Chilean Chronicles, Part 71: Mario Hernandez and Los Patitos

If you work at a restaurant long enough you become part of the menu.

At least that’s what has happened to Mario Hernandez.

He first started working at Los Patitos, a seafood restaurant in sleepy oceanfront Algarrobo whose name means “the ducklings,” as a 16-year-old.

That was in 1969.

He’s worked there ever since.

Don Mario served thousands and thousands of customers as his three boys grew up and became men.

He waited on Don Pablo Neruda and his third wife Matilde Urrutia. (He said the former’s personality was “special”, while the latter was “normal.”)

He took the order of Socialist President Salvador Allende.

Don Mario served military leaders during the Pinochet dictatorship-a group that he divided in two parts.

The smaller portion consisted of “good” generals like General Oscar Bonilla, who Don Mario said tried to restrain Pinochet’s murderous excesses of Pinochet and died in a mysterious plane crash in 1975.

The larger group were “bad,” he explained, shaking his head with disgust at the memory.

The dictatorship hit Don Mario’s home community hard, he said.

People would disappear in the middle of the night and never return.

Many people.

A climate of fear pervaded.

What was it like to serve people who you knew did these terrible things, I asked?

Don Mario stared.

For a minute, rather than an empty patio, it seemed as if he could see the leaders of the junta who had inflicted such massive damage on the country.

It was work, he said, just a touch of sadness entering his voice.

He worked at Los Patitos in 1988, the year he and Chileans across the country overcame their fear, voted with their hearts and aspirations, and voted No to the dictatorship.

Five years from retirement, Mario looks younger than his 60 years. His face is youthful and unlined. His black hair is a little thin in the back and he’s carrying some extra weight, but his movements are energetic and he smiles easily.

We met on Sunday night, when Dunreith and I were the only customers under the awning outside the restaurant.

We had initially checked the menu, gone to survey other options and returned to Los Patitos when we discovered that nearby Peruvian and Italian restaurants were closed.

It was a little cool on the patio.

Mario took a little while to warm up, too.  When he did, though, the information flowed quickly and freely.

He told us about his three boys, all in their 30s now, and living and working in Santiago. He carefully pulled out the business card for the oldest from his wallet and showed it to us with reverence.

Don Mario talked about being good friends with Manuel Araya, Neruda’s chauffeur whose assertions about the great poet being poisoned have contributed to his body being exhumed.

He’s talked about that for years, Don Mario said. He told me about that for the first time in 1978. Araya said that Don Pablo got an injection in his stomach, which turned red, Don Mario said.

So you believe it? I asked.

It’s the truth, he declared.

Don Mario stood to the side of us, his head jerking regularly as he spoke.

Often he didn’t respond to what I was saying, but kept going with his train of thought.

It wasn’t out of rudeness, but rather as if he didn’t hear me.

He did connect when I mentioned our friend and Chilean guide Alejandra Matus.

Alejandra Matus, he asked, brightening. I know her.

That was a good book, he said, referring to Alejandra’s The Black Book of Chilean Justice, her powerful expose of the Chilean judiciary in the Pinochet era.

The judge’s decision the day after the book’s publication in the spring of 1999 to recall all of the copies and the possibility of her serving 5 years in jail prompted Alejandra to flee the country.

The book was banned, but that didn’t stop Don Mario from getting a copy.

My copy was photocopied in Argentina, he said, smiling. A friend from Santiago got it for him.

I’m not a Communist, but I liked that book, he said, shedding his manner of long-time employee and leaning in close when Dunreith and I stood up to go.

You’re not a Communist, but you like to know the truth, I said.

Don Mario smiled again.

Tell her I sent my greetings, he said.

We shook hands.

His grip wasn’t real firm, but contained genuine enthusiasm.

Dunreith and I exited the patio and started to walk back to Andres’ rustic cottage in the woods.

Mario Hernandez was there, standing vigil over the restaurant where he’s worked so long that his name is a part of its history.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 58: Dreams Made Real Here in Chile

You know that switch that gets flipped every four years right after Labor Day? It's the one in which presidential election campaigns go into overdrive as the voting public turns from the unofficial end of summer to start to turn its attention to the question of who they are going to choose to be their leader.

Apparently the switch has a Chilean cousin, and it just got flipped today.

Hot on the heels of Fiestas Patrias, the weeklong celebration of Chilean Independence, and less than two weeks after the commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the Pinochet coup, election fever has started to run hot here in Chile.

Before this past weekend, you could see billboard signs of a smiling, blond, bespectacled Michelle Bachelet in the same smile either by herself of with other members of her Nueva Mayoria, or New Majority, slate.

Overnight, they've multiplied faster than any rabbits I've ever seen or heard of.

Michelle signs are literally everywhere.

On the side of roads.

In Parque Forestal.

Next to shops.

The Bachelet materials are the most prominent, but far from the only, sign that the sprint to the November 17 elections have begun in earnest.

And the impending elections are far from the only thing that was on today.

As the television in the Manuel Montt Metro station reminded us, today also marked 40 years since the death of fabled Chilean poet, senator, diplomat and self-described "thinger" Pablo Neruda.

Don Pablo's body was exhumed this spring to discover whether accusations leveled by his former driver Manuel Arayas that he had been poisoned had any merit.

For folk singer Charo Cofre, who along with her husband Hugo Arevalo lived with Neruda for two months in Paris, the answer was simple: he died of a broken heart.

The poet's death came just 12 days after Pinochet came to power and his forces ransacked La Chascona, Neruda's home in the Bellavista neighborhood that borders our community of Providencia.

Neruda left for Isla Negra, his first home and the place where he spent the most time, with his wife Matilde Urrutia.

He never returned.

Although devastated by Allende's overthrow and weakened by advanced prostate cancer, Neruda did muster enough strength to inform the armed forces who were searching Isla Negra: "Look around--there's only one thing of danger for you here--poetry."

Dunreith bought me a book of Neruda's poetry for our anniversary.

I read several gems this morning before breakfast.

One source of particular delight came from The Book of Questions, a collection of 316 questions that he wrote shortly before his death and that was published posthumously.

Here is the English translation of what I read in Spanish:

When does the butterfly read what flies written on its wings?

So it can understand its itinerary, which letters does the bee know?

And with which numbers does the ant subtract its dead soldiers?

What are cyclones called when they stand still?

The campus at the University of Diego Portales was from still this morning when Dunreith and I arrived, but it didn't stay that way for long.

As soon as classes were let out, the din of journalism and literature students returned and energized from their week's vacation filled the air and rose up to the office we share on the sixth floor.

I was there for most of the day grading my students' work.

They had passed in their first major assignment, a 1000-word story, the data they analyzed, the analysis itself, a visual element, and the text of the interviews they conducted.

I also had the students do an assessment of how the process went for them, of what they did well and could improve, and what I had done well and could do better.

This is my first time teaching a Data Journalism course at the university level, and definitely my first class of any sort in Spanish, so I didn't know what to expect.

My uncertainty had been heightened by having received just one paper until 10 minutes before the final deadline.

The students' work impressed and left me feeling that they had indeed understood the essence of what I had been trying to convey.

To be sure, some students didn't hand in all of the required elements.

Many of the stories were heavy on data recitation and light on actual people affected by the issues the students were covering.

The graphics in many cases were quite basic.

But they took on issues that matter like child sexual abuse and voting rates and literacy and teenage pregnancy and the distribution of public money.

They carried out analyses and generated findings.

They reported based on those findings.

And they said something in their pieces.

In so doing, they started to change their orientation of what reporting is from simply asking people on different sides of an issue, "What do you think?" to going to those same people and asking, "Why do the day say this?"

It's a powerful shift, and, even as we're communicating across language and culture and generation and, often, Facebook, it's starting to happen.

That feels good.

So, too, did the feeling of recognition and warmth that you feel when you return to a familiar place in which you've started to build an emotional home, to forge relationships of some substance, to commit yourself and your heart.

I had that this morning when we greeted the security guards, when a tanned, relaxed head of the IT Department told me everything was fine for him until a professor asked him to do a Skype call on September 26-that's the date when Center for Public Integrity Data Editor David Donald is speaking to my students-and when a Spanish exchange student with Italian parents stopped by to see if we could grab a coffee next week.

His request, the signs touting Bachelet's candidacy, the anniversary of Neruda's death and the great poet's questions are not only the trifles that Dickens said make up the sum of life.

Each in their own way remind Dunreith and me that we are in a distant land where we have chosen to spend a significant chunk of time.

They tell us that life in each country has its own rhythm and flow.

They show again that there is something meaningful and real and true that can be communicated through the inevitably imperfect tools of words.

When I dreamed for years of what it would be like to be here, I didn't have a precise image in my head.

Today, when elections are gaining steam and I read the words of a beloved poet who died exactly four decades ago and I see that something central of what I wanted to teach has stuck with my charges, that picture becomes much clearer.

It's here.

Now.

Chilean Chronicles, Part XXXIII: A Grey Neruda Day visiting Isla Negra

“It’s grey, but Neruda loved grey,” friend, intrepid journalist and unfathomably generous host Alejandra Matus told us. “It’s a Neruda day.” She was talking to Jack Fuller, Dunreith and me.

The four of us were sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Plaza San Francisco waiting for University of Diego Portales colleague Patricia Rivera to join us before driving to Isla Negra, Pablo Neruda’s largest home and the place in which he spent by far the most time.

Jack’s the former editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, where he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for his editorials on constitutional issues. Alejandra hosted him throughout the week at UDP, a time during which he presented to students, alumni and colleagues about his latest book.

Although he’s a long-time and accomplished novelist-he told me during the day that he was writing fiction during his training in 1968 in Fort Bragg, North Carolina-his most recent work is about journalism and the challenges that news organization face in trying to retain large number of readers.

Dunreith and I attended his first presentation, an address on Tuesday evening in which he explained the impact of research about brain activity and the critical role emotion plays in attracting and retaining people’s attention.

A central part of his message was that journalists and news outlets need to focus both on retaining standards of journalistic integrity while at the same time integrating new methods based on the knowledge gleaned from the most recent neurological research.

Patricia arrived, we filed into the gray van that matched the day and started the 90-minute ride to Isla Negra.

The Ride and the Black Book of Chilean Justice Relieved of driving and navigational responsibilities, we settled into an easy and amiable conversational flow as we made our way through the rolling green hills.

We moved from the joys and challenge of child rearing in the United States and Chile to Jack’s encounters with some of the more Joseph Heller-like moments while serving as a correspondent in Vietnam in 1968, to my father’s quip, when asked by a colonel why he was wearing his army-issued hat backward, that he wanted people of lower rank to be able to salute him coming and going.

The discussion went in a deeper direction when, at Jack’s request, Alejandra told us the story behind, and the response to, The Black Book of Chilean Justice, her expose of the corruption and lack of independence in the Chilean judiciary during the Pinochet era.

Investigative stalwart Monica Gonzalez invited Alejandra in the early 90s to participate in the project after the publication of a federal report that criticized the judiciary. (Gonzalez, who now directs CIPER, Chile’s strongest investigative publication, later backed out due to other work responsibilities.)

Alejandra smiled as she remembered asking her then-editor for two extra weeks of vacation to write the book.

He laughed, told her to take the two weeks of vacation and then get to work.

It ended up taking six years.

The book’s publication in early 1999 came months after Pinochet’s arrest in London in October 1998.

The timing was such that the book publishers thought that there would not be a strong official response to the book becoming available nine years after Pinochet left power.

They were wrong.

Drastically so.

Judge Rafael Huerta Bustos ordered all copies of the books confiscated the day after it was published. Chief Justice Servando Jordan invoked the State Security Law, which made it a crime to disrespect public officials or governmental agencies. Among other elements in the suit, he cited the book's cover, which showed three monkeys who represented the philosophy of "See-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil."

Alejandra faced five years in prison.

Her initial plan was to stay and fight, but three conversations changed her mind.

She spoke with her brother, a lawyer who said she could indeed be imprisoned.

Her publisher said the house couldn’t protect her.

And her fiancé looked terrified.

Instead, Alejandra decided to flee the country as soon as possible.

She flew to Buenos Aires and thought the whole situation would calm down in about 10 days.

She didn’t return to her country for two-and-a-half years.

A lot happened during that time.

Presidential candidate and later victor Ricardo Lagos made the law and Alejandra’s return an issue in his campaign.

Tens of thousands of copies of the book were sold on the black market. La Tercera, Chile’s second-largest newspaper, published the book on its website outside of the United States.

Alejandra won a case she filed against the Chilean state in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and received reparations.

The law eventually was overturned.

This is a remarkable story, Jack said.

Patti agreed, adding that many people in Chile consider Alejandra a hero.

The impact of what Alejandra had shared with us was soaking in when we pulled off the highway and started driving the final kilometers to Isla Negra. Isla Negra

We walked around the property and headed down to the beach.

“I came back from my voyages and navigated constructing happiness,” was carved in Neruda’s distinctive cursive writing into a brown wooden beam holding up the front entrance to the long house that snaked along his property.

Constructing was indeed the perfect word.

Dunreith and I had already seen La Chascona and La Sebastiana, Neruda’s homes in Santiago and Valparaiso, so we were prepared for the way Neruda built a world out of his home, his travels, his politics, his writing, his women, and his friends.

We felt ready to see the fantastic objects like a life-size horse made in part of papier-mache and statues of bare-breasted women that Neruda treated as if they were alive, the secret space of the kitchen, a place Neruda he considered magical, the sacred sanctuary where he wrote, and the items he acquired from all parts of the planet. (This house contains extensive collections of pipes, bottles, sombreros, butterflies and clam shells.)

We were familiar with Neruda’s love of the sea, his penchant for naming houses and friends’ books, and his insistence on a robust and well-stocked bar.

But whereas the other homes had a more vertical feel-they were a minimum of four stories each-Isla Negra was defined by its comparative flatness and its clear and stunning views at nearly all points of the house of Pacific Ocean.

This included the tomb outside where he and Matilde Urrutia, his third and final wife, were buried.

Waves crashed into the rocks in their ceaseless, eternal rhythm, spraying foam high into the air and providing an undulating, calming background accompaniment to their permanent resting place.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTrB2HDydDI&w=420&h=315]

Charo Cofre

It was close to 1:00 p.m., and we were all feeling hungry.

Fortunately, Alejandra had arranged for us to eat at a nearby hostel owned by Chilean acoustic guitar legend Charo Cofre.

She and her husband Hugo were close friends of Neruda who lived with him for two months in Paris.

A gallery of black and white photographs, several of which were autographed by the poet, and nearly of which had relevant quotes from him writing pasted onto them, stood along the walls.

Images of Neruda’s mother, who died shortly after he was born.

Pictures of the artist in exile, looking like an earlier version of James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano.

A somber shot of the crowd of people, with Hugo identified in the back, who marched to bury Neruda after his death in the first public protest after the coup.

A photograph of his message, written in 1971 in his trademark cursive script, “I am too happy to write. I have to eat and drink with you, dear friends.”

We were the only customers in the house.

Well, besides Don Pablo.

A lifelike model of the poet, dressed smartly in a tweed jacket, a red scarf poking out of his white button-down shirt and one of his many hats, sat in the corner.

We all took some pictures next to Neruda, whose fingers moved as if ready to write some more when we started to move away from him.

We started the meal with Chilean standards of a pisco sour and rolls topped with pevre, a salsa equivalent.

Dunreith and I followed Alejandra’s lead and ordered caldillo de congrio, a fish soup that was Neruda’s favorite dish.

We were well into our meal and a few glasses of white wine where Charo came, guitar in hand and sat at the head of the table.

Her black haired pulled back tightly against her head, Charo was draped in a green shawl that covered most of her body like a cloak. The color of her light-blue flowered shirt matched her eyeshadow.

Although she regularly performs for hundreds, if not thousands of people, today it was just the five of us.

I am doing this for Alejandra, she said.

Charo sang about her country, the sea that Neruda loved so deeply and, in a new song, about her mother’s hands.

Her own hands danced and strummed and plucked as she sang, often with her eyes closed.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rIRIcA2Nb8&w=420&h=315]

In between the songs, she told us about Neruda and Matilde.

People on the left want to say that he was killed by the government, but I think he died of a broken heart, she said. (Neruda passed away just 12 days after the Pinochet coup and subsequent ransacking of La Chascona by military authorities.)

Charo based her opinion on having talked with Matilde regularly in the dozen years after her husband died, a period during which she never mentioned a murder.

Charo told us about shopping at a flea market in Paris for a bottle to add to his collection.

It was no easy task, as he already owned many of the ones they brought to him.

But, eventually, they met with success.

Neruda rewarded himself with an artery-clogging croque monsieur, ham and cheese sandwich that he said had to be kept quiet from Matilde.

Charo also talked about how she learned from the joy her mother took in daily life, in small moments like watching tiny chickens move.

Indeed, she said that she had recently told a very wealthy friend that she felt richer than her because of the way attitude she has toward her life.

After about half an hour of singing and talking and laughing, Charo said she had to go.

Soon, we did, too, to get Jack to the airport. The Return

The ride back to Santiago was slower.

Dunreith closed her eyes in the front.

I talked mostly in Spanish with Patti, a documentary film maker and a doctoral student who is doing her dissertation about narrative construction in blogs. Jack and Alejandra discussed the 1976 murder by Chilean government officers of former Chilean ambassador to the United States Orlando Letelier.

We dropped Jack at the airport so that he could catch his return flight home before the driver dropped us at the University of Diego Portales.

We went with Alejandra to pick up Alejandro, her five-year-old son, and then to meet her husband Alberto, a former militant and exile who is now a political consultant.

He hugged and his wife and son.

He and his partner were working with Ricardo Yarzo, a candidates for a council position in the upcoming November elections. He’s one of 40 candidates seeking to win the eight positions that are available in Punta Arenas, one of the country’s southern-most communities.

Alberto introduced Alejandra to Ricardo.

Do you know her? he asked quietly, pride seeping through his voice. She wrote the Black Book of Chilean Justice.

Ricardo said that he did.

We downloaded the video I shot of Charo singing, and I showed it to Alberto.

He stopped moving and watched, riveted.

“She is beautiful,” he declared.

Alejandra was right.

It was a grey Neruda day.

And so much more.

Chilean Chronicles, Part XXVIII: Meeting Dr. Juan Zuchel at Cerro San Cristobal

If there’s one thing Dunreith and I have learned in our first five weeks here in Chile, it’s that there are no end of places to meet people here. I met augmented reality ace and entrepreneur Eduardo Rivera at last month’s Data Tuesday, held at innovation space Movistar Innova.

I met Juan, a nine-year-old Colombian boy who had moved here four months ago with his mother, at the Federal Police Station in downtown Santiago.

I met Gonzalo and Jacqui Salazar while trying to get out of the civil registry compound to get a copy made of a page that the female bureaucrat said was insufficiently clearly written.

And, today, we met doctor, author, half-marathoner, two-time husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather and Concepcion loyalist Juan Zuchel close to the summit of Cerro San Cristobal.

We were on a quest to make the four-mile trek so that we could approach, and even touch, the massive white statue of the Virgin Mary.

It’s not that I’m suddenly considering becoming Catholic. Rather, it’s that we can see the statue from the balcony where we’ve already been treated to all manner of gorgeous sunsets. On Thursday night, during a pleasant evening with several Santiago-based Fulbrighters, we learned from two of them who jog daily up to the top that it’s a very pleasant run and an accessible trail and decided to check it out for ourselves.

By the time we met Juan, we had already passed a determined group of red-jacketed and red-shirted striking postal workers gathered at Pio Nono, a major Santiago intersection that leads into the funky Bellavista neighborhood that’s heavy on lapislazuli shops and student eating and drinking options. (The University of Chile is right nearby.)

A number of workers appeared to have slept in tents next to the Rio Mapocho.

According to the Santiago Times:

The workers are asking postal service Correos de Chile — an autonomous state enterprise — for a 50,000 peso (US$97) raise per month. This figure was negotiated two years ago, according to Jessica Havia, the secretary of the National Postal Workers Syndicate (SOP). Already irritated over the delay in payment, new raises for managerial staff pushed workers to strike.

But if the workers were irritated, they certainly didn’t show it.

Like yesterday, they were chanting, singing, blowing whistles and horns and seeking to collect money from passersby in an effort to keep going as the strike extends to the end of its second week.

Dunreith and I walked to the left of the park where we had been our first weekend in Chile and started our trek up the mountain.

We had plenty of company.

A stream of walkers, bikers, bike-walking bikers, joggers, and cars also made their way toward the summit.

Although it’s still winter, the temperatures stretched upward of 75 degrees. As if often the case, Dunreith had more foresight than me and put on sun block.

But, though we brought a dozen tiny clementines that Dunreith had purchased yesterday at the Tirso de Molina market, neither of us had brought water. This omission started to take its toll as we wound our way around the sun-exposed asphalt surface.

The air got clearer as we rose in altitude, and we were increasingly able to see the smog that hangs over the city like a cloud and that seems, almost magically, to work its way into our two-room apartment at rates that requires twice, if not thrice, daily, cleanings.

Beyond the smog, we were also able to see the snow-capped Andes.

I took a series of pictures using the panorama feature, including one that also featured the multi-story gleaming glass cell phone building.

Enter Dr. Zuchel, who was coming down the mountain.

Clad in a blue t-shirt with a red Z inside a yellow triangular shape over his heart, he had a ring of sweat around his neck. He looked younger than his 68-years, had sturdy legs had propelled him to a second-place finish in his age group during last year’s Santiago half-marathon, and, we learned a little hairless, a nearly hairless chest.

“I call this a monument to consumerism,” he told us.

This was not the first critical comment we had heard about the structure.

During our first week in Santiago, Alejandra Fritz, our uber-guide at Pablo Neruda’s house La Chascona, fired a salvo against it, too.

It was fortunate that Don Pablo did not live to see this built because he would have had a direct view from his home and would not have liked it, she said.

For Juan, the anti-cell phone tower statement was only the beginning of his conversational gambit.

In short order, he informed us that he was from Concepcion and that he was both a surgeon and a forensic doctor who taught at the University of Concepcion, the most beautiful university in the land. (Here he dipped his head to show us the university’s name on his yellow hat.)

Juan also told us that he had a German father and Chilean mother, but could only speak a little German. He has four daughters and one son from his first wife and two daughters from his second one. He has seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild. One of the children is a doctor, while two others are psychologists, he told us after urging us to walk with him toward the summit.

Juan also let us know that he has written seven books about everything from love to children’s literature, that the entire area of Concepcion would support Michelle Bachelet, the former president who is currently seeking re-election, and that the pediatrician and former torture survivor would earn a decisive victory in November.

I also suffered under Pinochet, he told me as we continued walking closer and closer to the top. When I asked him for more details, he said that he had been detained repeatedly, but not tortured.

I can't lie, he said.

I told Juan that I hadn’t know how divided the country still was about the Pinochet era, adding that I had spoken with many people who offered freely their opinions that life was more orderly, respectful and generally better during the dictatorship than in the 23 years since he left power in 1990.

It all depends on your circle and how much it affected you, he answered.

The conversation was flowing easily and the increasing presence of tourist wares told us that the summit was getting closer and closer.

But, amidst all of Juan’s sharing, one part confused me; he kept telling us that he was looking for his green family car.

It’s got to be somewhere, he told me early in our conversation.

Where exactly that somewhere would be was not clear to me.

There appeared to be both no car that color anywhere in sight as well as absolutely no room in either lane for said car to park, if indeed it actually existed.

Juan kept referring to the car throughout our conversation and trek upward, which lasted about 20 minutes.

I found myself torn between wondering if his car was the Chilean version of Mr. Snuffleupagus, or if this was the entry point to some request for us to lend him money to get down to the bottom of the mountain on a funicular. We arrived to the top. Juan waved us through the gates and told us he would meet us inside since he had to wait for the auto.

We smiled, inwardly shook our heads, and gratefully gulped down the water, Gatorade and reheated mushroom and cheese empanada we bought from a stand near the end of a row. We walked up dozens of cobbled steps toward the massive white statue of the Virgin Mary, her arms uplifted to the heavens.

Like I do when I reach the halfway point of lengthy runs, I felt compelled to touch the structure before we turned to start making our way back down the mountain.

We walked past rows of neatly manicured and multicolored flowers as the strains of solemn religious music washed through the air.

Dunreith, who had just had a small bite of the empanada, brightened when she saw a stand where she could buy ice cream.

His back turned to us, Juan was standing there with a young girl with straight, blond hair.

He had shed the hat and was wearing a white t-shirt that declared his allegiance to the band Los Jaivas, a group whose members have mixed rock with South American ancestral music for the past half-century. (Juan had just seen one of their concerts the night before.)

After a quick consultation with Dunreith, I tapped him on the shoulder.

Juan turned.

His eyes gleamed when he saw us.

This is my youngest daughter, he said. I met my family.

So he had.

They were there, sitting on the brick ledge that lined the steps across from the ice cream shop.

His wife Valeska and second-youngest daughter Francisca.

His cousin Jaime, his wife Belen, their daughter Alejandra and granddaughter Ximena.

We chatted for a while.

Did he tell you that he’s written books? Belen asked.

He did, I replied. One book for every day of the week. He also told me about being a surgeon and forensic doctor, about running 10 half-marathons and about teaching at the University of Concepcion.

He told you a lot, Valeska said meaningfully, her tone suggesting that her husband’s loquaciousness was an occasional, if not frequent, source of irritation for her.

I talk a lot, but I don’t say much, I responded,then laughed much harder than anyone else in the group.

We moved on to other topics, like whether Francisca had a boyfriend (she did), and whether Alejandra might be interested in my brother Jon (She appeared intrigued, but Jon’s never having been married at 43, and, perhaps more important, the thousands of miles between their homes seemed to present a prohibitive barrier for her.)

The conversation was just at the point when it could have started to expand and go in all kinds of directions when Juan intervened.

Let’s go to the Virgin, he said.

His family rose as if they were a single person.

We hugged and kissed each other.

Before the family departed, I asked all of them to write their names down so that I could remember them.

More hugs and kisses, and the family started walking to their destination.

Dunreith and I turned to go, but, before we did, I read the names.

We’ll wait for you in Concepcion, Francisca had written in large blue letters, an explanation point with a strong line emphasizing her point at the end of the sentence.

I don’t know if we’ll go to Chile’s largest city, or, if we do, whether we’ll see Juan’s family.

But I do know that our time here has shown again and again the myriads of people, each of whom has their own unique story and particular desire to connect, that exist in this country, and in the world.

We didn’t need to come to Chile to learn this, of course.

And somehow being here and new and outsiders and open has allowed us to see this more than usual, and to benefit from the exchanges.

Tomorrow, Dunreith and I will go for a walk, see a museum or explore a new part of Santiago.

I can’t wait to see who we meet.

Chilean Chronicles, Part XIII: Edmundo Verdugo Carnitas and the Treasures of Quinta Vergara

Quinta Vergara park in Vina del Mar has many treasures.

There are the large stone plaques that greet you when you pass through the black gates and that honor Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda, Chile’s pair of Nobel laureates for literature.

There are the paths that wind up and down the park.

Filled with leafy green spaces that spark memories of the California redwoods, they provide shelter shelter from the sun, a cocoon of cool, clear air and the perfect environment for a lengthy, unhurried stroll to consider and start to discuss one of life’s most fundamental questions: what do we want to do and to have done with our time on the planet?

There are the stones placed artfully around the garden, each with poems or poem fragments by bards through Central and South America that invite you to engage in their words, their images and the images about the single conversation that matters most-life.

There are the leaves sculpted with skill and precision into the shape of dinosaurs and pachyderms, of a brontosaurus and a mother elephant leader a child by her tail.

There is the Vina del Mar Municipal Band that has existed for generations. Composed a dozen or so gentleman who stand in their tan suits and ties, they deliver songs for parkgoers’ consumption and pleasure every weekend.

Yet as wondrous as all of these may be, they all pale when compared to the nimble feet and unquenchable thirst for performance of Edmundo Verdugo Carnitas.

Edmundo is a natty dresser with a red bow tie and sweater, a white scarf that matches the feather in his black bowler cap and a long black jacket. He’s got a Chaplinesque mustache, plenty of white stubble, few, if any, teeth and an unblinking gaze.

He’s also 97 years old.

We met when he was standing near the band during a lull in performance. He rested part of his weight on his cane.

We talked long enough for me to establish his name and age.

I started to ask him another question, but then the music began.

Edmundo stepped forward and started dancing, shedding decades by the second.

His tongue protuding the way basketball legend Michael Jordan’s used to wag as he took flight, he moved forward and back in perfect rhythm, twirled in a circle, put his cane through his legs twice, spun it around and caught it cleanly.

Edmundo’s awareness that I was taking pictures of him only heightened his energy.

Off came the bowler hat in a salute to the crowd of about a dozen people-a move that revealed an impressively full head of hair.

One more spin of the cane.

Edmundo didn’t catch it, but his feet still kept time as he bent to pick it up.

The glitch didn’t dampen the audience’s enthusiasm.

They applauded vigorously after the song ended.

I asked Edmundo to write down his name, which he did in shaky but legible letters.

Dunreith and I started walking toward the paths, but looked as the band struck up their version of “Tequila,” complete with chanting the word at the right moments in the song.

Edmundo was still dancing.

We only stayed in Vina for about half a day, so we know we’ll be back to see the rest of what it has to offer.

I know where I’m going.