Santiago Pavlovic Urionabarrenechea (Sewell, Chile, 77 years old), journalist from the University of Chile, is one of the few, if not the only Chilean reporter, who continues working in the field after more than five decades. He was already on National Television (TVN), the public channel, when the socialist president and leader of the Popular Unity, Salvador Allende, took office in 1970. He remained there after the 1973 coup d’état led by Army General Augusto Pinochet – only He interrupted the period for a scholarship to Germany – and continued in democracy in 1990, until today. He is known for his coverage of several war conflicts, including the Gulf War.
A week ago Pavlovic, one of the founders of Informe Especial (the longest-running journalistic investigation program in Chile that will turn 40 years old in June) and host of the interview space Sin patch, was one of the presenters of the book Mucha Tele: a choral history of TV in dictatorship (Economic Culture Fund, 2023). Speaking to those attending the launch, he said: “I was part of that controlled television and I am still ashamed. But what can I say: I was in my early 20s, married and had three children.”
Pavlovic spent much of his childhood in Sewell, today a former mining camp, located about 140 kilometers from Santiago, where his father had a small business to supply workers. He arrived in Santiago, the capital of Chile, as a teenager, to a house in the center of the city. He was the first in his family to enter college.
His first steps as a journalist, in 1969, were at Radio Patagonia, in Coyhaique, in southern Chile. “I spent a year doing everything. He was the press officer and was 22 years old. They fired me because we took over the radio, which was something that was customary at that time to demand rights.”
He arrived at TVN in 1970, months after the station was founded in 1969. Jorge Navarrete, whom the Christian Democrat president Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970) commissioned, when he was barely 22 years old, to create the channel, was there as general manager, as well as Gonzalo Beltrán, Pavlovic’s former university classmate. “I came to ask for a job. I spent three months as a student intern, from March to July 1, 1970, when they hired me.”
Ask. Why do you remember the exact date of the contract?
Answer. Because I am the oldest worker on Chilean television. And when they fire me they have to pay me for 54 years. That’s why they’re hardly going to fire me.
By 1970, Pavlovic says, TVN had only young people at the helm. “My generation had the dream of creating an independent, autonomous channel that did not obey business interests or political parties. It was making an original creation, public television. I felt it was very inspiring, something different in the middle of this Chile that was quite polarized, with social cracks.”
Q. How was the independence of the channel with Allende?
A. In Frei Montalva’s time it was not so independent either, because there was no special legislation for the channel. But it was much more than with Allende, because later he responded to the interests and program of the Unidad Popular, despite the fact that the people who were here, like Helvio Soto, Augusto Olivares or José Miguel Varas, were very valuable.
Q. How did you notice it?
A. I quickly moved on to the international area, which was not so ideological. The Vietnam War was on the news table. But in Unidad Popular the channel was the propaganda tool, along with Radio Magallanes [que emitió el último discurso de Allende] and some other media in an absolutely divided country. The media was combative and in some cases even financed by the CIA. They were all partisan.
Q. Was it uncomfortable?
A. For me it was always uncomfortable. It wasn’t my dream. But when the dictatorship came, Allende’s thing seemed like child’s play. Because before differences were respected. For example, I was not a supporter of Popular Unity; I have always been center, center-left.
Q. And the dictatorship came in 1973.
A. At 27 years old they put me as press officer for a few months, but since I was not trusted by these people [los militares a cargo del canal] Then they gave me some special programs that never aired. Then I got a scholarship in Germany, because the only thing I wanted was to leave Chile for a while.
Santiago Pavlovic, during the interview with EL PAÍS.FERNANDA REQUENA
Q. At the presentation of the book Mucha Tele (…) you said that you felt ashamed for having remained on TVN during the dictatorship. Is he at fault?
A. I didn’t have many options. More than guilt, there is nothing about that period that makes me proud, rather it makes me ashamed. But I was neither an exile nor a political refugee nor was I planning to leave the country. The feeling I had was why I had to leave if I had been, practically, one of the founders of the channel. But I was working on a channel that was not National Television, but a national shame in terms of personal support for Pinochet. He had two journalists who were with him constantly and accompanied him on all of his trips. We called it the caravan of good humor. There was also another journalist who was with Lucía Hiriart de Pinochet [la esposa].
Q. They secretly called those spots on TVN’s 60 Minutes news program the Lucy show.
A. Exactly. And to that journalist who was with her all day, I asked him: “How are you going to make a three or four minute note about the delivery of trousseau? [para recién nacidos]? But no one dared to cut. Lucía Hiriart even said: “Sports have taken up five minutes, and important social work has taken two or three.”
Q. Was Lucía Hiriart some kind of editor?
A. Absolutely. Once, Lucía Hiriart did a pre-Christmas meeting at the National Stadium and, at some point, the cameraman zoomed in from a place that was more or less empty, which then opened up and showed the people. This woman thought that was wrong. She said there was a special perversity to showing that empty space. But there was none of that. She had a hard time [el trabajo] to a journalist. And worse things happened, as journalists who obviously had a relationship with the DINA and the CNI. [los organismos de seguridad de Pinochet responsables de las violaciones a los derechos humanos]. They always had information that there had been an attack or a terrorist killed in such a confrontation.
Q. How did you feel when you saw that?
A. I always felt uncomfortable, terrible. Once, when the Special Report had already started [en 1984], they insisted that we all go to Pinochet’s birthday. I said no reason. Long before, one of the first things I had to do on the channel was interview Pinochet with Pedro Carcuro [conductor de deportes] and three more journalists. I was a jerk then, with a mustache, no tie. At that time it was said that we had to tighten our belts [gastar menos], and I asked Pinochet about that. I told him that with that the ones who always suffer are the workers or something like that. He was very upset. When he left, he squeezed my hand very hard and I squeezed it the same.
Q. Were you alone in that?
A. The next day Colonel Sepúlveda called me [director del canal] and he told me: “Santiago, General Pinochet called me. He is outraged. He says that I have a Marxist infiltrator.”
Q. Why did you endure being on the channel for 17 years of dictatorship?
A. I thought that this issue had to change, that it could not continue.
Q. When did a break begin to occur?
A. Already during the dictatorship we began to put some cuchufles in the Special Report. For example, with reports about Northern Ireland, where people were demanding greater equality of social and economic rights, and that it was not simple terrorism, but there were underlying reasons. And in South Africa I interviewed Desmond Tutu about the right to vote. That’s how you talked about democracy and the value of pluralism, but in other countries.
Q. What happened when democracy arrived?
A. We immediately felt that the world had changed for us. Freedom was complete, but we felt it since the NO won [a Pinochet] in the 1988 plebiscite, because it was no longer so easy for them to throw you out or put obstacles in your way to do decent journalism. Later, in democracy, we did human rights reports that were very significant, such as the murder of General Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires [cometido por la DINA en 1974]; the tortures in Venda Sexy [un centro de detención de la DINA]or Marcelo Araya’s interview [experiodista de Informe especial] a Michael Townley [agente de la DINA que asesinó en Washington en 1973 al excanciller de Allende Orlando Letelier]. We were all participating in that. There were so many things to tell.
Q. You said at the launch of the book Mucha Tele (…) that you were a kind of widower of the Concertación. Was it his best time?
A. I have no doubt that the 30 years, a large part of the Concertación, have been the best in Chile in economic growth, equality of possibilities, educational growth, public freedoms, cultural development and guarantees of personal rights. I am a lover of Chilean history and I don’t think anyone can dispute that they have been the best years. Not everything is perfect, because we still have many inequalities and low pensions, but compared to what existed before, and I’m not just talking about the dictatorship, but before, before and before, this is a completely renewed country.
Q. President Gabriel Boric’s generation, on the other hand, has questioned the 30 years that you defend.
A. I believe that they are in a learning experience of what they can and cannot do with power. This president may have many mistakes, but also many positive elements, such as a special sensitivity. He is a personality that we are going to have for the next 30 or 40 years on the front line anyway. But what is best for Chile is to have a model like that of the Concertación. I voted for this president, even though I didn’t like him. The other thing, Kast, the extreme right, was the viscous horror, reliving and considering that what happened in another period was positive. There are still people who vindicate Pinochet, the heavy hand of the regime and the violence. These are people who simply did not understand that we are in this option that, in my opinion, is linked to the great trends of the West: a democratic West, of the European economic community and even of NATO.
Q. You are 77 years old. Why do you continue reporting?
A. This profession is the most fascinating in the world, and if it is associated with travel, as the Russian writer Ivan Bunin said, there are three fundamental things in life: love, a job in which you feel happy, and travel. If you can do that, say and do important things, like denouncing corruption, we achieve it.
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2024-01-29 07:44:12
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