The writer Arturo Fontaine (70 years old, Santiago de Chile) has a privileged view of public life in Chile. He teaches courses at the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Chile – one of the biggest bastions of the student left at the country’s most important university – and at the Humanities Faculty of the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, a prestigious private institution. For years he headed the Center for Public Studies (CEP), one of the most influential centers of liberal thought. He also looks at Chile from an intellectual and cultural point of view, since the author of Oír su voz has been one of the most important voices in the Chilean narrative since the 1990s.
In this conversation with EL PAÍS in the library of his home in the municipality of Vitacura, Fontaine declares himself enthusiastic about electronic books, about the workshop on Dostoyevsky he gives to philosophy students, about the fourth novel he is writing and about the soda with sugar, which he could never replace with less sugary ones. But the writer is sad: a few days ago his friend Jorge Edwards, Cervantes Prize winner in 1999, with whom he had a close bond, died. The Edwards family asked him to speak at the mass held in his memory in Santiago de Chile last Monday, where Fontaine read a very emotional but at the same time extremely funny text published by EL PAÍS.
Questions. Edwards’ death shook you…
Answer. It shook me a lot more than I expected, even though I am a person who is already 91 years old with such a long, adventurous and fulfilling life. It was an expected death, absolutely. And yet it hit me terribly. The feeling that this personality suddenly disappeared… We were very close friends. And Jorge was more important in Chile’s cultural environment than people thought.
Q What place did it occupy in Chilean culture?
R Because of his nature, Jorge didn’t talk about his books, almost not at all. He asserted himself for his humor, his sympathy, his human talent, for his anecdotes. He never tried to put his literature first. And a lot of people stuck with that personality and tended to see the books as add-ons. But the truth is no: his books are great books. And in the Chilean cultural area it was a link between very different generations and people, different ages, political currents and worlds. He was socially very integrated, but at the same time had a certain capacity for distance. It is this eye that nourishes his literature: this slight distance. It is very interesting to read his books again now.
Q Have you reread some of your work these days?
R I reread Persona non grata (1973) and I found things I hadn’t seen. What I had seen was what we know: the clash between the Cuban Revolution and the revolutionary dissidents and writers, but with criticism and the difficulty of accepting it. But what I hadn’t seen was Jorge’s reflections on where the ultimate support for the Cuban revolution is, what is the almost unconscious root that drives the revolution. The support is not just in Marxist ideology.
Q And how is that explained then?
R What Jorge believes is that it’s a reaction against the North American way of life. It is a rejection of capitalism, especially North America. So that’s the real root. And if so, then it is a nationalist reaction, defending the self against the invasion of the foreign. The United States is constantly producing not just world-conquering products, but ways of life. So what sustains the Cuban Revolution is a form of nationalism, self-defense in the face of this invasion of what belongs to others. And like all nationalism, it has a nostalgic and melancholy streak. Persona non grata makes me think of Carlos Granés’ book…
Arturo Fontaine. Sofia Yanjari
Q American madness. And why the link?
R Because Granés’ book is a bit of that idea: that deep down, Latin American intellectuals have a nationalist streak. And the Marxism of many of them was more a mask for nationalism or a way to rationalize nationalist impulses. Persona non grata has many previews of what would become Chilean drama. It must be remembered that Jorge not only took this position on Cuba, but also had a very critical position on the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. After returning to Chile in 1978, he headed a committee defending freedom of expression and played an important role, again as a dissident.
Q To what extent is this Latin American nationalism still valid?
R That’s the impressive thing: one might think that after the drama of fascism, nationalism is dead. And no, reborn. It’s a seven-headed hydra that comes out two every time one is cut off. Latin American nationalism is being reborn under different masks. Of course, there are purely Marxist intellectuals in Latin America, and very important ones, but if we consider that there is a nationalist streak in a good part of genuine Latin American Marxism, I believe that nationalism takes on other faces in certain places. For example, the ethnonationalism that we see: the search in some indigenous peoples for what Mario Vargas Llosa called the archaic utopia. A kind of lost world that could be reclaimed. And that is also a nationalist reaction. Granés’ book is luminous in this sense. And persona non grata anticipates it.
Q Were you able to speak to Edwards del Chile about the 2019 social outburst and what happened after?
R Yes, I was a bit critical. As he was, a very pragmatic man. He didn’t like the outburst very much. He had a negative view of the path that was being taken. He worried about the future of Chile. And he saw early on that the triumph of rejecting the proposal for a new constitution would come in the 2022 referendum.
Q And you, how do you see Chile today?
R. The rejection of the proposed new constitution last August and the popular priorities that followed show that there has been an important change that is forcing us to reinterpret the 2019 revolt.
Q And what happened that October?
R The best interpretation was that in a book by Rodrigo Karmy, El porvenir se inherited, where he claims the revolt was an uproar of redeeming violence which he did not justify but recanted. In other words, it’s a recall revolt against the status quo, but without a proposal. It was a very accurate reading of what happened there. And the burning, in that sense, was very symbolic of the state of mind of the people who were on the streets. A survey of sociology students at the University of Chile at the start of the protests showed that 42% of them had completed college. And 10.4% of them had completed postgraduate studies. So the Chilean revolt was a movement of very radicalized young professionals who were in a pejorative mood. It was not a revolutionary project they wanted to impose by force, but an uneasiness for a country very different from the one where their parents lived. The under-40s have been touched by a country that has been economically stagnant for 10 years.
Q After all that, what happened when a very transformative constitutional proposal was rejected?
R These were radical groups that I don’t think changed their vision much. What has fundamentally changed, however, is the support of the population, which was initially very tolerant of the violence. But today the country is different. The violence that unleashed after the 2019 outbreak, spawning other forms of violence, acted as a vaccine against violence for the vast majority of Chileans. Today there is a rejection of Mapuche violence, drug violence, general violence and political violence. And there is a lot of action that needs to be taken by the government. The country has turned around and Gabriel Boric’s government sees it. Although there are risks.
Q As such?
R. The risk is that this will lead to a future trend towards an authoritarian caudillo, legally and democratically elected, establishing an autocracy like Bukele in El Salvador or Orbán in Hungary. It’s a spirit that’s there. Order is very important today, and Chileans are willing to sacrifice freedom for order. And in Chile we are in this danger. Fundamental issues such as pensions were pushed into the background.
Q How do you see the new generation of leftists that came to power with Boric?
R Politically expressed through the Breite Front, the Chilean equivalent of Podemos, these radicalized young people are in a process of mutation, revision and doubt. Ernesto Laclau’s vision that politics is built through popular mobilization, through populist rhetoric, serves to win elections. But to govern you need the opposite, agreements. Not enemies, but opponents. And the government of Boric is there.
Q Is the President also in a process of mutation?
R Boric is a political animal. He won elections that were impossible to win, but he suffered a great defeat: that of the constitutional vote. This hit him hard and he has gone through an evolutionary process in which he has realized that he must govern through construction contracts. And that means leaving Laclau in the library and going to other ghosts. Boric switched from the radical left to social democracy.
Q What died in the current Chilean government after the defeat of the new constitution?
R The radical wing and the idea of a repeal project trying to tear everything down was weakened without having a very clear replacement. That’s what he lost.