By his own account, Ariel Dorfman shouldn’t be alive to tell his tale.
But for a twist of fate, the Chilean writer would have been shot or fatally tortured early in the 17-year reign of terror that followed Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s rise to power in 1973.
In his latest book, “Heading South, Looking North,” the novelist and playwright describes his narrow escape from death in the military coup that toppled leftist President Salvador Allende while Dorfman was a palace aide. His memoir also lays out his inner conflict with the languages of his growing years, English and Spanish, and the two nations that competed for his soul, Chile and the United States.
Dorfman was born in Argentina and brought as a toddler to New York by parents reeling under a blow of Peronist anti-Semitism. He soaked up English, baseball and John Wayne, then was moved to Chile in 1953 when his Marxist father, a United Nations official, was forced out of the country by Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
Eventually, Dorfman returned to the United States and now teaches literature and Latin American studies at Duke University.
He discussed his views on nationalism, language and Pinochet during a visit to Chicago as a lecturer in the Centennial Laureate Speakers’ Series at DePaul University.
Q: Pope John Paul II has called for an America in which the concept of north and south and the color of the flag come second to hemispheric solidarity. What is your view?
A: We should struggle for the unity of America. That cannot be done unless there are very major changes in the North American mentality, and that calls for moral revolution. You North Americans are uniquely gifted for this. One of the (significant) stories of America is the mixing (of ethnic groups and races), the tolerance. There is that constant Utopia in the American vision. Often it falls incredibly short of that vision but the nice thing is that the vision exists. There are things that need to be done in Latin America as well. I don’t think we have any other human alternative but to go in that direction.
Q: Should the United States become a bilingual country?
A: Absolutely. The solution to the (language) problem is that instead of being so happy–the United States is so happy that it has English as its own language–it should celebrate the fact that it has so many other languages. It should teach Spanish in kindergarten to everybody. People say why not Chinese, why not Turkish, Armenian, there are so many things that could be taught? The answer is that if you look at geography and demographics, in 200 years Latin America is going to be entirely bilingual. If in 200 years the United States is only able to speak English, it will then have lost the chance to make one America.
Q: Will this put us at an economic or moral disadvantage?
A: I think it will hurt you first of all morally. The economics will come later. The moral question is very important because learning another language opens to you the possibility of destroying a sort of me-first arrogance. That’s a great danger for the United States in a world in which it has become the only superpower. It’s very dangerous because you tend to confuse your power with your right. Might makes right, and that’s not true, as most people know from history.
Q: Why do many people in this country feel threatened by the prospect of Spanish in schools?
A: The world, and the United States in particular, is (having) a bit of an identity crisis. It has always had a bit of an identity crisis. There is a general crisis in the world in the sense that globalization brings a very strong question of identity. It’s not very clear who you are at this moment. There’s a very big conservative reaction. Conservatism has to do with the fact that when the world changes too quickly, you tend to want to slow things down.
For instance, you used to understand yourselves very clearly as (the opponent of) the Soviet Union, so the end of the Cold War means the end of very clear-cut missions in the world of self-images. Certainties are being questioned. When those things happen in relation to culture and education, everybody is very mixed up. Everything is mixed up. People are a little confused. When that happens, one of the things you hold on to is your language and you don’t let it go. Your language is the thing that you constructed; I call it the house of your identity. You build it brick by brick and you say, “I’ll let anything go, but this is who I am!”
What the U.S. has got to understand is that it needs to accept duality. It would be extraordinary for Americans to accept the idea that you could voluntarily split into two and say, “I speak English, but I also speak Spanish. I am these two things.” There’s a tendency in that direction, but the tendency has got to be emphasized more. The point is that the image (Americans) have is that of a melting pot. They’ve got to get rid of that because no matter how much you melt things in a stew, you don’t mush it all together.
We live in a time where, because everything is moving so quickly, the tendency is to withdraw and hold on to that one element that you’re sure of in the world–language.
Q: As for Pinochet, in general you preach reconciliation and brotherhood. Yet many of your friends were among the 3,000 or more murdered or “disappeared” under his government, and you came close to that fate. How do you feel about Chileans responsible for such an atrocity and about Pinochet’s detention in Britain?
A: If they were to say, “We’re so sorry we did this,” and it was part of a real ethical change, I’d jump for joy. If that small group in Chile–25 or 30 percent of the country–realizes what was done in their name, in relation to human-rights violations and devastation of life, if they understood, absorbed it, took responsibility and said: “My God, how terrible. How can I repair this?” and then said, “Please forgive me; I’m so sorry, I will never do this again,” then those stages–none of which has happened so far– would be enough for me. It would mean a new country, a different country.
I wrote an open letter to Pinochet and I said, “Believe me, general, this is the best thing that could happen to you; you have a chance to repent.” Religion, art and history tell us that the best thing to happen to a criminal is to be caught, because then you have the chance to realize what you’ve done. I don’t think he’s going to do that; it’s not going to happen.
Q: Should he be extradited to Spain and put on trial?
A: I’d rather see him put on trial in Chile. The only way for that to happen is for people who have veto power over our political process, including the military, to indicate precisely that–that they want him to be put on trial. It’s all in their hands. What’s disturbing about my own country is that I don’t think there are enough people in Chile who want him on trial.
In a sense the trial has already occurred. He’s branded as a criminal in the eyes of the world. This is not a problem of some men judging other men. It’s how does each Chilean judge Pinochet inside; the real trial has to do with inside us. Each of us has to put him on trial in the private courtroom in our minds. When that happens, we will have a different Chile, and we would have a different world because we’d have to do the same thing with all the dictators.
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An edited transcript
