Gabriel Garcia Marquez Read Online Free PDF Page A

working within the country, which ultimately will be the thing to effect change.
    GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO : A little while ago I saw that a journalist had asked you which Latin American country you thought was most likely to have revolution in its future, and, I imagine to the journalist’s surprise, you said Chile.
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : Well, after what’s happened, it has the most organized, radicalized popular workers’ movement, it has enormous international support and sympathy, and it has ever more unity on the left. Which other Latin American country has all that?
    GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO : It’s almost a year and a half since the coup in Chile. What has the junta done?
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : Taken power and repressed the opposition. That’s all, apart from increasing inflation by two thousand percent and spending $500 million on weapons.
    GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO : It seems obvious that they’re getting more isolated all the time.
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : More lonely all the time. Something fundamental is happening, which I mentioned in the telegram I sent to the Chilean military on the day of the coup, and that’s that “the Chilean people will never allow themselves to be governed by a gang of criminals on the payroll of North American imperialism.”
    GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO : Okay, let’s talk about that telegram.
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : When I wrote it, in Bogotá, at eight o’clock at night, as soon as I found out about Allende’s death, some friends told me it read like something from a children’s book; it wasn’t my fault that the situation was like something from a children’s book. And I wanted to write it before my fury subsided; as you can see, a year has gone by and my fury still hasn’t subsided.
    GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO : Régis Debray told a Mexican journalist, not long ago, that he might not know what’s to be done in Latin America, but that he does know what should not be done on the battlefield. Do you feel the same way? What are the things that must not be done?
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : One of the main causes of division in the Latin American left has been the eternal debate about the means of struggle. And the other is that some on the left align themselves with the Soviet Union and others with China.Since these are causes of division, we must be very careful with them.
    Choosing the means of struggle can’t be done mechanically or in advance; what happens in advance is that the revolutionary movements that emerge in every country as cultural as well as political entities gain political strength.
    The conditions themselves will dictate the best forms of struggle, and there’s no reason they should be the same in every country. I want to get to the point where Che’s failure in Bolivia isn’t interpreted as the fundamental failure of armed struggle, and where the failure of the Unidad Popular in Chile isn’t interpreted as the failure of the electoral route.
    GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO : What about that other cause of division?
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : The answer seems to me to be that it shouldn’t matter to revolutionary movements who supports one and who supports the other; that they needn’t concern themselves with other countries disagreeing with them. That’s nothing but a remnant of the old colonial mentality; the one that says we’re nobody unless we have a mother country. And this way of thinking isn’t the same as opposing international solidarity; not at all. It just means getting rid of the fear of the catechism.
    GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO : In another interview you hinted at something about revolution and how to start it.
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : I don’t know who the hell it is that’sended up convincing us—the people who want to start a revolution—to accept the idea that revolution is apocalyptic, catastrophic, and bloody. We need to grasp once and for all that it’s counterrevolution