They feel like they have been treated with a lack of respect. That people sort of see them as these ordinary guys who accidentally got buried underground and hoped to get rich and famous off of it, and what they hope that the movie and the book will show them, will show Chile, is that they went through a war underground, that they are battled scarred.

Hector Tobar

Categorized in : Entertainment

Maybe innocence is a skin you must shed to build layers more resistant to the caustic truths of the world.

Hector Tobar

layers skins world

We're writers. What do we do? We tell stories. We make up stories. We create art.

Hector Tobar

stories art

I'm, by nature, a really optimistic person. It goes back to my parents having been each divorced three times and my finding some way to survive all that. I always managed to survive by being upbeat.

Hector Tobar

optimistic three parent

What we're trying to do as writers is rescue, preserve this space of thoughtfulness of language, of a deeper and more honest appreciation of our reality. And, so, we have to work even harder as writers against this tide of silliness, against this tide of superficiality, against this horrible Greek chorus on Twitter where everyone is insulting each other and now we have an insulter-in-chief, who's risen to the presidency by insulting people.

Hector Tobar

space appreciation reality

I want to bring Americans into some experiences they ordinarily would not consider. Experiences in Latin America, people in Latin America, I want to bring them closer to those people, and I know I have to work extra hard at my craft to reach across these increasing chasms, these gaps that exist between different kinds of Americans, and that's the work of the artist, is to create these works that sort of help us understand our time.

Hector Tobar

artist latin america

I write, fighting for every sentence, fighting to hold the reader with every paragraph.

Hector Tobar

paragraph fighting writing

I just feel that art is more important than ever, that art is something that can unify us, that can make America stronger.

Hector Tobar

important america art

Undocumented people have been targeted for years now. Even under the Obama administration, there was a really large number of deportations of undocumented people. Trump has just taken that policy and ratcheted it up several notches. He's made it much more intense. We've had situations where people who would have been covered by the Obama administration, people who had been promised a path toward legal residency, had that taken away. I did not imagine that. I could never have imagined that happening.

Hector Tobar

taken numbers years

In real life, there are right-wingers, there are anti-immigrant activists who want to overturn this constitutional right that we have to become Americans when we're born in this country. There's lots of people who believe that this has led to the phenomenon of the anchor babies. I am an anchor baby. My parents were able to receive their residency and citizenship because, I, a U.S. citizen child of theirs, was born in Los Angeles.

Hector Tobar

baby country children

In the Latino community, the Trump campaign, even when it seemed it was a long shot he would be elected president, his campaign itself just caused lots of consternation and nervousness and anger. Famously, piñata makers started making piñatas of Donald Trump, even before he won the Republican nomination. There was this sense that, here's a person who's rising in the polls because he's insulting us, because he's created this scapegoated image of us as the people responsible for the decline of the United States.

Hector Tobar

community long people

I am someone who is fascinated with European German history, the Holocaust, and to see these parallels in our own democratic system, and then to see them come to this absolutely incredible climax, and this fruition with the election of The Donald, it was just too much.

Hector Tobar

german-history holocaust too-much

There's a lot of really wonderful things about the United States of America, especially its ethnic diversity and its mostly successful struggle to create a democracy out of many different cultures. So, we have a lot of capital as a people, we have a lot of cultural capital to keep our democracy going.

Hector Tobar

successful struggle america

For many it was a kind of rebirth and so to see that your near death experience and rebirth played out on the big screen was very emotional for them, so there were many tears shed at the screening in Chile.

Hector Tobar

entertainment

As a professional journalist, I've been interviewing people for almost thirty years. And the one thing I've learned from all those interviews is that I am always going to be surprised.

Hector Tobar

professional i-am always people

I think even a hero is someone who has sort of the flaw or imperfection of character. I remember Alice Walker saying that once - she'd written a novel about a civil rights hero, and it was someone who had this flaw, this central flaw.

Hector Tobar

think hero remember character

I spent my whole life as a writer talking to just the average guy in Los Angeles and Latin America, talking to working people.

Hector Tobar

talking life america people

Divorce was illegal in Chile up until 2005 or so.

Hector Tobar

until up chile divorce

I've never been on a paperback tour before, you know, because usually you go on tour when a hardcover comes out.

Hector Tobar

never go know you

I think, as journalists, we sometimes are afraid to enter into the emotional lives and the complications of the lives of the people we write about - we don't really have the space and the room to deal with those things. But as a novelist, that's precisely what you're writing about.

Hector Tobar

you space sometimes people

You cannot bribe a Chilean police officer - I know this firsthand.

Hector Tobar

cannot know you police