"Paris, 11/30/79
Dear Viviana,
Thank you for sending me a copy of Semana.
The interview you did to me came out really well given the chaotic circumstances we had to deal with. You really took into account some of the things I told you and I hope readers feel the dual authenticity of you work and my words.
Thank you again. Kind regards from your friend,
Julio Cortázar not only was kind enough to agree to an interview in Caracas in late September 1979, when I was a 21-year-old unknown exiled freelancer, writing for free for Semana - a dying magazine - but he was also extremely generous for sending me a letter to thank me for the interview once it had been published, saying beautiful words that only a wonderful person like him could write and that, of course, I did not deserve.
Cortázar was in Caracas to participate in the First International Conference on Exile and Latin American Solidarity in the 70s (October 21-29), which opened in Caracas and then continued in Mérida, bringing together the greatest writers of the time: Mario Benedetti, Eduardo Galeano, Antonio Skarmeta, Ernesto Cardenal…
I signed the interview using a pseudonym (the name was chosen by the editor in chief) because Cortázar was one of the most famous and combative opponents of the Argentine dictatorship; my mother and my sisters were living in Argentina and I feared they could suffer retaliation. Cortázar, with his characteristic humanity, understood my fears when I explained the situation.
When we met at the Anauco Hilton Hotel lobby, we did not kiss in the cheek, in Argentine style, but shook hands instead, in Venezuelan style, because that was the first thing I had learned after ending up hovering in mid-air several times with the person I was trying to kiss staring back at me in surprise. Cortázar, who had been in Venezuela several times, seemed to know about this custom quite well.
He did not ask why I had been forced to live in exile and I did not tell him about it. I admired him too much to waste time talking about myself. I only wanted to hear his thoughts. He was with Carol Dunlop, who looked charming with her big tender eyes full of amazement like a little girl, and Cortázar was very patient when I attacked intellectuals who urged people to fight but hid behind their books when bombs started falling. Of course, he was not like that, but I had met so many who were during my last months in Argentina, while trying to run away, that intellectuals disgusted me. Cortázar, who seemed to intuitively know I was bleeding out in exile, responded to my attacks with patience and great gentleness.
He looked very young and handsome (and he was 65 years old), but he seemed to be a very sad man - although at some points in the interview I say he smiled like a child - he seemed very worried and physically exhausted.
When the interview finished and we were both standing, saying goodbye, when I saw that he was starting to walk and that he would be out of my life forever, I somehow plucked up the courage - even though I was extremely shy - to stop him and say:
- Cortázar, could I ask you a favor?
- Of course! —he answered kindly.
- Can I give you a kiss?
Cortázar burst out laughing with surprise and joy, and for the first time I saw his eyes sparkle happily. Carol, by his side, smiled at me with a knowing look in her big eyes.
- Sure! —he answered with a wonderful smile and leaned so that I could reach his cheek.
A kiss, an interview, a letter. Who could ask for more? Cortázar was my best gift in exile (together with Joan Báez, but that is another story).
What Cortázar did not know - and had no reason to know and actually never knew - was that I had been forced to live in exile for being a pacifist and the editor of a small, underground culture magazine, Machu-Picchu, where I had expressed my opposition to the war with Chile in September 1978. The result was persecution, secrecy, asylum at the Embassy of Venezuela in Buenos Aires and exile - in that order. And lacking any political militancy, I was very naive to think using a pseudonym was enough to hide from the dictatorship.
Because Alberto Boixadós, an Argentine writer who supported the dictatorship and whose book “Arte y Subversión” (Art and Subversion) includes a chapter dedicated to attacking Cortázar called “Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa. ¿Son francotiradores o constituyen ejército regular?” (Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa. Are they free agents or part of the regular army?), can be read - even today! - in the Argentine neo-Nazi blog calledWeltanschauungNS:
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Alberto Boixadós published the book “La Revolución y el arte moderno” (The Revolution and Modern Art) in 1981 and, continuing his attacks on Cortázar, he says:
“Revolutionary passion leads him to distort the truth reaching the absurd.
In an interview to Cortázar performed by Viviana López Osornio for Semana magazine #581, November 1979, in a corner of the Anauco Hilton Hotel on the occasion of the first International Conference on Exile and Latin American Solidarity in the 70s, he answers: ‘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 (…)”
This demonstrates two things.
First, how much Cortázar’s words bothered the Argentine dictatorship and its followers, because “Semana” was a bankrupt magazine (it closed a few months later) and therefore had very few readers and very little influence on Venezuelan political life, and because the interview had been performed by an absolutely unknown and insignificant person in 1979.
However in 1981, when the book came out, I was an active opponent of the dictatorship through my pro bono work at Amnesty International and the “Coordinator for Human Rights in Argentina” (created by part of the Argentine exiles in Venezuela); I had stopped using the pseudonym in 1979 and had become a small public figure - just as insignificant, but for the dictatorship any flea could mean the risk of getting a huge bump.
Second, that there were traitors among Argentine exiles in Caracas, because only the people around me knew that that interview to Cortázar had been performed by me and it had never been republished with my name. (Besides, in 1980 I adopted my mother's surname, Iriart, and I have been known by that name since then.) Who were those traitors?
Living in exile, among other things, was always like walking down a mined road - you never knew when you could explode into pieces, because the dictatorship never stopped persecuting us. Or if the helping hand that was extended to you was actually the one that was trying to kill you.
In the interview, Cortázar says sorrowfully: “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.” I thought the same thing. How wrong we were! We had forgotten about traitors, handing our heads on a plate for money, envy, ambition, perversion or mere hatred.
Cortázar was not invited to Alfonsín's investiture when democracy returned to Argentina in December 1983. And if anyone deserved to be invited for how he had fought and for all he had given and all he had stopped doing for himself and sacrificed for Argentine democracy, it was him.
Cortázar was also betrayed by democracy.
And I only hope that traitors have been punished, either by justice or by life, and if they have not, so be it: they will always be a piece of shit under a military boot or a democratic shoe.
Cortázar is still one of the greatest writers of all times, in the whole world. One of the most loved human beings. And I live in peace.
And now that the letter he sent me in 1979 has become part of the book “Julio Cortázar: Cartas 1977-1984” (Julio Cortázar: 1977-1984 Letters), which contains 5 volumes with almost all the letters Cortázar wrote in his life, I can only say once again: Thank you, Cortázar, for letting me be part of your life.
April 22, 2013
© Photographs by Eduardo Gamondés
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