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Amid all the chaos, excitement and violence, we were actually pretty laid back, taking things as they came. Terror attacks, bombings, the Red Brigades...these were all part and parcel of our youth and adolescence, but overall they didn't worry us excessively. We had quickly learned to survive in a manner not too dissimilar to that which I would later encounter among those living amid conflict or civil war. They had adapted to such extreme living conditions, a bit like we had back in the 1970s.
Alberto and I really wanted to make a difference. Whereas today's kids are engrossed in selfies, Instagram and smartphones, we poured our boundless enthusiasm and utterly carefree attitude into reading everything in sight and going to concerts, music festivals (it was that magical time when rock music was really taking off) and film clubs.
And so it was, armed with a dictaphone and our heads full of dreams, we made our way hurriedly towards the San Babila theatre on that sunny October afternoon more than forty years ago.
Our appointment was at 4pm, an hour before the matinée performance was due to begin. We were led down to the basement of the theatre, where the actors had their dressing rooms, and waiting for us in one of them was the star of the show and my first interviewee: Peppino De Filippo.
I don't remember much about the interview, and unfortunately the recordings of our radio show must have got lost during one of my many moves.
What I can still remember clear as day is the buzz, that frisson of nervous energy that I felt â and would feel plenty more times in my life â before the interview began. I say interview, but really I see an interview as a meeting ; it's a lot more than just a series of questions and answers.
Peppino De Filippo was coming to the end â he died just a few years later â of what was already a legendary career acting on stage and screen. He greeted us without getting up from his seat in front of the mirror, where he was doing his make-up. He was kind, courteous and engaging, and he pretended not to be taken aback when he found himself confronted with a couple of spotty teenagers. I remember the calm, methodical way in which he laid out his stage make-up, which looked heavy, thick and very bright. But the one thing that really sticks in my mind is the profound look of sadness in his eyes. It hit me hard because I felt his sadness so intensely. Perhaps he knew that his life was drawing to a close, or maybe it was proof of the old theory about comedians: they might make everybody else laugh, but they are themselves the saddest people in the world.
We spoke about the theatre and about his brother Eduardo, naturally. He told us how he had born into show business, always travelling around with the family company.
When we left after nearly an hour in his company, we had a full tape and felt a little fuzzy-headed.
That wasn't just my first interview; it was the moment I realised that being a journalist was the only career choice for me. It was the moment I felt for the first time that strange, almost magical chemistry between and interviewer and their subject.
An interview can be a formula to get to the truth, or it can be a futile exercise in vanity. An interview is also a potent weapon, because the journalist can decide whether to work on behalf of the interviewee or the reader.
In my opinion, there is so much more to an interview. Itâs all about psychoanalysis, a battle of minds between the interviewer and the interviewee.
In one of the interviews you will read in this book, José Luis de Vilallonga puts it very nicely: âIt's all about finding that sweet spot where the interviewer stops being a journalist and instead becomes a friend, someone you can really open up to. Things you wouldn't normally dream of telling a journalist.â
An interview is the practical application of the Socratic art of maieutics: the journalistâs ability to extract honesty from their subject, get them to lower their guard, surprise them with a particular line of questioning that removes any filters from their answers.
The magic doesn't always happen; but when it does, you can be sure that the interview will be a success and not just a sterile question-and-answer session or an exercise in vanity for a journalist motivated solely by a possible scoop.
In over thirty years as a journalist, I have interviewed celebrities, heads of state, prime ministers, religious leaders and politicians, but I have to admit that they're not the ones towards whom I have felt genuine empathy.
Because of my cultural and family background, I ought to have felt on their side, on the side of those men and women who were in power, who had the power to decide the fate of millions of people and often whether they would live or die. Sometimes the destiny of entire populations lay in their hands.
But it never happened like that. I only felt true empathy, that closeness and that frisson of nervous energy when I interviewed the rebels, the fighters, those who proved they were willing to put their (often peaceful and comfortable) lives on the line to defend their ideals.
Whether they were a revolutionary leader in a balaclava, hiding out in a shack in the middle of the Mexican jungle, or a brave Chilean mother waging a stubborn but dignified fight to learn the horrible truth about what happened to her sons, who disappeared during the time of General Pinochet.
It seems to me as though these are the people with the real power.
Grotteria, August 2017
*****
The interviews I have collated for this book appeared between 1993 and 2006 in the publications I have worked for over the years as a reporter or correspondent, primarily in Latin America and the Far East: the weekly magazines Panorama and LâEspresso , the dailies Il Tempo , Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica , and some for the broadcaster RAI.
I have deliberately left them as they were originally written, sometimes in the traditional question/answer format and sometimes in a more journalistic style.
I have written introductions to each interview to help set the scene.
1
Subcomandante Marcos
We shall overcome! (Eventually)
Hotel Flamboyant, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. A message has been slipped under my door:
You must leave for The Jungle today.
Be at reception at 19:00.
Bring climbing boots, a blanket,
a rucksack and some tinned food.
I have just an hour and a half to get these few things together. Iâm headed for the heart of the Lacandon Jungle, which lies on the border of Mexico and Guatemala and is one of the least explored areas on Earth. In the present climate, no ordinary tour operator would be willing to take me there; the only man who can is Subcomandante Marcos, and the Lacandon Jungle is his last refuge.
*****
That meeting with Subcomandante Marcos on behalf of Corriere della Sera âs weekly magazine, Sette , remains to this day the proudest moment of my career. Even if I wasnât the first Italian journalist to interview him (I canât be certain that the likeable and ubiquitous Gianni Minà didnât get there first, if Iâm honest), it was definitely long before the fabled insurgent with his trademark black balaclava spent the next few years ferrying the worldâs media to and from his jungle hideaway, which he used as a kind of wartime press office.
It had been nearly two weeks since my plane from Mexico City had touched down at the small military airport in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of the state of Chiapas, at the end of March. Aeroplanes bearing Mexican Army insignia were taxiing on the runway, and various military vehicles were parked menacingly all around. Chiapas was approximately a third of the size of Italy and home to over three million people, most of whom had Mexican Indian blood: some two hundred and fifty thousand were descended directly from the Maya.
I found myself in one of the poorest areas on Earth, where ninety per cent of the indigenous population had no access to drinking water and sixty-three per cent were illiterate.
It didnât take me long to work out the lie of the land: there were a few, very rich, white landowners and a whole load of peasant farmers who earned, on average, seven pesos (less than ten US dollars) a day.
These impoverished people had begun to hope of salvation on 1 January 1994. As Mexico entered into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States and Canada, a masked revolutionary was declaring war on his own country. On horseback and armed (albeit mostly with fake wooden guns), some two thousand men from the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) were occupying San Cristóbal de las Casas, the old capital of Chiapas. â Tierra y libertad! â [âLand and freedom!â] was their rallying cry.
We now know how that decisive first battle ended: the fifty thousand troops sent in with armoured cars to crush the revolt were victorious. But what about Marcos? What became of the man who had evoked memories of Emiliano Zapata, the legendary hero of the Mexican Revolution that began in 1910?
*****
Itâs seven oâclock at the reception of Hotel Flamboyant. Our contact, Antonio, arrives bang on time. He is a Mexican journalist who tells me he has been to the Lacandon Jungle not once, but dozens of times. Of course, the situation now is very different to how it was a year ago, when Marcos and his comrades enjoyed a relatively quiet existence in the village of Guadalupe Tepeyac, at the entrance to the jungle, equipped with phones, computers and the internet, ready to receive American television reporters. Life for the Mexican Indians has remained constant, but for Marcos and his fellow revolutionaries everything has changed: in the wake of the latest offensive by government troops, the leaders of the EZLN have been forced to hide in the mountains, where there are no phones, no electricity, no roadsâ¦nothing.
The colectivo (a strange cross between a taxi and a minibus) hurtles between a series of hairpin turns in the dark. The inside of the vehicle reeks of sweat and my clothes cling to my skin. It takes two hours to reach Ocosingo, a town on the edge of the Jungle. The streets are bustling and filled with the laughter of girls with long, dark hair and Mexican Indian features. There are soldiers everywhere. The rooms in the town's only hotel have no windows, only a grille in the door. It feels like being in prison. A news item crackles over the radio: âA man has revealed today that his son Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, a thirty-eight-year-old university professor from Tampico, is Subcomandante Marcosâ.
A new guide joins us the next morning. His name is Porfirio and heâs also a Mexican Indian.
It takes us nearly seven dust- and pothole-filled hours in his jeep to reach Lacandón, a village where the dirt track ends and the jungle proper begins. Itâs not raining, but we're still knee-deep in mud. We sleep in some huts we encounter along our route, and it takes us two exhausting days of brisk walking through the inhospitable jungle before we finally arrive, completely stifled by the humidity, at Giardin. Itâs a village in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve that is home to about two hundred people, all of whom are either women, children or old. The men have gone to war. We are made to feel welcome, but few people understand Spanish. Everybody here speaks the Mayan language Tzeltal. âWill we be meeting Marcos?â we ask. âMaybe,â Porfirio nods.
We are woken gently at three in the morning and told that we need to leave. Guided by the light of the stars rather than the moon, we walk for half an hour before we reach a hut. We can just about make out the presence of three men inside, but it's almost as dark as the balaclavas that hide their faces. In the identikit released by the Mexican government, Marcos was described as a professor with a degree in philosophy who wrote a thesis on Althusser and did a masterâs at Paris-Sorbonne University. A voice initially speaking French breaks the silence: âWeâve got twenty minutes. I prefer to speak Spanish if thatâs OK. Iâm Subcomandante Marcos. I'd advise you not to record our conversation, because if the recording should be intercepted it would be a problem for everybody, especially for you. We may officially be in the middle of a ceasefire, but theyâre using every trick in the book to try and track me down. You can ask me anything you like.â
Why do you call yourself âSubcomandanteâ?
Everyone says: âMarcos is the bossâ, but thatâs not true. They're the real bosses, the Zapatista people; I just happen to have military command. They've appointed me spokesperson because I can speak Spanish. My comrades are communicating through me; Iâm just following orders.
Ten years off the grid is a long time. How do you pass the time up here in the mountains?
I read. I brought twelve books with me to the Jungle. One is Canto General by Pablo Neruda, another is Don Quixote .
What else?
Well, the days and years of our struggle go by. If you see the same poverty, the same injustice every single day... If you live here, your desire to fight and make a difference can only get stronger. Unless youâre a cynic or a bastard. And then there are the things that journalists donât usually ask me. Like, here in the Jungle, we sometimes have to eat rats and drink our comradesâ piss to ensure we don't die of thirst on a long journey...things like that.
What do you miss? What did you leave behind?
I miss sugar. And a dry pair of socks. Having wet feet day and night, in the freezing cold...I wouldn't wish that on anyone. As for sugar, it's just about the only thing the Jungle can't provide. We have to source it from miles away because we need it to keep our strength up. For those of us from the city, it can be torture. We keep saying: âDo you remember the ice creams from Coyoacán? And the tacos from Division del Norte ?â These are all just distant memories. Out here, if you catch a pheasant or some other animal, you have to wait three or four hours before it's ready to eat. And if the troops are so famished they eat it raw, itâs diarrhoea all round the next day. Life's different here; you see everything in a new light... Oh yes, you asked me what I left behind. A metro ticket, a mountain of books, a notebook filled with poems...and a few friends. Not many, just a few.
When will you unmask yourself?
I don't know. I believe that our balaclava is also a positive ideological symbol: this is our revolution...it's not about individuals, there's no leader. With these balaclavas, we're all Marcos.
The government would argue that youâre hiding your face because youâve got something to hide...
They don't get it. But itâs not even the government that is the real problem; it's more the reactionary forces in Chiapas, the local farmers and landowners with their private âwhite guardsâ. I don't think thereâs much difference between the racism of a white South African towards a black person and that of a Chiapaneco landowner towards a Mexican Indian. The life expectancy for Mexican Indians here is 50-60 for men and 45-50 for women.
What about children?
Infant mortality is through the roof. Let me tell you the story of Paticha. A while back, as we were moving from one part of the Jungle to another, we happened upon a small, very poor community where we were greeted by a Zapatista comrade who had a little girl aged about three or four. Her name was Patricia, but she pronounced it âPatichaâ. I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, and her answer was always the same: âa guerrillaâ. One night, we found her running a really high temperature â must have been at least forty â and we didn't have any antibiotics. We used some damp cloths to try and cool her down, but she was so hot they just kept drying out. She died in my arms. Patricia never had a birth certificate, and she didn't have a death certificate either. To Mexico, it was as if she never existed. Thatâs the reality facing Mexican Indians in Chiapas.
The Zapatista Movement may have plunged the entire Mexican political system into crisis, but you haven't won, have you?
Mexico needs democracy, but it also needs people who transcend party politics to protect it. If our struggle helps to achieve this goal, it won't have been in vain. But the Zapatista Army will never become a political party; it will just disappear. And when it does, it will be because Mexico has democracy.
And if that doesnât happen?
Weâre surrounded from a military perspective. The truth is that the government won't want to back down because Chiapas, and the Lacandon Jungle in particular, literally sits on a sea of oil. And itâs that Chiapaneco oil that Mexico has given as a guarantee for the billions of dollars it has been lent by the United States. They canât let the Americans think they're not in control of the situation.
What about you and your comrades?
Us? Weâve got nothing to lose. Ours is a fight for survival and a worthy peace.
Ours is a just fight.
2
Peter Gabriel
The eternal showman
Peter Gabriel, the legendary founder and lead vocalist of Genesis, doesn't do many gigs, but when he does, he offers proof that his appetite for musical, cultural and technological experimentation truly knows no bounds.
I met him for an exclusive interview at Sonoria, a three-day festival in Milan dedicated entirely to rock music. During a two-hour performance of outstanding music, Gabriel sang, danced and leapt about the stage, captivating the audience with a show that, as always, was much more than just a rock concert.
At the end of the show, he invited me to join him in his limousine. As we were driven to the airport, he talked to me about himself, his future plans, his commitment to working with Amnesty International to fight racism and social injustice, his passion for multimedia technology and the inside story behind Secret World Live , the album he was about to launch worldwide.
Do you think the end of apartheid in South Africa was a victory for rock music?
It was a victory for the South African people, but I do believe rock music played its part.
In what way?
I think that musicians did a lot to make people in Europe and America more aware of the problem. Take Biko , for example. I wrote that song to try and get politicians from as many countries as possible to continue their sanctions against South Africa and keep up the pressure. It's about doing small things; they might not change the world, but they make a difference and it's something we can all get involved in. Fighting injustice isn't always about big demonstrations or grand gestures.
What do you mean?
Let me give you an example. There are a couple of elderly ladies in the Midwest of the United States who annoy the hell out of people who inflict torture in Latin America. They spend all their time firing off letters to prison directors, one after another. Because they're so well-informed, their letters are often published prominently in the American newspapers. And it often just so happens that the political prisoners they mention in their letters are suddenly released, as if by magic! Thatâs what I mean when I talk about how little things can make a difference. Basically, the music we make is the same as one of their letters.
Your commitment to fighting racism is closely linked to the work of your Real World label, isnât it, which promotes world music?
Absolutely. It's given me immense satisfaction to bring such diverse musicians together from places as far apart as China, Africa, Russia and Indonesia. We've produced artists such as the Guo Brothers from China and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan from Pakistan. I've taken so much inspiration from their work, as well as from other artists on the Real World label. The rhythms, the harmonies, the voices... I had already begun to head in that direction as early as 1982, when I organised the first WOMAD [World of Music, Arts and Dance] festival. The audience were able to take part in the event, playing on stage alongside groups from Africa. It was such a meaningful, life-affirming experience that the festival has since been held in other parts of the world, including Japan, Spain, Israel and France.
Is that why some people call you the âfather of world musicâ?
Real World and world music are commercial labels above everything else; we publish music from artists the world over so that their music can be heard the world over, on radio stations and in record stores. But I want the artists who record an album on my label to become famous in their own right. No one says âis this reggae?â any more; they say âis this Bob Marley?â. In time, I hope that no one who hears a song by one of my artists asks âis this world music?â
You've recently shown a great interest in multimedia technologies, and your interactive CD âXplora1â has really got people talking. How does all this fit in with the activities of Real World?
There's so much you can do on that CD, like choose tracks by each individual artist just by clicking on the album cover. But I want to see so much more of this kind of thing; interactivity is a great way of introducing people to music. Essentially, what Real World is trying to do is blend traditional, analogue music, if you will, with the new digital possibilities that modern technology gives us.
Are you saying that rock music itself isn't enough any more? That it needs some kind of interaction with the listener? Do you want everyone to play a part in creating the final product?
Not always. For example, I tend to listen to music in my car and I don't want to need a screen or a computer to do that. But when Iâm interested in an artist or I want to know more about them, where they come from, what they think, who they really are, thatâs when multimedia technology can offer me some relevant visual material. Basically, in the future I would like to see all CDs offering this dual functionality: you can either simply listen to them, or you can âexploreâ them. With Xplora1 , we wanted to create a little world in which people could move around, make choices and interact with the environment and the music. There's loads of things you can do on the CD. Like take a virtual tour of the Real World recording studios, get access to events like the Grammys or the WOMAD festival, listen to live tracks, learn about my career from the early days with Genesis until the present day, and even remix my songs to your heartâs content!
And also have a virtual rummage in your wardrobe, right?
Absolutely ( laughs ). You can have a rummage in Peter Gabriel's wardrobe!
All this seems light years away from your experience in Genesis. What has stayed the same since those days? Have you never wanted, for example, to do another rock opera like âThe Lamb Lies Down on Broadwayâ? Have you moved on from all that?
Good question. I think Iâm still interested in some of those ideas, but in a different way. In one way, the things I was trying to do during my final years with Genesis were linked to the idea of being multimedia. Itâs just that back then, sound perception was restricted by the technology of the time. Now, I want to go a lot further down that road.
Going back to your political and humanitarian activities, now that apartheid is over, what are your other causes célèbres? What global injustices are you looking to rail against?
There are loads. But right now, I think the most important thing is to help people get their voices heard. Everyone should be able to appear on TV or have access to means of communication such as fax machines or computers. Basically, I think we have a chance today to use network communication technology to better defend peopleâs human rights.
That's very interesting. Can you give a concrete example?
I want to set small, tangible goals. Like making sure a particular village has phone lines, twenty or thirty PCs, that kind of thing. You can set that kind of equipment up almost anywhere in the world - India, China, up a mountain, wherever... Within three or five years, the people living in these places could learn how to create, manage and process information. With just a little bit of hard work, we could transform the economies of many countries from being based on farming to being based on information. That would be a huge step.
So, what next for Peter Gabriel?
A holiday ( laughs ). Weâve been on tour for months. Weâve had the odd break, but I think I need to get away. On tour, there's always time pressure and the stress of travelling...and I don't get time to play any sport. I mean, I love to play tennis. As far as work is concerned, Iâm thinking about doing something similar to the interactive CD. I've just finished my new album, Secret World Live , which was recorded over the course of this long tour. Itâs an overview of my career to date, kind of like an anthology. The only track that hasnât been on one of my previous studio albums is Across The River . Basically, the album is also a way for me to thank all those people who have performed with me on this back-breaking tour. There's the usual suspects like Tony Levin and David Rhodes, but also Billy Cobham and Paula Cole, who accompanied me in Milan, Billy on the drums and Paula on vocals.
Do you have a dream?
I do. I wish there was already a United States of Europe.
