Chilean Chronicles, Part 100: The Joy and Honor of Working with Jon Lowenstein

Our time in Chile has been an extraordinary and expansive time for many reasons.

Dunreith and I have been animated by a sense of adventure that’s been heightened by having sold our house the day before we flew to Santiago.

We’ve been treated with enormous and continuous generosity by colleagues, students, taxi drivers, and Chileans of all stripes, ages, classes and political backgrounds.

We’ve had the chance to travel within and outside the country to places that in some cases we had dream of going for years, even decades.

We’ve also had a heavy dose of family.

We flew to Buenos Aires to meet Dad and his partner Lee for five days before their two-week cruise in Argentina and Chile.

We’re about three weeks into a more than month-long stay with Aidan, who’s fresh off a fantastic semester of study and travel in New Zealand.

We also had my brother Jon here for two work-filled weeks.

Jon likely would have come here to visit us anyway, and having a professional purpose clinched his decision.

That came in the form of our successful application to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. We put in a proposal that said we would do a three-part series for the The New Yorker’s Photo Blog, a similar project for Vivelohoy, and a number of blog posts for a combination of the Huffington Post, the Ochberg Society, Hoy and my personal blog.

Jon and I have collaborated before.

We’ve covered police brutality on Chicago’s South Side.

We participated in a fellowship where we did a project about the experience of undocumented Latino migrants who become disabled on the job. (This was the one for which I taught myself Spanish.)

We’ve traveled to the far reaches of Northern South Africa to cover life in a rural community there and the efforts of Evanston resident Ann Covode to bring a library and other educational support to the children in the community.

It was during this project that, after a formal ceremony and introduction, one of the teachers told us in front of the staff that they had prepared a delicacy for us to eat: a cow’s hoof.

Last year we flew to Dad’s hometown to photograph and write about his return there for the first time in 73 years.

These have all been remarkable experiences, and the work we did in Chile was our most ambitious yet.

Over the course of a series of conversations, we defined our scope.

We would look at Chile’s past, present and future 40 years after the Pinochet coup.

The past would involve going to memory sites like the Museum of Memory and Human Rights and Villa Grimaldi, interviewing survivors and activists who had lived through the time like Ana Gonzalez, a feisty 87-year-old with bright red fingernails whose husband, two of her sons and a pregnant daughter-in-law were murdered by the government during the dictatorship, and talking with memory scholars like friend Hugo Rojas.

The present consisted of covering the first round of elections that pitted nine presidential candidates against each other, including frontrunner and former president Michelle Bachelet of the Nueva Mayoria, or New Majority, and childhood friend Evelyn Matthi of the conservative Independent Democratic Union.

And the future including talking with young, digitally-savvy Chileans who grew up during and after the dictatorship and who are working to improve the country.

People like Jaime Parada, the son of Pinochetistas whose parents joined neighbors on the street in weeping the night in October 1988 that Pinochet lost the plebiscite that would have kept him in power.

Last year Jaime became the first openly gay public official in Chilean history when he won a Councilman position in the wealthy, politically conservative Providencia neighborhood. Since his election he’s worked with reform Mayor Josefa Errazuriz to push for, and win, a battle to change the name of one of the community’s major streets from Avenida 11 de Septiembre, a name that honored the Pinochet coup, to Nueva Providencia, or New Providencia.

People like the light-blue shirted volunteers of TECHO, a non-profit group founded in 1997 by Father Felipe Berrios and some young Chileans to help individuals and communities fight poverty. Since its inception TECHO has evolved from doing construction work to a more ongoing and holistic approach in which they work with community members to diagnose, and then set a plan to meet, the community’s needs.

Together we went to a campamento, or shantytown, in the La Florida neighborhood that cropped up after powerful floods devastated the area in 1997. The volunteers there were in the process of setting up a community center; other campamentos with a TECHO presence have tutoring programs, a library and micro-enterprise stores.

Being able to do work that you love is a tremendous gift.

Doing that work with one of your brothers for one of the world’s top magazines is even greater.

Indeed, many of the day that Jon was here, before I left the apartment, I’d say to Dunreith, “I’m going over to Jon’s apartment. We’re on assignment for The New Yorker.”

And a riveting assignment it was.

Together Jon and I went to Algarrobo to interview Hernan Gutierrez, who was 13 years old when he witnessed decapitated bodies floating down the Mapocho River shortly after the coup.

We spoke with Mario Hernandez, who told us about waiting on Salvador Allende and Pablo Neruda as well as serving high-ranking members of the dictatorship.

We went to Villa Grimaldi and spoke with Carlos Contreras, who still had the chess board he made out of cardboard to play with fellow inmates when they were detained in 1974.

We attended the end of campaign event for presidential frontrunner Michelle Bachelet, listened to her race through her speech and met former President Ricardo Lagos.

I shook his hand and told him that I had seen his finger years earlier. (His finger-wagging calling out of Pinochet was seen by many as a critical moment in the “No” campaign.)

We went together to the Open Mind Fest that was sponsored by MOVILH, one of the nation’s leading gay and lesbian activist groups, that stretched across four city blocks. Jon shot picture after picture of the drag queens who were the unofficial stars of the event, of young lesbian couples holding hands and of the youth dancing and swaying and vibing at the four stages set up along Paseo Bulnes.

Jaime Parada told us that MOVILH held the event near the presidential palace and congressional offices to remind politicians of the community’s clout.

The message appeared to be heeded, as five of the nine presidential candidates attended the event.

Beyond all that we did, the project was a chance to learn from Jon, who is one of the planet’s top photographers.

He shoots and shoots and shoots, getting closer and closer to the action, swerving as he identifies an opportunity to make a picture, letting the place speak to him, always thinking about how he can be do better.

Jon’s been shooting seriously for more than 20 years, and continues to expand his skill and scope. His passion for photography, storytelling and documenting what’s happening in the world remains undimmed. If anything, it’s only grown stronger with the passage of time, clarity of vision and commitment to his craft.

We didn't only work.

Together with Dunreith, Dad and Lee, we'd have lengthy dinners topped off by nightly servings of ice cream. We'd carve out space to laugh about family stories and discuss the latest developments in the NBA.

I don't want to suggest that the collaboration was easy at every moment.

It never is with two strong-willed people, let alone two brothers with more than four decades of history.

And there’s no doubt in my heart and head that working with Jon was a joy and an honor, and something I’ll remember for as long as I can remember.

Living in Chile has been magnificent, and the project with my brother is a big part of it.

I can’t wait for the next one.

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 94: Hernan's Gutierrez's Memory and Imagination

Imagine that you’re in Santiago, Chile in 1973.

Imagine that you’re 13 years old and walking to school with your father.

Imagine that there’s been a coup in your country that deposed the president and left him dead.

Imagine that your school was closed for about a week. When you returned, many, if not most, of the teachers you worked with and learned from and loved are gone.

This included Julia Del Rosario Retamales Sepulveda.

A 55-year-old Communist, she was for you the sweetest, kindest, most nurturing teacher there was.

Imagine that you learn later that she was detained at Villa Grimaldi, the largest and most notorious detention center in the network of such facilities established by the DINA, Pinochet’s secret police.

You never saw her again.

Imagine that you’re walking along the Rio Mapocho with your father on the way to school.

You see something floating downstream.

You realize that what you are seeing are dead bodies.

Your father tries to protect you and stops you from moving closer.

You can’t see everything, you see enough to realize that some of the bodies have been shot.

Others have no heads.

Imagine that you walk along the river the next day.

You see more bodies.

The day after that.

Even more.

Hernan Gutierrez does not have to imagine.

Because this happened to him in the fall of 1973.

“It was horrible,” he said, shuddering as he described the terror inflicted on the people during the Pinochet dictatorship.

Forty years later, the memories are still with him.

The trauma of what he saw has not stopped Gutierrez from marrying and raising a family or from moving forward with business endeavors.

His wife had a similar experience after the coup, so they each understand what the other experienced.

In the early 80s, the couple moved to Germany for eight years because they did not want to raise their two boys in a society that instilled such fear in its citizens.

They returned in the early 1990s, moving from Santiago’s bustle to the quiet seaside town Algarrobo, where they’ve set up a life together.

They own a chocolate shop on the main street of Carlo Alessandri.

Two doors down, she runs a clothing store.

Their sons have grown and become men. One is an artist whose work adorns the wall of the clothing store. A daughter-in-law works in the chocolate store.

Life is quiet and peaceful.

But the memories still sit uneasily beneath the surface.

When he thinks about them, they remind Hernan not only of that darker, earlier time.

They make him question those who were older and say they did not know.

If I could know this at 13, he asked, how could they not know what was happening?

After we visited Hernan, we drove to Villa Grimaldi, the former restaurant that became a detention center during the Pinochet era, a place of unspeakable evil where people were tortured and the torturers’ children played in a nearby pool.

We walked to the part of the park that honors women who were detained and disappeared there.

Each woman has a plaque that looks like a multi-colored tile lollipop planted in the ground near a rose.

The flowers are arranged in a series of circles.

In one of the circles, there is a tile and flower for Julia Del Rosario Retamales Sepulveda.

Just as Hernan remembered.

He does not have to imagine.

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting supported this story.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 65: An Extraordinary September in Chile

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plays.

Poetry readings.

Book launches.

Memorial events at former torture centers like Villa Grimaldi.

Scholarly conferences.

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

There have been observances of the coup in years past.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Presente.

Present.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TRANSPARENCY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He expected a flood of requests from journalists.

That didn´t happen.

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

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

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

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

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

CELEBRATING FIESTAS PATRIAS AT THE FONDAS

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

The celebrations last far more than a day.

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

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

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

Each had its own flavor.

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

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

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

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

I first applied to the Fulbright program in 2000.

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

Realizing that success is a dream come true.

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

The events of September confirm the wisdom of our decision.

I can’t wait to see what October brings.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 47: Memory Ceremony with Michelle Bachelet at Villa Grimaldi

The fortieth anniversary of the Pinochet coup that removed democratically-elected leader Salvador Allende from power has been met with a blizzard of activity. Dunreith and I have attended a lot, but far from all, of the events.

Documentary films.

Academic conferences.

A translated of Eurpides' play The Supplicants.

Round table discussions on the importance of memory.

Nothing moved like seeing the relatives of the disappeared today at Villa Grimaldi, the former restaurant turned torture center turned peace park.

I was part of a pack of about 50 photographers, videographers and radio reporters that took pictures from every possible angle of Michelle Bachelet, the former president and current presidential front runner who, along with her mother Angela Jeria, was detained and tortured during the military dictatorship.

But what got me the deepest was meeting people like Cecilia Hernandez, who was wearing a picture of her mustachioed brother Juan pinned to her purple jacket.

Cecilia was 13 years old when the coup happened.

She remembers the terror she felt.

She remembers being threatened, with her 3-year-old sister, by the authorities, who along with their dignity and sense of safety robbed their home of many of its most valuable items.

They also took Juan, her older brother.

Two years after the coup, in 1975, Juan, who was politically active against the regime, left for Mendoza, Argentina.

The authorities went there, brought him back, and detained him in Villa Grimaldi.

In June 1976 Juan was disappeared.

He hasn't returned to this day, Cecilia said, a cloud of sadness and grief hanging over her face.

She was one of hundreds of people who sat in the white chairs underneath a large outdoor tent.

Every other chair had a black and white pictures of someone who had been murdered at Villa Grimaldi.

Each photograph had the person's name underneath and a red rose laid across the chair.

At the event organized by a coalition of human rights groups, the families stood and raised the pictures during a song that paid tribute to their loved ones.

Through their comments, event organizers made it clear that the day was not just about honoring and remembering the dead, but about demanding complete truth and full justice.

Lorena Pizarro has been president of the Group of Families of Detained and Disappeared People since 2003.

She issued a fiery speech, but she also made the point that for her the day was one of happiness.

The loved ones of the have not been forgotten, said Pizarro, whose father was disappeared, they have been with us every day of the past 40 years.

They were there in the full-throated call issued by a woman near the front of the tent after singer Isabel Aldunate finished her final song.

Companeras, detained and disappeared? the woman yelled before the applause for the song had stopped.

Presente, the crowd answered as one.

Present.

Companeros, detained and disappeared? She asked, louder and slower, lingering over every syllable.

Presente.

Louder. More united.

Companeras, executed for political reasons?

Presente.

Companeros, executed for political reasons.

Presente.

Louder still.

The call and response concluded with a salute to Salvador Allende's ideals, now and forever, before family members placed the pictures and the rose at the wall that honors Villa Grimaldi's victims.

Dunreith and I started to move away from the pack that continued to follow every inch of Bachelet's slow walk out of the compound.

We walked past Jeria, who had linked her arm with a young man wearing a dark suit and, unlike her daughter, was attracting no attention.

We crossed the street, caught a bus and rode quietly to the Metro station on our way back to the University of Diego Portales.

The swelling in my heart and the lump in my throat remained.