'Index' translates work of murdered Argentine writer

Freedom of expression magazine Index on Censorship has negotiated rights to translate a short story from Haroldo Conti, an Argentine writer who was "disappeared" by the state in the 1970s during the Argentine military dictatorship.

The story, never before read in English, is "Muerte de un hermano" ("A Brother’s Death"), which Index on Censorship is publishing with an introduction in its winter 2016 issue of the magazine published by SAGE. It has been translated by Jon Lindsay Miles, who translated Conti's 1962 novel Southeaster for And Other Stories in 2015 and is currently preparing a translation of Conti’s novel In Life for a 2018 release with Immigrant Press.

Conti won the Casa de las Américas Prize for his novel Mascaró el cazador ameri- cano (Mascaró, The American Hunter), a novel the censors reported "fosters the diffusion of ideologies, doctrines or political, economic or social systems that are Marxist, intending to abolish the principles held by our National Constitution”. He opened up his home in Buenos Aires as a place of refuge to other writers under threat of kidnap and murder and, after the military coup of 1976, he himself was arrested and tortured. 

Index on Censorship editor Rachael Jolley said: "This story we are publishing by the award-winning writer Haroldo Conti is poignant because it is about being attacked, and dying violently. Of course, we know now that Conti was arrested by the Argentine police and killed in this bloody period. He was murdered by the police during the terrible period of Argentinian history in the early 1970s. Some of the details of this horrific period are only just coming to light. 

"Details are now being released by the White House in one of Obama's last moves as president. Index is particularly honoured to be publishing this story by Conti, as the magazine covered this period of censorship and attacks on journalists, writers and activists in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1981, in an article for Index on Censorship magazine, Gabriel Garcia Marquez confirmed he had been told of the death of Conti, a friend of his. Conti had been picked up by the military police, beaten and dragged into a waiting car."