It steals photographs from other publications, runs a column called "Shit," and in its most recent edition devoted a full page to fantasizing about the sexual exploits of Chile's six presidential candidates.
The Clinic is a new bimonthly satirical magazine -- akin to Britain's anti-establishment Private Eye -- that has broken with the strait-laced style of Chile's traditional right-wing newspapers, winning thousands of fans and readers.
"This, in other countries, is not overly breaking the mold, but in Chile it is," said Patricio Fernandez, The Clinic's editor.
More than 13,000 copies of the first edition to be distributed via kiosks were sold last month, surpassing several minor national newspapers. In a leftist slap at the general who ruled Chile with an iron fist for 17 years, Fernandez said the magazine is named after the London hospital where ailing former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested last year.
"The name came out of Pinochet's arrest in London but The Clinic is also the magazine in which Chile is undergoing a sort of mental purging," said Fernandez, who has received hundreds of messages supporting the publication's outrageous style.
Pinochet, under house arrest outside London, is battling extradition to Madrid where he is wanted by a Spanish judge to face charges of torture from his 1973-1990 military rule. More than 3,000 people died or disappeared under Pinochet and tens of thousands fled the country rather than live under military rule and witch-hunts directed against known leftists.
Media freedoms still limited
Pinochet's authoritarian rule, including several years of nightly curfews, turned Chile into a predominantly conservative nation of 15 million where media freedoms are still limited.
Fernandez said he and a floating bunch of Chilean writers and journalists -- the unofficial hierarchy behind The Clinic -- had the idea of launching a publication to shake up Chile's bourgeois and intellectual circles even before the general's arrest. But the arrest was the perfect launch pad.
"We decided to do something that was totally unpretentious. A few friends got together to eat and drink and out of those meetings came the tone -- the laughing, the permanent joking," Fernandez said.
The first few issues of The Clinic were published underground but circulated freely and at no cost in Santiago's bar and cafe society. But the magazine's chiefs realized the project would not progress unless it lost the clandestine tag.
So they decided to publish openly and distribute via newspaper kiosks, where it is now in demand for 200 pesos (35 US cents) a copy. A Web site was also launched through which readership and popularity are growing abroad.
"Well done on rediscovering humor in a country that so badly needs it," reader Ernesto Navarro wrote in a letter from Mexico. "Your mission seems modest but in reality it is enormous for the courage needed."
Fernandez, also an art critic and columnist with the daily Las Ultimas Noticias, said many contributors to The Clinic are journalists in senior posts with other Chilean dailies who keep their links with the magazine a secret.
Writers `practice self-censorship'
"These same people practice self-censorship and abort their own plans in an incredible way just to keep inside this enormous machine of established Chilean newspapers," Fernandez said. "If we had a more hospitable, more open press in Chile, I'm sure that we would not be doing this [magazine]."
The Clinic refers to Chile's best-selling and influential daily El Mercurio as El Merculo, an untranslatable slur roughly like calling the Washington Post the Washington Ass.
El Mercurio and others at the butt end of The Clinic's satire and sarcasm have not yet formally complained or launched legal attacks, which Fernandez believes is because the magazine is still a small fish in Chile's media sea.
They even condone its style and content to justify their own editorial lines, he said. "They say, `Let that idiot say what he wants to say so that we can publish a headline that we want and no one tells us that we are blind to the truth.'"
Fernandez, who is financing The Clinic from his own savings along with a business partner, plans to take the magazine forward, converting it into a weekly. Small-scale advertisers such as bars and restaurants have expressed interest, he said.
But he is under no illusion about what it would take to compete with established papers in Chile, as he is often forced to use the scissors on other publications to lift pictures or ask for the unpaid services of a friendly photographer.
"The project still is a little precarious, it's looking for oxygen, but I have a lot of faith," said Fernandez, who has lined up prizewinning Chilean novelist Roberto Bolano to write a piece for the next edition.
Print runs for upcoming editions have increased to 20,000 copies and Fernandez is sure that is a feasible sales goal.
"The magazine is not a cultural magazine," he said, "although people talk about culture. But they also talk about politics, toilets, whatever they want, cigarettes, drugs, sex, topics you hear on the streets."
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