CHILE: WAITING FOR THE FALL
Beam, John M.
CHILE Waiting for the Fall BY JOHN M. BEAM SEPTEMBER 2 Our two-person invasion force enters Chile through a tunnel boring into the highest section of the Andes. At the tunnel's end, a new...
...And how?—Struggling...
...You can whistle it, clap it, or beat it out on the nearest resounding surface...
...You can chant it...
...SEPTEMBER 19 Tomorrow we'll head north through the Atacama Desert in a jeep lashed atop a cargo of high-pressure gas bottles on a flatbed truck...
...he asks me...
...We have been marching for less than three minutes...
...The pacos seem restrained but are present in busloads...
...That's hard, given the political climate in which I was raised...
...Those lines have been drawn pretty clearly...
...SEPTEMBER 5 I rode one of the city buses to San Pablo today...
...Polly twists an ankle when a man pushes past her in panic...
...But tonight is the despedida, the farewell party...
...And for those leftists, the possibility of implementing the acuerdo lies in the slim chance that some of Pinochet's generals back the plan, which, incidentally, is popularly viewed as a concoction of the U.S...
...Between the busts and the total lack of activity in the demonstration area, the day is shaping up to be a lata, which is Chilean for a drag, a bummer...
...They reply that they will dress the giant idols in pajamas so as not to scandalize the Americans...
...He also shows us a bridge over the Rio Mapocho, which cuts through Santiago, where rush hour traffic would slow down in September 1973 while drivers could watch officials fish bodies out of the river...
...She mentions a pregnant mother who was "so happy because she had finally been able to put styrofoam insulation inside her roof...
...It's the closest thing to Bourbon Street on New Year's Eve that I've seen in nearly two years of living in South America...
...There does, however, appear to be a battle on for the national symbols...
...Poder popular...
...The street word for snitch is sapo—toad—a critter with big eyes and a bigger mouth...
...When Chile entered into the shadows of hate and division, when atheistic Marxism took over many consciences," the vicar sermonized, "thousands of Chileans turned their eyes to the Mother of Chile, to the Virgin of Carmen, and implored with vehemence for the salvation of Chile...
...SEPTEMBER 4 National Day of Protest...
...Y va a caer...
...Everyone begins walking, not running, out of the cemetery by various routes...
...We begin to march down the street toward the cemetery gates...
...Some youth groups, she says, schedule their training sessions for new members so older members can be present—and take some of the snacks, too...
...Later, as we are driving around, H. keeps pointing out anti-Pinochet graffiti...
...We plan to "observe" with El Comite por la Vida, an organization composed of relatives of the victims of political assassination...
...Someone from the Chilean Commission on Human Rights delivers a short speech...
...Another 152 are from the low-income neighborhoods, which often are the hottest spots during protests...
...Government troops ripped it down, claiming it was a false ceiling to hide weapons...
...The four of us see a movie, and afterward, while waiting for a bus, B. points out the headquarters of the Centro Nacional de Information, CNI, the secret police...
...Polly calls it guerrilla demonstrating...
...I blink but don't hesitate...
...We head back home...
...The house is packed...
...Another song...
...The Chilean flag was draped across the door of the building...
...This is news...
...We spend most of the time at the Chuncho Solidario, the Solidarity Owl, a fonda covered with eucalyptus branches and bustling with volunteer waiters and waitresses who are laden with beer and food...
...Callow would probably be too strong a word...
...In reading the cases, I am struck by the emphasis on the spiritual and psychological damage remaining long after the cigarette burns and electrode scars have healed: Nightmares, migraines, severe* depression, and paranoia—but is it?—are referred to frequently...
...We ask why...
...C. and H. still regularly bring flowers to the grave of a workmate who was killed in the coup...
...To idly accumulate names, addresses, or work places is irresponsible when torture is the norm for interrogating political prisoners...
...In a frank attempt to avoid threatening the military, the acuerdo makes absolutely no mention of what is to be done with the torturers...
...The arrests continue...
...No," I answer...
...a group of volunteer attorneys will—we hope-help spring him...
...Soon, even the music has to say it and the crowd takes every number, whether it's a tricky Colombian dance tune or a thumping boogie, and makes the prediction and demand part of the beat...
...The risks, even for legal and above-ground activities, are real...
...And in a way, it's true...
...L. says tomorrow is the test between forces mobilizing at the grass-roots level and those of the center-right cabal that signed the acuerdo national...
...The prominent Christian Democrats arrested are freed almost immediately, but thirty-two people will be detained for the full five days allowed by law...
...This is the day I came back for...
...Twelve years of tyranny...
...Our waitress has been listening to Pinochet's speech, an hours-long affair, and gripes about his giving bonuses to everyone but the workers...
...Primary school students ride the bus free, and the driver admits he lets some of the older kids ride gratis also...
...L. and B. go to the precinct station to check on the arrested, many of whom are friends...
...As someone who comes from a nation where patriotism and revolution are viewed as antonyms, I find it fascinating that Chileans refuse to surrender their symbols to a government they view as a cancerous growth on the body politic...
...Rich neighborhoods get the juice first, followed by poor ones...
...And he hands me back my passport...
...Quien lo matd?—Facismo...
...To give some idea of the peso's falling buying power, the twelve-month inflation rate as recently reported by El Mercurio here was 36.5 per cent...
...The national accord posits a reestablish-ment of basic political liberties, an elected executive, separation of powers, and a national plebiscite to approve its various proposals...
...We go back to the park again at night with Gabriela and some of her friends...
...It didn't seem like he was talking about the desaparecidos or Victor Jara...
...Softly, people begin to sing one of his songs...
...The Chile where you could buy, from a table set up in the post office, a book telling you how to organize your neighborhood, your price-control committee, or your sports league by making use of various executive decrees of the Allende government...
...Lots of red flowers...
...Of course, many of the parties that signed the acuerdo sup- . ported the coup that dropped bombs on the industrial sectors surrounding Santiago, but I guess negotiating styles do change over time...
...On our way home, we see trucks and buses headed for Prov-idencia and Los Condes where the rich live...
...The pacos were teargasing the area, firing shots, and had helicopters out with searchlights scanning the buildings and streets...
...There are a few more busts...
...The immigration official speaks English...
...The national anthem is sung...
...We reach the back wall where folksinger Victor Jara is entombed...
...Right, Jack...
...She tells us the pacos have been arresting students for the last two weeks—200 or 250 yesterday in Santiago alone...
...We'll see sand, some cactus, a former desert concentration camp, and little sign of political activity...
...Lots of women in black...
...Before we board the bus, L. tells us to watch what we say...
...The live groups are great, the taped music between sessions is great, the food is great...
...In the evening, while coming home from a folk-music performance, we have trouble getting into L.'s neighborhood...
...Two-thirds of the way to our destination, the back of the graveyard where the sin identification, the nameless dead from 1973, are buried, word goes out that if we are to march, the chanting must stop...
...Hay que solidarizarse, no cierto" ("You gotta stick together"), I joke...
...The UF serves, ultimately, to protect banks from inflation...
...And ninety-three more are engineering students who occupied the rector's office to protest their classmates' arrest...
...I came to Chile with a good heart, an open mind, and a little bit of analysis...
...On September 4, for example, we walked past the offices of the National Academy of Architects...
...We regroup and move steadily past row after row of ornate family mausoleums...
...Instead, they live in a lower-middle-class area...
...People are tossing handfuls of leaflets into the air, they are chanting, and they pogo-dance while they chant so they stand out from the pedestrians, who are, in reality, few in number...
...Each time a vehicle approaches, we retreat to the shadows...
...One only needs to know enough to do one's job...
...On this anniversary, we stop, we give thanks to God for everything He has done, especially in benefit of the poor and needy...
...A Chile where economic disaster and political hope shared the same space...
...Queen of Chile, save your people that clamor unto you,' was the plea that was on the lips of men, women and children, youth, students, workers, men at arms, and professionals...
...Or to the students peddling broadsides on tooth care, the most recent labor law, or whatever their academic specialty is...
...Then we notice a water-cannon tank hosing down the facade of the University of Chile: It's noon and the day has officially begun...
...They were closed in obvious sympathy with the protest underway...
...The city is an odd mixture of chromed shopping districts, shanty-towns, and modern, drab, suburban-looking tract houses and apartment complexes...
...SEPTEMBER 11 Dia de nuestra disgracia, the day of our disgrace...
...People have to stretch because his shelf is high...
...The woman's husband, whose background is in development economics, tells us 800,000 families, roughly four million Chileans, are homeless...
...Los Chicago Boys, by the way, is Chilean Spanish, not a translation...
...One man, an attorney for the French embassy, is picked off and stuffed into a green bus that the police have nearby...
...She describes how six months ago a squad of ski-masked agents burst into the offices of an internationally respected human rights organization, beat some people, molested some women, and tore the place apart...
...As we begin to stroll, pacos cruise along with us, their numbers growing until they outnumber our group of twenty...
...I moved on, and so did my life...
...L. has been trying to teach me about minding my own business...
...She works with torture victims and some of the people who visit her would rather not be seen...
...Of shortages and lines and angry middle-class people...
...Y va...
...Occasionally, complete psychotic breaks are triggered by torture...
...negotiations to use it as an alternative space-shuttle landing site...
...We finally take a taxi, for double fare, that brings us within a tense walk of L.'s place...
...The woman speaks of hunger in low-income neighborhoods, of children who come with their mothers to training sessions and save snacks to share with brothers and sisters at home...
...Polly asks if the Chileans will protect the archaeological treasures...
...One of these will be sent into internal exile...
...This is not the Chile I visited in the spring of 1973...
...Looking at the flags, it occurs to me that now there is no war for the hearts and minds of the people of Chile...
...May through July, was 13.1 per cent, down from the same period in 1984 when it hit 16 per cent...
...Y como?—Luchando...
...The shot was fired from a car that had no license plates...
...San Pablo is a low-income neighborhood in West Santiago, and some of the shacks people live in are about seven-feet-by-ten-feet...
...The anniversary of the second liberation of Chile, the other side calls it...
...I read in the papers later that one of the three persons killed today was a woman from our neighborhood who took a bullet as she walked near a bonfire...
...Have you been to Chile before...
...One teacher, she says, arrived late, apparently caught up in traffic because police were investigating the shooting of a military officer...
...Although we arrive early for the September 11 anniversary of the coup, L. tells us September 4 is more likely to be the date for street protests...
...Four hours later she was out of a job...
...SEPTEMBER 18 This is the first of a two-day celebration commemorating Chile's independence...
...B., who is out attending a meeting, decides to spend the night with friends rather than try and come in...
...This takes them to the proposed demonstration site, a green space in the middle of a street behind the presidential palace...
...She says she has seen entire audiences follow the pacos into shopping galleries while the pacos harassed musicians...
...At the tunnel's end, a new efficient immigration center processes visitors arriving in bus-sized units...
...In 1973, I was fresh out of three years as a foot soldier in the U.S...
...The dance floor is jammed and every song ends with people chanting...
...Then, suddenly, the pacos come running up behind us, followed by the ubiquitous police bus...
...The Chile of Salvador Allende...
...Now, for what probably are unadmirable and sentimental reasons, I feel this obligation to see what happened after I left, to try to understand a little better, to see things a little more clearly...
...A swath hundreds of kilometers long is covered with darkness...
...The other, a teen-ager, will be held for the optional fifteen-day extension permitted by the "law...
...Many of the houses of torture are in big brownstones in a residential-military-university neighborhood at the other end of the business district...
...L. tells Polly and me not to talk so our accents won't give us away as yanquis...
...L. gives me hell for being bored by reports of a gradual reestablishment of electrical power...
...Unemployment for the previous trimester...
...And now the band plays "La Bamba," returning to the first verse over and over, and we're jumping up and down on the dance floor singing the chorus...
...If there were really that many illegal arms, there would be more dead pacos and government troops...
...Abbie Hoffman supposedly once said that whenever he walks by a sit-in, he somehow suddenly feels real tired...
...Tell it to all those folks sin identiflcacion buried in the weeds at the back of the cemetery...
...We don't stop for casualties...
...The little I underJohn M. Beam, an organizer in Brooklyn, New York, recently returned from two years in South America...
...These musicians are nineteen-and twenty-year-old working-class kids whose only income comes from playing at the malls in the center of Santiago...
...She tells about what happens when government troops carry out an allanamiento, or break-in...
...The pacos move in with tear gas and smoke bombs...
...Tonight three high-tension towers in the mountains east of the city are blown out by the Frente Patriotico Manuel Rodriguez...
...In her more somber moments, L. says, "Look at Stroessner in Paraguay...
...You really can't trust government numbers, but even these indicate one of every seven Chilean workers is jobless...
...Green might not be...
...Tortura—documento de denuncia, published by one of the nine human rights organizations active in Chile, provides clinical descriptions of the experiences of torture victims...
...Most of their neighbors are pacos or military types, though, so they don't talk politics too much...
...The value of the UF floats in its own market, closely linked to the dollar and a consumer price index, both of which rise relative to the peso...
...What should one expect...
...We congregate a couple of blocks from the cemetery shortly before noon...
...It was the second independence of Chile...
...SEPTEMBER 14 Polly and I spend the day with C. and H. again...
...A good week for them is when the weather is pleasant, all of their singing partners can scrape together bus fare to trek to the mall, and the national police, or pacos, don't bust them and confiscate their instruments...
...Yes, emphatically, says L. Because the neighborhoods remaining without power are those that can expect allanamientos, house-to-house searches tonight by government troops...
...Throughout our stay in Chile, we heard the national anthem sung at opposition functions...
...State Department...
...Polly and I go with L., B., and Gabriela to the fondas in Nuiio, an area that attracts many activists and intellectuals...
...Gabriela says that when the pacos run off street singers, the crowd often sticks around to provide some level of protection...
...Who will avenge him?—The people...
...More flowers...
...There's no use for gringos now, and Polly, Gabriela, and I stop off for a beer...
...The Chile of the only real land reform to have been attempted in South America...
...Quien lo vengard?—EI pueblo...
...At lunch, H. and his sister-in-law talk about how no one in their neighborhood displayed flags for the "anniversary...
...We pick up our mail at American Express, find the black market, change some money, then head to the house of our friends, L. and her husband B. A recently returned exile, L. spent weeks in a secret prison and months in a public one in 1974...
...Our group is one of hundreds...
...The rich kids, he says, pay each time...
...There were also extensive excerpts from his speech: He said about one kind word for the acuerdo for every twenty spiteful ones...
...I knew I liked the people and the country...
...Salvador Allende—Still here...
...They say they have an informal education project with programs for prenatal care, youth leadership, and recreation...
...I like them because, although they're not political in any active sense, they have, unlike many of their middle-class compatriots, refused to buy in on the dictatorship...
...Polly and I have noticed that the price of big-ticket items such as houses are often listed in UF instead of pesos...
...The Unidad Fomento, they reply, was an invention of the Chicago Boys, the disciples of Professor Milton Friedman...
...I am of the people, Of the people I am, Wherever they take me, I go...
...Once learned, it is unmistakable and instantly recognizable...
...One advantage, however, is that the Chilean Left does have some capability of mobilizing the people...
...The crowd is raucous and iconoclastic, and you can almost believe—despite so much evidence to the contrary— that Pinochet and his gang might flee the country tomorrow...
...After another meal with C. and J., Polly and I walk to El Pueblito, an artisans' area in a nearby public park...
...No," I answer...
...Bonfires still smoulder in the streets...
...Creating popular power...
...That's if they're from San Pablo...
...He pauses at the Nicaraguan stamp in Polly's passport...
...The principal slogan, or consigna, goes Y va a Caer—"And he (Pinochet) is going to fall...
...L. tells me that if people don't show for the protest tomorrow, it may mean the acuerdo, which is viewed as a liberal document in the worst sense of the word, remains the only alternative...
...we chant...
...More surreal and chilling was the sermon of the military vicar, Joaquin Matte, who blessed the fallen of 1973...
...Secret Service has plans to protect the White House from an air attack directed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff...
...Without further ado, our bus delivers us to Santiago...
...Tell that to the workers selling candy for a nickel on the buses...
...The change represents 36,145 more people on government workfare programs...
...Sixty-one are middle-level union and community leaders accused of being the "intellectual authors" of the "violence...
...SEPTEMBER 8 From the newspaper La Tercera: Another 306 detainees in the aftermath of the demonstrations...
...Twelve years ago, the rosary began to be prayed without ceasing and Mary performed a miracle...
...stood of what the Unidad Popular was trying to do, I admired...
...Creando...
...From November 1984 to April 1985, the Chilean Human Rights Commission documented 115 cases of systematic torture, 236 other cases of "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment" of government prisoners, and eighteen goon-squad attacks on union, cultural, and social-service organizations...
...But we've changed the chorus and now it goes, Y va a caer...
...Look how long Franco lasted in Spain...
...It's important to remember that L. and B. don't live in a barrio combativo, a militant community...
...Two more short speeches by liberation theologian Father Jose Aldunate and a youth leader...
...As the day closes, L., B., Polly, and I walk to Vicuna McKenna, a major avenue, to watch bonfires the demonstrators have set...
...But tonight we want to believe...
...Before General Augusto Pinochet took power, that was election day in Chile, and, in recent years, it has been the day chosen to commemorate democratic values...
...The driver grins and agrees...
...Point well taken...
...Polly and I look for B. and L.—we're with friends of theirs— and end up in the cemetery, into which several hundred other people have filtered...
...The document is strong on private property and naive, disingenuous, or remarkably undialectical about class relations—this in a nation where events of the last twelve years show that class comes close to being the whole bag where policy and politics are concerned...
...His pants and leg are skewered on a spike at the top...
...A local paper attributes 170 arrests to the blackout...
...No," I answer...
...Farther on are the fondas, or covered stalls, where one can dance and buy a grape beer or a meat turnover and mill around with tens of thousands of Chileans on family outings...
...Some of us lift him up, and he is over and gone...
...I just barely learn the first chant: Salvador Allende—Presente...
...They tear open sacks of sugar and flour, looking for arms, and folks who had little before have less when the troops leave...
...Eventually the pacos tear-gas the area and people move downtown, taking over intersections, pogo-dancing, blocking streets, and generally raising hell...
...I wonder whether the U.S...
...Of the Unidad Popular...
...Another man manages to get stuck at the top of a ten-foot-high fence he is scaling...
...The march starts with people loitering on a corner, in our case by the National Library, then ambling down the Alameda, Santiago's principal boulevard...
...She was finally allowed to go to France—thanks to pressure from Amnesty International...
...There are bonfires every few blocks starting a bit toward the center and as far as we can see in the other direction...
...Another family saved a month's wages (about $35) toward a television set, only to have it confiscated by government troops because— you guessed it—it obviously was for buying illegal arms...
...Folksinger and cultural worker Victor Jara, who since his death has become something of a popular hero, did a translation of the song "Little Boxes on the Hillside," and one can see why...
...antiwar movement and a year of my first organizing gig working with food co-ops in funky parts of Chicago...
...I tried in a sort of half-assed way to get a job as an organizer in the budding cooperative movement but wasn't skilled enough to get it together...
...But beware of satirizing the satanic...
...The vehicles are full of people waving Chilean flags and having a good time on "the anniversary of the second liberation of Chile...
...After lunch, I make my pilgrimage to the Moneda, the government palace where Allende shot his bazooka at tanks as fighter bombers screamed into the capital of what had been one of the most stable democracies in South America...
...During supper, C. and her family and friends joke about Easter Island and U.S...
...Then...
...One less soldier," muttered another teacher...
...This particular fonda is sponsored by two of the schools at the University of Chile and it provides for their fund to aid needy students...
...As Pinochet's government has been pressured to cut some of the human-rights violations, activity by extra-official death squads seems to be climbing...
...SEPTEMBER 6 C, the sister-in-law of another friend from Quito, tells Polly and me about a teachers' meeting held in Santiago a few years ago...
...Yesterday's paper had great shots of Pinochet surrounded by corpulent officers resembling Sergeant Schultz from Hogan's Heroes...
...Such blackouts usually go unclaimed by their perpetrators, and unexplained by authorities, but tonight the guerrillas contact Rad:o Cooperativa, one of a few trusted news sources, to dedicate the event to the memory of Allende...
...This after promising to provide for the mas ne-cesidades, the neediest...
...Who," the woman asks, "is going to tell the older ones that they can't eat...
...That evening, Gabriela, a Canadian friend from Quito, Ecuador, who arrived in Chile a few weeks ago, takes us out to see some folk musicians perform...
...SEPTEMBER 3 Lunch with L. She is a little put out that we drop by her office without calling...
...Who killed him?—Fascism...
...On the mall this evening we listen to a duo: Yo soy del pueblo, Del pueblo soy, Donde me llevan, Yo voy...
...L. thinks the low level of repression is too obvious not to be official policy for the day, but she's not sure what that means...
...You can sing it...
...The acuerdo national mobilizers have called for no violence, have discouraged street actions, and have proposed a half-day business shutdown and a massive drive to collect signatures supporting the acuerdo...
...If wishing till you're hoarse and sweaty can make something come true, then this will come true...
...Chileans don't mince words when referring to what happened in 1973...
...L. orders us to be observers, not participants, whatever that means...
...The pacos bust a few preselected people and fire some tear gas...
...In the evening, Polly and I share wine, tea, and pizza with a couple working for the American Friends Service Committee here...
Vol. 50 • April 1986 • No. 4
