JULIO CORTÁZAR AND LATIN
AMERICA: "WE MUST FIGHT AGAINST CHAUVINISM"
His deep, nasal voice answers the phone, without intermediaries,
just by lifting the receiver. Cortázar. His voice is
serious, as the image I have of him, in which he is always forty years old -
impossible to imagine him older (yet his biographers say he was born in 1914).
He tells me he wants to see the magazine before agreeing to an
interview. For some reason neither he nor we understand, the magazines we
left at the hotel never reached his hands. He still suggests meeting at Central
Park, at the opening of the First International Conference on Exile and
Latin American Solidarity in the 70s, in which he would
participate.
And there he was, drawing people's attention, whether he liked it or not - he
was the tallest person in the crowd. And there he was, with that copper beard
and mustache he has been wearing for so long, with the seriousness he displays
in newspapers and magazines, and yet with a charm I had never imagined. There
he was, Cortázar. A human being
like you and I, yes, with two eyes, a mouth, two hands, virtues, flaws,
desires, longings.
The interview took place in a corner of the Anauco Hilton Hotel in the presence
of the advisor of Semana magazine, Jorge Madrazo, photographer Eduardo Gamondés
and four or five of the writer's fans, who were secretly (or not so secretly)
immersed in the conversation.
He spoke slowly, warmly and his green eyes scanned ours as his words opened at
the center of our minds, remaining there long after spoken.
And he remained within us when night came and found us in different places. As
an invisible, wished-for presence, always there since that first meeting.
ABOUT LITERATURE AND POLITICS
"Well, of course it bothers me to be called upon to give
political opinions more than literary opinions, because I am a literary animal.
Just as the French often refer to someone as a thinking animal or a
philosophical animal, I am a literary animal. I was born for literature, and I
only assumed this ideological commitment that you've seen in me after a very
slow, very difficult and sometimes very painful process. Because, since
literature is my true vocation, there are times when political circumstances –
having to come to this Conference, write articles with political content,
attack the Argentinian or Chilean Junta, deal with cases of missing, dead or
tortured people, or answer some of the enormous amount of correspondence I get,
because people think that I can always say something helpful – well, there are
times when – I admit it because it's true – I become greatly discouraged.
Because I say, 'Well, will I ever be
able to write a novel?' Ideally, I would like to have a year or two of
tranquility, to write a novel that I've been playing with in my head for a long
time. That's why I'm becoming more of a short story writer, because
that's something you can write on the plane, at home, on the street..."
EXILE CAME ALL THE WAY TO FRANCE
"I've lived outside Argentina for 28 years, but I had
never considered myself an exile until the Videla coup. I had never considered
myself an exile because for me exile is a compulsive thing, and I was living in
France because I wanted to. Because it is a country I like, where I feel good
and where I could write without any difficulties or problems. And suddenly,
when the military coup happened,
I realized I had become a true exile. So now I have this feeling that all
exiles have, where the negative side is very strong, it's a heavy weight. This
led me to reflect on the problem of exile for the first time. That's
when I realized that if I or any other exile fall into the stereotype of exile
being essentially negative and devastating, we are letting the dictatorship
that exiled us win. So I set out the issue very clearly - it's crazy, it's
illogical, it can't be scientifically applied, but instead of moving forward, I
move backwards, I reverse the motion and understand exile in positive terms. I
said it in Paris and it made many people smile: I said that it was as if
Videla, having exiled me, had given me a grant to write outside of Argentina.
And the best way for me to respond to that exile is to give the most that I can
give as a writer, and that's what I'm trying to do.
But when an exile arrives completely broken, either because he himself suffered
- even physically - before he could leave or because there are a lot of dead,
disappeared, tortured people around him, you cannot ask him to begin his life
in exile with a smile, saying "This is alright." No, because it's
horribly wrong. I urge all men and women who haven't lost their senses, when
the time comes to think about the new life that is beginning, at that moment I
urge them not to fall into stereotypes and say, "I am a victim, I am an
exile, I have been unjustly thrown out of my country," which will
gradually lead to bitterness and to an overwhelming nostalgia. I urge them –
when that first traumatic shock is over – to feel like a full man or woman once
again."
THE SOUTH, THE WALL AND BEYOND… (1)
"Yes, because what is the point of five nostalgic Argentines
getting together, grilling meat, drinking mate, listening to Susana Rinaldi, Mercedes Sosa or Gardel (according
to taste) and indulging in nostalgia for a past that we want to revive? I do
that too, but that does not stop me from waking up in Paris the next day, and
getting in touch with a lot of people who are not Argentine and carrying out my
work.
So this is a subtle matter, it is not very simple and, of course, not all
people are equally equipped at a mental or intellectual level. And a
blue-collar worker, who is more limited from a cultural perspective - because,
due to his status, he hasn't been able to study – that man is really the one who
is most at risk in exile. If a worker has to live in Sweden, just the
language problem is like a death threat. And that's when nostalgia,
Gardel, memories and photos become his only defense. And I think all of us can
do a lot through publications, events, meetings, to make them feel they are not
alone."
(1) In reference to verses from the famous tango “Sur” (South). For this interview, south means Argentina, wall means execution walls, and beyond means the concentration camps and death flights by the Argentine dictatorship.
CULTURAL EXILE
"For me what is and has been traumatic is a phenomenon which
not everyone considers and which, in the case of an exiled artist, is
fundamental. It's what I would call the cultural exile: it's terrible to
realize that in your own country there is a barrier of censorship that means,
for example, that I cannot publish any more books in Argentina. So you realize
– and this is what's most frightening for me – that you are exiled, but on the
other side, in your country, there are 26 million people who are exiled
from you. I am separated from my readers, but my readers are separated from me:
my last book of short stories in Argentina could not get published because
there were two stories that annoyed the Junta. And, for me, this is not just a
personal matter: there are 150 magnificent Uruguayan, Chilean and
Argentine writers that cannot be published in our country.
In Chile, starting on September 11, 1973, a
generation of young people was taken by the Junta and enrolled in fascist
schools run by the military. Six years have passed and they have lived their
critical years (between 12 and 18) under that regime, thousands and thousands
of Chilean boys and girls who, right now, believe in the Junta, believe in
National Security, believe that all of us are traitors. They believe that Chile
is a country which is unjustly attacked and threatened. It's not their fault,
poor things, because in six years they have become the same as what Hitler did with the
Hitler Youth, or Mussolini with the "Balillas". Well, that is for me
one of the most frightening things, and we can do nothing, intellectually.
Because here I can tell you this, but no one will listen to me in Argentina,
nobody will read it. You can publish it, but unless someone takes it there by
carrying it in their pocket, no one will be able to read it there."
A WRITER AND HIS COMMITMENT TO THE REVOLUTION
"I keep an open mind regarding writers' work. I think there
can be pure writers who don't introduce any political message into what they
do. I think that's possible, and that their work can be revolutionary if it is
a creative, refreshing work, a beautiful work. All that I demand in such cases
is that the person making pure literature show in their personal conduct that
they are not an escapist. That if they do not include politics in their work,
it is only because their vocation is for example to write sonnets, in which
politics have no place. But they have to prove, through their conduct, through
their personal responsibility, that they are entitled to write those
sonnets.
Look, I have so much fun writing pure literature...
Next year I'll publish a book, which I'm now finishing, where there are one or
two stories with political content; all the others are fantastical tales. And I
think I'm entitled to write them, because my readers know who I am. So why
should I feel compelled to bring politics into everything I write? If I did, my
literature would be very bad - I am well aware of this. Not every man is
born for action, not every man – how should I put it? – has the physical skills
to dare to play a role at the action level. Not every man is born to be a
soldier of the revolution. There may be a man with an interior life, with a shy
nature, which leads him to write a work that only sings to the revolution. But
I do not think you can demand active militancy from everyone."
VIETNAM AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT BY IMPERIALISM
"I think that denouncing human rights violations which occur
in socialist countries is a positive thing, as long as you're absolutely
certain about what you're denouncing. Because, when it comes to human rights
violations in those countries, I on principle examine the record very
carefully, because I know very well how much information from imperialism
alters, changes and modifies things.
I do not forget that, for example, following the last stage of the Nicaraguan
revolution in the Herald Tribune in Paris, you could find a discussion
of how the Yankees prepared the American reader to be against the victory of
the revolution. They referred to Somoza as a tyrant, a dictator, but when they
spoke of the advancing columns, the spoke of 'the Marxist columns.' Every eight
or nine paragraphs they would drop that word, so that a good lady in Minnesota
or Detroit would say: 'My God, the Communists!' So, when it comes to Vietnam, I
am waiting to see García Márquez, who was there doing a survey, so that he can
tell me how things are. I do not trust press releases. But when in
Russia or the other countries of the socialist sphere there are flagrant
violations of human rights, I speak up."
A UNITED LATIN AMERICA: REALITY OR UTOPIA?
"I'll say it in a sentimental way, almost like Rubén Darío
would: in my heart, Latin America exists as a unit. I am
Argentine of course (and happy to be), but essentially I feel Latin American. I
feel at home in any country in Latin America. I perceive local differences, but
those are differences within unity. That's on a personal level. In geopolitical
terms, we have this pernicious divide-and-conquer policy, one that Americans
have long applied. Promoting nationalism and rivalries between countries to
better dominate them, destroying Bolivar's dream of the "United States of
South America" and encouraging the creation of different countries which
are proud, self-confident, and ready to go to war for reasons that do not stand
to serious analysis. This is a reality.
And I think one of the major duties of the political left, of revolutionary
writers, is to try by every means to fight this chauvinism, which makes an
Argentine child in school learn that he is much better than a Chilean or
Paraguayan child. Indeed, in my previous visit I spoke with ordinary
Venezuelans and their idea about Colombians, their contempt, their hatred
terrified me. The same, of course, occurs on the other side. This proves that
‘divide and conquer’ works, that the Yankees continue to promote it because it
works to their advantage, and local dictatorships are happy to help them."
THEN HE SPOKE ABOUT LIFE AND DEATH
"A day in my life is always a very beautiful thing, because I'm really happy to be alive. I have no intention of dying, I have the impression I'm immortal. I know I'm not, but the idea of death does not bother me, nor does it scare me. I deny its existence, so that helps me to live in a way… how can I put this? Under the sun, in a solar way.
I am very glad to be alive. And there is something few people think about:
it is such a marvel that we all are human beings, that we are at the top of the
zoological ladder by purely genetic chance. Because you are not responsible for
being who you are. We come from a very long genetic chain, and when I see a
chicken or a fly, which were born within the same genetic chain, I marvel at
being a man and not a chicken. I am a man, with all its good and bad
aspects. And I'm glad that I have had a conscience, that I've been able
to see as much as a conscience can see of this planet. And I'll stop
speaking."
He uttered those words after spending more than half an hour with
us, telling us anecdotes and smiling, sometimes like a child. Yes, he is a
human being like you and me, he needs to move his mouth in the same way you and
I do in order to speak. But he is Julio Cortázar.
Semana
Magazine, Caracas, September-November 1979
© Photographs by Eduardo Gamondés
Translation: