After the coup d'état of September 11, 1973, the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, the general who led the assault on La Moneda in which the socialist president Salvador Allende was overthrown, began for Televisión Nacional (today TVN), the Chilean public channel , a new stage.
It had several military officers as directors in charge of an industry they knew nothing about.
Pinochet's then son-in-law, Hernán García Barzelatto, even headed the channel.
Thus, that new television, which then also included three other university channels, including 13, underwent a change.
But the greatest intervention was in state-run TVN, where censorship in the press department and the cult of the new de facto authorities was strongly felt.
For example, tells the recently launched book
Mucha Tele: a choral history of TV in dictatorship (
Fund for Economic Culture 2023), by journalists Rafael Valle (Valparaíso, 53 years old) and Marcelo Contreras (Valparaíso, 51 years old), Lucía Hiriart de Pinochet, the First Lady, had a reporter assigned to her daily activities on
60 Minutes
.
Behind her back, the news program was called
The Lucy Show.
Marcelo Contreras and Rafael Valle, authors of 'Mucha tele: a choral history of TV in dictatorship'.Sofía Yanjarí
“Pinochet's Lucía Hiriart appeared in everything,” says journalist Bernardo de la Maza in the book, one of the 96 interviewed by Valle and Contreras, who was already on TVN before the coup and went to Channel 13 in 1976. He remembers that on one occasion, in the middle of a microphone test, he said: “This is
60 Minutes
, the most lying news program on Chilean television,” a joking but at the same time very serious phrase that almost cost him his job. .
Then, an announcer worked on the channel who was a relative of Manuel Contreras, the director of DINA, Pinochet's secret police.
Also, the sports journalist and host of TVN, Pedro Carcuro, says in the book: “One day they asked those of us who worked at the channel to go to a Pinochet birthday party on Presidente Errázuriz Street, where the commander's house was in army chief.
“We had to go.”
The agent and the star
Valle and Contreras conducted the interviews between 2018 and 2023, and launched the book on Thursday, in Santiago.
It was presented by the actress Malucha Pinto, who in the 80s was one of the protagonists of
Los Eguiguren
, a humor space within
Sábados Gigantes
, the program with the highest audience in Chile, on Channel 13, hosted by Mario Kretuzberger, Don Francisco, one of those interviewed for
Mucha Tele
.
In addition, the text was presented by Santiago Pavlovic, a TVN journalist from before the coup and until today, and Álvaro Díaz, one of the creators of
31 Minutos
and who wrote the prologue.
Díaz said in the presentation that the television of the dictatorship was “at a midpoint, between naivety and evil.
And that middle point is called banality.”
A scene that illustrates this “middle point” is recounted with ease in
Mucha Tele
by Sergio Riesenberg, a well-known former director of TVN.
He was at the head of
Sabor Latino
, a program that started in 1982, hosted by Antonio Vodanovic, and that brought dozens of vedettes to the television set, including the Spanish Maripepa Nieto.
There are several interviewees, including the Chilean singer Luis Jara and the producer Tita Colodro, in addition to Riesenberg, who remember, sitting in the audience, the former operational head of the National Information Center (CNI), Álvaro Corbalán, currently imprisoned in the prison of Punta Peuco for human rights violations and who they say was Nieto's partner.
A television in Chile, in 2003, broadcast images of the assault on La Moneda in 1973. Laurent PETERS (Getty Images)
Sergio Riesenberg says on
Mucha Tele:
“To win over Maripepa, Corbalán offered her the Viña Festival, and I didn't even know him.
He approaches me: 'Do you know who I am?'
'I have no idea,' I replied.
'I'm the operational chief, I don't know what...'.
'Old man,' I reply, 'she has nothing to do in Viña.'
He started threatening me and he complied.
I had a terrible time.
“The episode with Corbalán was very violent.”
The “goals” to the regime
Contreras and Valle tell EL PAÍS that Pinochet's seizure of power had immediate consequences on Chilean television.
Unlike the Unidad Popular, the State stopped providing financing to the channels.
“The neoliberalism imposed by the dictatorship decided that the television industry had to generate its own income via advertising, getting rid of the state contribution (...).
The
spots
became an integral part of the television schedule,” the book says.
The authors of
Mucha Tele
are part of a generation that grew up with programs such as the
Festival de la Una
, the humorous
Jappening con Ja
or
Sábados Gigantes
, among many others, also in the children's genre.
But, Contreras emphasizes that, when undertaking the book, “our motive was not to romanticize a period of television.”
“There is a fact that was very basic, and that is that that television, programmatically, was very diverse, which contrasts with the thematic jibarization that exists today in Chile, restricted to the information area, to morning shows and to channels that can make teleseries.
The paradox is that, with Pinochet, there was more programmatic freedom, excepting the information area.”
They remember that in that mix there were programs “for children, like us;
youthful, as we were in the 80s;
for housewives, who later evolved into morning meals, and for the man who came home tired and had
Latin Flavor.
“There was surprising diversity considering we were under a dictatorship.”
“There was a lot of trial and error,” they point out.
They even remember that cultural programs flourished on various channels, such as
Creaciones
,
Teleduc,
on Channel 13
,
or the
Earth in which we live.
Likewise, they remember that the period also featured “some great goals.
If there was a singer who was not inclined to the regime, they managed to insert him.
Or in the dramatic areas, on TVN, the main villain was Luis Alarcón, a recognized leftist actor.
“This shows that in this industry there were many cracks and many more grays as well.”
The cover of the book 'Mucha tele'.Sofía Yanjarí
Thus, the journalists say that in their investigation they were demolishing myths and prejudices.
Among them, that the dictatorship “had a master plan for how to dominate the masses through the screen.
There was little of that, except in the information field, with super ugly control especially on TVN.
But, in the rest of the areas, the military had no competence.
“They had no alternative but to trust, in quotes, those who were working on the channel.”
Valle adds: “There was no strategy that said something like 'so that people don't think, we are going to invent
Jappening with Ja'.
That was not so.
The Jappening
people
have had to bear a very unfair poster.
They were guys who met on a previous show,
Dingolondango
.
And then they sat down at a soda fountain to invent a program that also made fun of TV and they offered it to TVN.
And TVN, after the success they had, even throws them out.”
An exoneration was after an invitation to an elegant French restaurant in Santiago, which included as a gift to the cast a glass ashtray with the TVN logo.
At dessert, Gloria Benavides relates in the book, García Barzelatto told them: "'I want to thank you for everything you have given for humor in Chile, an iconic program, but this is as far as we have come.'
It was like The Last Supper, but like The Last Lunch.
"We couldn't believe it."
Maitén Montenegro, dancer, singer and comedian, like Benavides, adds: “It seemed like a
Jappening
sketch .”
About this “unfair cartel” to which Valle refers, Fernando Alarcón, also part of the elected, spoke in the book: “Every time they ask me: 'Were you Pinochet's circus?', I say: 'I studied journalism, I They taught that when you want to ask a question you have to inform yourself and bring some
background
.
The Jappening was not 'Pinochet's circus';
In his time there was also La Madrastra [a successful TV series on Channel 13 in 1981], Sábados Gigantes, Teletón, Festival de Viña, Los bochincheros, Marcelo con Cachureos.
Why does
Jappening
have to be just that?
There was everything!
The actors, who always claim to be left-wing, were there in the soap operas!”
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