Crushed Under The Brutal Boots Of The Fascist
Haresh Shah
Having launched in Germany, Italy and France, the next natural Western European country for us to explore should have been Spain. But as long as Generalissimo Francisco Franco was alive and ruled the land, there was no way in the hell anyone could even dream of publishing the local edition of Playboy. But almighty Franco had to die sooner or later. After all, he was already eighty years old when we launched in Germany. All we could do was to wait it out. Soon as Franco died in 1975, the wheels began to turn and we were approached by several interested Spanish publishers. Among them Editorial Zeta and Editorial Planeta. We launched the Spanish edition of Playboy with Planeta in November of 1978. Me ending up spending fair amount of time in the most charming city of Barcelona, which almost immediately usurped Munich and Amsterdam as being my two most loved cities on the European continent.
The fact that there were even interested and established publishers to partner with in itself was a big leap forward. You could almost feel the euphoria and can’t help but be carried away by the sudden snapping free of the tightly wound cords. But what you don’t see is the underlying fear and apprehension of the recent past, the anarchy of the fascism and that certain uncertain feeling that the beautiful dream could easily collapse like a house of cards. As I walked the streets of Barcelona, I could feel the big bald and angry face of Franco peering through every window, standing at every street corner. Fortunately, other than Franco’s ghost hovering over, King Juan Carlos I put the country on to the steady path of democracy.
A scant a year later, when Lee (Hall) first asked me to take a trip to Santiago, Chile, just having seen the stern faced images of then the absolute dictator of the country, Augusto Pinochet was enough to put the fear of God in you. The House of Spirit by Jose Donoso and Pablo Neruda’s Memoires helped ease the fear, but not the assassination of Orlando Letelier, his car blown up in the broad daylight under Pinochet’s Operation Condor, while he was in exile in Washington, DC. And the ruthless coup d’état that overthrew and assassinated the first democratically elected Marxist President Salvador Allende.
I had not yet been to the Latin American countries that formed the tail of the continent referred to as the southern cone or cono sur. Of those, Argentina and Chile. The best way to get there is via Los Angeles. I think Braniff still flies there non-stop from LA to Santiago, Lee informs me. Which seemed odd, considering that in theory, from Chicago you should be able to fly directly down south. Now they do, but then that’s how it was.
It’s an overnight flight so I don’t have much time to think about my arrival and what may await at the airport. During the flight, I can’t help but notice the stark inequality between the have and the have not’s. I am traveling in the first and seated in the eighth row, and believe there are a couple of rows still behind me. That’s almost twice as many first class seats as on most other routes. And each one of those seats are taken. This normally is not the case. While now almost all airlines offer the seats that stretch out into flat beds in their business and the first classes, at that time the seats offered were wider and tilted farther with a foot rest. Better than in back of the plane but not as comfortable and as good as being able to stretch out across an entire row of five seats with their arm rests flipped back, in the economy. The first class is packed solid not with the businessmen, but with the families including kaccha-baccha – kids and caboodle, making big ruckus. How am I supposed to even attempt to fall asleep?
So after dinner, I peek through the curtain in the back of the plane. The larger economy cabin is practically empty with many unoccupied rows. So I downgrade myself and claim one of the rows. I happily skip the breakfast for an extra hour of sleep.
Soon we’re landing in Santiago. I am fully prepared for the poker faced passport and immigration officers. What I am worried about the most are the issues of Playboy I am carrying in my baggage.
‘Don’t worry. Things have eased. Plus we’ll have “arranged” everything.’ They tell me.
It’s just a small airport – our large aircraft purring on the tarmac dwarfs the smattering of small regional and private flying machines. We step down the rolled-in stairs from the airplane’s open door. It’s summer in the southern hemisphere and outside it’s warm and sunny. It’s after one in the afternoon. Standing by the plane is Herman Valerius – the General Manager for Empresa Editora Gabriela Mistral’s small publishing division. They are the contrary’s largest printing company. I am welcomed like a visiting dignitary. Herman grabs my passport and the ticket and hands them over to the man standing next to him. Within minutes, he comes back with my passport duly stamped. My bags picked up and tucked into the back of the VW mini-bus waiting for us on the tarmac. And I am whisked away.
I am staying at the Sheraton. That night I am the guest of honor on the prime time variety entertainment TV show being broadcast live from the hotel’s poolside. I am not aware that the camera is focused on me until the host announces in Spanish and English: Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we have a very special guest in the audience, who has flown in this afternoon from Chicago. Please welcome Mr. Haresh Shah of one and the only Playboy magazine. Applause applause.
While I stand up and take a bow bathed in the glow of the flood light, I am not feeling that glow inside. Instead, what crosses my mind is that I am being beamed live and perhaps the mighty Augusto Pinochet himself is watching me standing there – and a sudden jolt of fear scurries through my nerve system. I imagine myself being put away in one of the torture chambers of the Pinochet machine for attempting to peddle pornography in his exclusive domain, never to be seen again, like thousands of desaparecidos – the disappeared ones. I have left behind at home, the woman who loves me and ten months old daughter.
But my fear is groundless. I spend very pleasant and productive eight days with the Chileans. We work on the first issue. I am treated to some of the best restaurants, bars and discotheques of the city. We would invariably end the evening at Red Pub, a cozy European style sidewalk café owned and run by Herman and his wife Veronika. I have a sumptuous dinner at La Estancia the second night of my stay with GM’s three owners: Juan Fernandez, Guillermo Tolosa and Rodolfo Letelier, and of course Herman. On the Saturday afternoon, we even take a quick ride to Viña del Mar for a bird’s eye view of their seaside wine region. It is during those few days that I get to know and begin to like and appreciate the Chilean wines.
By the time I leave Santiago, we have pretty much agreed on the contents and the layouts of the entire first issue – which is actually going to be just one shot test issue. Coffee table perfect bound book, printed on glossy heavier paper, containing the Playmates of the Years from 1969 through 1979, and it’s designed to be a Latin American product which would have an interview with Argentina’s star football coach Luis Menotti and include the works of the Chilean sculptor Juan Egenau Moore, Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, Bolivia’s Botero. The publication is scheduled for March 1980 to wait out the summer vacation in Chile and to give ourselves enough time to gather the material. I board the plane, feeling content and good about my trip. But the issue would be further delayed and would not come out until more than a year later, in June 1981.
Whatever the reason, I guess they mainly wanted to wait out the confirmation of the modest political liberation taking place which had helped boost Chile’s economy between 1976 to 1979. When the new constitution was announced in March 1981, did they feel more comfortable bringing out the magazine. Even so, Pinochet would remain in power until 1989 and therefore the ultimate law of the land. What finally nudged him out was the national referendum with 55% of population voting resounding NO to the 43% saying YES to his run for an extended term.
The first issue hand delivered to us by Herman Valerius and Rodolfo Letelier at Playboy International Publishing’s 1981 annual conference taking place at Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Proud as can be and glowing in their success of having sold out the first print run of 100,000 + copies within days. The second printing already ordered, they are there to justly join the expanding family of the world wide editions of Playboy.
Halfway through the conference, I have just introduced one of the editors to do his audio-visual presentation and have sat down, when I see my secretary Teresa (Velazquez) hurriedly coming down the aisle and scoot right next to me. I follow her out of the meeting room and into the lobby of the club. Standing there are Herman and Rodolfo, looking like as if they have been hit by a boulder.
‘Didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye to you, but I am sorry, we have to return to Santiago immediately. There is an emergency regarding the reprint of Playboy. We will call you as soon as we have dealt with the crisis.’ Says Herman while Rodolfo looks on nervously. Teresa has helped them re-book and the limo is waiting outside to take them to the O’Hare International Airport.
Two days later, I am told that while the plant awaited the distribution truck to pick up the second print run, instead a military truck shows up and hauls away the pallets of the freshly printed second run of the magazine. All 50,000 or so copies confiscated by the thugs of the regime. Playboy magazine’s Chilean edition, like its people disappears as suddenly as it had appeared and before it had a chance to grow. Nipped right in the bud.
But that wasn’t the end of it. Some years later when I saw Herman and Veronika on a visit to Chicago, he told me rest of the story. Not only did they confiscate the magazine, but also arrested and imprisoned the principal owner Juan Fernandez.
Following the referendum, Pinochet would step down as the President on March 11, 1990 when the democratically elected Patricio Aylwin took the office. Even so, Pinochet remained as the commander of the country’s armed forces until 1998 and beyond that become a senator-for-life. Later that year, while traveling in England, he was detained by the British authorities at the request of Spain and charged with the torture of Spanish citizens in Chile during his reign. When the British court ruled in 2000 that he was physically unfit to stand trial, he was allowed to go back to Chile just to be investigated by the Chilean authorities. He was stripped of his immunity from prosecution and was brought to trial for the human rights abuses in Chile. In 2002, Chilean Supreme Court upheld the British ruling that he was mentally incapable of defending himself. Disgraced, he died in 2006.
However, no one has since then dared bring out the Chilean edition of Playboy.
© Haresh Shah 2015
Illustration: Celia Rose Marks
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