In 1973, the film director Miguel Littin fled Chile after a U.
-supported military coup toppled the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende.
The new dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, instituted a reign of terror and turned Chile into a laboratory to test the poisonous prescriptions of the American economist Milton Friedman.
In 1985, Littin returned to Chile disguised as a Uruguayan businessman.
He was desperate to see the homeland he'd been exiled from for so many years; he also meant to pull off a very tricky stunt: with the help of three film crews from three different countries, each supposedly busy making a movie to promote tourism, he would secretly put together a film that would tell the truth about Pinochet's benighted Chile--a film that would capture the world's attention while landing the general and his secret police with a very visible black eye.
Afterwards, the great novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez sat down with Littin to hear the story of his escapade, with all its scary, comic, and not-a-little surreal ups and downs.
Then, applying the same unequaled gifts that had already gained him a Nobel Prize, Garcia Marquez wrote it down.
Clandestine in Chile is a true-life adventure story and a classic of modern reportage.
| Stunt | With the help of three film crews from three different countries each supposedly busy making a movie to promote tourism he would secretly put together a film that would tell the truth about |
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New York Review Of Books Clandestine in chile: the adventures of miguel littin, paperback/gabriel garcia marquez
