Interview for BBC Mundo with Abraham Zamorano (transcript):
Why did you choose the story?
During the years when Amelia and I began to contemplate the idea, the e-mails we received from Venezuela were overwhelming. People could only talk about Chavez. Venezuelans who disagreed with him lived in constant anger. People would get upset if one would not respond in agreement and with the same intense tone. In many ways, we always received the same message: You’re living an American dream, this doesn’t matter to you.
High Treason was born partly from the need to respond to such an unfair statement, because immigration is a very difficult process that does not lead to oblivion or indifference. High Treason is also a contribution of great personal sacrifice to Venezuela. We feel we did our part in the best way we could.
Additionally, the same migration process created the need to understand ourselves and explain to our children where they come from and why we are here. So the novel was born from that need as well.
How is Hugo Chavez represented?
In Latin American literature, there is a considerable body of novels that speak of power by focusing on the characters that hold it. However, our interest was not the character of Chavez, but the emotional consequences that this character has produced in Venezuelans, both individually and collectively.
In High Treason Chavez is a presence, a shadow and most of the time, the nightmare of a group of characters or the hope of others. And more importantly, Chavez is the end of a long chain whose links are all Venezuelans, for in him our mistakes are condensed: from the most naive idealism to the blindest greed.
As Venezuelans, though still very young, our characters are like atoms from that equivocal history of corruption and high aspirations hatched at the expense of oil wealth.
How much is Chavez involved in the story?
It was I who insisted on avoiding Chavez as a main character in the story. Therefore, he participates very little. In fact he only appears twice. First he appears in abstract notes written by one of the characters. The notes make a parallel between Venezuela —represented as a famous Caracas building called Helicoide— and Dante's Inferno. Then he appears in the epilogue, where we use literally, one of his many absurd speeches. This one believe it or not, about his diarrhea attacks.
Does Chavez have potential as a literary character?
Chavez's persona, from his colorful behavior to his political actions has great literary potential. For us, Chavez has little to do with the dictators who have so far been fictionalized, since far from oppressing the people, he has offered them a fantasy world that they have assume as reality.
In literature, Chavez is a character from Magical Realism: any writer, even the most ingenious, would have to make a great effort to represent the extension of irrationality his mandate has spread inside and outside Venezuela.
