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

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

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

Friends.

Colleagues.

Students.

Travel adventures.

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

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

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

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

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

A research plan evolves

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I took other actions, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I learned a lot through my research.

The good news first

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Many challenges exist, too

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I concluded by noting the following:

The law is still young, but has tremendous potential.

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

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

I’m honored to be part of that dialogue.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time itself is neutral, he said.

I did some research.

Two groups gathered and listened and dialogued with each other.

Folks who did not know each other now have met.

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

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

I'm transparent about that.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 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 66: Carlo Gutierrez and the Fight for Public Emails

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It didn’t go that simply.

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

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

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

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

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

Gutierrez offered an oral argument before the court.

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

But the court of three judges found otherwise.

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

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

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

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

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

Earlier this year the court rendered its decision.

It held in favor of the defendants.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chilean Chronicles, Part XXXVIII: Luis Dreams of a Home in Chillan

Luis has dreamed of the house in Chillan for years.

It’s located in the country about four hours away from Santiago, where he grew up and has driven a cab nearly the past half-century.

He started driving at 19, just after he had legally become an adult and more than a dozen years after both of his parents had died.

Luis’ father passed away from cancer when he and his twin were just 4 years old.

His mother had a heart attack that same year.

The city has changed a lot since he first got behind the wheel, he told me during a traffic-filled ride to St. George’s school on the outskirts of Santiago on Wednesday.

He was wearing a blue-striped sweater, a neatly knotted tie, and a shirt with the top button undone.

His mustache and the hair on his head are both thick and have hefty portions of grey.

The day he drove us, he was wearing a blue-striped sweater, a neatly knotted tie, and a shirt with the top button undone.

The topic of the changes in the city since he’s been a taxi driver elicited animated hand gestures that evoked his Italian ancestors.

In the Allende days, Luis said, the streets were littered with trash.

People were drunk all the time.

The buildings were all grey.

Many people lacked a strong work ethic.

Pinochet changed all that, Luis told me.

People went to bed earlier.

They worked harder.

In short, Pinochet modernized the city and the country.

Luis has a far dimmer view of politicians these days.

They’re more concerned about serving their own and their parties’ interests.

They don’t think about what the people need.

As a result, Luis said he’s not going to vote in the upcoming presidential elections.

But one thing he is sure of, regardless of who wins: the people will have to work like slaves.

That includes him.

Which is why he’s so excited about his house.

It’s in the country, and, in his vision, has got a small goat, a chicken and a rooster.

While there, he’ll be able to relax and enjoy himself.

Luis doesn’t have much family.

His marriage with an Arab woman didn’t work out.

He has two sons in their 30s, neither of whom is married or has children. They've been to Italy, but he's never made it there.

His brother’s wife died a few years ago.

Still, the image of the home gives him peace as he’s chauffeuring customers around the city as many as 80 hours per week.

The problem, though, is money.

Luis said he’s hardly saved any money in the pension accounts that were established under the leadership of Jose Pinera, older brother of current Chilean president Sebastian Pinera.

We were pulling up to the front gate at the school.

I waited in the car, gave Luis a tip and wished him luck in converting his vision into a reality.

I asked him for a business card, and he gave me one from the company.

For his sake I hope that, someday soon, Luis will be able to give his final ride to a customer, move south to Chillan and take up residence in the rustic home he’s wanted so desperately.

But, as his car rumbled away, I feared instead that Luis may spend the rest of his days and years driving around the city where he has lived his entire life, and from which he is likely never to leave.