To remember is to resist

by Lucia Capuzzi*

Carmen Yáñez, how does one survive hell?
With the sole conviction of having reason and truth as an ethical principle. One only needs to have the perspective and behaviour of a human being who feels empathy towards their fellow human beings.

In 1975, you were imprisoned and tortured in Pinochet’s prisons. Then in 1981, you had to leave Chile, while facing new pain and suffering. How did you experience to be torn from your country, your loved ones, your family?

Exile is a side effect of the suffering of a people who must emigrate, must give up all life and any future project, without the ground beneath their feet. It is a new self-construction that is not without uncertainty.

Since then, you have shared the fate of the migrant and the condition of the exile. Has your journey as a migrant, your exile, ever ended?

I experienced it intensely. In my case, it also involved learning new codes and a new language. I believe the journey never ends. In any case, I try to build my home wherever I find myself.

Have you ever lost hope? If so, when?

Yes, when you lose a loved one without warning, when the pain of that loss is excruciating. Then, little by little, you get back up to rebuilding yourself and starting again.

To what hope did you cling when everything seemed dark?

Life has always brought me out of the darkness, whether that be my own, or that of my children, and grandchildren’s.

What do you feel towards your torturers?

I do not feel hatred. Hatred returns to the one who hates. I do not even feel pity. Yes, I believe in justice. I believe everyone should pay for their crimes. I would not be capable of doing what they did to their prisoners. A sufficient punishment is depriving them of their freedom because they were and are a public danger. There is no forgiveness, there is no forgetting, which is my motto and that of all my generation who suffered under the dictatorships.

Your husband, Luis Sepúlveda, also lived through the same experience, first prison and then exile after the 1973 coup against Salvador Allende. Both of you continued to fight for social justice. Where did you draw the strength and courage from?

Because we have always been convinced that the resources of nature in this world should belong to all beings of this world. Inequality has brought only sadness, disappointment, misery, and human tragedies.

Today, what are the greatest risks for the planet and humanity?

Ambition, the greed of some ruthless and narcissistic human beings who make this world unequal. They are the owners, the rest are consumerist sheep. Climate change is evident in various parts of the planet. We are witnessing the greatest crime against humanity, but those in power do not put a stop to this disaster.

What hopes should and can we cling to?

My hope is that human beings find balance, kindness, ethical values, empathy toward their fellow humans, and wisdom.

What are your personal fears?

I look after my family, and my friends. I take care of them, even if they live far away from me.

And, your hopes?

A future without fear.

Your life, your loves, your hopes, your longing for your country emerge in your poems. How is your daily life imbued with them?

I wanted to give voice to those who, like me, emigrated in search of a place in the world to survive.

Do words and memory open a glimpse of salvation?

Without memory, without history, we are condemned to repeat mistakes. Only historical memory reveals to us the hypothetical future of the Earth.

How do you build hope, whether that be for yourself or for others?

With my only weapon, with the word.

Is memory a weapon of justice?

A powerful weapon of justice.

You have said that for you and Luis Sepúlveda, literature became your next homeland. However, is there something you missed in this second homeland?

At times, we migrants feel like we don’t belong anywhere. We have become citizens of the world, universal. From nowhere and from everywhere. We perhaps miss the sense of belonging, childhood friends, and the geographical places where we began the journey of life.

What power can literature have today to raise awareness of risks and awaken hope?

Literature is an enormous window to observe the world and learn to know it. The story that is not told officially. Open memory.

Juan Belmonte is the protagonist of the book The Name of a Bullfighter by Sepúlveda. He appears as a man who, after fighting so many battles, feels disillusioned and reluctant to get back into the fray. Why is that, in your opinion?

Juan Belmonte is a character who has lost small and great battles. He is a loser, but he always tries again because his desire for justice is greater than his fear of losing again.

Is Belmonte Sepúlveda himself at certain moments in his life?

Many writers tend to lend a bit of their biography to the construction of their characters, as well as the feelings portrayed in the story, with a good dose of fiction.

And Veronica, the wife who in the book never recovered from the dictatorship’s torture, is she you?

Yes, in part, but she also describes a completely destroyed woman, a victim of torture. In my case, I managed to overcome that chapter.

Did you and Sepúlveda ever feel the burden of testimony, of having to tell your story?

It’s not easy because it’s a weight we will always carry. I went many years without speaking about it. I imagine the same happened to Luis. There was fear and shame in telling it. It runs very deep.

As Sepúlveda writes, do you think that “The shadow of what we have done and have been haunts us with the tenacity of a curse”?

We are made of what we were. We cannot change that story. We must accept it and from there live until the end, consistently with who we are today.

Can you recommend three books to read so as to nurture memory and hope?

I recently received a book by a Uruguayan writer that I would recommend: Las Cenizas del Cóndor [The Ashes of the Condor] by Fernando Butazzoni. In part, it tells the story of our Latin America that was hit by the coups of the seventies, under the cover of the sinister torture and extermination plan “Operation Condor”, which left so much desolation in its wake. Nevertheless, this book continues to open glimpses of hope. We believe in the human beings we are.

The second is Look Back by Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez, based on true events about relationships between parents and children marked by political ideas and fanaticism.

The third is La guerra perdida [The Lost War] by Mexican writer Jordi Soler. This is a story about a family of Catalan exiles, and their dangerous journey. The losses and the way they survive in the heart of the jungle, while waiting for the fall of the dictator who tore them from their roots.

*A journalist for the italian daily newspaper «Avvenire»

Thanks to Daniel Mordzinski for kindly granting the use of the photograph of Carmen Yáñez and Luis Sepúlveda for this article.