I, along with many other left-of-center individuals, am deeply worried about the recent actions of President Donald Trump’s administration which smack of anti-democratic inclinations. Today, however, I want to touch on a very disturbing aspect of authoritarian regimes that I don’t think people adequately address: the sheer feeling of alienation that comes from living in them. By alienation I do not mean physical isolation from others, but rather the feeling of loneliness that arises from the inability to trust anyone, including oneself.
There are two works, both from Chile, that I believe display the incredibly damaging capability of this loneliness. The first is a 1990 play by Ariel Dorfman called “La muerte y la doncella,” which translates to “Death and the Maiden,” and the second a 2004 film called “Machuca.”
Both works deal with the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, lasting from his 1973 coup against the democratically-elected President Salvador Allende until a plebiscite removed him from office in 1988. Between those years, Pinochet ruled Chile with an iron fist as leader of a right-wing military junta, and was responsible for the executions or “disappearances” of 3,095 people and the torture of an estimated 27,255.
“La muerte y la doncella” takes place immediately following the end of the Pinochet regime. It concerns a politician named Gerardo who is helping to lead the redemocratization process, and his wife Paulina, a former political prisoner who faced terrible treatment at the hands of the military and now lives an isolated life. One night, Gerardo invites a stranger named Dr. Miranda, whom he says helped him fix a flat tire, over to their house, and Paulina becomes convinced that he was one of the men who tortured her. Thus, she places him at gunpoint and forces him to confess, despite it being unclear whether or not he actually was the culprit or if her PTSD is simply deluding her. Just before she is about to execute him, the play skips forward in time to a symphony performance in which Gerardo and Paulina are in attendance, and she sees the ghost of Dr. Miranda seated in the audience, staring at her, implying that she will forever be haunted by the fact that she may have killed an innocent person. This self-doubt and guilt will further isolate Paulina, just as her own torture by the military did.
The play’s power lies in the incredible profundity of Paulina’s sheer feeling of alienation. The regime may have ended by the time this play takes place, but it has nevertheless done long-term, possibly irreparable damage to its victims. And as a result, it’s possible that an innocent person got caught in the fray.
Unlike “La muerte y la doncella,” “Machuca” takes place in the time leading up to and immediately after the Pinochet coup. It follows Gonzalo, a well-off schoolboy attending a private Catholic school, who meets a poor indigenous boy named Pedro. Despite their socioeconomic differences, the two develop a close and beautiful friendship. However, immediately after the coup and as a result of the subsequent political turmoil, the two boys’ friendship falls apart. The film concludes with a dramatic scene in which Gonzalo visits Pedro’s shantytown only to find it under siege by the military, with soldiers violently rounding up the town’s inhabitants, presumably to be tortured or killed. As Gonzalo runs away from the bedlam, he locks eyes with Pedro. What is so particularly tragic about this scene is that Pedro’s look is one of anger, as if Gonzalo — and the Pinochet-supporting side of Chilean society which he represents — is at fault for all of this.
When I first saw “Machuca” as a 16-year-old, it shocked me. And it has stuck with me until this day as a warning sign of just how much damage an authoritarian regime can do to a society. Even though Gonzalo, at the very end, returns to his fancy Santiago neighborhood with all the comforts of a wealthy life, he is emotionally ruined, the beautiful friendship he had now gone forever.
I want the characters of Paulina and Gonzalo to stick in my readers’ heads, just as they have stuck in mine. They are emblematic of the immense damage that authoritarian regimes can do to societies beyond the archetypal images of death squads and censorship. They isolate people and inflict severe emotional damage.
About a month ago, The New York Times published a fascinating and disturbing video in the Opinion section that interviewed people who had been targeted by, and subsequently fled, authoritarian regimes. One of the interviewees, a former nonprofit leader in Nicaragua driven out by the Ortega regime, provides a powerful line: “I wish I had paid more attention to those flashes of authoritarianism. We ignored it…”
As the chaotic next four years unfold, be diligent in viewing what might be new signs of authoritarianism because those little signs could eventually snowball into a much larger attack on freedom. Keep the lessons of Paulina from “La muerte y la doncella” and Gonzalo from “Machuca” in your head; we should never allow society to become that terribly lonely.
