Mariana Callejas: Literature and Horror in Pinochet’s Chile

Abstract

Mariana Callejas (1932–2016) was an award-winning 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 dedicated 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 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 by her. This article focuses on her autobiographical book and three fictional pieces written by leading Chilean writers (Pedro Lemebel, Roberto Bolaño, and Carlos Iturra) with a dual purpose. On the one hand, it analyses how different authors (including Callejas herself) use characters inspired by Callejas to conceptualise the relationship between literature and horror during the years of Pinochet’s dictatorship. On the other hand, the article studies how these writings thematise the tension existing in Chilean society (particularly among certain intellectual circles) between knowing, not knowing, and not wanting to know what was going on under the Pinochet regime.