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.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 70: Hernan Gutierrez and the Dance of Conversation in Algarrobo

In the nine years that he lived in the south of Germany, the country where he had moved to give his son a better life than under the Pinochet dictatorship, Hernan Gutierrez could recognize fruit from his homeland by its smell.

Sometimes it was an apple.

Other times an orange.

But Gutierrez could tell where it had come from, even though there was an embargo in place against Chilean produce.

He knew.

The knowledge and the smell gave him joy.

By the time Hernan told us this nugget, we were already knee deep into a conversation that began when we surveyed the options and then bought a piece of white chocolate from one of the two stores he owns in Algarrobo, a seaside town about 90 minutes west of Santiago.

Dunreith and I are staying in a rustic cottage that’s owned in part by Andres Rolón, the lean, wild-haired Bolivian roommate of fellow Fulbrighter Larry Geri.

After our weekly yoga class at their apartment, we mentioned our desire to head out of Santiago for a few days.

Andres talked about his house.

Sixty dollars later, we had the place for the weekend.

We managed to get the lights and water on with little incident.

The gas was more problematic, and, thanks to the son of an elderly woman visiting our neighbor, we managed to get hot water and the stove working, too.

Despite our bringing shorts and swimming trunks in anticipation of taking a springtime dip in the Pacific Ocean, the weather was decidedly mid-winter. The sky was grey, overcast and cold.

Undeterred, we strolled on the beach past the world’s longest swimming pool at San Alfonso del Mar.

We purchased and ate a dozen mandarins from two immaculately maintained grocery stores.

Soon after that we entered Hernan’s chocolate store, which he was manning with his daughter-in-law.

The offerings were laid out neatly in the counter of the small space.

Hernan, who is sturdy and wore a white hat on his roundish, long head with white sideburns, greeted us and explained the flavors. (He had liqueurs filled with whiskey, among others-and everything ranging from standard choices like dark and white to slightly more unusual ones like orange.)

At just about the midway point of our time in Chile, I’m familiar with the conversational ritual we go through with vendors, people we meet in parks, or people who invite us to their homes.

We cover where we’re from, how we like Chile, and what on earth motivated us to travel to their country, let alone describe it as a place that we had dreamed of coming before seeing where things lead.

With Hernan they lead directly to the Pinochet coup and ensuing dictatorship.

He was just 13 years old and living in Santiago when Pinochet and the forces loyal to him ousted democratically-elected Salvador Allende and ushered in 17 years of terror.

Hernan remembers the dead bodies in the Rio Mapocho, the murdered people in the streets, the disappearances.

It is precisely because of those memories that he has little patience for those people who say now they didn’t know what was happening then.

I saw these things at 13 and understood what was happening, he said animatedly after we had moved outside of his store and onto Algarrobo’s main street, a peaceful two-lane road. Other people who were older than me had to realize.

People in Algarrobo were not as directly affected by the brutality, he added, but the climate of fear and disappearances happened here, too.

We need to recognize, not deny our painful past, he declared.

The conversation gained momentum as Hernan took us through his time in Germany, the poor quality of Chilean Spanish, the connections between the Pinochet government and Nazi thinking, the dim prospects for change through the political process, and the yawning gap between rich and poor in Chile.

He broke down the measures the tiny group of the most powerful Chilean families take to ensure their grandchildren and great-grandchildren’s financial futures.

High on the list: the regressive nature of the 19 percent Valued Added Tax which hits poor people hardest since they never get anything back. On other hand, wealthy store owners have the money returned back to them because they´ve been able to successfully argue that providing supplies for their workers means that they should get a tax exemption, he said.

From there he talked about the difference between Chile’s macro and micro economies and the disappointing tenure of former President Ricardo Lagos, whose election was heralded as being the end of the dictatorship, but whose presidency was characterized by making things even easier for the rich to line their pockets.

Hernan had just given us his assessment about how the movement from the current Santiago-based and controlled political system to the establishment of regions as meaningful political entities would be ideal, particularly for nearby San Antonio, a port city with one of the world’s largest tonnage movement, and was moving into a detailed discussion of the reasons why Chile has so many abandoned dogs and a local operation to spay many of them.

At this point all standard conversational moves were off.

The three of us were were just flowing and riffing and laughing and learning from each other.

The thought had entered my head that we might eventually end up at his house for dinner if this continued-a prospect that might have impacted my evening’s writing, but seemed highly enjoyable nonetheless-when Dunreith signaled that she wanted to get home before it was dark.

I’ve written before, including recently, about the good things that happen when I listen to my wife.

So I did.

I extended my hand and did my best to meet Don Hernan’s thick mitt with the same force he applied to mine.

He kissed Dunreith on the cheek. We wished him well, and he did the same.

Dunreith and I walked down the street a little bit before crossing to the side closest to the ocean and walking back to Andres’ house.

Hernan was standing in the front door of the chocolate shop.

We waved to each other.

Dunreith and I kept going.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 68: We're Going to Machu Picchu

I still remember seeing the Cape of Good Hope for the first time.

It was in the fall of 1995.

I was on a 10-day fall break during my year at teaching at the Uthongathi School just north of Durban.

Fellow teacher Kay Wise, her boyfriend and later husband Suri Chetty and Suri’s brother Theju drove us down from Durban past the Garden Route and down to Africa's southernmost point.

We had already visited a tattered version of Dutch colonist Jan van Riebeeck’s fabled hedge of bitter almonds that Allister Sparks used as the framing metaphor as the separation between the European colonists and indigenous people in his book, The Mind of South Africa.

The day was cold and windy, the weather overcast.

I saw the point of land where the Indian and Pacific Oceans converged and merged.

During my years as a Social Studies teacher I taught many times about legendary Portuguese explorers Vasco da Gama and Bartolomeu Dias reaching, and then rounding that point on their way to India in search of an all-water trade route.

Standing on the same spot where the sailors had passed through unknown lands more than five centuries before changed forever my understanding of history and the world.

Whereas previously I had thought of the discipline I taught and loved as a series of dates, names, people and places to memorize and spit back, the greater the volume, the deeper my understanding, now I realized that I indeed could be and travel to and feel a connection to those people who had come before us and played a role in shaping the world we have inherited.

I thought of that moment yesterday when Dunreith and I, after a couple of weeks of searching and wading through Internet outages and hassles, pressed, “Compar” on the TACA Airlines website.

Buy.

The tickets we purchased will take us from Santiago to Lima, and then Cuzco, in Peru.

Machu Picchu lies just a couple of hours away.

I first learned about the Inca in seventh grade.

Steve Orrell was my teacher.

Sharply dressed, with thinning brown hair, he often took a break in between classes to buy or sell 1,000 shares on the stock exchange. (A tech company was a particular favorite.)

Mr. Orrell later left teaching to open a clothing store on Boston’s Newbury Street.

In his class, though, we had a major project about ancient Incan culture and civilization.

David Sharff, my early morning running partner and fellow newspaper boy, did the best one.

He earned a 98 for his elaborate drawings of Incan villages-he later became an architect-as well as his thorough description of the various aspects of Incan culture.

I left mine until nearly the last minute.

I don’t remember the exact day of the week that the project was due, but I do remember waking up very early in the morning two days before, sitting at our kitchen table and working to produce the project’s required elements.

I didn’t yet have an understanding of empires or colonialism. For me, this was material that I had to produce about a distant land that I did not even consider whether I would ever visit or not.

But I do remember the words Machu Picchu and the images of the glorious ancient temples that were the nation’s headquarters.

Yesterday’s purchase assured that we will see them.

The past 16 months have been a time of extraordinary gifts and realization of long-held dreams for me.

In May 2012 we traveled with Dad to his hometown in Germany for the first time in 73 years-a journey I had wanted to take for decades.

In November last year, with plenty of help from Dunreith and Paul Tamburello, I finished and published On My Teacher’s Shoulders, my memoir about learning from Paul at three distinct points over the course of 30 years. I had first discussed the project with Paul in the summer of 1999, months after I ran the Boston Marathon in his honor.

And in February of this year, I gained acceptance as a Fulbright Scholar to teach Data Journalism at the University of Diego Portales and research the impact of the 2009 Transparency Law on journalism here in Chile. In 2000 I filed the initial of what turned out to be four applications to participate in the program to travel with Dunreith and Aidan to live, teach and do research in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

These experiences, and the people we’ve met through them, have helped me gain an ever-stronger conviction that it is possible both to live a life based on deep and long-held dreams and fundamental values as well as to weave a life together with my blood and chosen families.

Based on that understanding, I need both to make sure I have enough space to reflect on my dreams, to give them the time and space to take specific form, and to work with those whom I love to make them real.

That process will continue in December, when Dunreith, Aidan and I board the plane and travel to a place I first learned about 35 years ago.

Once there, we’ll see the wonder of what the Incas created.

I expect that I’ll continue to savor my great fortune at being alive, too.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 67: Happy Birthday, Dunreith! (Just a little early)

Our time in Chile has been drenched in special experiences.

Many of them have come from the tremendous generosity we have experienced from our colleagues and friends.

But others have stemmed from celebrating deeply personal moments in a different country.

Our anniversary is in the latter category.

So was fasting on Yom Kippur.

Dunreith's birthday tomorrow is a third.

We were together for the first time on her birthday in 1998.

We hadn't been dating long, and drove from Boston to Westwood on a rainy Saturday night.

Susan Kaplan, a friend whom Dunreith met in kindergarden, and her husband Evan hosted an intrepid group of people who gathered to honor Dunreith.

We all sat around the kitchen table.

A lot of talk about children ensued.

Cathy McKenzie, a dear friend whom Dunreith met while teaching at Wilbraham Monson Academy, sat on a couch in the living room. She rubbed her pregnant stomach and commented on how people's braving the weather showed how much they cared about Dunreith.

Anne Murphy, a former roommate from Springfield with blonde hair the color of straw, read a poem that mentioned Dunreith and her occasional man.

Fortunately for me, I was that man that night.

Even more fortunately, the occasion has lasted until today.

In the 15 years since that evening, Dunreith and I have been through many major life events together.

We've raised Aidan and cared for her parents as their strength faded.

We've moved from our shared home state of Massachusetts to the most American of cities, and swapped being the major breadwinner and the parent at home.

We've bought and sold a home, and woven a community composed of our blood family and our family of the heart.

Throughout this decade-and-a-half Dunreith has given me many gifts and taught me many lessons.

How to be a better husband, father and man.

How to back your partner with every fiber of your being.

How to build a life out of bedrock values and long-held dreams.

How to give your parents the same love and care at the end of their lives that they showed you when you were young and vulnerable.

How to win by losing in parenting, work and life.

How to reach out and come together after moments of conflict and tension.

What a remarkable gift it is to be with someone who is bone-deep authentic and expects nothing less of you.

Dunreith has given all of that to me.

We started our celebrations last night with some Fulbright friends and continued tonight with our English language students at the American Corner.

Dessert was a prominent feature both nights.

Tomorrow, too.

We got a reservation for a massage and a plan to savor the delectable cappuccino dessert they serve at Cafe Cinnamon.

From there we'll go to seaside town Algarrobo for the weekend.

The time to walk on the beach, decompress and appreciate being around each other will be a welcome break from Santiago, a city with precious little green space.

Celebrating Dunreith's birthday here will indeed be a special experience.

But what is even more special is understanding that it is indeed a privilege in life to share not just joy, but grief, not just triumph, but failure, not just moments of lightness, but of struggling for purpose, with the person to whom you've pledged yourself.

Dunreith's that woman for me.

Now and for as long as we're both alive.

Happy Birthday, Dunreith.

And thank you.

For everything.