Chilean Chronicles, Part 100: The Joy and Honor of Working with Jon Lowenstein

Our time in Chile has been an extraordinary and expansive time for many reasons.

Dunreith and I have been animated by a sense of adventure that’s been heightened by having sold our house the day before we flew to Santiago.

We’ve been treated with enormous and continuous generosity by colleagues, students, taxi drivers, and Chileans of all stripes, ages, classes and political backgrounds.

We’ve had the chance to travel within and outside the country to places that in some cases we had dream of going for years, even decades.

We’ve also had a heavy dose of family.

We flew to Buenos Aires to meet Dad and his partner Lee for five days before their two-week cruise in Argentina and Chile.

We’re about three weeks into a more than month-long stay with Aidan, who’s fresh off a fantastic semester of study and travel in New Zealand.

We also had my brother Jon here for two work-filled weeks.

Jon likely would have come here to visit us anyway, and having a professional purpose clinched his decision.

That came in the form of our successful application to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. We put in a proposal that said we would do a three-part series for the The New Yorker’s Photo Blog, a similar project for Vivelohoy, and a number of blog posts for a combination of the Huffington Post, the Ochberg Society, Hoy and my personal blog.

Jon and I have collaborated before.

We’ve covered police brutality on Chicago’s South Side.

We participated in a fellowship where we did a project about the experience of undocumented Latino migrants who become disabled on the job. (This was the one for which I taught myself Spanish.)

We’ve traveled to the far reaches of Northern South Africa to cover life in a rural community there and the efforts of Evanston resident Ann Covode to bring a library and other educational support to the children in the community.

It was during this project that, after a formal ceremony and introduction, one of the teachers told us in front of the staff that they had prepared a delicacy for us to eat: a cow’s hoof.

Last year we flew to Dad’s hometown to photograph and write about his return there for the first time in 73 years.

These have all been remarkable experiences, and the work we did in Chile was our most ambitious yet.

Over the course of a series of conversations, we defined our scope.

We would look at Chile’s past, present and future 40 years after the Pinochet coup.

The past would involve going to memory sites like the Museum of Memory and Human Rights and Villa Grimaldi, interviewing survivors and activists who had lived through the time like Ana Gonzalez, a feisty 87-year-old with bright red fingernails whose husband, two of her sons and a pregnant daughter-in-law were murdered by the government during the dictatorship, and talking with memory scholars like friend Hugo Rojas.

The present consisted of covering the first round of elections that pitted nine presidential candidates against each other, including frontrunner and former president Michelle Bachelet of the Nueva Mayoria, or New Majority, and childhood friend Evelyn Matthi of the conservative Independent Democratic Union.

And the future including talking with young, digitally-savvy Chileans who grew up during and after the dictatorship and who are working to improve the country.

People like Jaime Parada, the son of Pinochetistas whose parents joined neighbors on the street in weeping the night in October 1988 that Pinochet lost the plebiscite that would have kept him in power.

Last year Jaime became the first openly gay public official in Chilean history when he won a Councilman position in the wealthy, politically conservative Providencia neighborhood. Since his election he’s worked with reform Mayor Josefa Errazuriz to push for, and win, a battle to change the name of one of the community’s major streets from Avenida 11 de Septiembre, a name that honored the Pinochet coup, to Nueva Providencia, or New Providencia.

People like the light-blue shirted volunteers of TECHO, a non-profit group founded in 1997 by Father Felipe Berrios and some young Chileans to help individuals and communities fight poverty. Since its inception TECHO has evolved from doing construction work to a more ongoing and holistic approach in which they work with community members to diagnose, and then set a plan to meet, the community’s needs.

Together we went to a campamento, or shantytown, in the La Florida neighborhood that cropped up after powerful floods devastated the area in 1997. The volunteers there were in the process of setting up a community center; other campamentos with a TECHO presence have tutoring programs, a library and micro-enterprise stores.

Being able to do work that you love is a tremendous gift.

Doing that work with one of your brothers for one of the world’s top magazines is even greater.

Indeed, many of the day that Jon was here, before I left the apartment, I’d say to Dunreith, “I’m going over to Jon’s apartment. We’re on assignment for The New Yorker.”

And a riveting assignment it was.

Together Jon and I went to Algarrobo to interview Hernan Gutierrez, who was 13 years old when he witnessed decapitated bodies floating down the Mapocho River shortly after the coup.

We spoke with Mario Hernandez, who told us about waiting on Salvador Allende and Pablo Neruda as well as serving high-ranking members of the dictatorship.

We went to Villa Grimaldi and spoke with Carlos Contreras, who still had the chess board he made out of cardboard to play with fellow inmates when they were detained in 1974.

We attended the end of campaign event for presidential frontrunner Michelle Bachelet, listened to her race through her speech and met former President Ricardo Lagos.

I shook his hand and told him that I had seen his finger years earlier. (His finger-wagging calling out of Pinochet was seen by many as a critical moment in the “No” campaign.)

We went together to the Open Mind Fest that was sponsored by MOVILH, one of the nation’s leading gay and lesbian activist groups, that stretched across four city blocks. Jon shot picture after picture of the drag queens who were the unofficial stars of the event, of young lesbian couples holding hands and of the youth dancing and swaying and vibing at the four stages set up along Paseo Bulnes.

Jaime Parada told us that MOVILH held the event near the presidential palace and congressional offices to remind politicians of the community’s clout.

The message appeared to be heeded, as five of the nine presidential candidates attended the event.

Beyond all that we did, the project was a chance to learn from Jon, who is one of the planet’s top photographers.

He shoots and shoots and shoots, getting closer and closer to the action, swerving as he identifies an opportunity to make a picture, letting the place speak to him, always thinking about how he can be do better.

Jon’s been shooting seriously for more than 20 years, and continues to expand his skill and scope. His passion for photography, storytelling and documenting what’s happening in the world remains undimmed. If anything, it’s only grown stronger with the passage of time, clarity of vision and commitment to his craft.

We didn't only work.

Together with Dunreith, Dad and Lee, we'd have lengthy dinners topped off by nightly servings of ice cream. We'd carve out space to laugh about family stories and discuss the latest developments in the NBA.

I don't want to suggest that the collaboration was easy at every moment.

It never is with two strong-willed people, let alone two brothers with more than four decades of history.

And there’s no doubt in my heart and head that working with Jon was a joy and an honor, and something I’ll remember for as long as I can remember.

Living in Chile has been magnificent, and the project with my brother is a big part of it.

I can’t wait for the next one.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 75: Chile Punches Its Ticket to Brazil 2014

“Oh, viva La Mundial/La Mundial, La Mundial/Viva La Mundial,” chanted the hundreds of flag-waving, cheering Chileans at Paseo Orrego Luca in the waning seconds of the team’s final qualifying match against Ecuador. Long live the World Cup.

Their beloved squad is going to the 2014 rendition of the world’s biggest sporting event in Brazil after a hard-fought and well-deserved 2-1 victory over a game, but outmanned, Ecuadorean squad-a victory that sparked frenzied horn honking, blowing of vuvuzelas, and passionate embraces.

Playing at their National Stadium in Santiago, Chile would have qualified with a tie. But the team coached by Jorge Sampaoli punched its ticket in impressive fashion with a pair of rapid-fire first-half goal from Alexis Sanchez and Gary Medel.

Sanchez’s header off a probing cross from Eugenio Mena was a particularly elegant strike, and one that prompted him to rip off his shirt in ecstasy. Sanchez headed a ball in the box to Medel directly in front of the goal a couple of minutes, and he converted for a two-goal halftime lead.

The home squad played more conservatively in the second half, and surrendered a goal to Caceido, who benefited from a lengthy run up the middle by Antonio Valencia.

The goal caused some apprehension among the multitudes at Paseo, many of whom were enjoying hefty portions of beer and fried food, but the hosts were never seriously threatened after that.

As the minutes wore down into injury time, the chant of Viva Chile grew less anxious and increasingly confident.

Then the final whistle blew, and the eruption of celebrations began.

The Ecuadorean squad didn’t look too disappointed after the match ended, as they, too, will be headed to Brazil next year.

Chilean Chronicles, Part XXXXII: The Week of Memory Begins

Something extraordinary is happening in Chile this week. All across the country, from Arica to Punta Arenas, and in 30 of the 32 comunas, or districts, within Santiago, public discussion is happening about the coup on September 11, 1973 that was headed by Gen. Augusto Pinochet that ousted democratically-elected President Salvador Allende and ushered in 17 years of military rule.

Tonight kicked off the nation's first Week of Memory. Occurring against the backdrop of the November presidential election, the next seven days will feature previously hidden or unknown testimony, pictures, films and texts.

Four key notions of memory underpin the programs.

The first is memory as an antidote to future such tyranny and oppression happening again in the country-a thought that’s captured in the statement that was said and projected on the screen in the front of the room, “Nunca mas.”

Never again.

The second conception of memory is a spur to greater levels of fulfillment of democratic principles, of the appreciation both of democracy’s fragility and of the importance of working ceaselessly to protect and advance its flow.

The third notion, according to Ricardo Brodsky, the director of the national Museum of Human Rights and Memory, is of memory as an restorative and reparative act that confers dignity that was previously stripped and violated to the victims.

And the fourth is the idea that the lessons of history and the suffering of the past must be taught to the next generation.

In his opening comments, Brodsky, who’s a childhood friend of poet, academic and human rights activist Marjorie Agosin, noted that this is not the first time that a round number of the coup’s anniversary has been commemorated.

However, as opposed to 20 years ago, when it was marked by a state ceremony, this year the conversations are happening in civil forums.

Places like universities and conference halls and libraries.

The latter is where Dunreith and I went to the kickoff event in Providencia, the neighborhood in the city where we live.

Originally slated to take place outside under a white tent set up next to the branch of the public library that sits in Parque Bustamante, the gathering was moved inside to the library’s basement because of a light drizzle.

The room was largely filled to capacity by close to 100 people of various ages who sat in the stiff red chairs.

Recently elected Providencia Mayor Josefa Errazuriz talked about the comuna’s decision, taken after fierce debate, to reverse the name that had been given to one of Providencia’s major streets in 1980 as Ave. 11 September to its original name of New Providencia Avenue.

She led the fight, she said, because she didn’t want young people to receive any shred of a message that the date was one to be honored.

It’s inconceivable that homage would be given to that name, Errazuriz said.

She added that the street’s renaming was a significant step in an ongoing process of helping to convert the sorrow, hurt and anger from the coup and the Pinochet years and dictatorship into future projects and plans.

We need to put the new generation in touch with how we lived and suffered, she said. The pain has to give place to proposals for the future.

We have to do it, she told me later, during a short break in which various types of cheese garnished with nuts and fruit juices, soft drinks and wine were all available.

The program’s feature event was a showing of 1978 German documentary film. Los Muertos No Callan, or The Dead Are Not Silent.

The crowd watched with a fierce and silent attention that was broken occasionally by a sigh or gasp.

Filmed in grainy black and white images, the movie told the story of the assassinations of top Allende political figures like Vice President Carlos Prats, Defense Secretary Jose Toha and Ambassador to the United States Orlando Letelier.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MdYxPkx50k&w=420&h=315]

But if the murdered politicians were silent, their widows gave voice to what happened.

In the movie Moy de Toha and Isabel Letelier narrate their horrific experience with almost unthinkable calm and composure and remarkable detail, even as their faces bear the toll that their husbands’ murders and the recounting of their deaths takes on them.

The deaths happened after forces loyal to Pinochet, who had repeatedly declared his loyalty to Allende, bombed La Moneda, the President’s palace. Fire and plumes of smoke billow on the screen for what feels like agonizing minutes, each successive flame further destroying the democratic ideals on which the nation had been based for nearly half a century.

The coup marked the beginning of Pinochet’s ruthless reign in which Toha, Letelier and many other leaders who were loyal to Allende were imprisoned at Isla Dawson, an island about 100 kilometers south of Punta Arenas.

Toha‘s death came after months of torture-the Pinochet government told Moy that he had committed suicide-and after his wife had confronted the dictator.

I am not talking to the head of the military junta, she said. I am talking to the man who we hosted at our house many times.

Pinochet had done more than visit.

One of the film’s most biting segments comes when the general’s words of effusive praise for the Tohas, which he wrote by hand in a letter and had engraved on a plate, are shown repeatedly on the screen.

Moy de Toha also shows a card signed by 39 of her husband’s former inmates who, like him had been incarcerated on Isla Dawson.

Orlando Letelier was among the signatories.

Letelier moved to Washington after political pressure led to his release from prison and his eventual reunion with his family in Venzuela. He became one of the major voices of the Chilean resistance.

On Sept. 10, 1976, he was deprived of his Chilean citizenship. During a solidarity concert that evening that was headlined by Joan Baez, he declared, “I was born Chilean, I am Chilean and I will die Chilean.”

Letelier then took square aim at the dictator.

Pinochet was born a traitor and fascist. He is a traitor and fascist. He will die as a traitor and fascist, Letelier said.

He was murdered in Washington by DINA agents in a car bombing 11 days later.

The bomb also claimed the life of his assistant Ronni Moffitt.

The Dead Are Not Silent ends after Isabel Letelier describes her fight to get to see her murdered husband.

His eyes were still open.

In his eyes, she said, she saw all of the regime’s horror.

But she also saw the strength necessary to carry on and continue fighting.

Isabel Letelier was in the front row of the audience.

She walked unsteadily, the product of having recently lost the use of a use of one of her eyes.

But her diminished physical state did not mean that her contribution went unrecognized.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

During his comments in the panel after the film, Juan Guzman, the former right-wing judge who indicted Pinochet shortly before his death, paid tribute to the courage, valor and strength of both widows.

The crowd applauded for a long time, and again as Isabel Letelier left the room shortly before the panel ended.

I told Guzman that I admired his transformation through allowing himself to be exposed to the regime’s atrocities from his isolation to his later role as arbiter of justice for the nation.

It was very good, he said about The Judge and the General, the film by Patricio Lanfranco and Elizabeth Farnsworth that traced his journey.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPnJu1PNTD8&w=420&h=315]

I also asked the judge about the people who had chanted, “They never got him” after Pinochet´s death, referring to the fact that the former dictator eluded prison time during his lifetime.

Guzman had said these people hadn´t learned anything as of the time of Pinochet's passing.

Had these people still not learned the lessons of history, I asked?

Many of them had not, he said.

Providencia councilman Jaime Parada, who is openly gay, addressed the same issue in response to a question I asked about why so many people we had met asserted that life was better under Pinochet.

I come from a right wing family, and I remember my mother and father crying when Pinochet lost the plebicisite vote, he said.

Forty three percent of the country supported Pinochet during that vote.

Many of them still do, he said.

This happened because of a confluence of factors, according to Parada. He cited the neo-liberal ideology that encouraged people to think only about themselves, and not to concern themselves with the pain of others.

Parada also said that the country was in an extreme anti-Marxist position during the Cold War.

At the same time, he also made the point that human rights violations abuse did not only occur during the dictatorship, but continue today in Chile and nations throughout the world.

These abuses occur to women, to people with disabilities, and to gay, lesbian and transsexual people, among others, Parada said.

The unfinished work that memory calls us to do hung in the room as the session wrapped up at 10:00 p.m. and the group started to disperse into the warm evening.

Practically bursting with all that we had seen and heard, Dunreith and I walked back to our apartment faster than usual.

The conversations about Chile's past would continue throughout the country the next day.

Chilean Chronicles, Part XVII: Maria Eliana and Humberto's Many Gifts

Maria Eliana Eberhard and her husband Humberto gave us many gifts during our leisurely, languidly unfolding nine-hour afternoon and evening of eating, drinking, talking and driving on Saturday.

They gave us unhurried time and unselfconscious generosity.

They introduced us to their new friend David Rojas and his lovely wife Maria Luz, whom they had met during a month-long tour of Eastern Europe that was headed by a former priest from Spain named Faustino.

They took us our first vineyard in Chile, the venerable Santa Rita vineyard that was founded in 1880 by Don Domingo Fernández Concha, and that has continued to grow and expand in the ensuing 130 years.

They gave us the gift of a delicious lunch in a long, cool dining hall of a hacienda with high ceilings and a red stucco roof.

We missed the 3:00 p.m. tour by a full two hours, but we got plenty of education.

As with friend and colleague Alejandra Matus, Dunreith and I were treated to a virtual seminar in Chilean history during the past four decades.

We covered the key role Jose Toribio Merino played in the 1973 coup, the current presidential contest between Evelyn Matthei and Michelle Bachelet, the impact Pinochet had on the nation, whether they voted Si or No in 1988 to end Pinochet´s reign and the legacy of the Chicago Boys for the country.

The talk wasn´t all political, either.

Maria Eliana and Humberto shared humorous travel misadventures in Mexico and England, while David´s face glowed with pleasure as he talked about two of his three sons working with him in the same clinic where they are all neurosurgeons.

They talked about Chile’s emergence from a more isolated and less self-confident nation to one whose people are more assertive and forthright. (At the same time, they made it abundantly clear that whatever gains in self-confident have been made, the levels they demonstrate still pale in front of those exhibited by Argentinians).

Everyone laughed when I suggested that Dunreith has an Argentinian heart.

They welcomed us into their home and offered "the elevens", an expanded version of tea time, complete with more than a dozen tea choices, mashed avocado that looked like guacamole, ham and crunchy wheat bread in small, circular slices.

Humberto shared his passion for music, his face expanding with joy as he talked about Arthur Rubinstein´s virtuosity and played for us a song that evokes a smaller Moldovan river merging into the larger, crashing body of wáter, the music rising in a crescendo as the piece progresses.

Yet the biggest gift in all the extraordinary generosity they showed us was not about Chile.

It was about my father.

In 1984, Maria Eliana and Humberto packed up their belongings and their two young boys, took the money they had saved and the nanny they had hired, and moved to Boston for a year for training in their respective medical professions. (Maria Eliana is an anesthetist, while Humberto is a cardiologist.)

Maria Eliana worked in the laboratory of Warren Zapol, one of Dad´s closest friends.

Humberto did not work with Dad, but talked about meeting him.

“Did your father have a small office?” he asked.

I said that he did.

Humberto described how he had entered the area before Dad’s office and seen his two secretaries, the notoriously straight-laced Ilse Kaprelian, a German woman who was married to an Armenian motorcycle rider named Gil, and the wisecracking Louise Hotz.

Humberto explained that he felt intimidated for a number of reasons.

He was not in the same field as Dad.

His English was limited.

And Dad was a professor.

With trepidation he opened the door.

What he saw astounded him.

There were papers and books everywhere, stretching all the way up to the ceiling.

On the desk.

On the couches.

On the seats.

Then he met Dad, who had apparently just come from the operating room.

Humberto knew this because Dad was wearing a puffy blue hat that Humberto was more accustomed to seeing on the head of a Chilean woman.

This was the professor? He wondered.

Dunreith told the table that, before he left Massachusetts General Hospital, Dad was given stationary with a cartoon version of a glasses-wearing Dad being buried in a sea of paper over the words, ¨From the desk of Ed Lowenstein.”

But then Humberto talked about how friendly and down-to-earth Dad was, how he treated him with dignity and respect and welcomed him into the community of doctors at one of the world’s most prestigious hospitals..

Maria Eliana echoed the same sentiments.

I´ve come to learn in life that the family that we know in our homes is only a part of them, and, more than that, that we leave parts of ourselves with people with whom we interact and share meaningful moments. .

Although the time has long since passed since I have hungered to know Dad, that was indeed the case for many years. One of the greatest benefits of working in his laboratory for two summers during college was that it gave me an opportunity to see how he was at work and what he meant to the people there.

Your dad´s a regular guy like us, my colleagues would say quietly. He´s not like a lot of those other doctors who think they´re better than us.

He takes public transportation, another told me.

One man, a Hungarian immigrant, told me about how Dad stuck up for him when he was working on an experiment and a doctor said that he was doing it wrong. Your father said, Joe is right, the man told me, his stocky body suffused with gratitude.

Nearly 30 years after I worked in the blood gas lab, I have a better sense both of the impressiveness of Dad´s accomplishments as well as the importance of what he gave to Humberto and Maria Eliana.

Dad came to the United States after fleeing Nazi Germanny on a program called the Kindertransport, I told the group. He never forgot what it was like to be a refugee in a new and unfamiliar country.

The conversation passed and we moved on to five more hours of the marathon visit.

But the gift of letting me know my father in just a slightly different way, remained.