Transcript
>> HINOJOSA: The wars in Central
America have framed his life and
shaped his work as a writer.
In his latest book The Art of
Political Murder, he uncovers
the truth behind one of
Guatemala's most notorious
assassinations.
Award winning author Francisco
Goldman.
I'm Maria Hinojosa.
This is One on One.
Francisco Goldman, you're an
award-winning author and a
contributor to the New Yorker.
Welcome to the show.
>> GOLDMAN: It's very nice to be here.
>> HINOJOSA: So, we're talking
about some pretty serious stuff
here.
But it all kind of starts in an
interesting way for you.
You are this Guatemalan Jewish
kid growing up in the Northeast.
And in the late 1970s, you make
a decision, like a lot of kids,
which is to take a road trip.
And you take that road trip
right into Guatemala in a moment
of civil war, essentially.
>> GOLDMAN: Well, my father's family...
my father's from a Russian
Jewish immigrant background
family from here in Boston.
But my mother's family in
Guatemala is an old fashioned
Guatemalan Mestizo Catholic very
traditional Guatemalan family.
And I had spent a lot of time in
Guatemala as a child, the first
couple years of my life, almost
every summer, summer after
summer.
But then, as I become more and
more your typical American
teenage kind of kid, I become
sort of self-conscious about
that.
I want to fit in the way
Americans do.
And I sort of begin to stay away
from Guatemala, I guess.
I hadn't been down there
probably since sixth grade or
so.
And sure, then in college one
day with my friends, we didn't
really have anything to do that
summer.
And one of my friends had a new
Ford Mustang, and I said, "Let's
drive down to Guatemala."
And we did, you know?
And that would have been about
1976.
And...
>> HINOJOSA: When the political
situation was...
>> GOLDMAN: Well, the political
situation...
>> HINOJOSA: Was percolating.
>> GOLDMAN: ...was just percolating.
I remember the big... my big
moment of political intuition
was one night, late at night, we
were out just walking around
Guatemala City looking for
something to do.
And a VW thing stops in the
street to ask us if we know
where there's any party going
on.
And they were students from
Salvador.
And they were... there had just
been a huge massacre at the
university in Salvador.
And they had fled, because the
situation had heated up there
first.
And I remember they had the
strongest pot I'd ever smoked in
my life.
We got into the VW thing with
them.
>> HINOJOSA: And you're
like, "Wow, Guatemala."
>> GOLDMAN: And we drove around hearing
their stories, you know?
I had never met anybody before
who... you know, fleeing a
massacre, right?
And... but outside of that, that
summer was fairly innocent.
That summer was basically
hanging around with my girl
cousins, you know...
>> HINOJOSA: And then you go
back.
>> GOLDMAN: ...who were beautiful and had
lots of beautiful friends.
>> HINOJOSA: And then you go
back and you make an incredible
decision that really changes
your life.
Because at that point you decide
to go to the morgue.
>> GOLDMAN: This is when I go back the
second time.
I was just out of college, and I
knew I wanted to... I thought I
was going to apply to master of
fine arts writing programs.
And I was living in New York.
I didn't quite graduate yet.
And I was living in New York,
working as a bartender in
restaurants and all.
I just couldn't get the time.
And I said, "Oh, I know, my
family, you know, down in
Guatemala, we have this..." I
was so innocent.
I hardly used to read the
newspapers.
You know, this was about 1979.
And I know we have this little
chalet down in Guatemala on Lake
Amatitlan, which is not the
beautiful, spectacular lake.
Lake Amatitlan is the sort of
polluted little lake outside the
city.
But we had an old chalet there,
and I thought I can hole up
there and write and do the three
short stories I need to do to
submit to a writing program.
>> HINOJOSA: This was going to
be, like, your getaway.
>> GOLDMAN: It was my getaway.
And I get there, and my uncle is
like, "You're crazy.
You can't go live out by the
lake.
You know, there's been violence
there, you know, there's a war
going on in this country."
And so I live at my uncle's
house.
>> HINOJOSA: When he said that
to you, when your uncle said,
"Look, there's a war going on,"
did you understand?
>> GOLDMAN: Not really.
I began to understand.
It was fascinating, because I'm
living at my uncle's house,
working on my New York City love
stories, right?
They were the most apolitical...
>> HINOJOSA: Because you're a
New York City bartender who's
trying to figure out life as a
writer.
>> GOLDMAN: And meanwhile, yeah, you
know, you're picking up the
papers every day, and you're
beginning to see the codes,
right?
Because Guatemala was
basically... that happened to be
the most violent year for the
city, because that's the year we
know now in history that the
Guatemalan army intelligence
forces really cracked down on
the urban guerilla networks, the
student networks, and so forth.
And there's just dead bodies
turning up everywhere.
And they never identify in the
paper what happened.
So you're reading the papers,
and they're always saying, you
know, "He was last seen," you
know, et cetera, et cetera, "His
family last saw him, the mother
says he wasn't involved in
politics."
You know, always these little
code words, right?
And they'd say, you know, "Body
found."
Just an endless cascade of
bodies being found all over the
city, always described as
showing signs of torture--
(speaking Spanish)
A coup de grace in the head.
>> GOLDMAN: HOST: These are kids that are
basically your age at that
point.
>> GOLDMAN: My age.
>> HINOJOSA: 20, 21, 22, 23.
>> GOLDMAN: Sure.
And then one day we're at a
family cocktail party, right,
and this other girl, she's the
daughter of family friends,
she's at the public university,
and she's studying to be a
doctor, and she's telling me
about, like, part of their
medial school practice...
because it's the public
university, it's the free
university.
And they do their forensic
studies at the morgue.
And she says to me, "You have to
see what it's like in there.
Some mornings, you know, there's
bodies stacked up like firewood
outside, and you should see the
condition they're in."
And that's the moment where my
life changed, really.
That's the moment... because I
could so easily have gone, you
know, "No, I don't want to see
that," or... the journalist in
me opened up at that moment,
right?
And I said, "Yeah, okay, I'll go
see it."
And to get me in there, she was
so funny.
It was so innocent.
She put me in a medical robe.
I even had, like, a little
stethoscope around my neck.
You know, and she said, "Don't
say anything.
If anyone asks us anything I'll
just say... you know, I'll do
the talking."
And we go in, and sure enough,
it was like... you know, it was
like falling through a hole.
It's a moment where you looked
in and you saw what I saw.
And you said, "Who could have
done this to anybody?"
>> HINOJOSA: And you used that
kind of metaphor.
You say that you felt like you
were falling into a hole, and it
was a hole that basically
enveloped you.
I mean, those images of seeing
young men, young women your age,
more or less... tell me what you
saw.
>> GOLDMAN: Yeah, I just remember very
specifically the men, young men,
laid out in these concrete
slabs.
And they'd been mutilated, you
know?
And the way they used to torture
people back then, they used to
torture... as it still is now in
the narco wars with the
beheadings and everything, they
used bodies to send messages,
and to intimidate.
It's theater of terror.
Of course, to someone like me to
see something like that, who'd
grown up mostly here in the
suburbs of Massachusetts, it
was... who could be so vile?
Who and why, and who are these
people, and why do they do it,
and what's behind all of this?
And this whole series of
questions opened up.
And I would never be... you
know, I walked into that room in
some ways an innocent American
kid from a, you know, split
immigrant family, and I walked
out of that room already
contaminated, in a certain
sense, by another sort of
reality that I was going to have
to begin to understand.
There was no way I could just
forget about it.
>> HINOJOSA: You could have.
>> GOLDMAN: Yes, but then I wouldn't be
me, right?
So it was a real... it was the
beginning of an... it was the
beginning of my real, true
education.
Because what happened is, you
know, I wrote my stories, and I
sent them out from Guatemala to
the MFA programs, and I also
sent some to Esquire magazine.
And I got into the MFA programs,
but bizarrely, miraculously,
Esquire magazine bought two of
them.
>> HINOJOSA: That's kind of...
>> GOLDMAN: And then I said, "Wow, I'm a
writer now."
And they asked me if I wanted to
do nonfiction for the magazine.
And I remember to this day they
proposed that if I wanted to go
and write about sherpas in
Nepal.
And I said, "No, I want to go
back and write about what's
going on in Guatemala."
>> HINOJOSA: And that's
surprising that they said yes,
because, you know, when you
think back about Central America
and its relationship to the
United States and the wars, a
lot of people know about
Nicaragua and the Sandinistas
and the Contras, and a lot of
people know about what happened
in El Salvador, maybe, you know,
not as deeply.
But there's not a lot of detail
about what happened in
Guatemala.
>> GOLDMAN: Yeah.
>> HINOJOSA: I mean, if you
know, you know that there was a
genocide.
>> GOLDMAN: There was a genocide.
It was by far the most... it was
the most violent, repressive
country, really that Latin
America has seen since the
conquest.
>> HINOJOSA: And the longest
civil war, right?
>> GOLDMAN: The longest civil war,
36-year civil war.
Why didn't it get the attention?
It didn't get the attention that
Nicaragua and El Salvador got,
because the guerillas were never
a threat to win.
The army basically wiped out the
urban networks, I guess in the
late '70s.
The very brutal, notorious
scorched earth campaign in the
early '80s essentially locked up
the country militarily.
And then a whole other process
of kind of military
consolidation, right, and
transition to so-called
democracy goes on.
Whereas obviously Nicaragua is
under control of the
Sandinistas, Salvador was very
contested, Honduras was the base
camp for the Contras going into
Nicaragua.
So all those countries tended to
be more part of the US policy
arguments, right?
>> HINOJOSA: So let's fast
forward a few years.
You become a successful writer,
your books do amazingly well,
and they're all fiction.
And then you decide, basically,
to insert yourself into a very
political reality.
And that's... the name of the
book is The Art of the Political
Murder.
>> GOLDMAN: The Art of Political Murder,
yeah.
>> HINOJOSA: The Art of
Political Murder.
Set up the story behind The Art
of Political Murder.
>> GOLDMAN: Well, you know, so I
basically... you know, because
that Esquire article sends me
into 11 years almost of working,
supporting myself as a freelance
journalist for magazines down in
Central America, the last story
I do is the Sandinista
elections, I think in '91.
And then I basically quit
journalism, and I just am burnt
out, I'm sick of Central
America, I'm sick of political
violence.
I go and, you know, immerse
myself in fiction.
Divine Husband, which is almost
like... my friends tease me, and
they call it Little Women in the
Tropics.
It's almost like a girly book,
you know?
It's all about these girls, and
Jose Marti, and it was, like
cleansing myself.
>> HINOJOSA: A whole other side
of Jose Marti, by the way.
If you think you know Jose
Marti, you don't.
It was amazing.
>> GOLDMAN: And this is how I get into
The Art of Political Murder.
I knew that Divine Husband had
to open in a convent.
And I wanted to do research
inside the Guatemalan church.
In 1998, when Bishop Gerardi,
the head of the Guatemalan Human
Rights Office, after he presides
over the publishing of an
unprecedented, taboo-shattering
human rights report on the
war...
>> HINOJOSA: And this is based
in the church.
>> GOLDMAN: The church sponsored...
>> HINOJOSA: The church is
saying, "We're going to open up
this Pandora's box about
political violence."
>> GOLDMAN: "And we're going to defy the
amnesty."
See, because when the
Guatemalan... the Guatemalan
army basically could dictate...
the UN Peace Accords basically
dictates the terms of the peace
agreement, right?
And among the things that they
insist on is that there's going
to be an amnesty.
In other words, of the 200,000
or more murdered civilians in
the war, the vast majority of
them killed in the 1980s...
>> HINOJOSA: 200,000 people.
>> GOLDMAN: Civilians killed.
They say there can be no
criminal prosecutions or
investigations, right, of these
countless tens of thousands of
homicides.
It was basically one of those
horrendous... you know, the
20th, late 20th... the 20th
century invention, almost of
making the civilian population
bear the brunt of the
fatalities, you know, in a war
against insurgency.
That was taken to a real extreme
in Guatemala for so many
reasons, part of them I'm sure,
you know, a kind of genocidal
rage and desire to sort of
cleanse the country of these
sort of...
>> HINOJOSA: So the Catholic
church, through Gerardi...
>> GOLDMAN: Yeah.
>> HINOJOSA: ...inserts themself
here.
>> GOLDMAN: Well, they say, "We didn't
sign the peace accords.
The church is not a..." and, you
know, the UN peace accords had
said there could be a truth
commission, but that their
report supposedly would be
forbidden from naming names and
assigning blame.
So he thought that the UN report
was going to be neutered.
And he also worried that the UN,
when they went in, would be more
or less, as it was, in fact,
staffed by, you know, young
North Americans out of law
school, and Europeans, and that
to break... they would never be
able to penetrate the fear and
silence that was up in the
highlands.
As you just said, people were
isolated not just by language,
because they mostly speak Mayan
languages, but also by
geography, by history, by... and
just this tremendous air of
trauma.
>> HINOJOSA: And distrust.
>> GOLDMAN: And distrust.
>> HINOJOSA: Total distrust.
>> GOLDMAN: And the church... if there's
any institution in Guatemala
that people trust, it's the
church.
Because people know who's in
their local parish and so forth.
And so he... basically the way
he did this report, it was
phenomenal.
They trained... started off with
700 volunteers from the grass
roots, from local parishes, and
basically trained them how to
use handheld tape recorders, and
a methodology of what sort of
questions to ask, and sent these
people up into the villages,
where nobody had ever told their
stories before.
>> HINOJOSA: And the stories
that you relate in the book, The
Art of Political Murder, of
these people talking about what
happened to their sons and their
daughters and the
disappearances... so Gerardi
puts out this report, which is
huge.
Two days later...
>> GOLDMAN: He's murdered.
>> HINOJOSA: He's murdered.
>> GOLDMAN: Murdered.
>> HINOJOSA: Give our viewers
just a context of why this
Gerardi murder is so
historically important.
>> GOLDMAN: The thing is I basically
wrote this book almost... I
lived it alongside these guys.
But basically this book... this
should have been a slam dunk for
the army.
It should have been so easy for
them to create this false case
that Gerardi died, you know, in
a homosexual murder, and smear
the church and so forth, right?
Young... a group of young people
from the church itself,
civilians, start investigating
on their own in a long process
that sees corrupt prosecutors,
corrupt judges, eventually
pushed aside by honest people.
You get a kind of perfect storm,
really, of unprecedentedly
committed, brilliant young
people fighting this case, with
the help... very important,
because if these people hadn't
been there they would have been
killed-- the United Nations
Peacekeeping Commission.
>> HINOJOSA: But it's
interesting that these young
people actually... again, they
knew what had happened in
Guatemala.
They were putting their lives on
the line, and yet they were
prepared.
I mean, tremendous courage.
>> GOLDMAN: This was an extraordinarily
important... the courage in this
case is unbelievable-- the
courage, the resourcefulness,
the intelligence, the
meticulousness, the patience,
it's a classic legal case.
And I try to tell the story of
how it was investigated, the
problems they met, the
mysteries.
Because the case still has
mysteries, right?
And how it led to this
unprecedented moment when, for
the first time in Guatemalan
history, still for the only time
in Guatemalan history, military
officers were convicted and sent
to prison for having taken part
in a state-sponsored political
execution,.
>> HINOJOSA: Amazing.
What did this... the book and
the reality of the Gerardi case,
how did it change Guatemala?
>> GOLDMAN: Well, to say it changed
Guatemala would be a little
grand.
But it definitely had incredible
impact.
Now, after the book comes out,
I'm sort of in a daze.
I don't really realize... my
wife has died.
I don't really realize what's
going on.
But I begin to hear reports that
the book is having a huge impact
in the election campaign.
Because the book does, in fact,
suggest that General Otto Perez
Molina, who was the leading
right wing candidate for
president, had a role.
In fact, the main witness in the
case says he has a role.
And I tried to provide some
supporting evidence for that, of
which now, since the book's come
out, I have a lot more.
And this became a big factor in
the campaign.
>> HINOJOSA: Well, he's running
for president, right?
>> GOLDMAN: Yeah.
>> HINOJOSA: The man who's
implicated.
>> GOLDMAN: And a lot of people say...
and, you know, it was... whether
scrupulously or not, the
opposition certainly used the
book.
And a lot of stuff got out
there, and a lot of people say
it hurt his campaign.
Most importantly for me... and
this is... I don't want to go on
too long about this, because
it's complicated.
But a big part of the book talks
about how after the verdicts in
2001, so much was done.
Because this verdict, this
unprecedented achieving of
justice, threatened so many
people in Guatemala if the case
went forward.
So much depends in impunity
staying intact.
And they tried to just, you
know, smear everybody involved,
and create this... confuse
everybody about what had
happened.
And the book, I think, restored
the true story of the Gerardi
case to Guatemala, and it's
recognized as having done that
in Guatemala now.
And, I mean, I'm really proud of
the fact that it's been three
years since that book came out.
And in terms of its... for all
the enemies I have in Guatemala
in the media and, you know, the
powerful media controlled by
people who are on the side of
the murderers, essentially, they
haven't been able to find one
detail that's wrong, that I've
had to retract in my recounting
of the case itself.
>> HINOJOSA: The importance of
fact-based reporting is right
there.
So I want to talk just as we end
about something that happened in
your life that was really
extraordinary.
You... you later in life find a
woman to fall in love with, and
you fall deeply in love with
Aura Estrada.
>> GOLDMAN: Yeah.
>> HINOJOSA: And just a few
years after you're together...
>> GOLDMAN: Well, we were together five
years.
>> HINOJOSA: Five years.
>> GOLDMAN: And no, she was... you know,
she's beyond the love of my
life.
We were... I think I was... you
know, I don't know how to say it
except to say, you know, we were
married two years.
We were married in 2005.
And I felt... you know, as a
husband, and she as a wife, I
think we were everything that a
husband and wife are supposed to
be to each other, you know?
She was absolutely every... she
was a genius.
>> HINOJOSA: She was a writer.
>> GOLDMAN: She was 20 years younger than
me, as you know.
She was a young writer.
She was studying for her Ph.D.
at Columbia University.
But she deeply wanted to write.
She did this incredibly
beautiful act of rebellion the
last year of her life, because
it put all her scholarships
at Columbia at risk, and she
applied in secret to the Hunter
MFA program.
>> HINOJOSA: Because she really
wanted to be a fiction writer.
>> GOLDMAN: She was desperate to write
fiction.
And...
>> HINOJOSA: And one of the
things that happened with Aura
was that she was this brilliant
writer, but that she didn't
believe it.
I mean, you kind of lived what
so many Latinas go through, what
so many women go through, which
is, "Do I have a voice, can I
write, can I trust this, am I
good enough?"
>> GOLDMAN: Yeah, I mean, you know, I've
seen this not just in Latin
America.
I teach creative writing
classes.
And in the past I've sometimes
seen, you know, all the work I
have to do to get the female
students in the class to speak
up, while the kind of boys sit
there and sort of dominate with
their... you know, it's funny
with their raunchy jokes and
everything.
But often the most talented
girls in the class, they'll sit
over there in a row, they're
doing the best writing, and
they're terrified, right?
And it's somehow... I don't know
why it is, but so often, like
every... so many young male
students who decide they want to
write think they're geniuses the
minute they write, like, their
first sentence.
And fiction...
>> HINOJOSA: I've never
experienced that, ever.
>> GOLDMAN: And the women, you know, are
just sometimes the most, you
know... something... are much
shyer about their voice, and
much more insecure about their
voice, and much more... and it's
especially compounded, I think,
sometimes for Latin American
women, especially from a culture
like Mexico.
And so...
>> HINOJOSA: It's hard.
>> GOLDMAN: And then there's personal
reasons, right?
And so Aura was the most... Aura
was a much better writer than
me.
She was a genius, she really
was.
She was extraordinarily
talented.
And I would sit there, and
anytime I read a story I would
say, "Oh, Aura, this is so
good."
She'd say, "You're just saying
that, because you want me to...
because you love me."
And I'd go, "No!"
You know, so it was so fantastic
when she went to Hunter and got
validation from the people...
>> HINOJOSA: Let me ask you
about what you're doing in
Aura's legacy.
Because Aura passed away very
suddenly.
>> GOLDMAN: In a swimming accident.
>> HINOJOSA: In a swimming
accident that you don't really
talk a lot about, exactly what
happened in that accident.
>> GOLDMAN: It was a... we were body
surfing at a beach, Mazunte, and
there was... we... it was
just... you know, we had... we
had been waiting all winter and
spring for this two week
vacation.
And we'd rented a house, and,
you know, it was Aura, and her
cousin, Fabiola, and me.
And it was just the second day,
and it was this beautiful day,
the water was full of people,
and she caught a wave wrong.
And even then, you know, I
thought she was still going to
make it.
And we... you know, luckily
there was a lot of people on the
beach, and everyone tried to
help, and we put her... there
were no ambulances.
You know, you forget what the
infrastructure of a poor country
is-- "Get an ambulance!"
And there's no ambulance.
The closest ambulance is three
hours away.
>> HINOJOSA: Ah, dios mio, oh,
my...
>> GOLDMAN: And he had to put her in a...
there was a doctor on the beach,
and we put her on a surfboard
and got her into the back of an
SUV, drove her to the nearest
hospital, where they didn't even
have a respirator.
They had to use a hand thing.
I mean, it was such a journey.
12 hours later we get her to
this... we finally get her air
medivaced out to a hospital in
Mexico City.
The only... so at least her mom
got to see her one more time.
You know, and then she died the
next morning.
>> HINOJOSA: And you have
decided in her name to create an
amazing award, the first of its
kind, which is basically to give
financial support to young...
>> GOLDMAN: Yeah, the Aura Estrada Prize.
>> HINOJOSA: The Aura Estrada
Prize.
And it's basically to say to
young women who write in
Spanish...
>> GOLDMAN: Women 35 and under who write
in Spanish who live in Mexico or
the United States.
And you get... if you win, you
get $10,000, and you get
residencies in three writers'
colonies-- Ledig House, Santa
Maddalena in Italy, and Ucross
in Wyoming.
And we gave the first prize last
November.
We had the most extraordinary
fundraisers.
We were so lucky at the last
fundraiser, because it was at
two weeks before the crash.
>> HINOJOSA: Mmm.
>> GOLDMAN: And in one night we raised
$80,000.
You know, we have enough to give
the prize now for... you know,
we need more.
>> HINOJOSA: Well, you know
what, Francisco?
What we can leave our viewers
with is that if they want to
learn more, they can go to
Auraestradaprize...
>> GOLDMAN: Auraestradaprize.org, yeah.
>> HINOJOSA: And we can read
your new book.
And the title of your new book
is?
>> GOLDMAN: Say Her Name.
>> HINOJOSA: Say Her Name.
And it's about your life with
Aura.
>> GOLDMAN: It's a novel, but it's about
Aura.
Yeah, that'll be...
>> HINOJOSA: Francisco, thank
you so much for opening your
heart to us here and in your
writing.
It means so much.
>> GOLDMAN: Thank you, Maria.
Thanks for having me.
>> HINOJOSA: Thank you.
>> GOLDMAN: Bye-bye.
>> HINOJOSA: Continue the
conversation at
wgbh.org/oneonone.
Captioned by
Media Access Group at WGBH
access.wgbh.org
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