During my childhood and youth, I saw my mother as a victim, and decided early on that I didn’t want to follow in her footsteps. I was a feminist long before I’d heard the word; my need to be independent and not to be controlled by anyone is so old that I can’t remember a single moment when it didn’t guide my decisions. When I look back at the past, I realize that my mother was dealt a difficult destiny and in fact confronted it with great bravery, but at the time I judged her as being weak because she was dependent on the men around her, like her father and her brother Pablo, who controlled the money and gave the orders. The only time they paid any attention to her was when she was ill, so she often was. Later she began her life with Tío Ramón, a man of magnificent qualities but one who was at least as macho as my grandfather, my uncles, and the rest of Chilean manhood in general.
I felt asphyxiated, a prisoner in a rigid system—we all were, particularly the women around me. I couldn’t take a step outside the norms; I had to be like all the others, sink into anonymity or encounter ridicule. It was assumed that I would graduate from high school, keep my sweetheart on a short rein, marry before I was twenty-five—any later and all was lost—and rapidly produce children so no one would think I used contraceptives. And in regard to that, I should clarify that the famous pill responsible for the sexual revolution had already been invented, but in Chile it was spoken of only in whispers; it was forbidden by the Church and could be acquired only through a physician friend of liberal inclinations . . . after producing a marriage license, naturally. Unmarried women were out of luck, because few Chilean men, even today, are civil enough to use a condom. In tourist guides they should recommend that visitors always carry one in their billfolds because they won’t lack for opportunity to use them. For a Chilean, the seduction of any woman in her reproductive years is a conscientiously executed task. Although usually my compatriots are terrible dancers, they are accomplished sweet-talkers; they were the first to discover that a woman’s G spot is in her ears, and that to look for it any lower is a waste of time. One of the most therapeutic experiences for any depressed woman is to walk past a construction site and observe how the work stops as assorted workmen hang from the scaffolding to throw her verbal bouquets. The compliment has reached the level of an art form, and there is an annual contest with a prize for the best flowery accolade, according to category: classic, creative, erotic, comic, and poetic.
I was taught as a child to be discreet and to pretend to be virtuous. I say “pretend” because what you do but don’t tell doesn’t matter as long as no one finds out. In Chile we suffer from a particular form of hypocrisy. We act as if we’re scandalized by any little peccadillo someone else commits at the same time that we are stacking up barbarous sins in private. We speak in euphemisms: “to nurse” is “to give the baby its milkie,” and “torture” is referred to as “illegal pressure.” We make a big show of being emancipated, but we are stoically silent about subjects considered taboo, not to be discussed publicly, from corruption (which we call “illicit enrichment”) to film censorship, to mention only two. At one time Fiddler on the Roof was censored; now The Last Temptation of Christ is banned because of the opposition of the clergy and the fear that Catholic fundamentalists might set off a bomb in the theater. Last Tango in Paris made its appearance when Marlon Brando had become an obese old man and butter had gone out of style. The strongest taboo, especially for women, is still the taboo of sex.
The daughters of certain emancipated or intellectual families went to the university, but that was not true for me. My family thought of themselves as intellectuals but actually we were medieval barbarians. It was expected that my brothers would be professional men—if possible doctors or engineers, all other occupations were inferior—but I was to settle for a largely decorative job until motherhood occupied me completely. During those years, professional women came principally from the middle class, which is the strong backbone of the country. That has changed, I’m happy to say, and today the level of education for women is actually higher than for men. I wasn’t a bad student, but since I already had a boyfriend it didn’t occur to anyone that I might go to the university—not even to me. I finished high school at sixteen, so confused and immature that I had no idea what the next step might be, even though I always knew I would have to work because you can’t be a feminist without financial independence. As my grandfather always said, the person who pays the bills rules the roost. I got a job as a secretary in one of the organizations of the United Nations, where I copied forestry statistics onto large pages of graph paper. In my free time I didn’t embroider my trousseau, I read novels by Latin American authors and fought like a tiger with any male who crossed my path, beginning with my grandfather and my wonderful Tío Ramón. My rebellion against the patriarchal system was exacerbated when I went into the job market and found out for myself the disadvantages of being a woman.
And what about writing? I suppose that secretly I wanted to devote myself to literature, but I never dared put such a presumptuous goal into words, because that would have unleashed an avalanche of guffaws around me. No one had any interest in what I might have to say, much less write. I wasn’t familiar with any important female authors, aside from two or three nineteenth-century English maiden ladies and our national female poet, Gabriela Mistral—but she was very mannish. Writers were mature men, solemn, remote, and usually dead. Personally I didn’t know any, except for that uncle who went around the barrio playing the hurdy-gurdy, and who had published a book about his mystic experiences in India. Hundreds of copies of his thick novel were piled up in the cellar—bought, almost certainly, by my grandfather to get them out of circulation—fine material for the forts my brothers and I built when we were little. No, literature was definitely not a reasonable career path in a country like Chile where intellectual scorn for women was absolute. Through all-out war, we women have earned the respect of our troglodytes in certain areas, but the minute we’re a bit careless, machismo raises its shaggy head again.
For a while I earned a living as a secretary, I married, and immediately became pregnant with my first child, Paula. Regardless of my feminist theories, I was a typical Chilean wife, selfless and servile as a geisha, the kind of woman who makes a baby of her husband, with premeditation and treachery. Enough to say, as proof, that I had three jobs, I ran the house, I looked after the children, and I ran like a marathoner the whole day to fight my way through the pile of responsibilities that had fallen on me, including a daily visit to my grandfather, but at night I waited for my husband with the olive for his martini between my teeth and the clothing he would wear the next morning carefully laid out. In any free moments, I shined his shoes and cut his hair and fingernails . . . just a run-of-the-mill Elvira.
Soon I was transferred to a different office, the department of information, where I was supposed to edit reports and act as press officer, either of which was much more entertaining than counting trees. I must admit that I didn’t choose journalism, I was caught off guard; the profession simply sank its claws into me. It was love at first sight, a sudden passion that has determined a large part of my life. It happened during the early days of television in Chile, which consisted of two black-and-white channels originating from the universities. The only screen I’d ever seen was at the movies, but it was Stone Age TV, the most primitive stage, and though I hadn’t taken regular courses at the university, I found myself launched upon a career. In those days, journalism was still a profession you learned on the job, and there was a certain tolerance for spontaneous practitioners like me. I should note here that in Chile women make up the majority among journalists, and are more prepared, visible, and courageous than their male colleagues; it is also true that they nearly always work under a man’s orders. My grandfather was indignant when I told him what I was doing; he considered reporting an occupation for knaves; no one of sound mind would talk with the press, and no decent person would choose a calling in which the main order of work was talking about other people. However, I think he secretly watched my television programs because occasionally he let slip some revealing comment.
By the early sixties the rings of poor settlements around the capital city had grown in alarming fashion: cardboard walls, tin roofs, people in rags clearly visible along the road from the airport. Since this made a very bad impression on visitors, for a long time the solution was to put up walls to hide them. As one politician said, “Where there is poverty, hide it.” There are marginal areas still today, despite the sustained effort of various governments to relocate the squatters in more decent barrios, but the situation is greatly improved. Back then, immigrants from the country and the most remote provinces came in massive numbers looking for work, and being unable to find decent housing they gravitated to these miserable hovels. Despite police harassment of the occupants, these shantytowns grew and became organized: once people took over a piece of land it was impossible to remove them or keep others from joining them. Shacks lined unpaved little streets that were a dust bowl in summer and a swamp in winter. Hundreds of barefoot children ran wild among the huts while parents went off every day to the city to look for a day’s work that would “feed the pot,” a vague term that could mean anything from earning a pitiable wage to buying a bone to make soup. Several times I visited these communities with a friend who is a priest, and afterward, when feminism and political unrest forced me out of my shell, I went often, trying to help. As a journalist I could make reports and tape interviews that helped me better understand our Chilean mentality.
Among the most acute problems, tied to the absence of hope, were alcoholism and domestic violence. Many times I saw women with battered faces. My sympathy fell on deaf ears because they always had an excuse for the aggressor: “He was drunk,” “He got angry,” “He was jealous,” “If he hits me it’s because he loves me,” “Who knows what I did to provoke him?” I’m told that this situation hasn’t changed much despite campaigns to prevent battering. In the lyrics of a popular tango, the man waits for his woman to fix his mate and then “knifes her thirty-five times.” Police are now trained to burst into houses without waiting for the door to be opened normally, or before a corpse with thirty-five stab wounds is found hanging at the window, but there is still a long way to go. And we haven’t even touched on the subject of child beatings! Every so often there is a story in the paper about some horrifying case of children tortured or beaten to death by their parents. According to the Inter-American Development Bank, Latin America is one of the most violent areas of the world, second only to Africa. Violence in the society begins at home; you can’t eliminate crime in the streets unless you attack domestic aggression, since children who have been abused often become violent adults. Today there is a great deal of discussion on the subject, it is denounced in the press, and safe houses and education programs and police protection are available for victims, but in those days domestic crimes were taboo topics.
There was a strong class-consciousness in those squatter’s settlements I visited, pride in belonging to the proletariat, which surprised me in a society as snobbish as Chile’s. That’s when I discovered that social climbing was a middle-class phenomenon, the poor never gave it a thought, they were too busy trying to survive. Over the years these communities acquired political savvy, they organized and became fertile territory for leftist parties. Ten years later, in 1970, they were decisive in electing Salvador Allende and for that reason had to suffer the greatest repression during the dictatorship.
I was very serious about journalism, even though colleagues from that time believe that I invented my reports. I didn’t invent them, I merely exaggerated slightly. The experience left me with several obsessions: I find I am forever on the prowl for news and stories, always with a pencil and notepad in my handbag for jotting down anything that catches my eye. What I learned then helps now in my writing: working under pressure, conducting an interview, doing research, using the language efficiently I never forget that a book is not an end in itself. Just like a newspaper or a magazine, a book is a means of communication, which is why I try to grab the reader by the throat and not let go to the end. I don’t always succeed, of course; readers tend to be elusive. Who is my reader? Well, when the North Americans were in Panama and arrested General Noriega, who had fallen from grace, they found two books in his possession: the Bible and The House of the Spirits. You never know for whom you’re writing. Every book is a message in a bottle tossed into the sea with the hope it will reach a different shore. I feel very grateful when someone finds it and reads it, particularly someone like Noriega.
In the meantime, Tío Ramón had been named the Chilean representative at the United Nations in Geneva. Letter exchange between my mother and me now took much less time than from Turkey, and occasionally it was possible to talk by telephone. When our daughter Paula was a year and a half old, my husband received a fellowship to study engineering in Belgium. On the map, Brussels looked very close to Geneva, and I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to visit my parents. Ignoring the promise I’d made myself to put down roots and not go abroad for any reason, we packed our suitcases and set out for Europe. It was an excellent decision; among other reasons because I was able to study radio and television and renew my French, which I hadn’t used since those days in Lebanon. During that year I discovered the Women’s Lib movement, and realized that I wasn’t the only witch in the world, there are many of us.
In Europe very few people had ever heard of Chile, but the country became fashionable four years later, with the election of Salvador Allende. It was in the news again in 1973 because of the military coup, then because of human rights violations, and eventually because of the arrest of the former dictator in London in 1998. Every time our country has made news, it has been for major political events, except for brief notes on the occasion of an earthquake. When someone in Europe asked my nationality in the sixties, I had to give long explanations and draw a map to demonstrate that Chile is at the southern tip of South America, not in the heart of Asia. It was often confused with China because of the somewhat similar name. The Belgians, used to the idea of colonies in Africa, were surprised that my husband spoke English and that I wasn’t black. Once they asked me why I didn’t wear traditional garb; they may have been thinking of Carmen Miranda’s costumes in Hollywood movies: a multiruffled skirt and a basket of pineapples on her head. We traveled through Europe from Scandinavia to the south of Spain in a beat-up Volkswagen, sleeping in a tent and eating sausages, horse meat, and fried potatoes. It was a year of frenetic touring.
We returned to Chile in 1966 with our daughter Paula, who at three spoke an academician’s Spanish and had become an expert on cathedrals, and with Nicolás in my womb. In contrast with Europe, where long-haired hippies were a normal sight, student revolutions were brewing, and the sexual liberation was being celebrated, Chile was boring. Once again I felt like a foreigner, but I renewed my promise to grow roots and never leave.
As soon as Nicolás was born I went back to work, this time for a brand-new women’s magazine called Paula. It was the only journal that promoted the feminist cause and featured subjects never aired until then, like divorce, contraception, domestic violence, adultery, abortion, drugs, and prostitution. Considering that in those days you couldn’t say the word “chromosome” without blushing, we were suicidally audacious.
Chile is a hypocritical, prudish country bristling with scruples in respect to sex and sensuality, a nation of “old ladies,” male and female. The double standard rules. Promiscuity is tolerated in men, but women must pretend that sex doesn’t interest them, only love and romance, although in practice they must enjoy the same liberties as men—if not, who are the men dallying with? A female must never seem to be collaborating with the macho during the course of the seduction, she must be sly. It is supposed that if a girl is “difficult,” the suitor’s interest is held and she is respected; on the other hand, there are some very inelegant epithets for describing her reluctance. This is but a further manifestation of our hypocrisy, another of our rituals for maintaining appearances, because in truth there is as much adultery, as many teenage pregnancies, children born out of wedlock, and abortions, as in any other country. I have a woman friend who is a gynecologist and has specialized in looking after unmarried pregnant teenagers, and she assures me that unwanted pregnancies are much less common among university students. That happens more in low-income families, in which parents place more emphasis on educating and providing opportunities to their male children than to their daughters. These girls have no plans, they see a gray future, and they have limited education and little self-esteem; some become pregnant out of pure ignorance. They are surprised when they discover their condition because they have followed admonitions “not to go to bed with anyone” literally. What happened standing up, behind a door, surely didn’t count.
More than thirty years have passed since Paula took a prudish Chilean society by storm, and no one can deny the effect of that hurricane. Each of the controversial articles in the magazine stirred my grandfather to the verge of cardiac arrest; we would argue at the top of our lungs, but the next day I would go back to see him and he would welcome me as if nothing had happened. In its beginnings, feminism, which today we take for granted, seemed extreme, and most Chilean women wondered why they needed it since they were already queens of their households and it was natural for men to be the bosses outside, the way God and Nature had intended. It was hard work to convince them that they weren’t queens anywhere. There were not many visible feminists; at the most, half a dozen. I try not to remember what aggravation we had to put up with! I realized that to wait to be respected for being a feminist was like expecting the bull not to charge because you’re a vegetarian. I also went back to television, this time with a comedy show, and while doing that acquired a certain visibility, as happens to anyone who appears regularly on the screen. Soon every door was open to me, people greeted me in the street, and for the first time in my life I felt I belonged.