The Pinochet dictatorship deployed a regime recognized for its human rights violations and its cultural persecution.
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One of the writers who became a public enemy of Augusto Pinochet was the Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, his book ‘The clandestine adventure of Miguel Littin in Chile’ was the subject of a massive book burning ordered by the dictatorship.
The episode is narrated by the then manager of the distribution of best sellers of the Colombian independent label Oveja Negra, co-founded by the writer Gabriel García Márquez, Arturo Navarro.
“Don Arturo, the issue is very complicated. They tell me the books were burned” Navarro tells the Chilean newspaper La Tecera. At the time, he maintains that the information confused him.
By 1986, censorship in the Chilean country had decreased and the controversial title of The Clandestine Adventure of Miguel Littin in Chile had been circulating several months earlier in a special edition of the magazine Analysis. For him, there was no reason for seizure.
Faced with that confusion, Navarro traveled to the port to find out what was really happening.
Upon arrival, he was surprised to see piles of sandbags at the entrance, which formed a trench, he sought to communicate with some agents of the armed forces and even proposed that the shipment be transferred to Lima in order to preserve the specimens.
However, in the end, an officer of the Armed Forces dispatched him from the place saying: Navarro, don’t worry. We already burned them.”
The books destined for the Santiago Book Fair that would begin on November 20, 1986, had been seized in an operation because, according to the local press, “they were in poor condition.”
The shipment of books had left Buenaventura, Colombia, the size of the shipment was 24.3 tons of books and some magazines.
The burning was not of the entire shipment, but of the 14,846 copies of García Márquez’s book on Littin and 29 units of Process to the Left, of former Venezuelan presidential candidate Teodoro Petkoff. The loss amounted to US$10,000.
Faced with the event, the government explained that intervening in the correspondence was the constitutional right of the head of the Zone in a State of Emergency.
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The measure of prior censorship was imposed (…) ordering the seizure of a shipment of books sent from abroad.
The notification of the acknowledgment of the burning of books did not reach the Colombian Consulate until January 9, 1987, through a letter accompanied by a stamp with the word “confidential”.
The document stated that: “Investigations were ordered to review the text of such books, ordering the incineration of those whose content violates (…) the Law of Internal Security of the State. As a consequence, they were incinerated The adventure of clandestine Miguel Littin in Chile and Proceso to the left for having found that its content transgressed constitutional provisions.
What is the censored story about?
Miguel Littín is an exiled filmmaker who, after finding his name on a list of people who are prohibited from visiting Chile, in the midst of a dictatorship, decides to infiltrate his own country to record a documentary (General Act of Chile), after outwitting all security mechanisms.
With this Miguel Littín intended to show the world, through his recording, the brutal repression and shame the regime of Augusto Pinochet.
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