد ذلك؛ فتعبير ماركيز جعلَ للكلمات تأثيرا يفوقُ الصور، فهو يقص الأحداثَ وكأنها صور حيةٌ تتحرك.هذه المخاطرة جعلتني متوترا مضطربا فهي رحلةٌ محفوفة بالمخاطر،متشوقا للمرحلةِ القادمة، حتى وعندما انتهت كنت أتسائل عن مصيرِ الفيلمِ المصور إلى أن ذكر في الصفحة الأخيرة ما آل إليه أمره.الكتاب يحكي مغامرةً، وتحد جسورِ الدكتاتورية، بهيئة تنكريةٍ دخل تشيلي بالتعاون مع فرق تصوير إيطالية وهولندية وفرنسية تحت غطاءاتٍ مزيفة حتى وصلت ببراعتها أنها وصلت للقصرِ الرئاسي!، استبدلها بعد ذلك بفرق تصوير محلية.ابداعٌ لا يختلفُ عن باقي روائعِ ماركيز، وإن كان هنا له فضلُ القص والحكايةِ على لسانِ البطل ليتين.
—Ahmed Almawali
Não foi o primeiro livro que li deste autor, mas foi o primeiro deste género. Distando enormemente do tipo de livros que tenho lido ultimamente, foi refrescante percorrer este livro-documentário. O cunho literário que o autor conferiu a este relato da aventura clandestina do protagonista, dá-lhe uma fluidez e um encanto que poucos livros deste género atingem. Foi com enorme interesse e emoção que com o protagonista fui levada ao Chile que Littín encontrou na sua viagem e ao Chile de antigamente. O interesse pelo Chile, a sua história, os seus locais, as suas gentes, já em mim havia sido despertado por Isabel Allende, uma outra autora do meu coração. A aprendizagem constante a cada página e a inevitável ligação emocional ao protagonista, acrescem à riqueza desta obra. Aconselho a sua leitura a quem goste de ler Gabriel García Márquez e tenha interesse pelo Chile. Dado o carácter único deste livro optei por incluir em seguida, informação resumida sobre o livro, e de como ele surge com o cunho de García Márquez.Para ver o post completo sobre este livro,visite:http://linkedbooks.blogspot.pt/2012/0...
—Ana
Este libro es el testimonio descarnado de una persona que sufrió el exilio en carne propia, y nos hace ver, más allá del propósito inicial de filmar la situación y las relaciones consuetudinarias de aquel entonces en Chile, cómo es el hecho aciago de sentirte fuera de tu tierra, y no poder realizar, hacer, o sentir cosas que son genuinas de uno por haber nacido en ese sitio, así como también perderse de las cosas que pasaron. Nos hace sentir empatía sobre el ser exiliado en una manera más profunda a la que estamos acostumbrados, más allá de las ideas políticas que se puedan tener. Es fantástico el relato que hace sobre la visita a la casa de Pablo Neruda, así como el reencuentro con la madre en Palmilla, y los momentos de tensión en que sumerge al lector cada vez que se encontraba con un puesto de control. Esto y otras cosas más hacen de este un libro entrañable,que de rigor debería ser su lectura, para periodistas en ciernes.
—Pablo
