September 24, 2020 85
“Politics are quicksand in this coun-
try,” Bruno Bozzetto had said. “Hon-
est people may want to enter politics,
but few survive.” That is what the poet
Adriano Sansa no doubt felt when he
ran for mayor of Genoa in 1993 as the
center- left candidate, mandated to
apply a pair of mani pulite to the city at
the height of tangentopoli. He won, but
he lasted a single term in the port city
that has since drawn critical attention
over congestion on its economically
crucial freeway system; this August
marked the second anniversary of the
collapse of a section of a bridge over a
residential area and subsequent revela-
tions of corruption in its construction.
(A new bridge was opened two weeks
before the anniversary.)
Now Sansa’s son, the journalist and
short- story writer Ferruccio Sansa, is
running for governor of the Liguria
region. It seems incredible that a man
who has spent his career exposing cor-
ruption, not least in Liguria, could con-
template office, never mind achieve it.
Among Sansa’s investigative books is
Il Partito Del Cemento (The Cement
Party) about mafia construction in Li-
guria. But today Sansa is challenging
the right- wing incumbent, Giovanni
Toti, on a reformist, anticorruption, en-
vironmentalist, post- Covid manifesto.
The outcome in Liguria will be a na-
tional barometer. “I will not do what
Salvini does: just tell people what they
want to hear,” Sansa told me.People must believe what I say,
even if they don’t agree. I propose
that we need a regional economy
free of mafia and corruption; we
need to stop pav i ng ou r shores w ith
concrete and work instead with
construction companies to build a
peripheral road system that serves
the region and doesn’t collapse,
and invest in the older suburbs.“At another level,” he continued, “all
this has to happen within a Euro-
pean framework. Not only around the
wisdom of Northern Europe, but also
the culture of the southern coun-tries. Europe cannot be greater Ger-
many; the Mediterranean is important
again.”
The Italians have always been in-
novative and resourceful. Theirs is a
country of the delightful quotidian en-
counter, the random chat with people
who are mostly curious, funny, open
to opportunity. “The Italians are cre-
ative,” Mayor Sala told me, “but much of
the initiative disappears into disorgani-
zation.” Italy, said Nando Dalla Chiesa
in conversation, “is torn between its
creative spirit and the bureaucracy; we
need to liberate the energy that exists
rather than the bureaucracy forever
neutralizing it.” The last attempt to
change Italy with that kind of language,
tangentopoli, was rejected by the elec-
torate in favor of Berlusconi. Then, the
impetus for change was judicial. Now, it
is moral and economic, as Italy emerges
from the trauma of the pandemic. It
might be optimistic for people like
these to expect Covid- 19 to propel the
changes they urge, but their aspirations
have a singularly Italian cogency, and itwould be cynical not to pay attention to
them.
In Milan, a symbolic renaissance, at
least: the reopening of La Scala. The
audience arrived for the series of four
recitals in July like a family reunion of
educated Milanese and the less well-
off but often more expert loggionisti,
regulars with cheaper seats in the high-
est galleries. Ushers wore plastic face
screens as well as the ceremonial chain
of Milan around their necks. There were
six empty seats between each occupied
seat or pair of seats; the piano keys were
disinfected between accompanists. The
opening aria—from Verdi’s A Masked
Ball—evoked “the last night of our
love,” a sentiment lost on no one. As
the final notes of the closing piece—the
love duet from act 1 of Otello—echoed
around the house, a charged silence
fell, made of both respect and unease,
before a ripple, then wave, of applause,
into which someone called, “VIVA
VERDI!”—a salute to the composer,
but also the cry of Italy reborn. Q
—Rome, August 27, 2020LETTERS
APPROPRIATE
APPROPRIATION?
To the Editors:
I was grateful for Esther Allen’s review of
my novel The Gringa [NYR, July 23], which
raises a number of ethical questions that
were major concerns of mine in writing
the book. That she comes to different con-
clusions is, of course, her prerogative, but
her propensity for smears-by-association
undermines the important discussions her
review might otherwise have raised. Her
invocation, for example, of American Dirt,
surely the most despised novel of the past
many years, without elaborating on what
The Gringa does or doesn’t have to do with
it, serves more as insinuation than criticism,
an easy way to discredit The Gringa with-
out actually analyzing it. In the same way,
she condemns a number of writers who
have written about other countries without
ever having visited those countries, clearly
intending for readers to see me as one of
them. Why she would make that assump-
tion is for her to know, but a responsible re-
viewer might at least have inquired. While
having spent several years in Peru does not
in any way make me an expert, Allen’s in-
sinuation that I’m entirely ignorant of the
country is both inaccurate and dishonest.
More centrally, I was surprised that she
was so offended by the characterization of
Leonora Gelb (whom Allen calls an “effigy”
of Lori Berenson, which seems to be her
synonym for “fictional version”). I’m will-
ing to believe my attempts at evenhanded-
ness fell short, but Allen seems strangely
placid about the allegations against Beren-
son—who arrived in a foreign country and
quickly mixed herself up with armed revolu-
tionaries—and all but insists that Berenson’s
personal suffering is of greater concern than
the misery and trauma her associates visited
upon the people of Peru. Allen’s reminder
that the Movimiento Revolucionário Túpac
Amaru (MRTA), upon which the fictional
Cuarta Filosofía is based, accounted for
only 1.5 percent of the 70,000 deaths in Pe-
ru’s dirty war (my emphasis) is shockingly
breezy—by my math, that’s still over one
thousand dead bodies, and it’s hard to un-
derstand how anyone would present such a
history uncritically. Perhaps Allen, a scholar
and translator of Cuban revolutionaries, felt
that the MRTA’s professed Guevarist ideol-
ogy exempts them from criticism, coming as
it does rather close to her own sympathies.
In this light, her review begins to seem
more like an impassioned defense of the
MRTA and Lori Berenson than a discussion
of a novel and its fictional characters.
Maybe that’s why she is so upset at the
thought that readers might confuse the CF/
MRTA with the far less palatable Shining
Path—and why she alleges, again without
support, that I’ve somehow tried to fool
readers into this conflation. Her proof of
this is that the name I chose for the orga-
nization (“Cuarta Filosofía”) is “resonant”
of Sendero Luminoso. I hear no such reso-
nance—but more importantly, the novel re-
peatedly, firmly, and explicitly distinguishes
the Cuarta Filosofía from the Shining Path,
beginning on page 31 with a lengthy com-
parison of the two groups that starts, “The
Cuarta Filosofía was not the Shining Path”
(!), and including a pivotal moment of dis-
illusionment when Leonora discovers that
one of her comrades used to be in the Shin-
ing Path, indicating the low regard in which
the characters hold that group. That Allen
didn’t have the inclination (or space) to
discuss any of this is fine—but if you aren’t
going to cite the glaringly exculpatory evi-
dence, it’s at best irresponsible to make the
accusation, and at worst it’s bad faith.
But it’s Allen’s last flourish, in which she
somehow contrives to align The Gringa
with right-wing thought or even Trump-
ism, that’s the real head-scratcher. Here is
a writer who clearly admires Lori Beren-
son, to the point of ignoring or excusing
her actions in Peru; a writer who spends no
time asking what a Peruvian might have felt
upon seeing a privileged white foreigner
screaming on television about the need for
violent revolution, nor interests herself in
the sections of The Gringa where I delve
into exactly what Peruvians felt about it;
who seems to feel that an American who
gets involved with armed militants in a de-
veloping country is owed more of our sym-
pathy than the citizens of that country—ac-
cusing me of an America First attitude?
The history of US interventions in Latin
America goes back more than a cen-
tury, from the Spanish- American War up
through this May, when a group of mer-
cenaries based in Florida tried to stage a
coup against Venezuelan president Nicolás
Maduro. It stems from the same arrogance,
self-righteousness, and racism that led to
such imperialist atrocities as the Vietnam
War and George W. Bush’s genocidal at-
tempts to “export democracy” to the Arabworld. Whether her politics were leftist or
rightist, whether she “meant well” or not,
Berenson’s alleged actions in Peru occur in
this historical context and as such are more
than fair game for investigation. To de-
clare such investigation off limits, as Allen
does, is to assert that Americans are above
the law and may act as they please in other
countries with no regard for those countries’
histories or cultures, or the lives of their
people. I can’t imagine any line of thought
more in keeping with Trumpism than that.Andrew Altschul
Fort Collins, ColoradoEsther Allen replies:In 2002, California congresswoman Maxine
Waters read the following statement into
the Congressional Record:I am outraged and appalled by the
continuing incarceration of Lori Ber-
enson on charges of collaborating with
terrorists in Peru. Lori Berenson is not
a terrorist, nor has she ever collabo-
rated with terrorists.... She has never
had a trial that respected her rights or
international standards of fairness and
due process. Not only has Lori never
wavered in her insistence that she is
innocent of the charges against her,
she was charged under the antiterrorist
laws that the Inter- American Commis-
sion [on Human Rights] has deemed
unacceptable.Two years earlier, Congressman John Jo-
seph Moakley of Massachusetts also placed
Berenson’s case in the Record:As a result of a conviction by a secret
military tribunal, Lori has toiled in
a Peruvian jail for more than 4 years
now, and has endured severe health
effects as a result. Throughout this
ordeal, Lori has maintained her ab-
solute innocence. Numerous interna-
tional human rights organizations, the
United Nations, and the Organization
of American States have all called for
her release and pointed to widespread
corruption in the Peruvian courts.Among the other US elected officials who
expressed concern over Ms. Berenson’s
plight in the same forum and denounced
the injustices done to her are New York
representatives Carolyn B. Maloney andEdolphus Towns, and the late Minnesota
senator Paul Wellstone.
Five years after the Peruvian authori-
ties released Berenson from two decades
of imprisonment, Mr. Altschul’s novel The
Gringa has appropriated the broad outlines
of her life, erasing Berenson and replacing
her with an effigy, by which I mean a false,
right-wing cliché. This effigy is repeatedly
said to hate America and repeatedly con-
fesses to being a terrorist. The Gringa not
only abusively misrepresents Ms. Berenson,
prolonging and compounding a trauma that
should have ended decades ago, but also
places her at risk—a risk it would seem to
acknowledge by having its Lori Berenson
character killed off by a protester whose
imagination has been inflamed against her.
Mr. Altschul complains that I ignore the
Peruvian perspective and says he has delved
into “exactly” how Peruvians feel about
Lori Berenson. I possess no unique knowl-
edge of the Peruvian mind but would be in-
terested in reading analyses of his novel by
Peruvians. My essay does remind readers
that in 2009 Peru jailed Alberto Fujimori,
the former president who used Berenson’s
arrest and trials to generate outrage against
her for his political benefit. Fujimori re-
mains in jail, convicted of corruption and
human rights abuses.
By vilifying its Berenson character, The
Gringa seeks to legitimize its appropriation
and distortion of Ms. Berenson’s life story. In
his letter, Mr. Altschul doubles down on this
tactic and tries frantically to flood the zone
with outrage against a vulnerable middle-
aged woman who has endured and survived
decades of punishment. Mr. Altschul con-
cludes by accusing me of declaring “investi-
gation” off limits. In fact, my essay calls for
works of fiction to investigate, respect, and
be responsible to the historical realities they
purport to represent. In context, “investi-
gation” must be read as Mr. Altschul’s syn-
onym for writing and publishing whatever he
wants, however false and abusive it is.CORRUPTION AND COVID
IN MEXICOTo the Editors:In Enrique Krauze’s reply to the excellent
letter by Edward Blumenthal and James
Cohen [NYR, August 20], he gratuitously
libels me and my wife, Irma Sandoval.
He states that “an investigative journal-
ist has revealed that she and her husband,