This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text, while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. Send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] for more info. --------------56F166ADF21 GRANMA INTERNATIONAL 1997. ELECTRONIC EDITION. Havana, Cuba =20 BY MARELYS VALENCIA ALMEIDA (Granma International staff writer) =20 GLADYS Mar=EDn is a readily approachable woman, in spite of being one of the 100 most wanted persons in Chile 20 years ago. Her eyes are charismatic and generous, although with a strength that indicates defensiveness. =20 Perhaps it was that strength that helped her in the hardest moments, after Allende was killed in the coup d'=E9tat in 1973, when she was the Communist Youth leader. She had to live in hiding until she managed to gain asylum in the Dutch embassy and subsequently leave the country. =20 Her exile was a short one. She returned in 1978, fatter, or rather disguised as an obese woman, with a Spanish accent and a Spanish passport, and the history of a coup-transformed homeland fixed in her mind, in case she was interrogated. =20 This was how the clandestine history of the woman then called "Isa" started. The dictatorship never found her. Luckily, now I can talk with Gladys. =20 What was it like, after having been so well-known in Chile, to return without anyone being able to recognize you? =20 Well, that happened to me as soon as I arrived at the house where I was going to stay. I was given the address of a woman who lived in an upper-class neighborhood, an area I'd never been in. She knew somebody was coming to stay, but had no idea that it was me. She was shocked. She gave me a drink of water and told me that I couldn't stay there. She'd recognized me. Then she took me to the house of a friend who lived with her six children in the same district. I don't have any hard feelings toward her, I understand her perfectly. If they'd discovered me, we'd both have been killed. =20 Did you stay there throughout the dictatorship? =20 No. I moved from place to place. I had to keep on the move in case they discovered my trail. The other woman, although she wasn't well-off and had the six children, was very welcoming. She's my great friend to this day. My new name at that time was Isabel, like Isabel Parra. But they called me Isa. =20 Later I left the country again. I was in Cuba in 1980, and then in the Soviet Union, where the leadership of the Communist Party of Chile was in exile. In fact, I left Chile two or three times, undercover. =20 And were they ever close to discovering you? =20 I had a few scares, although what I was really frightened of was not being in prison, but that another political commission of the Party would be lost. Two had already disappeared. =20 On one occasion, we met in the house of a friend. Not long afterwards, some agents from the National Center of Intelligence (CNI) knocked on the door. We did not know it, but they were conducting a raid in the area. We immediately hid the papers under the furniture. Luckily, the woman who owned the house was a corporate lawyer and she told the CNI that we were in a law office work meeting. We were always very careful. That's why we didn't get caught. =20 Nonetheless, after the dictatorship, last year to be exact, weren't you arrested for verbally attacking Pinochet in a speech? =20 Yes. It was my September 11 speech in honor of all of those who fell in Chile. Pinochet had stated that we were responsible for the politics of popular rebellion. So, I took advantage of the speech to inform him that we weren't afraid to show our faces and that he was the one really responsible for everything that happened. I called him a psychopath and a coward. He accused me of defamation. In fact, I was held for about six days. They released me because of the pressure of national and international public opinion. Moreover, that was the time of the Ibero-American Summit of heads of state and I think my situation was embarrassing for them. Pinochet decided to withdraw his charge. =20 In the new circumstances, has the Communist Party's discourse changed? What's the current situation? =20 Our discourse has been enriched. We've used the experience of what happened in Eastern Europe, our periods of living in exile; we've also incorporated an ecologist policy and all the cultural traditions of our people. The essence of our Party continues to be the same. =20 Now, I'm a candidate for senator for our group in the December elections. And we have a chance. We're the second largest force in the United Federation of Chilean Workers; the first in the country's most powerful trade union, the Professors Association, and also in the health union and in the Federation of Students of Chile. =20 You were invited to the 14th World Festival of Youth and Students. What did you think of that encounter? =20 It's a great lesson for the entire world. It demonstrated that young people want to change things, to participate. The story that youth don't want to participate in anything is an invention of neoliberalism, of the media transnationals to discourage hope. Youth has always been a force for change. =20 There was one central figure in this event: Che. And for me this was a call on us to maintain our responsibility with the times, to make a revolutionary transformation of society. =20 The festival was also a blow to imperialism, the blockade and the Helms-Burton Act. =20 Silvio Rodr=EDguez came to see you. Are you very close friends? Something very special happened to me with Silvio. We've been friends for more than 20 years, although we hardly ever see each other. When we met this time, it seemed like I'd seen him yesterday. And it's worth going out of your way to see friends that you love a lot. Shawgi Tell Graduate School of Education University at Buffalo [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------56F166ADF21--