Bajo la Dictadura

The part of Carlos' mural en Belloto Sur that depicts the military coup

There’s so much I want to say in this post, and I don’t think there’s really a clear through-line. So bare with me.

The other day as I boarded the ascensor Espíritu Santo from above I could hear the sound of drums faintly from below in the plan of the city. The ascensor operator was leaning out of the window of the station perched on the hill. I asked him what he was looking for. He responded that there was a march that day. I had heard that some high school teachers were on strike so I asked him if this was their march. It wasn’t; it was a march against the Chilean healthcare system, he said. I rode down with a mother and her son who was probably about six. He stood on the bench of the elevator to be able to look out the window for the approaching protesters. When I smiled at him, his mother said to me, “Está malo este país. Está malo.” It’s broken this country. It’s broken.

Two days ago, a man at the crosswalk asked us for the time. When he realized we were foreign, he began a monologue about the evils of living in Chile. “Why do you come here to live,” he asked, “when we all want to go to your country?”

A few days before, Jennie and I had gone to the Plaza Victoria to watch a student march against the largely privatized education system. We sat down on a bench next to an old man named Guillermo. He was waiting for his dentist appointment. He had come so early because he thought the march might cause traffic. He told us that Valparaíso used to be different. The people could access the water, for example. Now there are barbed wire fences along the entire coast barring people from entering the ports that separate the sea from the city. He also told us that he had lived in Canada for several years, fleeing Chile in 1973, fleeing la dictadura.

Barbed wire en Estación Bellavista blocking access to the sea

Almost every day here I have a conversation like this, that begins with modern Chile, and how broken it is, and almost always winds up at a phrase like “bajo la dictadura” or “durante la dictadura” or “antes de la dictadura.”  In 1973 in Chile, a military coup overthrew the Socialist government of Salvador Allende and replaced it with a dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet. Allende was the first Marxist presidential candidate to be elected in Latin America, and the only one since. The coupe, or golpe de estado, was backed—if not organized by—the CIA under President Nixon. There are varying estimates of how many people were killed under the Pinochet regime, ranging from 3,000 to 15,000. Allende himself was killed, driven to commit suicide as Pinochet’s army surrounded la moneda, the capital buiding. Thousands more were arrested and tortured. Around a million fled the country. Pinochet ruled until 1990. In 1988, he agreed to a country-wide vote, yes or no, to decide whether he would continue to control the country. The no vote prevailed by a slim margin: 54% to 46%. Pinochet was not exiled, nor subjected to a trial for human rights violations in Chile. He served as Commander-in-Chief of the army until his retirement. The constitution drafted under the dictatorship is still in effect in Chile.

A portrait of Salvador Allende in the family home where we stayed near Currarehue

That’s the overview but it’s not simple, nothing about it is simple. When I told my host-dad about what the woman in the ascensor had said, he responded in his characteristically diplomatic way: in every country there will be satisfied and dissatisfied people. In every country there are problems and there is corruption. Who were those 46% of people who voted for Pinochet? I haven’t talked to anyone like them. I asked my host family about the plebiscito, the country-wide vote for yes or no, and they explained that voting wasn’t secret, that many people were scared to vote, and that many people just didn’t know what was happening because Pinochet controlled the press. So really it’s kind of a miracle that Pinochet lost at all.

Carlos Villamar, the muralist who works with the Centro Cultural Roberto Matta, painted a mural in Belloto Sur about the history of Chile (specifically Belloto Sur) in the last 100 years.  My understanding of the dictatorship, of what has happened here since 1970, is somewhat like Carlos’ mural, an almost overwhelming collection of vivid, somewhat disparate images. But I still don’t feel like I really get it. 

In my classes here we’ve talked about the golpe a lot, but most of what I’ve learned comes from conversations that happen every day, usually with people I’ve never met or barely know.

Here’s a list of a few things I have heard about  that happened during or resulted from the dictatorship (keep in mind that these things come from conversations, I’m including them more to demonstrate how the dictatorship is perceived by the people I’ve talked to than to provide facts): certain types of traditional musical instruments were prohibited, a concentration camp-like prison was set up in the stadium of Santiago, in it, Victor Jarra, the “Bob Dylan of Chile,” was killed within days of the coup, the economy was transformed from a developmental model to a neoliberal model (with the help of Americans and Chileans who had studied at the University of Chicago) so everything was privatized, the economy appeared to improve, abortion was outlawed, there was a curfew, puñuñalchefes, the Mapuche ritual midwifes, were arrested and killed, Mapuche land was divided and assigned to specific families, driven into poverty, they sold their respective shares, reducing their total portion of land by a huge percentage, Torres del Paine national park was founded, professors from the left were replaced with professors from the right, partially due to a reduction in pay so professors from the left couldn’t live off the wages, police uniforms were militarized and now faintly resemble those of the Nazis, perhaps because Pinochet admired and provided refuge for Nazis fleeing Europe, family members, friends, and neighbors disappeared.

It seems like every day here there is a protest, a demonstration, or a march. Today there is a march for water rights throughout Chile. When we were in Currarehue about a week ago, we went to another water rights march with the Mapuche people against a dam that threatened their community’s water supply. 

The march in Currarehue protesting against hydroelectric plants and dams

People are frustrated, but they are so active. They care. And that’s something that’s been relatively new to me here. Since arriving, the world seems more and more malleable every day. So many things that I’ve been taking for granted, I’m realizing, are not the way they are because they have to be that way.  In fact, it’s starting to seem like most things shouldn’t be the way they are. At all.

A man at a march protesting against corruption within the Chilean healthcare system.

"Corruption and nepotism, consequences of capitalism"