Abstract
Readers of The Inferno understand how difficult it was for you to tell your story. You had to overcome many fears and personal obstacles. How would you characterize those fears?
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Notes
On June 8, 2000, the Santiago Appellate Court took an interest in clarifying and probing a long list of details that Arce includes in The Inferno. Early in her deposition, Arce explains to the court her reasons for writing the book: “Regarding why I wrote The Inferno, I should point out that from the time I resigned from CNI, in 1979, until 1988, I went through a period of extreme depression. At first I sought therapy from a psychologist friend of mine, and later treatment from a neurologist. When I started to get better, without yet having become a Christian, I asked them to take me to a priest, at random; I recounted to the priest, day by day, the many bitter experiences I had lived. After some months, the priest, whose name was Father José Luis de Miguel, told me that he thought that even though it might be painful, I should remember all the life experiences that for nine years I had tried to forget. He recommended that I write them down because, in his opinion, that would help me accept my past. The idea wasn’t to publish what I wrote, but rather for it to be a kind of personal therapy. Because the military government was still in power, I was scared to write and keep my writings in my apartment. Father José Luis gave me access to the Dominicans’ library so that I could write there and store the originals. After the government changed in 1990, I made the decision to testify to the Rettig Commission. As a result of that testimony, the human rights lawyers Carlos Fresno, Gastón Gómez, and Jorge Correa Sutil recommended, for my personal security, that I take up residence abroad. That’s how in 1991 I came to live in Vienna, Austria. While I was in that city, a German publishing house from Hamburg contacted me and proposed that I publish a book about my experiences in the military government’s security organizations. When they suggested it, I told them that a manuscript already existed in Chile, which turned out to be a good thing because I got a contract faster and was able to finance my stay in Europe. I asked Father José Luis to send me the manuscript, and he did. When I received the manuscript, I worked on the computer, first to write a timeline and then to give titles to all the chapters. According to the contract, the German publishing house would have exclusive rights to the German version, but I was authorized to publish the Spanish version wherever I wished. I returned to Chile in January 1992 and spent most of my time testifying in different courts. Toward the end of that year, I approached Planeta publishing house with a bound copy and proposed that they publish my book. I told them that based on commentaries by people who had access to my manuscript, especially Father José Luis, my experiences ‘had been an inferno.’ [Father José Luis] thought that The Inferno was an excellent title and, what’s more, there was no other book of its kind by same name. The first edition appeared in 1993. In 1994, it was published in German, and pretty soon it will be published in English.” Luz Arce, The Inferno: A Story of Terror and Survival in Chile (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 2004).
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© 2011 Michael J. Lazzara
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Lazzara, M.J. (2011). Trauma and Writing. In: Lazzara, M.J. (eds) Luz Arce and Pinochet’s Chile. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230118423_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230118423_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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