Writer Not Permitted to Re-Enter Chile

Chilean writer and columnist Ariel Dorfman was stopped by police from entering the country and deported to Buenos Aires, a friend said today.

Dorfman, 45, a U.S. resident and professor of Latin American literature at Duke University in North Carolina, was returning to Chile on vacation with his two sons Sunday. He was stopped by international police on orders from the Interior Ministry.

Police put the writer on the next plane bound for Argentina, accompanied by his youngest son, who is 8, said economist Sergio Bitar, a friend of Dorfman. It was not clear whether Dorfman’s other son was allowed to enter the country.

Bitar said Dorfman was banned from returning to Chile because of his criticism of President Augusto Pinochet’s government over the burning of Rodrigo Rojas. Rojas, a Chilean-born U.S. resident, was doused with gasoline and burned alive by soldiers during an anti-Pinochet protest July 2, 1986.