INTERVIEW WITH MARGARITA DRAGO
Editorial CAMPANA, United States

1. When did you begin to explore literary writing and what motivated you?
I began writing in middle school. I wrote diaries and letters that I never sent. It was a confessional practice, an unburdening, that helped me understand and explain my relationships. I was fascinated by the exercise of putting ideas in order through the written word. In jail I wrote a lot more, and I wrote diaries, letters, and brief autobiographies all the time. I never had the consciousness of a writer. I thought, according to what I’d learned in the university, that literature only dealt with the grand themes that preoccupy humanity, that its fundamental feature was fictionality, and that only the very gifted could be part of it, and those were generally men. What I’d write didn’t fit into these parameters. I had to leave Argentina, go to New York and put myself in contact with writers and women who had a different concept of what literature was than those who imposed an elitist vision on it in order for me to understand [this different perspective on literature]. This was in the nineties, when I first met Sonia Rivera-Valdés and Paquita Suárez Coalla, and when I became part of the Tertulia de Escritoras Dominicanas directed by Daisy Cocco de Filippis, Vice President of the Community College Eugenio Maria de Hostos. In these meetings I read my first memoirs from jail, the ones I’d written for a woman’s literature class taught by Professor Adriana García in City College. Here, and thanks to my companions who appreciated my work and motivated me to give form and continuity to the stories about jail, my book Memory Tracks came to be, and will be published by Editorial Campana in New York City.

2. Describe how and why you were deprived of your freedom?
In the seventies I was militant in the revolutionary left, I developed community work alphabetizing children and women in a ghetto close to my neighborhood, and I worked as a teacher in a parochial school where I was the union delegate for the Confederation of Educational Workers. At that time Isabel Peron governed the country. Her government was antidemocratic and repressive. During her term, a paramilitary troop was formed known as the Triple A (Anticommunist Alliance of Argentina), whose members indiscriminately assassinated certain activists, student leaders and workers, and an anti-subversive law was sanctioned that, among other unconstitutional measures, made unions illegal. Because of this, the teachers who fought for freedom and democracy, as well as students and populist leaders, were persecuted and incarcerated. This was my case. On October 24, 1975, I was arrested by the Intelligence Service of the city of Rosario. They began a legal process and condemned me to two years in jail, that ended up being five, under the charge of taking part in subversive activities.

3. In Aquí me tocó escribir, the anthology of Latin@ writers in New York by Paquita Suárez-Coalla, there are five of your stories that take place in jail after the political persecution by the military dictatorship in Argentina. A woman is the main character in situations that are conventionally reserved for men. What do you think about this gender difference and what are these stories’ contribution in this context?
Women’s role in politics and revolutionary fights during the seventies stood out. But although their participation alongside men had grown and created new forms of relationships in a shared militancy, in elections for leadership positions, and in having access to political decisions, men were still the more privileged. And this wasn’t because women were ideologically weaker or didn’t have the capacity to take on leadership roles. Examples of this was their valiant conduct when being tortured, how they carried themselves during life in jail—where they were submitted to inhuman conditions—, as well as their ability to convert themselves into political women while in jail. Because of that, the repression of women was so cruel.

In the prisons, the leftist militant organizations established a collective policy of resistance that sought to incorporate most of the detainees through basic demands proposed by the group. Proof of the success of this effort was that they publicly recognized, as much before political detainees as before jail authorities, general delegates and entire floors and pavillions. In my book about prison memories, I emphasize the role of women as political leaders, and exalt the determined way in which they offered themselves to the revolutionary cause. I believe that, in terms of gender, these stories greatly contribute to the affirmation of women’s outstanding role during one of the darkest periods of Argentine history.

4. In several of the pieces there is a character, an “us”, and a “them”. Why?
When I got out of jail in September 1980, one idea drove me: to denounce the crimes and violations of the military dictatorship, and to provide testimony to the resistance of the Argentine political prisoners in the cells of the regime. I did it in places and forums where it was possible. When I began to write my first prison memoirs in 1988, the same impulse propelled me: to denounce. The story “The First Christmas” belongs to this period. It’s a text in which an I is diluted into a we that tells the story. A story in which there are no isolated individuals, only men or women who move as a unit and who belong to one of the confronted groups: the oppressors and the torturers, or the political prisoners. I do, however, acknowledge social differences, political and ideological differences amongst the military, police and jailers, as well as the ones between us, the political prisoners. When I choose characters like “them” and “us”, I do it to show that, in times of violent repression, societies divide into oppressors and the oppressed, victims and victimizers. And one is part of one group or the other, there is no middle ground. And just as it happens in the outside world, it happens inside prisons. That’s how it was in the two prisons I was in, Alcaidía de Rosario and Villa Devoto. Outside prison were them, the military, torturers, jailors, and inside, in the prison camps, us, resisting our captors annihilation plan.


5. While as an author you write about extreme situations that are difficult to overcome, there is a trace of optimism. What are the elements that sustain that faith?
Despite the horror, fear, and in spite of living with death day after day while in prison, we never stopped laughing, believing, and dreaming. We’d invent recipes of jail food with the tiny amount of food that we received, we’d write and share our work, we had spaces and times dedicated to recreation, we’d sing, we’d celebrate ourselves and we’d celebrate traditional holidays.

Amidst the precariousness, we led an organized life of clandestine work and study. We did it all because we were convinced that jail wasn’t a parenthesis in our lives, but rather a space of resistance to the dictatorship. From the front we’d unite family, organisms of international and national solidarity, and all the popular sectors that resisted the destructive plan of the military regime. The great majority of the political prisoners, myself included, had faith and a firm conviction in our ideals.

I’m speaking about the prison of Villa Devoto, where the majority of prisoners were political. This was the main reason we were not annihilated either psychologically or ideologically. For me, the prison experience was transcendental. To live at the limit of things, with such brave women as my companions were, helped me value life, acknowledge the darker and more hidden facets of human beings, and understand their fragility.

6. These collective stories appear in times when individualism predominates... do you think they could be considered a reflection on the possibilities of oppressed collectives?
Women and men of my generation fought to change the capitalist structures of our country because we radically opposed its pitiless individualistic essence. Our model was the Cuban Revolution, and we were guided by Che Guevara, who, after his project to form the “new man”, proposed a moral revolution based on the respect, freedom, and dignity of mankind.In jail, particularly in Villa Devoto, where we were able to achieve a high level of organization and political resistance, we tried, despite our human limitations, to put into practice the values we defended. In the space in which our enemies had confined us as hostages, we were able to create, sustain, and defend a system of life founded on solidarity and friendship.

A principal purpose of my book about prison, Memory Tracks, is to provide testimony to that experience that was so particular. The readings of these accounts in the different groups in which I have participated always generate conversations that have made people think, among other things, about the possibilities of organizing the oppressed collective, as you say.

7. The editorial market has molded, using cultural and political models, stereotypes of what a “female writer” should be writing. Are you afraid that after that vision you will be perceived as a marginal writer?
Not at all. I was always on the margin because I’ve been kept there by the people who have the power to divide, but above all, because I’ve consciously chosen it as a space of resistance. In Argentina, I openly opposed injustice and all the ideas that went against the liberty of man. Because of this I was accused of being subversive, and they sentenced me to five years in prison.

In jail, I resisted censorship of freedom of expression, and that sent me to solitary confinement many times. Since then I’ve maintained this same approach, I consider it a question of principle. And this is reflected in my writing. I could never write subject to cultural, political or ideological models that are antagonistic to mine. If to assume this attitude means being perceived as a marginal writer, I accept the challenge. I think that those of us who think like this should become aware and join together, support and work on independent and alternative projects that move and spread a culture of diversity. An example of this in the city of New York is Editorial Campana, that publishes literature written by Latinos who challenge the literary canon and conventional cultural models.