Chilean Chronicles, Part 104: Returning Home to Chicago

We're in the air from Toronto to Chicago.

We've left Santiago, site of fulfilled dreams, 80 degree Christmas Days, our impossibly dusty postage stamp of an apartment, and the consumption of more pisco sours and glasses, well, bottles, of red wine than we could have ever imagined, and are heading back to the Windy City that has been our home since 2002.

With grins that stretched beyond our ears, Dunreith and I deposited the check from the house sale we completed the day before we left on our Chilean adventure.

It far exceeded our greatest expectations.

We had the great privilege of being in Chile as the nation confronted, more directly than ever before, the still raw wounds from the Pinochet coup that happened on September 11, 1973.

We attended vigils and memorials events and plays and conferences and documentary films and panels and book launches, all of which were dedicated to grappling with the enduring impact of the overthrow of democratically-elected Salvador Allende and the brutal aftermath.

I've lived in the United States close to 50 years, but never before had I witnessed the concentrated and unified focusing on a single event in our nation's history the way Chileans from Arica in the north to Punta Arenas at the end of the world turned their attention to the coup.

In October we witnessed the jubilant eruption of emotion issuing forth from Chileans who hugged, kissed, screamed and honked their horns when their beloved soccer team punched its ticket to the world's largest sport event, to be held next June in Brazil.

In November we went to election events and talked to voters of all persuasions and ages and sides of the political spectrum during what turned out to be the first of two rounds in the presidential elections.

And in December we traveled to Torres del Paine, a national park of unsurpassed and staggering beauty that recently was named the eighth wonder of the world, when Michelle Bachelet made history in becoming the first candidate ever to be elected president twice in the post-democracy era.

Beyond these momentous months in Chilean history, we received an enormously generous reception from Chileans with whom we had some connection-we met everyone from dear friend Marjorie Agosin's seemingly inexhaustible supply of cousins and former students to a female anesthetist Dad had helped train nearly 30 years ago to our colleague, friend of a friend, guide/secret weapon Alejandra Matus-and those whom we had the good fortune to meet through our travels.

My Data Journalism students at the University of Diego Portales gradually understood my Spanish, my teaching methods and the concepts and application of this type of journalism in a process that left both sides feeling enriched for the encounter.

My research into the landmark 2009 Transparency Act, after an initial shift in focus, led me to talk with journalists, lawyers, non-profit executives, government representatives and plain folks in a project that gave me a sharper sense of the law's as yet incompletely realized potential.

Dunreith and I traveled to the vineyards of the Central Valley, to the coast cities of Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. With Aidan we flew to the searing desert of San Pedro de Atacama, the world's driest such space, and to Patagonia, a place Dunreith had longed to visit for years.

We also ventured to Rio, where I had the honor of attending, teaching and presenting to colleagues at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference doing investigative work, often at great physical peril, throughout the world.

We flew to Buenos Aires, where we met Dad and Lee before they set off on a two-week tour to Southern Argetina and up through Chile, and strolled together down elegant, inordinately wide, European-style boulevards, ate ice cream at Cafe Tortoni, the continent's oldest cafe that oozes with swagger, listened and learned for three hours at ESMA, the largest of the Argentine dictator's network of detention centers, and feasted on the sights and food of El Ateneo, the former theater that has been converted into one of the world's most spectacular bookstores.

Jon and I had the tremendous fortune to receive a grant from the Pulitzer Center to do a project about the impact of the past on the present in Chile 40 years after the coup. Together we worked long hours over the course of two weeks for a three-part series that ran on The New Yorker's Photo Booth and on Hoy's website.

The family visits over our final six weeks in the country helped confirm to me the possibility of weaving together the people and passions and dreams and values that I hold most dear. Perhaps, greatest of all, it's fortified my increasing conviction that this way of living was not only possible, but could in a very real sense become ordinary.

Now, we are returning to Chicago, the city from which we have left, where we raised Aidan from a boy to a man, and where we have spent the vast majority of our married life.

I am, and will always be, a Bostonian at my core.

I had too many seminal events, from the Blizzard of 78 to the 1975 World Series to growing up amidst that inimitable accent for it to ever be otherwise.

But if Boston in my heart, Chicago's in my guts.

The people's straightforward manner and generous spirit, the city's sense of itself as a place of story and legend, the passion that Chicagoans bring to their sports and their politics and their brats and their neighborhoods, its industrial past and tortured history with race and segregation and immigration and labor that make it what the late, great Studs Terkel called "the true American city", have all gotten in deep, and are not going anywhere, either.

I'll miss our life in Santiago and our travels throughout the country and continent, to be sure.

And I'm excited to fly over the leafless trees toward the dirtied snow and land at O'Hare, to walk in the 20 degree weather and see our breath and our circle of friends and family again, and to bring a fresh, broader perspective to my ongoing love for the city.

We don't know our exact next steps, or, frankly, where we're going to live after we stay at my brother Jon's place on the South Side.

But we do know without any shred of a doubt that, as always, the adventure will continue.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 102: Culminating Thoughts on Transparency in Chile

Our days left here in Chile can fit on one hand-we’re flying back to Chicago and the United States on December 25-and I find myself in the summing up and looking back place that often is precipitated by the ends of experiences.

As I’ve written before, and really throughout, these chronicles, there have been many rich, meaningful and memorable aspects of our time in the land of Neruda and Mistral, Allende and Pinochet.

Friends.

Colleagues.

Students.

Travel adventures.

A profound sense of living out of our dreams and values.

There’s also been the research I’ve done about the landmark Transparency Act that was passed in 2009, a few years after the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found in favor of former presidential candidate Marcel Claude that a right existed to government information.

Among the key components: the creation of an independent Transparency Council to which individuals and groups can appeal if their request for information is denied and accountability not just for functionaries, but for agency leaders who do not supply the data or documents that had been sought.

My goal as a Fulbright Scholar has not been to simply teach a course and conduct an investigation, but rather to spark relationships and bring people together who might not otherwise know each other so that those connections can continue after Dunreith and I return to the United States.

As part of that effort I participated a pair of conversations hosted by Fulbright Commission during the past couple of weeks. My colleagues at the University of Diego Portales and other journalists, folks from the Chilean government, people involved in transparency work in the non-profit sector, members of the Hack/Hackers community and staffers from the U.S. Embassy attended the events.

A research plan evolves

After thanking everyone for attending, I shared my original plan for the project.

Modeled on James Painter’s work on climate change coverage, I had intended to look at a year’s worth of coverage of El Mercurio, the country’s largest paper, before and after the law’s passage to determine what, if anything, had changed.

After arriving here, reading the paper on a more regular basis-it treated the fortieth anniversary of the Pinochet coup like a soccer news brief-and watching El Diario de Agustin, the documentary film that exposed the paper’s complicity with the Pinochet government, I decided to go in a more qualitative direction.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvo0939_bSc&w=560&h=315]

Instead, I approached the topic like a beat I would cover. As part of that commitment, I reported on what I did as I went along, using the iterative approach endorsed by dear friend Fernando Diaz.

As a result, I met with journalists at different levels of prominence and stages of their careers, with non-profit folks like ProAccesso, a group that does legal work on transparency, and Ciudadano Inteligente, a group that works to empower citizens through technology and access to information.

I talked with elected officials like Mario Gebauer, the mayor of Melipilla who had filed a lawsuit pushing for the emails of public officials to be public record.

I met with folks in the computer coding and hacking community as well as with people from the Transparency Council, the organ whose establishment was a key component of the law.

And I interviewed people from the Transparency Commission, the government’s organ dedicated to these issues.

I took other actions, too.

Within the country I attended and presented at Data Tuesdays sponsored by Fundacion Inria Chile, a French non-profit organization, and taught at the Winter Data School held at the University of Diego Portales where I taught. During our Data Journalism class I had students write letters and brought in a bunch of guest speakers, many of whom talked with the students about the importance of acquiring publicly available data.

And, with the help of lawyer friend Macarena Rodriguez, I filed an information request and appeal.

Outside of Chile I attended the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Rio in October and met with members of the data team from La Nacion when we traveled to Buenos Aires.

I blogged throughout about what I learned from these interactions, which took place during a time in which Chile not only marked the fortieth anniversary of the coup, but continued its ongoing transition from a closed and isolated dictatorship to a fitfully emerging democracy more connected to the world through technology and the global economy.

In addition to the specific area of transparency under the law, Chile was going through all kinds of openings from the past and into the present through the work people like the young volunteers of TECHO, who work in a holistic way with poor communities to identify and confront a plan to meet the challenges they face.

Or with people like Jaime Parada, the nation’s first openly gay public official who was elected in 2012 as councilman in the wealthy and politically conservative Providencia neighborhood.

Or members of MOVILH, one of the nation’s most visible and active gay rights organization.

Or Nancy, an Aymara woman who scours the Internet to send up north to members of her community about the devastation mining is doing to their land, who makes traditional handcrafts and is starting to teach her children the language that previously was banned.

Many of these individuals and organizations are part of a transition from an earlier concept of human rights as being individually based and consisting of dictatorship-era violations like torture, detention and disappearance to a more ample and collective vision that include the rights of people with disabilities and members of the LGBT community, the right to a clean environment, and even to Internet access.

I learned a lot through my research.

The good news first

The first part was that there was a lot of good news and positive developments around the law and infrastructure, which, along with Mexico, are among the best in the continent, according to transparency guru Moises Sanchez.

There are a core of people involved in the issue, many of whom expressed optimism and enthusiasm about the direction of transparency in the country.

The number of requests filed by citizens over time has grown to tens of thousands field per year.

It’s both an anti-corruption tool that is a central part of the government’s approach toward transparency and one that has the potential for historic reconstruction to gain a fuller and deeper understanding of what happened in the country during the earlier and darker time of the dictatorship.

The government has posted close to 1,100 data set on its data portal, and is working to integrate those sets with each other and with information from the country’s 15 regions.

The Council’s budget has gone up each year of its existence, increasing by more than 50 percent from 2010 to 2013.

The large papers appear to be using the law more frequently.

There was a Supreme Court decision in November that reversed its earlier position and said that emails from public officials are public record.

And the leadership of journalism organizations like Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Chicago Headline Club are willing to support continued efforts in this area.

Many challenges exist, too

At the same time, the law has many challenges, according to the people with whom I spoke.

Before its reversal, the Supreme Court had issued two decisions saying that public officials did not have to supply emails that had been requested-a position that was backed on the editorial pages of leading newspapers like La Tercera.

Many journalists are not using the law for a number of reasons. Some expressed the feeling that they could choose to wait close to a month, and very possibly longer, for information they could more easily obtain through their sources. Others said that some journalists feel they are betraying their sources if they request information through a freedom of information request-an attitude that suggests that their the relationship with a government official is more important than the public’s right to know.

There is a perception among many that law is the tool of the country’s elite, many of whom are male, educated, wealthy professionals with Internet access.

In 2011 President Sebastian Pinera, in a decision many considered to be politically, chose not to renew the terms of Raul Urrutia and Juan Pablo Olmedo on the Transparency Council, even though the Senate had endorsed their continued service.

The council is not officially linked to civil society, even though that option exists.

Many of the organizations engaged in transparency work have few resources and are isolated from each other. In many cases, there is little outreach.

As I experienced personally in my request, the process can be extremely slow on potentially sensitive data request, with government officials invoking concerns of national security and saying they have too much work to fulfill the request.

Finally, while the judicial and legislative branches have to publish information, they are not subject to the same disclosure requirements as the executive branch.

Based on this balance of positive and negative developments, I suggested that people consider working on legislation to address their concerns, collaborate more actively with each other, dedicate more resources to outreach, encourage the Council to develop an official link with civil society, and connect with people outside the country who are doing the same work.

I concluded by noting the following:

The law is still young, but has tremendous potential.

There has been significant progress, and the value and spirit of the law has yet to be truly realized.

The actions of the people in the room will play a role in the degree to which the potential is converted into reality.

I’m honored to be part of that dialogue.

From there, I opened the floor for discussion, which in both cases was lively and wide ranging.

I don’t want in any way to romanticize or elevate what occurred.

As always, the work of making a lofty promise real falls to those who live in that time and who must decide whether it is worth the effort, whether we want it enough.

It’s true that Dr. King said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b80Bsw0UG-U&w=420&h=315]

But he also said and wrote repeatedly that there is nothing inevitable about time’s passage and social progress.

Time itself is neutral, he said.

I did some research.

Two groups gathered and listened and dialogued with each other.

Folks who did not know each other now have met.

We've made a start, and we'll see how far we go from here.

I know that I’ll continue to work on this issue.

I'm transparent about that.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 97: Data Journalism Class Ends

Although generally joyous, the end of school years also have a twinge of sadness. Our time together-and, with it, my chance to directly impact the students-has ended.

Life goes on.

Last Tuesday marked the addition of a new group to the list: the 20 or so students in my Data Journalism class at the University of Diego Portales.

It's been close to three decades since I first worked with three- to five-year-old students at the Bellehaven Child Development Center in East Menlo Park.

I still remember their eyelashes, their angelic expressions and the silence that greeted me after I had biked away from Stanford's leafy luxury and toward their grittier neighborhoods.

I didn't know what I was doing with them.

I didn't know why so few fathers came to get them.

But I did know that I was where I belonged.

Since then I've worked with students of all kinds of ages and backgrounds in Boston suburbs, Appalachian classrooms, and one of South Africa's first private multi-racial schools.

This group was special, though.

It was both my first crop of Chilean students and my first Spanish-language class.

We adjusted to each other as the semester unfolded.

I learned both how to explain the requirements with more clarity and to convey my insistence that they attend class and do work in order to pass. I changed the assignments from a series of smaller items and what amounted to a continent-wide fishing expedition around lotteries to three projects of increasing scope, rigor and sophistication.

For their part, the students had a series of experiences-projects, articles, guest lecturers-that allowed them to better understand the sensibility I wanted them to develop and the world of data journalism they could enter, not just the data analysis skills they needed to acquire.

But I didn't just talk to the students about data.

I told them how I had wanted to go to Chile for many years and how I had applied to the Fulbright program four times before being accepted.

I told them about how extraordinary what was happening in the country before the September 11 anniversary of the coup, how significant the presidential elections were.

I also talked to them about my tremendous fortune in being there with Dunreith, about being able to work on a project for The New Yorker with my brother Jon, who shared his work and talked with the students twice. I let them know how much it meant to me to have Dad there, who told them about the importance of being actively involved in both sides of a mentoring relationship.

Finally, I urged them to give themselves enough time to do the kind of work of which I knew they were capable and to finish strong.

On Tuesday, they did just that.

One by one they stood and delivered at the front of the room. They talked about their data sets, their maps, their graphics and the law they chose to evaluate. Using Powerpoint or Prezi or a Google Docs, students who had had no idea of what a database was at the beginning of the semester explained how they had acquired and analyzed their data.

Dunreith and Aidan arrived about two thirds of the way through the class.

My family I said.

Please give them a round of applause.

The class complied with gusto.

The last student finished about 10 minutes after our scheduled time, and I moved forward to the front of the room for the last time.

I apologized for the lateness and asked them to think back to August, when they knew little to nothing about data.

I told them again how much I had enjoyed working with them and how being there and working with them was the realization of a dream for me.

I told them that I had learned that it's possible to live from dreams and values, and that I hope they felt the same way.

I explained that they had had the opportunity to meet some of the people in the world who do the best work in this area.

And your brother, one student called out.

And your father, said another.

You're almost there, I said.

I'm proud of the progress you've made, but you're not done yet.

You can finish strong.

I believe in you, I said. I'm available to you as a resource now and in the future. And I'll be in my office tomorrow if you need help.

Then I thanked them and told them they could go.

The students applauded and started to leave.

I stood by the door.

The male students and I hugged each other on the way out.

The women and I kissed each other's cheeks.

Then it was over.

Grading and deciding with Dunreith and Aidan what to do next awaited.

As always, I had the knowledge that I could have done better.

Vulnerability in the knowledge, too, that life continues its ceaseless forward flow. The end of the class anticipated, in a small but real way, the ultimate ending we all face.

Drained.

But I also felt good, deep down good, at the knowledge that I had given my best, at what we had done together and at the transmission of a spark that I believe, at least for some, will not soon be extinguished.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 92: Pure Joy as Jon Arrives and Family Time Begins

There's nothing else like it.

The feeling you get around those who knew you when, the people with whom you shared the most formative, embarrassing, meaningful and ordinary moments of your lives.

Those with whom you grow up and whose progression through the life cycle helps you mark your own life journey.

Your family.

Our time here in Chile has been an extraordinary one for many reasons.

One of the most important of these is that Dunreith and I are sharing this adventure.

That we sold our house the day before we left only heightens our sense of carving this chapter together.

Late last month we had the pleasure of spending five glorious days with Dad and his partner Lee in Argentina and Uruguay.

They'll be coming here next Thursday after a 17-day tour that has them heading down to the continent's southernmost point before making their way up Chile to Santiago.

They'll also be here with my brother Jon, who arrived in Santiago this morning for a two-week stint during which we'll do a journalistic project.

It promises to be a period of intense activity. I've been exerting a lot of energy calling and emailing to make sure we take full advantage of the opportunity.

I'm optimistic that we'll do just that with a hard push.

And, mostly, I feel tremendously fortunate not only that we have this time together, but that we're able to collaborate on work that we love.

Jon's arrival marks the beginning of our final seven weeks here in Chile.

Dad and Lee will stay until November 21.

Aidan, who set off for Bali today after finishing his expansive semester in New Zealand, lands a few days later.

He'll be here for a month.

During that time we'll travel to northern Chile to see the desert and to the south to spend time in Chiloe and Patagonia, a place Dunreith first wanted to visit in 1977 after reading Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia.

We'll also spend close to a week in Peru, including several days in legendary Incan site Machu Picchu.

Time with any family member is something to be treasured, particularly since we no longer live near each other.

Having that time with Aidan, especially in places where none of us will have access to the Internet, feels even more so.

Dunreith, Jon and I met at our place after I had finished with teaching and meeting and interviewing and planning.

We all walked to our favorite Peruvian restaurant, where Jon had his first dinner on Chilean soil as well as his Peruvian pisco sour. We made plans for what we'll do tomorrow and the weekend and as much of the next week as we've got lined up at this point.

We savored the three types of ceviches, feasted on the classic Peruvian dish of aji de gallina and devoured the crepe-covered ice cream and the tres leches cake.

After dinner we took the Metro down to La Moneda, the presidential palace that was bombed on Sept. 11, 1973, the day on which Salvador Allende delivered his famous final speech to the Chilean people.

The massive Chilean flag that is so often unfurled and waving in the wind during the day was still.

The palace was surrounded by a wall marking it off as a construction site.

Dogs lay on the sidewalk, looking, and perhaps even being, dead.

O'Higgins Street bustled with activity.

The three of us walked to the site to get a better look at the front of the palace.

A statue of Diego Portales, one of the nation's most critical political figures, loomed in the distance.

We strolled past the parking garage and into the cultural center and saw a large, open space where workers were packing up chairs and speakers from a performance.

We went out the back and saw a statue of Allende standing above words from his final speech, "Tengo fe en Chile y su destino."

I have faith in Chile and his destiny.

We headed back to the Metro.

Jon stopped every few steps to take pictures of the dogs, of the political posters, of the artwork in the station of Chilean geography, and, after we got off at the Pedro de Valdivia stop, of a yellow public service announcement telling people to register their guns.

On one level, Jon's setting foot in Chile bring just a tiny hint of sadness because it means that the finish line to a remarkable time in our lives is visible, if only faintly.

But that wasn't what I felt tonight.

It was pure joy.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 91: Becky Simpson's Counsel and a Full Life

In the nearly quarter century that I knew her, Becky Simpson, known to many as the "Mother Theresa of Applachia," taught me many lessons. She taught me that visions can come true after she had had an image of a mountain of food, a mountain of clothing and a molehill of money-and all three happened at the Cranks Creek Survival Center she co-founded with her husband Bobby.

She taught me about how far a sense of righteous indignation at society's inequities and a seemingly bottomless well of compassion and giving can flower and touch people from around the world.

She taught me that fierce and gentle can exist in equal measure in the same person.

She taught me that meaningful moments shared cut across all kinds of lines.

She also taught me about how people can endure and move through unimaginable suffering and come out bruised, but intact, on the other side.

This last lesson came after I asked her how she had been able to survive so much-a third grade education, the death of her younger brother and one of her six children, a profoundly damaged back, the most grinding of poverty, Bobby's blindness, floods that wiped out her home and a devastating car accident are only among the most noteworthy-and still continue both to extend an open hand to help those who needed it and to fight for justice.

How do you do it? I asked as we sat around the kitchen table where we spent many, many hours talking.

I was waiting for a lengthy explanation of social justice tactics.

Becky gave me nothing of the sort.

Rest and try again, she said, her clear blue eyes filled with hard-earned wisdom.

I'm trying to draw on Becky's counsel these days, when things are popping on many fronts, to put it mildly.

I'm working to pull my Data Journalism course together for the final month and to work with potential replacement Daniela Cartagena to make sure that she has what she needs to feel oriented and to continue the burgeoning tradition we're starting to establish at the University of Diego Portales.

I'm coordinating a presentation of my research into the impact of the landmark 2009 Transparency Law on the country with Antonio Campana, Yunuen Varela, and the rest of the folks at the Fulbright Commission.

I'm writing one post a week for Hoy in both Spanish and English, and working to maintain a similar pace with the Huffington Post in English.

I just sent off tonight an 8,000-word chapter that Dunreith, Gabriele Thimm, Dad and I wrote about our trip in May 2012 to Dad's hometown in Germany for a book based on the Engaging the Other conference at which we presented in South Africa in December 2012.

Dunreith and I are working out the logistics for trips that we'll take to Peru, the desert in northern Chile and the glaciers in the southern part of the country during the month that Aidan is here.

After receiving an email from high school friend Tamera Coyne-Beasley about the possibility of our class holding a 30th reunion, I reached out on Facebook to classmates to see if there was any interest in having such an event. This sparked a chain of events that has led in the past two weeks to the formation of a Facebook group with more than 150 members, the discovery that our class has had $559 since our tenth reunion in 1993, and the impending delivery of a class directory courtesy of the Brookline High School Alumni Association.

I'm gearing up for my brother Jon coming here for a couple of weeks for us to work on a journalism project, all the while trying to keep this space going.

This says nothing of following up and making plans to learn from and collaborate with, the talented, dedicated, courageous and inspiring journalists I met at the Global Investigative Journalism conference last month in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

And I'm trying to keep my writing going here and in another book project.

I don't offer this list either to brag or to complain.

It's hard for me to express how fortunate I feel on so many levels to be with Dunreith at this point in our lives and in the nation's history.

Rather it's to say that tending to all of these varied projects can leave me feeling alternately drained and scattered and to my head swirling with the myriad details to which I need to attend.

Which brings me back to Becky.

This afternoon Dunreith and I slogged through about three hours worth of checking out websites, reviews and options for each of the three trips we're taking starting at the end of this month.

My eyelids were starting to hang heavy as we sat on the lower level of the Starbucks on Pedro de Valdivia Street.

My response time and accuracy was diminishing, my irritability rising.

I've got to head back to the apartment, I told Dunreith, who was feeling the same way.

We loaded up our computers and cords and adapters into my red backpack, walked down Providencia Avenue, greeted the doormen and gratefully laid down on our bed.

The pain in my jaw that accompanies my starting to meditate began its inexorable rhythm.

My breath grew deeper.

My thoughts started to slow down.

I woke up forty minutes later.

My head was groggy, and, within 20 minutes, it started to clear.

After an hour, I felt fully recharged.

I kept contacting people to interview for the project.

Dunreith and I had dinner and watched the latest dark episode in the third season of Los 80, Andres Wood's look at a pivotal decade in Chilean history through the eyes of a middle-class family.

I called mentor and friend Paul Tamburello and filled him in on my doings.

I went downstairs, pumped away on the exercise bike and stretched on the rug-covered floor.

I came back up to write this piece.

It's close to 1:00 a.m. and I'm starting to fade again.

It's time once to more to heed Becky's words.

It's time to rest.

And, in the morning, to try again.