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 66: Carlo Gutierrez and the Fight for Public Emails

As part of my work as a Fulbright scholar here in Santiago I’m looking at the impact of the landmark 2009 Transparency Law on investigative reporting.

I’ve written before about how the focus of my research has changed after I arrived here and found that my initial plan of doing a pre-and post-law analysis of content in the country’s leading news outlet was fundamentally flawed.

Instead, I’m taking the pulse of a range of folks who have been involved with the law.

Carlo Gutierrez, who heads the legal team of the municipality of Melipilla, is one of them.

We met briefly last week during our meeting with Melipilla Mayor Mario Gebauer.

Gutierrez was the point person for the municipality’s ultimately unsuccessful effort to gain access to emails that contained communication about how to distribute reconstruction funds after the devastating earthquake of February 2010.

I took the bus again to Melipilla, made my way to the city hall, and was directed to the back of a series of single-story buildings.

After asking three people for directions, I found Gutierrez’s modest office.

His name is printed on the wooden door. Neatly organized piles of paper sit like rows of cards in a solitaire game.

Gutierrez, who has a boyish face and longish black hair, arrived a couple of minutes after I did.

He had prepared a folder of material relative to the precedent-setting case he had filed and that led him eventually to present for the first time in his life before the country’s Supreme Court.

For Gutierrez, who had previously worked in the Interior Department, the initial request as well as the subsequent legal arguments, seemed straightforward.

The Transparency Law gives citizens the right to information by and about their public officials.

Digital communication like emails that are written from official accounts are covered by the law.

The subsecretary of the Interior, then, had a responsibility to supply the information he had requested on behalf of the community.

It didn’t go that simply.

Gutierrez explained that the agency answered neither the first nor the second request he sent.

When they eventually did answer, they refused to provide the information, citing privacy concerns of the public officials.

This struck Gutierrez as strange because they explicitly had asked for information from public officials written on public accounts about public business.

The community then appealed to the Transparency Council established by the law. It accepted the municipality’s argument and said that it had a right to the emails it had requested.

This time the government appealed to the regional court in Santiago. It’s the middle of three levels within the Chilean court system.

Gutierrez offered an oral argument before the court.

Again, he felt the issue at hand from a legal perspective was straightforward.

But the court of three judges found otherwise.

It held in favor of the defendants, accepting the argument that emails written by public officials on public accounts are not subject to the law.

On to the Supreme Court, the highest in the land.

Gutierrez again went and presented his oral argument. A lawyer for the Transparency Council joined him.

As opposed to the United States, where lawyers arguing before the Supreme Court have exactly 30 minutes and can be peppered at any minute by any of the nine justices, in Chile the lawyers have about an hour, Gutierrez said.

Also in contrast with the United States, where the questions the judges ask often can reveal the justice’s orientation in a case, Gutierrez explained that the lawyers only received a few questions, none of which sparked a meaningful exchange.

Earlier this year the court rendered its decision.

It held in favor of the defendants.

The decision was a bitter disappointment to Gutierrez, who felt that it was made for political reasons.

The court has reiterated its stance in ensuing cases filed by non-profit organizations like Ciudadano Inteligente. But what is perhaps of even graver concern is that Secretary General Cristian Larroulet is seeking to codify in law the restrictions that the court has placed through the cases on which it has ruled.

In Chile, legislation originates from the executive branch, then goes to the Congress and Senate for discussion and a vote before returning to the president to be signed.

As Secretary General, Larroulet has President Sebastian Pinera's ear and is doing his bidding. (Pinera already showed his anti-access position in 2011 when he sought to have members of the Transparency Council removed because of their support for releasing emails.)

Gutierrez holds some hope on the new government that he hopes would propose legislation that goes in a more, rather than less, open direction.

But he also is strongly concerned that the courts’ actions have struck a strong blow against the nation’s still fragile democracy.

Chile has been an authoritarian country in the past, Gutierrez said. A key tool in the transition to democracy is the access to information.

They have closed the window on that, he said, a trace of sadness crossing his face.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 65: An Extraordinary September in Chile

Yesterday marked the end of an extraordinary month that began with memory and ended in transparency, with a hefty dose of celebration in between. MEMORIES OF THE COUP AND AFTER

For people in the United States, the the date September 11 has, since 2001, had a special meaning and obligation to those who were killed in the terrorist attacks in which separate planes wiped out the twin towers of the World Trade Center, smashed into the Pentagon and crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

But here in Chile, the date has been significant for the past four decades.

That’s because it was on that day in 1973 that a military junta headed by Gen. Augusto Pinochet bombed La Moneda, the presidential palace, overthrew democratically-elected Socialist leader Salvador Allende and ushered in a 17-year reign of disappearances, torture, murder and, for some, economic prosperity.

The coup and its bloody aftermath constitute an open wound from which many Chileans are still seeking to heal.

The early part of September saw an unprecedented outpouring of memory-related activity.

Plays.

Poetry readings.

Book launches.

Memorial events at former torture centers like Villa Grimaldi.

Scholarly conferences.

Documentary films about topics ranging from murdered members of Allende’s inner circle to a punk band formed in the waning days of Pinochet regime.

There have been observances of the coup in years past.

But the volume and the source of this year’s eruption of memory distinguished it from the ones in earlier years and decades, according to Ricardo Brodsky, director of the national Museum of Memory and Human Rights.

Whereas in previous years the commemorations were more based in the state and emotionally muted, this time they came from all sectors of civil society.

Matias Torres, the sponsor of fellow Fulbrighter and friend Deb Westin at the University of Chile, also made the point that the language of memory has started to change, too.

What as recently as five years ago was called a “military regime” was now openly labeled “a dictatorship,” he said.

Starting on September 2, Dunreith and I worked to attend at least one event per day.

We largely achieved our goal, and we only attended a smidgen of what was available here in Santiago, let alone throughout the planet’s longest country.

We saw and heard things we are not likely soon to forget.

Like the hundreds of relatives of disappeared sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, nieces and nephews who gathered at Villa Grimaldi, the former restaurant turned torture center turned peace park, stood and held black and white photographs of their loved ones aloft while a sturdy woman near the front of the pavilion took what amounted to a roll call.

Female comrades who have been disappeared and detained, she called.

Presente.

Present.

Former president, current presidential candidate and Villa Grimaldi survivor Michelle Bachelet was there in the front row, standing alongside her mother, Angela Jeria, who was also detained and tortured there.

People weeping at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights during the readings of the stories of their loved ones.

The lighting of candles at a vigil held by the Communist Party at the National Stadium.

This disgorging of memory has had the effect of what many said the Truth and Reconciliation Commission did in Sotuh Africa. It broke through the layers of ignorance and denial.

The emotional aftermath from this information is still settling in for many Chileans

Just last week, Don Roberto, a lifetime resident of Melipilla and a longtime government employee there, explained that many people in the area worked on farms and got their information from the patron.

We saw things on the television that we didn’t know were happening at the time, he said.

The ability to know what is taking place depends on accurate and full information that was all too short supply during the dictatorship, especially from many organs of the press. The powerful film El Diario of Augustin tells the story of El Mercurio´s being funded by the United States government and actively collaborating with the dictatorship.

TRANSPARENCY

In order to boost citizen’s ability to know what is going in the country, elected leaders passed a landmark Transparency Law that then-President Michelle Bachelet signed iin 2009.

This is the subject of my research investigation that I began in earnest this path month.

In many ways, it is an impressive piece of legislation that also has the accompanying infrastructure of a council.

More than 1,000 data sets are available on the nation´s data portal, for instance, and transparency gure Moises Sanchez said the framework is among the best in the continent.

But, as with just about anything significant in life, the proverbial devil is in the details.

Thus far, they don’t tell a very promising story.

Few media outlets appear to be using the law to gather material for hard-hitting stories. (Non-profit outfit CIPER is a notable exception.)

Waldo Carrasso, who now heads the libraries in the municipality of Providencia, worked in Public Information when the law came into effect.

He expected a flood of requests from journalists.

That didn´t happen.

I also learned that the government refused to release emails about public business written on public accounts when requested to do so by Melipilla Mayor Mario Gebauer and lawyer Carlo Gutierrez.

They engaged in a fight that eventually went to the Supreme Court, but lost.

So, too, did Ciudadano Inteligente, a pro-transparency group that issued a similar request.

And President Sebastian Pinera tried to replace the members of the Transparency Council who supported the release of such material.

The struggle for public information continues, and is also being waged by a small, but growing, community of hackers who write code as a means to more quickly and on an ongoing basis secure large volumes of public data.

CELEBRATING FIESTAS PATRIAS AT THE FONDAS

The public turned out in great numbers during the week of September 18, the official day of Chilean Independence.

The celebrations last far more than a day.

Everything shut down for the Wednesday and Thursday of that week.

People either go home to celebrate with family and/or to attend the many fondas, or festivals.

These are not events that I would normally frequent in the U.S., however, because we are here, I went to four of them. To four of them.

Each had its own flavor.

Rodeo was the dominant feature of the fonda at Parque Alberto Hurtado, while the sneaky strong terremoto drink stayed with me long after I left Parque O´Higgins.

With its organic foods, higher prices and vendors accepting credit cards, the Providencia event felt like the Whole Foods of fondas, and the Nunoa event featured a hustling anticucho cook named Patricio who asked me to purchase a couple of beers for him in exchange for my getting a skewer of grilled beef and sausage.

Together, the fondas gave me a collective impression of the importance of those days to Chileans as well as of the staggering volume of kitsch that is sold at such events around the world.

Many anticuchos, parties, piscos and a terremoto later, I returned to the university, and life started to resume what has already become a normal rhythm.

I first applied to the Fulbright program in 2000.

I was rejected that time, as well as in two subsequent attempts.

Realizing that success is a dream come true.

It´s even more so because we sold our house and put ourselves out into the world.

The events of September confirm the wisdom of our decision.

I can’t wait to see what October brings.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 61: Transparency Troubles in Chile

I wrote the other day about my ongoing project about the impact of the 2009 Transparency Law on investigative journalism here in Chile.

I mentioned in that post that transparency guru Moises Sanchez, who works in the area of open government with countries throughout the continent, believes that the law and accompanying infrastructure of a Transparency Council that investigates and decides on each claim is, with Mexico, among the best in the continent.

Since then I’ve reached out to investigative non-profit outfit CIPER, a stalwart organization that has broken many stories of national impact and participated in international collaborations with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

As it turns out, I also received an invitation that I passed onto my students from CIPER to attend a weeklong workshop toward the end of next month.

Among the first topics: how to file a request under the Transparency Act.

In a positive development on that point, I  heard from my student Doren Lowry that the 20 days since he submitted his request for data has passed, and that he’s going to inquire as to the status of his letter.

More fundamentally, I’ve come with more and more certainty  to believe that it is important to expand my focus beyond a strict look at a particular journalistic outlet, or even the field itself, to get a broader, more textured understanding of how the issue of transparency  is playing out here.

As a result, I contacted Ciudadano Inteligente, a non-profit organization committed to principles of transparency and open government.  The organization, along with two others, has been involved in a lawsuit around the right of citizens to have access to emails written by public officials on their work accounts.

This is an important issue as the Transparency Council and  civil society groups-but not, notably, media outlets-tussle with the government over the rights and limits of the public to have access to what the government that they are funding is doing.

There is historical resonance, too, as Chile continues to wrestle with its wounded past. The society was far from open before the Pinochet dictatorship, and, during his 17-year reign, brutality, information control, and silence were integral and related parts of a ruling method.

The lawsuit builds on the legal foundation that Mario Gebauer, the mayor of Melipilla with whom we spent a number of hours and had lunch yesterday, attempted to establish.

The year following the devastating earthquake of Feburary 27, 2010, Gebauer asked for the emails between Interior Subsecretary Rodrigo Ubilla, and the provincial government of Melipilla about the distribution of funds for reconstruction for the earthquake. (In an analogue to Los Angeles City and County, Melipilla is both a city and a province.)

The government refused to provide the requested documents, citing privacy and confidentiality concerns of the employees, even though they were acting in their public capacity.

The judicial branch ultimately accepted the government’s arguments, and no emails were released.

There was a certain irony in the timing of our meeting with Gebauer.

Today our students heard from David Donald, data editor of the Center for Public Integrity, spoke about an analysis that he helped reporter and friend Kate Golden of Wisconsin Watch of Gov. Scott Walker’s emails.

The number of emails was so copious, David said, that he devised a random sample to get a representative understanding of what the emails said.

Moreover, as Lewis Maltby wrote in Can They Do That, in the United States employers have the right to look at work and private email activity that is done during work time, and even after hours if it is conducted on a work computer.

The Chilean court’s decision is troubling enough.

Yet what is more so is that the government is considering legislation that would place official limits on the public’s ability to receive email from their officials, according to Carlos Gutierrez, a lawyer for the community of Melipilla.

I’ll be looking more into this and report on what I find.

It’s too early for me to render a conclusive judgment.

But a picture is rapidly emerging of an acquiescent press, the majority of which is neither trying to access the rights they have nor to contest the erosion of those freedoms, and of a society whose progressive promises have not yet been with an openness commensurate with those lofty ideals.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 60: The Busy Life of Mayor Mario Gebauer

A few years ago, Mario Gebauer was planning to set aside some quiet, reflective time to study social anthropology. But then came the call came to serve in government in Santiago.

He answered.

In 2008 he decided to run for Mayor of Melipilla, a community about an hour southwest of Santiago.

During his campaign Mario walked to thousands of households, knocking on doors, introducing himself and asking for support from the voters in on during his campaign.

The longtime Socialist won in a traditionally right-leaning area, garnering 58 percent of the vote.

His life has been a whirlwind of activity ever since.

To wit, he has helped the usher the community through the devastation wrought by the deadly earthquake of 2010.

He’s participated in a precedent-setting, but ultimately unsuccessful, lawsuit involving the 2009 Transparency Law and that sought public officials’ emails.

He’s started to work with Chinese companies that want to invest in the area that has traditionally relied heavily on agriculture to power its enconomy.

He’s begun working on a hospital that would replace the current facility that, along with other public services, attracts people from all over, but that he said is not equipped with state-of-the-art facilities.

He’s laid the groundwork, along with elected officials in nearby San Antonio, to create a distinct governmental region that would seek to release what he called the “super-centralized” system that, not unlike Chicago in Illinois, concentrates a disproportionate amount of power and resources in the largest city.

He’s supporting Michelle Bachelet so that she can win in the first round in the upcoming presidential elections as well as backing other candidates with similar political leanings.

He’s also raising a family.

Dunreith and I spent three and a half hours with him this morning and afternoon.

I had met Mario briefly at the University of Diego Portales with Alberto Barrera, a former MIRista, friend and husband of colleague and guide Alejandra Matus. We were following up on his invitation for us to visit his community.

Dunreith and I took the Route 78 bus from the San Borja bus station for a peaceful, hour-long ride through increasingly green, hilly and rural territory to arrive near the town square.

After walking to the town square and looking for the municipal building, we received help from Juan Manuel Cornejo, a hale and hearty lifetime Mellepilla resident who works in real estate. Cornejo delivered us to the mayor’s office and took his leave after passing me a business card.

Dressed in a sweater and blue jeans, Mario is close to six feet with thinning, fine black hair. He is clean shaven, and emits a look of intense concentration on his face as he listens.

Mario speaks quietly and moves and acts in a efficient, economical fashion. He used the time the town’s lawyer came in talk with us about the transparency lawsuit to rapidly sign a bunch of documents, all the while continuing to follow the conversation. His phone buzzes and moves constantly with calls and texts and emails.

The Social Democrat came of age during the 1988 plebiscite in which the Chilean electorate voted to end the reign of dictator Augusto Pinochet. Then 17 years old, he couldn’t vote, but he was able to throw himself into the work and see the value of a key opportunity converted into a meaningful social result.

The pictures on the wall show that his political commitments and high levels of energy have remained largely the same since then.

On one wall is a framed copy of the Bolivarian dream of a pan-Latin American federation.

On an adjacent wall is an arpillera, or tapestry, that were common forms of resistance during the Pinochet dictatorship. (He later gave Dunreith nine cards with multi-colored cloth Nativity scenes.) Near that are three black and white pictures he received during a recent trip to Cuba.

So, too, have the emotional scars from that era.

Over lunch, Dunreith said that she has been watching Los Ochenta, Andres Wood's company’s representation of life during the dictatorship as experienced by a single family.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIk3f2FZIgs&w=560&h=315]

I watched one episode of the show and decided not to watch more, Mario said.

His choice was not because the program has inaccuracies.

Quite the opposite, in fact. He praised the scenes and clothes and music and television excerpts that appear in the episodes.

Rather the show brings back painful memories for Mario. He didn’t elaborate, but said, simply, “Era fuerte.”

It was strong.

His words came after we had spoken in the office about the major initiatives he has been engaged in during his first term and the beginning of his second four years in office. Mario explained that he is deeply committed to bringing public investment to Melipilla. It’s no easy task, as about 80 percent of the municipalities have no such investment. He estimates that he travels to Santiago about once a week to solicit funds, among other purposes.

We had arrived at lunch after driving in the mayor’s official car, a white pickup truck, past rolling hills with vineyards, horses, cows, basic houses with Chilean flags and road signs with campaign pictures of candidates like Juan Antonio Coloma.

Don Roberto, a brown-haired lifelong native of Melipilla, drove, and then ate, with us at El Mirador de Popeta, a restaurant that sits above the main highway on a dusty and winding road and that specializes in typical seafood.

Miriam, an energetic grandmother of three with a purple sweater, thick black hair in a ponytail and amiable manner, greeted Gebauer with a familiar hug and ushered us to our table.

We were the only ones in the restaurant.

Shortly after we sat down, Miriam brought a steaming pile of the largest, tastiest seafood appetizer I’ve ever shared.

Shrimp, scallops, mussels in shells that ringed that the black, cast-iron bowl. Large pieces of salmon and reinata. Vegetables and a rich, brown soy-based sauce underneath.

And, of course, a pisco sour. This one had a touch of ginger on the top that added a tangy twist.

We spoke during the meal about what the experience of people in the area was during the dictatorship.

Don Roberto explained that many people worked on farms, received their information about what was happening from their patron, or boss, and thus did not know about the atrocities the Pinochet regime had committed. Because of that, the recent commemorative activities and shows on television had been a potent and disturbing revelation, he said.

In between peppering us throughout the drive and meal about the American political situation, Gebauer told us about visiting the Holocaust Memorial in Israel, his trips to Rio and his sense of Buenos Aires.

Miriam came back after we had finished-she told me she was going to punish me because I hadn’t eaten enough-and asked if we wanted dessert.

We chatted for a minute about El Mirador, which gets its seafood and shellfish from Santiago and which she and her husband opened two years ago. By this time the restaurant was bustling with customers.

The opening came 40 years into their marriage and decades after her husband, who worked for most of his life in restaurant kitchens, first hatched his dream.

Miriam told us that her daughter has taught English for nine years.

But the English of England, not America, which is a lower form, Mario said.

It’s like the different between Castilian and Chilean Spanish, I answered. (We had already discussed how many Chileans pride themselves on speaking a Spanish that is generously called hard to understand.)

They laughed loudly.

The Americans are the Chileans of English, I added.

More laughter.

We talked a little while longer until a pause came in the conversation.

Shall we go? Mario asked.

It was a statement more than a question.

We got back in the car. Mario talked, texted and answered as we drove.Don Roberto dropped us off at the bus station.

Toward the end of the meal, Mario said he hoped to get back to his studies next year.

I wouldn’t count on it.