On Chile

the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda

 In 2000, I decided to go to Chile during my spring break. I made the decision as I always made travel decisions back then -- hmnnn, I think I'll go abroad for awhile. It wasn't a completely random choice. Chile had been on my mind for almost 10 years by then. In high school, my mother had given me my first Neruda book, a bilingual edition with translations by W.S. Merwin, Alastair Reid, Nathaniel Tarn and Anthony Kerrigan (for the record, of the four translators, I tend to prefer Merwin and Reid. But why read Neruda in translation if you don't have to?). I absolutely devoured this book, especially the love poems. But later I discovered simple things Neruda (the odes), Spanish Civil War Neruda (Spain in the Heart), the Neruda I read with friends. I found out about Isla Negra, and I wanted to see it. I decided to go to Chile to visit Neruda's three homes in Santiago, Valparaíso (where my college friend Luis lives) and Isla Negra. Because my friend is a geologist, and was going to be doing field work in the Punta Arenas area, I also made plans to go there.

Before I went to Chile, I had only visited Mexico and Spain. Being in Chile was a little like going to California when you have only been to the east coast (or vice-versa). Stepping off the plane, there is a distinct sense that you are. . . elsewhere. Part of it has to do with the change in seasons, but it's also just the "vibe" of the country. I only saw a fraction of the country, but it made a big impression on me to go from Santiago to Viña del Mar to Valparaíso to Isla Negra to Punta Arenas. The difference in temperatures, pace, amount of people and general landscape was pretty significant.

My visit was incredible. I left the end of winter and entered the end of summer. People swarmed the beach at Viña del Mar. My friend and I started in Valparaíso, with its inclines and sea-worn buildings. Now that I've been in San Francisco, I can say Valparaíso reminds me a bit of being there. Or the other way around. I love being near "the sea" and having that smell in the air. I would love to wake with a view of water -- who wouldn't? In Neruda's house, one of his rooms -- I can't recall which at the moment -- looked right out onto the water. No one was allowed to photograph anything inside the house, but one could be photographed with the view of the sea in the background. I tried to imagine Neruda writing with that backdrop, drinking wine with friends, reading. I tried to imagine the house totally ransacked, his rows of books in ruins on the floor, after the '73 coup, just days before his death.

Recently, like many other people, I've had Chile on my mind for reasons other than Neruda. The earthquake, the bicentennial, the ongoing news about the miners, and the fact that I haven't stopped listening to this CD for the last month, have all put Chile (phonetically, she lay, as my friend would say) back in my everyday thoughts.

Driving home from work last week, I was listening to a report on the rescue of the miners. Isabel Allende was talking. Shortly after Chile's independence day (September 18), she had visited the mine site and now she was reflecting on this emotional moment for the country as a whole. She never mentioned a word about Chile's military dictatorship, never said a thing about the disappeared, but in my own mind, I could not help associating these "disappeared" miners, now being "appeared" and released from the earth, with those who were disappeared and never returned. Strangely, the rescue gave Chile back its own sons in a way that has never been possible for those who vanished under Pinochet. The fact that Isabel Allende - whose father was Socialist Salvador Allende's first cousin -- was standing beside President Sebastián Piñera, a right-wing millionaire, was also quite a symbolic moment, I thought. Perhaps it doesn't mean anything, but the image of the two together seemed to bring the past to a scene that had been concentrating very much on the present, on the extremely delicate, day-to-day, minute-by-minute operations of bringing the miners to the earth's surface.

Isabel Allende beside President Sebastián Piñera (photo from here)

Lo and behold, just one day after I heard the interview with Isabel Allende, I read this article in the NYT, which reflects on the site of the mine rescue as a site of memory inextricably linked to the crimes of the Pinochet dictatorship: "In the predawn hours of Oct. 17, 1973 — 37 years before the mine rescue, almost to the day — military personnel murdered 16 men near here, including some who worked for Chile’s state mining company." These men, the article goes on to say, were 16 of 70 that the "Caravan of Death" murdered that month in Chile. One of the victim's sisters said that "The experience with the 33 miners made us relive every moment. . . Finding them alive and then rescuing them was like finding my brother again.”

The mine rescue, and the connection of the site with a previous traumatic history, illustrate the fact that sites of memory do not just remain stable representatives of the same story, but evolve over time, depending on historical and political circumstances. Although it is quite different, I am reminded of the Valle de los Caídos site in Spain, currently back in the news again as the Spanish government debates whether or not to make it into a "center for memory."

The most striking symbol of Valle de los Caídos is the gigantic cross that marks its location. The site is visited largely by tourists, but also used to be where the ultra right gathered every November 20 (the anniversary of Franco's death), until the 2007 Law of Historical Memory made that illegal. Many people don't realize that Valle was built by slave labor under Franco in the 50s. Many also don't know that, buried on the altar (!) of the church inside are Franco himself and José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the Spanish fascist party, Falange. In addition to Franco, many of the Civil War dead are also buried in the walls of what some have called Spain's largest "mass grave." What to do with this enormous structure, which still houses a Benedictine monastery, remains unclear. However, one thing is certain -- the site's identity has undergone a series of revisions over the past several years. In my view, these revisions are necessary, and transforming the site into a Center for Memory would give Spain what is still lacks almost 35 years since Franco's death.

"Revising" a site of memory like the area of the mine rescue or the Valle de los Caídos site should not mean eclipsing its past history. Ideally -- and it sounds cliché -- we could use the past struggles there to inform the present use of the site. In 1973, miners were murdered where in 2010, they were rescued. What does this mean? Is it just a coincidence? Or can the rescue ultimately allow healing of other kinds?

I'll be writing a bit more about Chile here soon. I have a post planned about the rapper Ana Tijoux. For now,  I'll just say that if you haven't been to this magnificent country, I highly recommend it. One day, I hope to return for a longer visit. In some ways, I know only an "imagined Chile" informed by Neruda and the folksinger Víctor Jara. What is the everyday Chile? It still seems a bit mysterious to me. So much is informed by what lies below ground -- fault lines, the disappeared, miners descending to the earth's pit. What is it to live with the knowledge of unstable tierra, the possibility of tremors and aftershocks? Surely, this awareness comes with its own kind of memory.