photo © Lee Todd/Duke University Born in Argentina in 1942, Ariel Dorfman spent ten years as a child in New York, until his family was forced out of the United States by the anti-communist frenzy stirred by Joe McCarthy. The Dorfmans ended up in Chile, where Ariel spent his adolescence and youth, living through the Allende revolution and the subsequent resistance inside Chile, and abroad after the dictatorship that overthrew Allende in 1973. Accompanied by his wife Angélica, he wandered the globe as an exile, finally settling down in the United States, where he is now Walter Hines Emeritus Professor of Literature at Duke University. Dorfman’s acclaimed work, which includes the play and film “Death and the Maiden,” and the classic text about cultural imperialism, How to Read Donald Duck, covers almost every genre available (plays, novels, short stories, fiction, essays, journalism, opinion pieces, memoirs, and screenplays). His award-winning books have been published in more than fifty languages and his plays performed in over one hundred countries. He contributes regularly to major papers and magazines worldwide and has been active in the defense of human rights.

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS OF THE HIGH COMMISSION OF INQUIRY’S INVESTIGATION INTO THE TROUBLES OF THE COMPENSATION BUREAU

It is unusual for any High Commission of Inquiry to reveal some of its findings before a report has been completed, but its members have made an exception in this case. Given the overwhelming interest—and even alarm—provoked by the crisis besetting the Compensation Bureau, we thought it urgent to release the information we have thus far gathered.

As to a full account, it shall be emitted as soon as we are able to depose, for a second time, the outgoing Chairperson of the Bureau. The fact that she has, at this point, failed to appear for that second hearing despite our insistence, does not mean that we prejudge her. On the contrary, rather than starting this chronicle by laying out how she cunningly and deliberately concealed secret plans for the Lazarus project, we have taken pains to highlight her ground-breaking accomplishments, pointing out that any history of the Bureau must begin with her and, of course, with the glitch that she was instrumental in discovering.

As is well-known, when the faint, initial signals that something might be amiss on the far-flung speck called Earth were picked up by the surveillance machines ascribed to that sector of the Galaxy, she was the only one of several Overseers assigned to intermittently review that remote material who paid any attention to it. She was as busy as her colleagues, rotating between multiple constellations and receiving, as they did, only a minimal dribble of intel from the respective site, and yet she was disturbed by what she remarked: though humans, the latest species on that planet, had made their appearance as intended and at the appointed hour of evolution, this appearance had been accompanied by what seemed to be an unsettling tendency among some of them to enact violence upon their fellows. Less well-known is that when she brought up this potential problem to the other Overseers—all of whom, let it be noted, were superior to her in status—they arrogantly dismissed her reservations. Didn’t she see, they said, that humans were well on their way to an Edenic future on a lush and impeccable planet, like the rest of other intelligent species in the Universe? They reminded her that for billions of eons, events had hummed along efficiently and peaceably, just as the Founders who had put us in charge had divined. Everything infallibly under control, no surprises thus far, no unpleasant predicaments. So any uptick in isolated acts of aggression among these people should probably be treated as a mere statistical blip.

The next review of the presumably untroubled planet was only due hundreds of thousands of Earth years in the future, but she was bothered enough—that word “probably”, that word “mere” kept gnawing at the edges of her conscience,—to eventually take the unprecedented step of leading a damage assessment team to the site to evaluate conditions on the ground.

photo © Lee Todd/Duke University Born in Argentina in 1942, Ariel Dorfman spent ten years as a child in New York, until his family was forced out of the United States by the anti-communist frenzy stirred by Joe McCarthy. The Dorfmans ended up in Chile, where Ariel spent his adolescence and youth, living through the Allende revolution and the subsequent resistance inside Chile, and abroad after the dictatorship that overthrew Allende in 1973. Accompanied by his wife Angélica, he wandered the globe as an exile, finally settling down in the United States, where he is now Walter Hines Emeritus Professor of Literature at Duke University. Dorfman’s acclaimed work, which includes the play and film “Death and the Maiden,” and the classic text about cultural imperialism, How to Read Donald Duck, covers almost every genre available (plays, novels, short stories, fiction, essays, journalism, opinion pieces, memoirs, and screenplays). His award-winning books have been published in more than fifty languages and his plays performed in over one hundred countries. He contributes regularly to major papers and magazines worldwide and has been active in the defense of human rights.

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS OF THE HIGH COMMISSION OF INQUIRY’S INVESTIGATION INTO THE TROUBLES OF THE COMPENSATION BUREAU

It is unusual for any High Commission of Inquiry to reveal some of its findings before a report has been completed, but its members have made an exception in this case. Given the overwhelming interest—and even alarm—provoked by the crisis besetting the Compensation Bureau, we thought it urgent to release the information we have thus far gathered.

As to a full account, it shall be emitted as soon as we are able to depose, for a second time, the outgoing Chairperson of the Bureau. The fact that she has, at this point, failed to appear for that second hearing despite our insistence, does not mean that we prejudge her. On the contrary, rather than starting this chronicle by laying out how she cunningly and deliberately concealed secret plans for the Lazarus project, we have taken pains to highlight her ground-breaking accomplishments, pointing out that any history of the Bureau must begin with her and, of course, with the glitch that she was instrumental in discovering.

As is well-known, when the faint, initial signals that something might be amiss on the far-flung speck called Earth were picked up by the surveillance machines ascribed to that sector of the Galaxy, she was the only one of several Overseers assigned to intermittently review that remote material who paid any attention to it. She was as busy as her colleagues, rotating between multiple constellations and receiving, as they did, only a minimal dribble of intel from the respective site, and yet she was disturbed by what she remarked: though humans, the latest species on that planet, had made their appearance as intended and at the appointed hour of evolution, this appearance had been accompanied by what seemed to be an unsettling tendency among some of them to enact violence upon their fellows. Less well-known is that when she brought up this potential problem to the other Overseers—all of whom, let it be noted, were superior to her in status—they arrogantly dismissed her reservations. Didn’t she see, they said, that humans were well on their way to an Edenic future on a lush and impeccable planet, like the rest of other intelligent species in the Universe? They reminded her that for billions of eons, events had hummed along efficiently and peaceably, just as the Founders who had put us in charge had divined. Everything infallibly under control, no surprises thus far, no unpleasant predicaments. So any uptick in isolated acts of aggression among these people should probably be treated as a mere statistical blip.

The next review of the presumably untroubled planet was only due hundreds of thousands of Earth years in the future, but she was bothered enough—that word “probably”, that word “mere” kept gnawing at the edges of her conscience,—to eventually take the unprecedented step of leading a damage assessment team to the site to evaluate conditions on the ground.