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A little more than 50 years ago Augusto Pinochet sent a delegation to northern Chile to train the regions' army. They called it the caravan of death. Dozens of trained soldiers landed in Calama and Antofagasta in mid-October 1973 and hunted down “communists” or anyone suspected of being one. They shot dozens of neighbors without even asking, in front of the untrained military from the north to instruct how things were going to happen from now on; what is the hand like? The operation ended with the murder of 93 men under 66 years of age. Decades later, Nona Fernández (Santiago de Chile, 53 years old) was invited to participate in a star baptism in honor of the victims of that brutal event. When she sat in front of one of her widows to learn her story, she began to tell in a rush what she had explained a thousand times. “They killed him like this, he had this on…,” says Fernández. “I stopped her in her tracks and asked her to tell me how they had fallen in love with her. And at that moment her eyes shone again and I went from having a widow in front of me to having an 18-year-old girl flirting with another young man on the bus,” she says. “You don't miss the dead, you miss the life that was stolen from you,” she says.
Fernández's ability to narrate from the sidelines without losing rigor, dignity and the sense of justice makes his works a beacon for those who ask: how far were we able to go? What is most on his mind now is how to call society to rethink the past. “What is clear is that it cannot continue to be just victimization. Telling the memory can contain humor, junk and pop,” he says on the terrace of a hotel in Jericó, in the Colombian heart of Antioquia. The Hay Festival, organized by the Antioquia Family Compensation Fund (Comfama), was held here at the end of January. In this same country he was researching and rereading the Final Report of the Truth Commission, which narrates the six decades of armed conflict in Colombia. As a result of his vision and that of nine other international authors, the book of Shared truths.
This restless woman, who admits that she almost never has the answers, lives asking questions. Her work is much more about questioning than answering. “I have written trying to respond to that girl I was.” In 2023, Fernández published How to remember thirst? (Historiographical, 2023), an essay that was once a performance and that talks about the years in which Chilean society lived with La Moneda in ruins, after the bombing of the army itself. “Many Chileans forgot that image due to their own trauma. But forgetting is a tremendous risk.”
Ask. You were three years old when La Moneda was bombed. How did your family tell you what happened?
Answer. The truth is that I had never thought about what my first story was… I lived relatively close, 12 blocks away. I have a memory, but it is possibly invented, of having seen military planes passing through a window of my house. And I remember my grandmother told me to get under the table. Later I was organizing the story, but I lived normally, locking myself in the house after 8:00 p.m., living indoors, curfews… I lived them normally because I didn't know the contrast.
Q. The elderly who lived in that center with La Moneda bombed do not remember what it was like to live with rubble. Forgetting is part of overcoming trauma. What is the problem with a generation forgetting?
R. I thought that only happened to my mother, but no. It happened to many people and many others tried not to pass by so as not to see it, because it was painful. That bombing was a symbol. I believe that only in Argentina has an army bombed the Government House. But forgetting is a tremendous risk. It was difficult for me to understand that sometimes you can't force people who experienced traumatic events to relive them. And that's what we are for, that other generation that doesn't live the fact fully…
Q. From where can society be called to remember?
R. That is the great challenge we have now. Certainly not from victimization. This may even sound arrogant, but it happened to me that when I read about memory, there was a solemnity and a victimization so powerful that it expelled me. I didn't have the tools to enter that place. I wanted to break that and I have found some mechanisms, but they are not a recipe. History must be appropriated. Telling the memory can contain humor, junk, pop… Or whatever is necessary to be told. With the rise of denialism, I think that literature also failed.
Q. How do you explain what happened with the constituent process in Chile?
R. The first thing is to understand that nobody understands anything. (Laughs). But I would put the magnifying glass on the social outbreak of 2019, which was fierce. Brutal. Very interesting in terms of study because it speaks of a boredom in front of a model. But I think it was read very poorly, because it was believed to be a leftist explosion. Citizens, who have neoliberalism in their DNA, want quick solutions. We are not interested in political processes or the color of whoever is solving it. And the first constituent process was built from that place; The aim was for a Constitution that was tremendously left-wing, very progressive. And, of course, it didn't happen. What came next was the conservative revenge, from the most troglodyte right. I voted in the last plebiscite to keep Pinochet's Constitution. It's very strong. I think Pandora's box was opened in the social outbreak and now we are seeing what we do with it.
Q. One of the reasons why the first proposal was most vehemently rejected was because of the issue of plurinationality. What role have indigenous populations played in reconstructing memory?
R. The conflict between the State of Chile and the Mapuches still exists today. And the dialogue has been very difficult. The Government itself has tried to dialogue, but not in the best way. I think that has to do with the fact that, when you live with other people, you can't be on top of them. You have to be with them. There is still a lot of contempt for the Indian. Plurinationality was not understood by society.
Q. At some point will Chile live with a Constitution as progressive as the one it proposed?
R. Oh… I would love to say yes. There are wonderful things that even seemed like science fiction. We have to claim the right to hope. Because we get excited. For a moment we thought we were superheroes. And we thought: we are going to do this for the world. Let's think so, maybe in the future. Although I'm not going to see it.
Q. You say that memory in Latin America has to be remembered collectively. Why does the armed conflict in Colombia also belong to Chileans and the dictatorship to Colombians?
R. That's something I'm thinking about now, but I think we've become engrossed in our processes. As if no one other than Chile could understand what a dictatorship or a post-dictatorship is. We may never fu
lly understand the political and social plot of the armed conflict, but it is not difficult for me to understand the pain of those who suffered the Argentine dictatorship. We are experiencing similar political processes: left-wing governments, terror of the ghost of the democratically elected troglodyte right, with Bukele, Milei… This is a Latin American plot.
Q. People fear insecurity but not the loss of democracy…
R. No no. There is something that is happening today and that is that there is a complete depoliticization. People don't have political thinking. And I'm not saying partisan, I'm saying living in a community, understanding that my rights are of no use to me without yours being guaranteed… That idea of democracy, people don't care. And that's why he doesn't value it. That is why they continue to control us with the discourse of fear.
Q. You talk about the failure of literature when it comes to telling the Chilean past. What responsibility have the publishers had?
R. I have always stayed very outside the market. I don't know how to write for fashion. And I've never been asked either. I have had that privilege, but there is something that happens with the market and that is that it takes everything. Memory, feminism… become marketing. And immediately they become light, a chapita and they disappear.
Q. They become Zara t-shirts…
R. Completely. Those of us who are interested in some topics have to be very attentive so as not to fall into fashion and not be looking in the showcase.
Q. The title of his latest work is from an epigraph from one of the works of the philosopher and film director Chris Marker. Is Chile close to being thirsty again?
R. That title is beautiful… There are two ways to understand it. The first is to shelter in that appointment, of course. Memory cannot always be closed in words. Where does thirst come from? How do we remember fear? We can verbalize it, but half of it is going to be left out. And, on the other hand, the specific issue of lack of water. I live in Santiago de Chile and my childhood memories were of incredible rains, the Mapocho River always got out of control… And now, every time it rains, we applaud. Today it is a thread that is pure land. And there are those great bridges of what there was. And there is nothing now. We always talk about political processes and where we are going, but we have to think about them from an ecological perspective. The planet has a deadline [fecha límite] super clear. We should all be thinking about how to stop this debacle.
Q. Will we read Nona writing about ecology?
R. My writing always entangles everything… I am identified with memory, but feminism and ecology have always been there, but I think I am going to raise the decibels on ecology so that they take more prominence. It is essential.
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