Mariana Callejas

Mariana Inés Callejas Honores (11 April 1932 – 10 August 2016) was a Chilean writer and member of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) who participated in several terrorist attacks, including the murder of General Carlos Prats and his wife, which was perpetrated in 1974 in Buenos Aires.

She was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison by courts of the first and second instances, though her term was later reduced to five years.

Mariana Callejas was born into a middle-class family.

Very early on she became interested in serious literature, claiming to have read Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment at age eight.

Her life changed dramatically at age 18 – she secretly left school after her favorite teachers, the Feinsilbert couple, were thrown out.

Influenced by this couple, she turned to Socialist Zionism and planned to emigrate to Israel.

In order to fulfill her plan, she married a young man.

One day, she told her mother about her school desertion, her marriage, and her conversion.

The reaction was unexpected; her father cut her out of their life.

Things got worse when soon after, Pablo, her new husband, decided to marry a classmate, and his family obtained an annulment of the marriage with Mariana.

Then, thanks to the Feinsilberts' connections, she took a ship bound for Israel.

On the first kibbutz where Callejas lived, Nan Kissuphim (probably the current Kissufim), besides working, she studied Hebrew in special classes.

From this kibbutz she passed to another, formed by emigrants from North and South America, in the Negev desert.

Located near the border, they had to build it from scratch.

Due to the danger of attacks from Egyptian and Bedouin soldiers, she had to stand night watches.

There she adopted the name of Anat, because it seemed to her that Inés and Mariana sounded too Catholic.

Her first and ephemeral marriage of convenience was soon followed by a second, this time to feel protected in an environment where there were four men for every woman.

She chose an American agriculture student, Allan Earnest, an idealist who had emigrated to Israel from Cornell University.

The couple left the kibbutz shortly afterward, along with a score of other residents, due to ideological differences.

They settled on a moshav, where it was allowed to own a home, as well as other manifestations of individualism.

In 1952 Allan was called up, but as a pacifist, he did not want to serve in the army.

In addition, he was still recovering from the injuries he had suffered when a mine exploded under his tractor.

Given this situation, Allan and Anat decided to embark with their young son on a ship bound for Chile.

There, as expected, they were not well received by her father, and soon they took another ship, bound for New York City.

In the United States, they shared an apartment with Allan's mother in Washington Heights.

Mariana Earnest escaped during the day to attend acting classes at different schools.

At that time she dreamed of theater and also began to write stories.

The couple moved to Uniondale, a suburb of Long Island, in 1957, when they already had three small children.

There she had a short experience as a waitress at the Italian restaurant Tony's, which she hated, as she also hated being a housewife.

Three years later, unable to take any more, she took her three children and returned to Chile.

Callejas arrived at the doors of a maternity home in 1960 with the children; she would not let anyone tell her to go back to her husband or the United States.

She continued to write stories and soon became friends with a group of bohemian artists.

Going to wait for one of them when leaving a party, she met Michael Townley.

That same year, Townley, at seventeen, fell madly in love with her, and despite the difference in age, courted her until she agreed to marry him.

Their marriage was celebrated on 22 July 1961.

None of their parents attended the wedding.

Not only the Callejas were against it; Townley's father, who worked at Ford Chile, had been promoted to Venezuela and had left the country with his wife and two other children.

Michael had refused to leave and had remained in Santiago, determined to conquer Mariana.

To make a living, Michael sold Collier's Encyclopedia to wealthy families who knew English, and fixed cars and electrical appliances.

Three years later, in 1964, thanks to his father, he got a job with Ford in Peru, but he failed and four months later he left Lima.