Mariana Callejas: Literature and Horror in Pinochet’s Chile

PLOTKIN, MARIANO BEN

JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN CULTURAL STUDIES

CARFAX PUBLISHING LTD.

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2024

1356-9325

Mariana Callejas (1932-2016) was an award-wining Chilean writer, active during Augusto Pinochet´s dictatorship. At the same time, she and her husband, the American Michael Townley, were agents of the DINA, the Chilean intelligence service devoted to the repression of opponents to the dictatorship. The couple was involved in several political crimes in Chile, and particularly abroad, including the murder of former Unidad Popular Minister Orlando Letelier carried out in 1976 in Washington DC. In 1995, Callejas wrote her memoirs and, after that, several fictional or semi-fictional works were published that had leading characters inspired in her. This article focuses on her autobiographical book and on three fictional pieces written by leading Chilean writers (Pedro Lemebel, Roberto Bolaño and Carlos Iturra) with a dual purpose. On the one hand, it analyzes how different authors (including Callejas herself) use characters inspired in Callejas to conceptualize the relationship between literature and horror during the years of Pinochet´s dictatorship. On the other hand, the article studies how these writings thematize the tension existing in Chilean society (particular among certain intellectual circles) between knowing, not knowing and not wanting to know what was going on under the Pinochet regime.