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 95: On Claudio Contreras, Soccer and Staying Single in Politics

“It’s important not to be married to anyone in politics,” Claudio Contreras declared, the mid-afternoon sun glinting off his aviator sunglasses and his slicked back black hair as he turned to look at me from the front seat of his taxi.

Contreras was driving me to meet Jorge Reizin, a successful businessman of Russian Jewish descent and a self-described extreme right winger (He later modified that label, calling himself center-right.)

Although perhaps the most iconic cab driver of all was Robert DeNiro’s Travis Bickle, in my experience there is an intimacy between what the Chileans call “taxistas” and customers the world over, the space that comes from the anonymous and finite time you spend together.

In Chicago, many of the taxi drivers come from other lands–Dunreith and Aidan often groan and roll their eyes when I tell them, “I’ve never been to your country.”-and I’ve found that many appreciate a connection to their homeland in a nation where few customers know where they are from.

Here in Santiago, many of the taxi drivers we’ve met are garrulous and hard working. (We took a ride with one gentleman who told us he works between 15 to 17 hours per day seven days per week.)

And, like Contreras, their desire to secure a fare leads them to tell us that they know our destination is, even when that is patently untrue. On our way to a Thanksgiving Day dinner hosted by Deputy Chief of Mission Steve Liston and his wife, we were treated to a passionate discourse about Chilean indigenous history and the lack of journalists’ knowledge and interest in subjects that matter by a pony-tailed driver who left us miles from our ultimate destination. My lack of giving the entire street name might have played a role in our troubles, and the man appeared to have no idea of where we were going or how to get there. This, however, did not stop him from keeping the meter running while he asked a bike courier for directions.

For his part, Contreras issued his proclamation about political deep into a ride in which the dominant focus had been listening to, and talking about, the waning minutes of Chile’s friendly match against England.

The Chileans were up by a goal when I got into the cab.

Contreras asked my permission to continue to listen to the game on the radio.

I granted it, of course, and his question seemed more like a formality that a sincere request.

We drove north to the tony Las Condes neighborhood.

Contreras kept pointing out people peering through bar windows to watch the game.

They’ve been drinking, he said. If I had stayed home, I would have had five beers, he said, a trace of longing filling his voice as he described his hypothetically-consumed drinks.

I told him I was grateful that he had not drunk any beers before picking me up. I did this both out of a genuine appreciation and to gauge whether he had indeed knocked back a few.

Claudio affirmed that he had not.

It was just about this point when Alexis Sanchez, Chile’s top player who had scored the team’s first goal, took a pass, dribbled once and lifted a gentle chip over the helpless English goalkeeper and into the left side of the goal.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OppqUhbE9dg&w=560&h=315]

Chile 2, England 0.

Sanchez jogged back toward his team’s side, tapping his chest and pointing to his jersey in a comparatively subdued celebration.

Not so the announcer, who erupted in a torrent of Spanish exulting Sanchez’s skill and talent, speaking with such force and conviction that it would not have been surprising had he proposed erecting a statue of Sanchez to go alongside those of iconic Chileans such as Bernando O’Higgins, Diego Portales and Salvador Allende.

Claudio responded, too, honking his horn at passing cabs and pointing out celebrating Chileans with even more vigor and enthusiasm. He also launched into a lengthy discourse about the victory Chile had earned at England’sfabled Wembley Stadium 15 years earlier, describing in great detail the golazo, or beautiful goal struck by Marcelo Salas. “The Matador” took a pass from midfield on his left thigh right outside the box and then volleying the ball with his left foot so that it rippled the right side of the net.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix2jW0UItb4&w=420&h=315]

The goalie had no chance.

More honking and discussion of beers.

After the tide of exultation subsided, we moved the conversation to politics. Claudio issued his denunciation of being wedded to a person or party.

It was an intriguing notion, particularly in a country where party loyalties have run very high.

Claudio explained that he and his family, who had supported Michelle Bachelet in 2006, had spoken together about who they felt would be best for the country. They liked the work that conservative billionaire and current President Sebastian Pinera had done, and thus were going to stay the course with Evelyn Matthei, the sole right-wing opponent in a crowded field of nine opponents.

Claudio estimated that 50 to 55 percent of Chilean voters felt the same way, that they were not particularly interested in the nation’s dark past or the personal histories of Bachelet and Matthei, but rather in who would be the best person to lead Chile into the future.

“The best poll in the country is in my backseat,” he told me as we pulled into the parking lot of the Starbucks where Jorge and I were meeting.

I ran upstairs, found Jorge and zipped back down to pay Claudio.

We shook hands and each went on our separate ways.

An image of the frothy beers Claudio would drink when he got home floated into my head as he rumbled away.

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting supported this story.

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

There's nothing else like it.

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

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

Your family.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dad and Lee will stay until November 21.

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

He'll be here for a month.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

O'Higgins Street bustled with activity.

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

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

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

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

I have faith in Chile and his destiny.

We headed back to the Metro.

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

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

But that wasn't what I felt tonight.

It was pure joy.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 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 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.