Surviving Santiago

I’m not a romantic, but when an author mixes love and politics—I’m in! I recently finished reading Lyn Miller-Lachmann’s latest YA novel, Surviving Santiago, and was intrigued by the central role played by the protagonist’s lesbian aunt. For a more comprehensive review of the novel, check out Cindy L. Rodriguez’s write-up over at Latin@s in Kid Lit. For more on the role of LGBTQ people in political movements, read on!

ME: In this companion to Gringolandia, we see a shift in perspective. Tina is now telling the story, and since her mother has remarried a gringo back in Wisconsin, the only female figure in Tina’s life is her father’s sister Ileana. Can you explain your decision to use Ileana as an opportunity to critique patriarchal norms in Chile as well as homophobia? Tina’s father is a radical political activist who has devolved into a barely functional alcoholic after being tortured by the Pinochet regime. He is almost entirely dependent upon his sister and yet openly expresses contempt for her as a lesbian. What, if any, statement were you trying to make about the role of women and LGBTQ people in leftist movements–and in families?

LYN: Thank you for your thoughtful question about Tía Ileana, Zetta! I’ve written about the Chicana civil rights movement, in which LGBTQ people played a major role in confronting patriarchy and homophobia, and in reinterpreting various myths, such as La Malinche, that justified the subjugation of women. Chile’s history and traditions are somewhat different from Mexico’s, but the society is still a patriarchal one with many contradictions. For instance, many women have long worked outside the home, more so than in other Latin American countries, but they return to the “second shift.” Poor, immigrant, and indigenous women are frequently employed as domestic workers, leaving their own families behind to care for the homes and children of well-to-do Chileans. And while Chile was one of the first countries in Latin America to elect a female president, it has some of the harshest anti-abortion laws and lags behind several of its neighbors in granting rights to LGBTQ people.

Tía Ileana embodies some of these contradictions. Like many Chilean women who work outside the home, she returns to the second shift of housework and caretaking. While politically progressive, she works for a real estate developer in the neoliberal economy imposed by the Pinochet regime and its U.S.-based consultants. And she assumes the traditional role taking care of her disabled younger brother, a role that typically falls to unmarried family members because of the lack of social services, while maintaining her relationship with her partner, Berta.

Living with these contradictions takes an emotional toll on Tía Ileana. At first, Tina is unaware of her aunt’s struggle because she is so focused on her own sacrifice, having to spend her summer in Chile with her estranged father. Gradually, though, Tina comes to see her aunt as a mentor and to empathize with her. She learns that she can be true to herself while loving her father despite his flaws and without expecting that he’ll change.

In the context of a leftist movement, the significance of Tía Ileana’s—and Tina’s—unconditional love is this: Being involved in a progressive movement is hard. You’re fighting against those who have nearly all the power and resources, and in the case of the dictatorship, a willingness to use torture, disappearance, and murder to crush their opponents. It’s easy to give up or walk away. My characters’ (particularly Tía Ileana’s) refusal to give up on the people closest to them parallels their refusal to give up on their country. Ultimately, too, they need each other to survive.

In contrast to the violent beginning of the Pinochet dictatorship—a violence aided and abetted by the United States—the end of that dictatorship was accomplished through peaceful means. Pinochet lost the 1988 plebiscite despite his control of the media and the rules of the election. His opponents engaged in dialogue with people who had initially supported the coup and with those too frightened to speak out. Tía Ileana embodies the possibilities that come from reaching out to people who do not understand, a lesson that Tina absorbs as well. Just as the people of Chile had the courage to bring down the dictatorship through peaceful means, Surviving Santiago ends with the hope that Tina’s father will one day change his attitude toward LGBTQ people because of the courage, persistence, and generosity of those around him.

Lyn Miller-Lachmann is the author of the young adult novel Gringolandia (Curbstone Press/Northwestern University Press, 2009), about a teenage refugee from Chile coming to terms with his father’s imprisonment and torture under the Pinochet dictatorship. Gringolandia was a 2010 ALA Best Book for Young Adults and received an Américas Award Honorable Mention from the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs, among many other accolades. Her second YA novel Rogue (Penguin/Nancy Paulsen Books, 2013), a Junior Library Guild selection, portrays an eighth grader with undiagnosed Asperger’s syndrome and an X-Men obsession, whose effort to befriend another outcast after being expelled from school leads her to some difficult and dangerous choices. Her latest novel is Surviving Santiago (Running Press, 2015), the companion to Gringolandia where younger sister Tina, now 16, travels to Chile at the end of the dictatorship in 1989 to visited her estranged father, and ignored by him, ends up falling in love with a mysterious local boy.

Lyn served as Editor-in-Chief for the quarterly journal MultiCultural Review for 16 years and has remained active in encouraging and promoting diversity in books for children and teens. She is a summer 2012 graduate of the Writing for Children & Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and reviews children’s and young adult books on social justice themes for The Pirate Tree (www.thepiratetree.com). Lyn has lived in Portugal and speaks Spanish and Portuguese. Her debut translation from Portuguese, the picture book The World in a Second by Isabel Minhós Martins and Bernardo P. Carvalho, was published by Enchanted Lion in 2015. She blogs about writing, travel, culture, and LEGO at www.lynmillerlachmann.com.