40 years ago... Allende, Chile's Coup, & the United States

The political background to Ariel Doftman's play "DEATH AND THE MAIDEN"                      

Click here http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/14/death-maiden-relevance-play

 for THE GUARDIAN UK  interview with Ariel Dorfman

I'm thrilled that Death and the Maiden has not aged over these 20 years, that it still moves people to tears, confronts them with a tragedy that has no clear solution, that it speaks to our world today with the same passion it embodied yesterday. I'm thrilled that the relations between men and women that I explored, the intricacies of memory and madness, the aftermath of violence, the uncertainty of truth and narrative, continue to capture the imagination of so many. Thrilled, yes, but it is also sobering to realise that humanity has not managed to learn from the past, that torture has not been abolished, that justice is so rarely served, that censorship prevails, that the hopes of a democratic revolution can be gutted and distorted and warped.

I can't help but ask if 20 years from now I will be writing this phrase all over again: this story happened yesterday, but it could well be today.