Fake news from Chile

On July 24, 1975 Chile’s afternoon tabloid La Segunda published a front page story headlined “Exterminated like mice.”  The article described a shootout between rival factions of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left and other Chilean leftist groups who had fled to Argentina after the 1973 military coup in which dozens of people were killed.

La Segunda is part of the El Mercurio newspaper chain, whose publisher, Augustin Edwards, died at his estate south of Santiago this week. The supposed shootout never took place and the newspaper report was part of an elaborate disinformation campaign by the Pinochet regime’s security agency, the DINA, aimed at discrediting victims of forced disappearances and their families.  The Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation later described the report as “the high point of manipulating disinformation.”  And Edwards’ newspapers were often willing participants in these operations. 

According to the Commission, the DINA published two lists totalling 119 Chileans who had disappeared after their arrest via two obscure publications, the Argentine magazine Lea and the Brazilian newspaper Novo O Dia.  

“Subsequent investigation revealed that Lea was the first issue of a magazine that did not legally exist and provided no names of anyone involved in it and that Novo O Dia was published irregularly in the city of Curitiba, Brazil. Further investigation into the source of the single issue of Lea led to a print shop linked to ultraright groups in the Argentinean government at that time. It also became clear that such unusual publications were used because despite considerable efforts the more serious media refused to publish the news.”

But Edwards’ El Mercurio newspaper chain was quick to pick up and republish this disinformation, with sensational headlines and additional material of questionable origin about Chilean subversives operating in other countries. The result, the Commission report noted, was “confusion within public opinion, and humiliation and isolation for the relatives of victim and those circles involved in defending human rights.”  And throughout the Pinochet dictatorship’s 17 years in power, Edwards’ newspapers routinely helped cover up human rights abuses, maligning the victims and casting doubt on the credibility of witnesses to such crimes.

The Chilean Journalists Association finally expelled Edwards two years ago. And last year his name appeared in the Panama Papers  as one of the clients served by the Panama City law firm Mossack, which had helped wealthy individuals from around  the world establish offshore  bank accounts.

Orwell in Chile

Grafitti on a wall in Santiago provided the cover picture for the Chilean edition of 1984.

This month marks the 65^th anniversary of George Orwell’s death, and here’s one of the lesser-known stories of the great writer’s legacy, courtesy of the Pinochet regime in Chile.

It was 1983, the military dictatorship had been in power nearly ten years and the first stirrings of protest on a national level were about to explode into demonstrations up and down the length of Chile’s narrow territory. Three young journalists—two Chilean, one American—began an afterhours project to translate and publish Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, 1984.

There were plenty of copies of Animal Farm, Orwell’s bitter satire of Stalinism, on offer in Chilean bookstores, but 1984 seemed conspicuous by its absence.  A search around Santiago turned up a Spanish language copy in the British Council Library, an edition translated in Spain under Franco which had cut out the course language and sexual scenes in some of the passages, as well as the Newspeak appendix at the end of the book. Newer editions were unavailable, and if the dictatorship had not officially censored 1984, the implied threat of confiscation, along with high sales taxes, were enough to discourage most booksellers from importing any newer editions of the book.

So the three friends decided to produce a Chilean version of 1984, meeting several evenings a week and working on a typewriter. A  curfew was in effect, which meant they often held all-night translating sessions. Over eight long months the team debated how to best to translate the text. A reference to one character’s “thick negroid lips” made them pause, but if they softened the racist language in their Spanish translation, wouldn’t they be guilty of Newspeak as well?  They opted for a direct translation: gruesos labios negroides. About halfway through they decided that Big Brother should not be translated as Hermano Mayor (which could mean “older brother”) but Gran Hermano. This meant a time-consuming task of going over each typewritten page, using Wite-Out correction fluid.

My friend and colleague Lezak Shallat was one of the translators. “We had this romantic idea of samizdat circulation, underground,” she recalled. “But halfway through, the prior censorship restriction was lifted and publishing became feasible. Sammy (Samuel Silva, another friend and colleague) contacted some publisher who agreed to it, but only if we paid for it, which we did. I remember that my share was US $400, a huge investment for me at the time.”

The translators–Fernando, Lezak and Sammy.

In addition to paying for the publication, the trio had to produce their own publicity, a tricky undertaking under a dictatorship. They decided the publicity should consist solely of grafitti on walls around Santiago, and they drove through the city looking for walls to paint—a rather risky operation in itself. The grafitti idea was later adopted as the cover of the book. And the Chilean edition of 1984 eventually rose to the bestseller list of El Mercurio, the country’s largest newspaper, whose editorial policies supported the Pinochet regime.

Pinochetistas

Right wing lawmakers in Chile’s Chamber of Deputies hold a minute of silence on the eighth anniversary of Pinochet’s death.

He died eight years ago in Santiago’s Hospital Militar, ironically on the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His ashes are kept in a chapel on an estate owned by his family, one of several properties he acquired during his lifetime. And he still has his admirers, as demonstrated by no less than 28 tributes published in the obituary section of El Mercurio, Chile’s largest newspaper. Here’s one: “We will always remember you for your great work for the good of Chile, for the restoration of its democracy and the enormous development achieved and projected, and for having kept the country’s peace, without ceding a centimeter of territory.” http://impresa.elmercurio.com/Pages/NewsDetail.aspx?dt=10-12-2014%200:00:00&dtB=10-12-2014%200:00:00&BodyID=3&PaginaId=15

And a group of lawmakers from Chile’s rightwing Union Democratica Independiente (UDI) party tried to hold a moment of silence in Pinochet’s memory. Ignacio Urrutia made the motion in the Chamber of Deputies, prompting lawmakers from other parties to walk out in protest. One politician from the Party for Democracy (PPD) remained in the chamber in order to break the silence, while a number of younger UDI politicians remained but did not take part.