Chilean Chronicles, Part 98: On Angela Bachelet Jeria and Bearing Witness

Bearing witness is the call and burden of the trauma survivor, but not all choose to accept it.

Angela Bachelet Jeria has done just that, though, for nearly 40 years.

The trained archaeologist’s life was changed permanently and fundamentally by the Pinochet coup in September 1973.

Her husband Alberto, an Air Force general, stayed loyal to President Salvador Allende and the Constitution.

For that decision he was detained and tortured for several months. In 1974 he died of heart problems that Judge Mario Carrozo said were caused by his torture.

The death of a husband at the hands of his former comrades and friends would have been more than enough for many to bear, and her troubles were just beginning.

On January 10, 1975, along with her daughter Michelle, a popular and politically active student, she was blindfolded and taken to the notorious Villa Grimaldi compound, according to the website ThisisChile.cl. It that was the largest of the network of such sites run by the DINA, or Pinochet’s secret police

Mother and daughter were separated.

Both endured interrogation and torture.

Michelle Bachelet was confined to a cell with bunk bed with eight other female prisoners.

Angela Bachelet Jeria was held in “the tower,” an infamous area within the camp that is located near a pool where the torturers’ children used to play. She was kept for nearly a week without food or water.

Both women were transferred to the Cuatro Alamos detention center, where they stayed until the end of January, the web site said.

After being spared death due to their connections with high-ranking military officers, the pair were released and lived in exile Australia, and East Germany.

Jeria, the widow and torture survivor, worked from abroad to bring about the demise of the regime that had robbed her of her husband and the country of a democracy.

She has continued that fight through Pinochet’s defeat in the 1988 plebiscite, through the restoration of democracy, through her daughter becoming the nation’s first elected female president, and through the flurry of memory-related activity around the fortieth anniversary of the coup in September.

I first saw her at a memorial event that she attended at Villa Grimaldi in September with her daughter. The former president’s emotions were visible as she wiped a tear from her eye, even as a bevy of cameras recorded her every move.

Looking fit and trim, with a full head of brown hair, Dr. Jeria seemed less visibly impacted by her latest return to the place where she had suffered so much.

But I wondered what was happening within her.

On Monday, I got a chance to learn the answer.

I saw Dr. Jeria, who had been erroneously introduced as the mother of the president, not ex-president, at the launch event for the 2013 annual report of the National Institute for Human Rights. Established during her daughter’s term as president, the institute issues an annual review of the state of human rights in the nation.

The event had had an uneven cadence.

Director Lorena Fries had delivered a frank assessment of the problems that still remain in the country, with the treatment of indigenous people, the practice of torture on those who are incarcerated and the issue of abortion heading the list.

President Sebastian Pinera arrived late, received a copy of the report and appeared ready to head off the stage before being asked if he would like to deliver some remarks.

He pulled a sheath of paper from a suit pocket and proceeded to deliver a nearly hour-long list of his administration’s accomplishments in the area of human rights as well as his top legislative priorities. This included lengthy sections on abortion and the nation’s indigenous which just minutes before had been among the chief topics in the report that he had praised and whose leader he had approved for another term.

A steady stream of whistling, heckling and banner raising accompanied the president as he spoke. He appeared to take note of the disruption, looking up at times from his paper and raising his voice, and generally he ploughed forward, seemingly unperturbed, if not openly indifferent.

The large security men in dark suits and neatly coiffed hair seemed far more uncomfortable, looking actively torn between restoring order by forcing the offenders to leave and exercising a restraint based on their knowledge that to do so would go even more directly against the event’s mission than the presidential appropriation of the stage he had been given.

Pinnera’s address ground on and on before he concluded with a call for everyone to remember that they were all Chileans and should not let differences stand between them.

The applause he received was tepid at best.

Dunreith and I moved gratefully into the reception area. I secured and gulped down a wine glass full of orange juice.

Then I saw Dr. Jeria.

Well dressed as always, this time in a brown pants suit.

I walked over and introduced myself, explaining that Dunreith and I had been in the country for five months and that I was at the tail end of a stint as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Diego Portales.

I told her that I had seen her at the Villa Grimaldi commemoration, that I admired her courage in being able to go back to the place that had been a site of such intense suffering for her.

She smiled, revealing a row of clean, white teeth that sat atop unreceded gums.

What had that been like, I asked.

Unlike the concentration camps of Eastern Europe, the camps here were destroyed by the perpetrators, she explained in a smooth, deep, melodic voice.. By going, we say that it happened and shouldn’t happen again.

We do this even though returning means that the memories of that dark, distant time are triggered anew.

Going there meant that she had to “revivir,” she said.

To live again.

I told her about our family’s history in Germany, how we had lost family members in the Holocaust, but also how we had returned with Dad in May of last year.

I let her know how much it meant to us that Dad had found it within himself to go back, to put himself back in that zone and time of memory and forgetting, how he did it in large part for us.

Dr. Jeria listened, nodding sagely and answering again in that even voice. For a minute I felt young and small, like I was talking to a grandmother who understood everything.

She asked me for a card and read it after I handed it to her.

More people were gathering around her to hug and embrace, to gain strength from her unbowed generosity and clarity of purpose.

I caught her eye again and told her it was good to meet before we left.

She smiled again and we squeezed each other’s hand.

Angela Bachelet Jeria was in the process of fulfilling her duty of memory and truth for the day.

More awaited.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 77: Viva La Mundial

In the three months that we’ve been in Chile, we’ve seen events drenched in emotion. We’ve seen the agonizing pain of surviving loved ones holding up large black and white photos of their sons, husbands, uncles, daughters, and nieces who were disappeared during the Pinochet dictatorship in the 70s and have never returned.

We’ve seen the exuberance of Chileans drinking terremotos and eating anticuchos for days as they celebrated El Dieciocho on September 18, the national Day of Independence.

But perhaps the greatest show of feeling came last night, when the country’s national soccer team punched its ticket to go to Brazil next year for the World Cup, the planet’s largest sporting event.

The unifying power of sport has been commented on before.

In Invictus, the film based on John Carlin’s book, Clint Eastwood shows how Nelson Mandela donned the once-hated green jersey of the Springboks rugby team to bring the nation together in its quest to win the Rugby World Cup the year after the first free and democratic elections. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZY8c_a_dlQ&w=560&h=315]

In 1967, the great Pele literally caused a 48-hour ceasefire in secessionist Biafra so that both sides could watch him play.

Here in Chile, the country remains deeply divided about the legacy of the Pinochet era, but there there was no apparent division within the nation last night.

The cancellation by non-profit Inria-Chile of their previously planned Data Tuesday was the first sign of the game’s significance.

The second came in Papi Pollo, a rotisserie chicken joint near our apartment that I go to regularly. Amidst the heat and grease of the french fries, sopaipillas and whole chickens that a man in white shirts and pants cut with impressive dexterity, the other worker, a stocky man with black hair and a round, open face, told me that he was giving all his attention to the evening’s game.

He was concentrating so hard that he gave me an extra 1,000 pesos for the half chicken I was taking back to our apartment.

You can give me this if you want, I said, but the charge is 3,500 pesos, not 2,500.

It’s important to focus on the game, but you have to focus on money, too. We laughed and shook hands after I gave him all the money.

First stop

I left our building and went out in the warm, clear evening air shortly before the game started.

I walked up Providencia Avenue, stopping at the newspaper stand that also sells candy and portraits of iconic music stars like Elvis that are hung on a fence on the other side of the sidewalk. About a dozen people had formed a half circle around the color television that had been carefully placed atop a stand so that all could see.

Most were sitting, and a few were standing.

I bought a coke to help establish my legitimacy and started snapping pictures.

The first 25 minutes of the game were generally in favor of Chile, whose players were wearing red shirts and who were playing in front of 67,000 fans at Estadio Nacional, the national stadium. They were issuing full-throated roars from the moment the referee blew the whistle to start the match, which Chile only needed to tie to advance to La Mundial.

Things were quieter at the kiosk, where the group watched intently, grimacing when Ecuador threatened and holding their hands up when Chile threatened, but did not score.

But they didn’t stay that way after a header by Alexis Sanchez zipped past the Ecuadorean goalkeeper and into the back of the net for a 1-0 lead. Sanchez ripped off his shirt in ecstasy.

The crowd gathered around the television didn’t do that, but erupted in joy, yelling, screaming, jumping up and down and punching their fists in the air.

I continued to take pictures until one of the celebrants came over and told me in English with the utmost seriousness: Enough.

Enough with the pictures, he said. You can stay here and watch the game with us, but stop taking pictures.

So I left.

Paseo Orrego Luca

I walked further up the street, crossing over to the other side and stopping at Paseo Orrego Luca.

It’s an outdoor drinking establishment enclosed on three sides by buildings and filled with tables that sat comfortably under large, tan umbrellas and beneath the light provided by yellow, red, green and orange lanterns.

Adapting a page from South Africa’s hosting of the World Cup in 2010, the owner of the place, which was doing a very brisk business in french fries and beer delivered by bustling waiters, set up at least a dozen televisions of varying sizes so that everyone could easily see the action.

The crowd, many of whom were wearing red shirts and a number of whom sported jester hats with the national colors, also exploded in jubilation just as I was pulling up, when Gary Medel deposited the ball from a Sanchez header into the net for a 2-0 lead.

The margin held until halftime.

Chile played more conservative soccer to start the second half, and the game Ecuador squad pressed forward.

About 20 minutes into the half, the home side surrendered a goal to Caceido, who benefited from a lengthy run up the middle by Antonio Valencia.

The goal caused some apprehension among the multitudes at Paseo, but the hosts were never seriously threatened after that.

As the minutes wore down into injury time, the chant of “Chi-Chi-Chi, Le-Le-Le, Vi-va Chi-le!” grew less anxious and increasingly confident.

So, too, did the verses of an ode to the tournament their team has never won, but was about to join.

“Oh, viva la Mundial,

la Mundial, la Mundial,

Viva la Mundial.”

Long live the World Cup.

Victory Celebrations

The referee blew the final whistle and the celebrations began in earnest. Fists punched in the air.

Passionate embraces.

Flags waving.

Horns honking from passing cars.

Kids banging on the windows of the buses they were riding.

A woman in the back seat shaking her ample bosom as all around her laughed.

My camera had just about died, and I was feeling the effects of having gotten just two and a half hours of sleep, so decided to head back home.

But before I did, I returned to the kiosk where I had been watching.

The owner, lean and tall with at least a day’s stubble and a blue sweater, was there.

Felicidades a Chile, I said.

Congratulations to Chile.

We hugged.

I started singing the World Cup tribute song when I entered the building.

The doorman, who had watched the game on television, smiled widely.

I congratulated him, too, and said that Chile deserved the win.

Ecuador was good, I said, but Chile was better.

And now they’re going to the Mundial.

He agreed.

I sang the song again, raising my voice as I walked by the apartment next to us, whose residents often party into the wee hours of the weekend.

The festivities lasted for hours.

Oh, viva la Mundial. La Mundial, La Mundial. Viva la Mundial.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 69: The 25th Anniversary of "No"

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L43ZTdVozLQ&w=560&h=315] Exactly 25 years ago, Chileans across the country, from Arica to Punta Arenas, went to the polls.

There was a single question on the ballot with just two choices: Yes or No.

The former meant a vote for continuing the 15-year reign of Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte.

The latter signaled a vote to end his hold on power that had begun on Sept. 11, 1973, when military forces loyal to him bombed the presidential palace, La Moneda, on the way to overthrowing democratically-elected Socialist President Salvador Allende.

The month leading up to the decision is the subject of Pablo Larrain’s film No, which Dunreith and I watched last night at colleague and friend Andrea Insunza’s recommendation.

In the movie, Gael Garcia Bernal plays Rene Saavedra, the skateboard-riding, single father and advertising consultant who is a fictional composite of a number of people who were charged with designing the No campaign’s advertising strategy. (In a concession to international pressure, the regime gave the “No” and “Yes” sides 15 minutes each per in the 27 days leading up to the vote.)

It’s been a season of anniversaries of major events in Chilean history since we’ve been here.

Last month marked four decades since the Pinochet-led coup.

As I’ve written before, a central theme of the volcanic eruption of memory-related activity around the coup anniversaries has been the assertion of “Nunca mas.”

Never again.

In a speech she gave at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights shortly before the anniversary day itself, torture survivor, former president and current presidential front runner Michelle Bachelet explained what the idea of Nunca Mas meant to her.

In her passionate comments, Bachelet spoke about ending the climate and fear and terror that pervaded life in Chile under Pinochet and instead creating one in which human rights are respected and where there is justice.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzsVy3MdBc8&w=420&h=315]

Under Pinochet, as friend and fellow journalist Miguel Huerta said, anything could happen to you or your families at any moment, for no reason at all.

No attempts to represent that climate.

As the positive and forward-looking message of the campaign starts to resonate with the electorate-a significant portion of the film depicts Garcia’s efforts to pitch, and then film, the segment that announces “Happiness is coming”-the rattled leadership starts to stalk and threaten members of the No team.

Garcia, who places his son with his more-radical ex wife Veronica in an effort to protect him, is one of them.

In an arc that is reminiscent of Liam Neeson’s Oskar Schindler, Larrain shows Saavedra’s gradually deeper emotional involvement in the No cause as he comes into closer contact with the government’s abusive practices.

This puts him in increasing conflict with Lucho Guzman, played by Alfredo Castro, his former boss and the man who eventually heads the opposite campaign.

Larrain intersperses actual footage from the era as he traces Saavedra’s evolution and growth and as he leads the viewer toward the seemingly inevitable conclusion.

This includes a clip of General Fernando Matthei being interviewed by media shortly before he entered the building that is now called the Gabriela Mistral Center the evening of the vote.

A member of the junta, Matthei, the father of one of Bachelet’s leading opponents, said it was clear that the No side had won.

His words delivered the message that the generals were abandoning their leader, who had been conspiring to devise a way to invalidate his defeat.

They endorsed the triumph of democracy and the rule of law.

This moment, the ensuing celebrations among incredulous and jubilant Chileans, and the subsequent election of Patricio Alwyn as Chile’s first post-dictatorship president give No an uplifiting feel.

Indeed, one of the film’s final images shows real footage of Alwyn being installed as president. He shakes hands with Pinochet, who moves away to give the new leader his moment-an image that conveys that indeed the work of the campaign had been accomplished and that a peaceful transfer of power had been reinstated in the once-peaceful nation.

While technically true, the democracy had major caveats.

Pinochet remained the head of the military and an unelected Senator for Life who not only cast a large shadow over the nation, but never was called to legal account for the tortures, disappearances and murders that happened during his bloody tenure.

Cultural critic Nelly Richard took the film to task for much more than its uplifting ending in a lecture she delivered during a pre-anniversary held at the University of Diego Portales.

In a systematic demolition of the movie, Richard went point by point over what she felt were its many and fundamental flaws

Among the most important: its focus on the fictional Saavedra elevates and glamorizes the role he and other advertising strategists played at the expense of organic, long-standing and independent-minded social movements.

Richard also took aim at Larrain's use of video footage from the era, saying that doing so both staked an unearned claim to historical accuracy and authenticity and, ironically, whitewashed the true terror so many Chileans experienced during that time.

This is not unfamiliar territory for critics evaluating films that tackle historic subjects.

Indeed, a central aspect of some studies of Holocaust literature, art and film start with the premise that it is impossible to fully convey what literature scholar Larry Langer called the terror and dread experienced by people who lived through the time.

There is a also a school of thought that says that the standard for critical scrutiny rises with the perceived intentions of the director.

At the same time, I would suggest that it is worth considering a study by former priest, author, and columnist James Carroll did for Harvard's Shorenstein Center.

Carroll studied the amount of coverage about the Holocaust in the United States over time, finding that there were three distinct points in which the volume of coverage spiked.

The first was in 1961, and coincided with the trial of captured Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem.

The second occurred in 1978, and was connected with the showing of the six-part miniseries, “Holocaust” that starred, among other people, a young Meryl Streep and James Woods.

And the third took place in 1993, when Schindler’s List debuted.

I mentioned the study’s results to Richard after her lecture.

Was there no value, I asked, in the popular introduction of a topic that, while not as hard-hitting as it could have been, nevertheless brought the No campaign to an audience that would otherwise know nothing about it?

Richard agreed and disagreed.

I am not saying that there is no value to the film, she told me, before adding that she found the international response to the film very complacent and uncritical.

Here in Chile, the marking of the anniversary of the No vote was muted.

I found a thin front-page story in La Segunda with Andres Zaldivar that cast a positive light on the role Christian Democrats played in the campaign.

Friend and memory scholar Hugo Rojas sent me the link to a piece the BBC did about the campaign.

Ricardo Lagos’ stern, finger-wagging statement on television that called Pinochet to account for his regime’s brutality is identified as one of three key aspects of the campaign.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvFqmjcj3ZQ&w=420&h=315]

Elected president in 2000, Lagos is the subject of much discussion in friend and UDP neighbor Rafael Gumucio’s latest book, a work in which he describes the high hopes he held for Lagos’ tenure and the conclusion he has arrived at more than a decade later than in reality the policies of Lagos’ opponent Lavin have won.

The BBC article also speaks about the role that television played during the ultimately successful campaign.

In all, coverage of the event paled in comparison with the deluge around the coup anniversary.

Still and yet, the day provides a useful opportunity to look into the reality behind the campaign and vote represented in Larrain’s movie. It also is a moment in which we can assess both how far the nation has come since the dark days of the Pinochet regime as well as how far it has yet to go to become a country whose lived reality for all matches its lofty ideals and promises to its citizens.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 63: Rafael Gumucio's Book Launch

Now that's what I call a book launch.

The event was held in the basement of the Gabriela Mistral Center, or GAM. Named for one of Chile's two Nobel Prize-winning poets, the center was opened during the tenure of Salvador Allende, and was the place where the ruling junta went after the Pinochet coup. The center was renamed the Diego Portales Building during the dictatorship, but resumed its art-oriented focus after Pinochet's reign ended.

As opposed to similar events in the United States, where the author is introduced, speaks, reads a few sections of the book and answers some questions, author, UDP neighbor and friend Rafael Gumucio didn't speak until an hour into the event, and ultimately did not read a single word from A Personal History of Chile, his latest work.

This was because he only spoke after Carlos Pena, the rector of our university and one of Chile's top newspaper columnists, had read his remarks in which he discussed Rafael's weaving of fantastic pairings of important figures in Chilean history as similar to legendary Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges' "Ficciones."

Rafael began to speak after eminent historian Gabriel Salazar, a long-haired, white-haired bearded man with a deep voice who speaks in paragraphs, not sentences, had discussed at length a 1998 United Nations human development report that spoke about the contrast between Chile's economic success and "malestar interior," or internal discomfort.

Salazar talked about the directions and reversals within the book, of his use of the Hegelian method of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, and of how, for Rafael, former President Ricardo Lagos was similar to Napoleon for Hegel.

Rafael offered his own comments after former student, humorist and writer Fabrizio Copano offered his assessment of the book as having a core of sadness yet also being an optimistic work.

He spoke after being invited into the conversation by broadcast journalist and longtime friend Consuelo Saavedra. Consuelo had said that they had known each other for about 20 years, and somehow the conversation always returned to him. But she added that the book helped her understand why he has always steered the discussion that way.

When he spoke, Rafael, who has wild black hair, a full beard that is flecked with grey near his chin and was wearing a blue jacket with a dark sweater, unleashed a torrent of words, ideas and jokes.

I don't know Rafael real well and I have not yet read the book.

Our offices in the journalism department at the University of Diego Portales stand around the corner from each other.

I sat in on a panel he moderated about the role and limits of humor in Chilean society-he's the head of the Institute of Humor Studies at UDP-and we both attended a lunch for author and futurist Nicco Mele that Alejandra Matus organized.

I did know that he had been exiled to France during the dictatorship.

But even these comparatively meager interactions were enough to help me understand that he combines the frenetic energy and wit of Robin Williams with the humor of Roberto Benigni.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIWB-Neyj-c&w=420&h=315]

As Rafael riffed about his pairing of epic Chilean figures like Pinochet and television host Don Francisco, about how he had thought Lagos would govern compared with what he actually did and about how Michelle Bachelet would like to be anti-colonial, but is in fact colonial, I turned around and looked at the room, which was filled with close to 100 people in seats and standing against the back wall.

They were listening and, in many cases, they were smiling a pleased, even indulgent, smile.

So, too, was Rafael's father, whose name Rafael bears.

The elder Gumucio was sitting, along with his wife, daughter-in-law and other family members, in a section of chairs to his son's right.

As he spoke, Rafael's younger daughter, a binky in her mouth and pigtails on her head, moved back and forth from her grandfather to her father's lap.

She stayed just long enough to crawl up, get a hug and then return to her grandfather.

Back and forth she went, sometimes crawling when her father was speaking, at other times when he was listening to the other panelists.

The conversation dipped and turned, ebbed and flowed back and forth among the panelists and the author and moderator, moving deep into the nature of history and social movements and the country's real and imagined past.

Consuelo was just asking Rafael one of many questions she still had when the word came that the time for the program had ended.

No one had left.

We all repaired to the area outside the room, where Rafael signed books and talked with people as the rest of us dolloped corn kernels onto sopaipillas, picked up and munched on eggplants on crunchy bread, and, of course, drank some red wine.

After a while, I hugged and congratulated Rafael before walking out into the cool night to head onto the Metro and back to Dunreith.

As I walked, I realized anew that Chile is a still wounded country engaged in healing from the damage caused by the the physical pain and enforced silence of the dictatorship.

Humor is an important part of that process.

I thought about the gift that Rafael has given of of embracing and moving into the intersection of personal history with public experience, and of launching the book in the very building where those most responsible for that damage first announced their seizure of power.

And, once more, I appreciated my great fortune to be in Chile at this moment in its history, and to be a witness to an event where university presidents and scholars and humorists and friends and family can sit and talk and listen and laugh in a way that would have been unimaginable just a generation ago.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 59: Looking into Transparency in Chile

Our time in Chile has already been filled with extraordinary experiences, and we’re not even at the halfway mark.

We´ve spent a magical day at the home of Alejandra Matus and her family.

We´ve been witness to what amounted to a smidgen of the available activities through the build up to, and commemoration of, the 40th anniversary of the Pinochet coup.

We´ve atended a bunch of fondas, eating anticuchos and drinking terremotos, during the weeklong celebration of Fiestas Patrias.

I´ve also had the great pleasure of teaching and learning from my Data Journalism students at the University of Diego Portales.  They´ve finished their first of three projects.  Their work and grasp of the concepts impressed me, while the work they´ve produced has made me feel proud.

Beyond that, we’ve all kinds of red wine, empanadas, pisco sours and cazuelas.

Of course, I’m not just here to teach a class, meet incredibly generous and interesting people, improve my Spanish and eat delicious food.

I´m also doing research into the impact the 2009 Transparency Law has had on investigative journalism in the country.

Passed during the administration of former President and current leading presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet, the law was hailed as a landmark piece of legislation that would move the former dictatorship state in a far more open direction.

Exactly how far it’s gone is what I intend to find out during the next three months.

The structure is in place, according to open government guru Moises Sanchez.

We met over Skype in 2008, the first year I applied for the Fulbright in Chile, and in person over coffee about a month agao.

Moises said that Chile and Mexico have the strongest laws and best supporting infrastructure in Latin America.

He ought to know.

His “region” is the entire continent, and he spends much of his time traveling from country to country monitoring the state of public access to information.

That’s helpful background information, and I will say that I my original research plan was to emulate the noteworthy example set by James Painter, a BBC journalist turned Oxford academic who did a fascinating content analysis of climate change denial.

My adaptation would be to look at a year´s worth of coverage by El Mercurio, the nation´s largest paper, before the law changed, and a year´s worth of coverage after its passage to evaluate what, if any, impact it had had.

There were one small, all right, major, problem with this idea.

El Mercurio doesn´t really do investigative reporting.

At all.

Beyond that, as I later learned from watching Patricio Lanfranco and Elizabeth Farnsworth´s outstanding documentary, El Diario de Agustín, the paper was not only complicit with the Pinochet regime, it was actually funded by the United States government and worked hand-in-hand with the dictatorship in its fight against what the paper´s leaders perceived as the Communist menace.

Learning that caused me to scrap my original approach.

Digging deeper, I’ve found that investigative reporting is in very scarce supply here in Chile.

This is with the major exception of CIPER, an investigative non-profit outfit headed by the indefatigable Monica Gonzalez.

Time and again CIPER, which has a small staff, has brought official misconduct to light.

One of their most recent exclusives broke the news about the comprehensive failure of the 2012 Census.

Their investigation and follow up coverage sparked a chain of events which culminated in the Census being declared invalid and needing to be redone in 2015.

CIPER has also participated in hard-hitting international collaborations with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists about key issues like the offshore bank accounts of elites in countries around the world.

I’m excited to meet the dedicated folks at CIPER, and have come to understand that beyond them, the list of investigative reporters is a very short one.

We met Waldo Carrasco, the head of libraries for the Providencia community where we live, at one of the events leading up to the September 11 anniversary.

He was working in public information at the time the law was passed.

“We had an expectation that there would be an avalanche of request, especially from the press,” he told me.  “It didn’t happen.”

I’ve also heard from some very high-level journalists that the Transparency Council is slow, picky and unresponsive.

The combined effect of this information has been that I´ve readjusted my approach froma primarily quantitative one  to a more qualitative method.

This means that rather than mostly crunching data, I’ll be talking with people.

A lot of them.

I’m shooting to talk with a range of media executives and reporters at major publications and news outlets to get their take on what the impact of the law has been.

I’m going to talk with lawyers who helped shaped the legislation to understand their sense of what the legislation has and has not done.

I plan to download and analyze data from the Transparency portal to assess how many and which people have been asking for public information as well as what the results of those requests have been.

But I also intend to connect with people in smaller outlet like Miguel Paz, whose Poderopedia, a site that details relationships between Chile’s elite, has already been exported to several other Latin American countries.

I’m also going to reach out to people in the burgeoning coding community who are using their coding skills to access and built applications that both have a greater volume and flow of data than their non-coding counterparts.

My goal is to be able to say something specific about the degree to which the promise of a more open society has been met by the reporters who have asked for information and the government which has it.

I also want to be able to paint some kind of picture of how other forces like technology and globalization are acting on the nation that University of Vina del Mar Sociology Chairman Luis “Tito” Tricot memorably called a small nation in the southern part of the world with a view of the sea.

I don’t know exactly what I’ll learn.

But I do know both that I’ll have fun along the way and that our remarkable set of experiences is only going to get richer.

Especially if red wine and pisco sour are involved.