1. Baggage Last "fall" (seasons in the northern hemisphere) my work running a semester abroad program here, a sort of "3rd world 101" for US college students, left me absolutely exhausted and doubting the usefulness of the enterprise generally. It was time to get out. We set off by land to Arica, a town on the northern Chilean-Peruvian border. >From there we would travel by plane to Santiago, and then on to Valparaíso to visit friends. I carried powerful preconceptions of Chile with me, from two sources: Bolivians identifying Chile with their own misfortune, and the stories Chilean political refugees have told me over the years of the golpe (coup d'é·tat) 11 September 1973, and ensuing capitalist modernization imposed through a reign of terror. The view of Chile from here (Bolivia) is that of a dangerous, aggressive neighbor that robbed Bolivia's access to the sea. Even today Chile is construed as a threat. Clearly this is part political convenience: any time a president see his (with one exception, it has been a he) popularity waning, he denounces the Chileans. The most recent round was in October 1997, involving suspicion that in the highlands Chileans had moved border markers and planted mines. Children here are schooled in how Bolivia will not be whole as a nation until the Litoral (the long strip of land lost to Chile) is returned. In the annual Miss Bolivia contest, there is always a Miss Litoral, "beauty" standing in for a void. Where the flags of the 9 departments are flown, one will often see an empty tenth pole too. Every noon just before the news, my preferred radio station plays a spot with the sound of breaking waves ... charangos sound in the background ... a stern voice proclaims "to the usurpers we say: we will return to the ports of progress!" It is like being incessantly told that you came into this world with a limb amputated. In other ways Chile's "successes" have spelled Bolivia's defeats (as implied in "ports of progress"). When the rail lines between Arica and La Paz were opened in the late 19th and early 20th century, Bolivian minerals (produced in textbooks cases of the enclave/dependent economy) found easier access to the sea. At the same time, however, cheaper grains from Chile and the US found their way into the Bolivian markets, decimating rural livelihoods. Even today there is a children's ditty that goes: Ferrocarril, carril, carril Railline, line, line Arica-La Paz, La Paz, La Paz Arica to La Paz, La Paz, La Paz un paso pa'tras, pa'tras, pa'tras a step back, back, back But it is not just the humiliation of defeat in commerce and war -- there is also envy, especially among the governing classes. Chile daily presents Bolivia with an image of what, according to reigning orthodoxy, it should become. It is the rich neighbor, the model of "successful" capitalist modernization, both economic and cultural, though admittedly fewer envy the political system. It is seen as more worldly, European almost, and certainly lighter in complexion. Clever pundits have baptized Chile the "Jaguar of the Andes", in league with the Asian Tigers (something about totems here to be explored ... where is Levi Strauss when you need him?). Simply by virtue of their country of origin, Chilean marketeers, pr folk and sundry business types fill posh hotel conference rooms here for seminars on this or that aspect of capitalist modernization, while Chilean goods are held to be superior to Bolivian products (in the case of wine, it is true). On par with (some) Bolivian's assumption of inferiority, some Chileans appear to hold a concomitant sense of superiority. In a filmed debate prior to the 1970 elections, pitting a member of the Socialist Party against a conservative, the latter blurted out, in exasperation with his opponent, "¡Pero pareces un Boliviano! [You sound like a Bolivian!]". Even poverty in Chile is held (by some) to be superior. You may remember an article I posted not long ago, on the salubrious nature of the Chilean poor: Pinochet says in Chile there is "Clean Poverty" Quito, 3 December (AP) In Chile, contrary to other countries, there is a "clean poverty" and nobody dies of hunger, the ex-president of Chile and general of the army Augosto Pinochet affirmed today. Pinochet, who is visiting Ecuador since last Thursday, gave an interview to Radio Quito, in which a journalist presented him with statistics showing that 2 million people in Chile live in poverty. "There are poverties and there are poverties. You can't compare the poverty of a German, from Germany, with the poverty that exists in Africa," the former ruler responded. "One poverty in clean, the other poverty is serious." "Chile has clean poverty. There you won't see poverty like what I have seen in other countries," he added. "There in Chile nobody dies of hunger. Everyone has clothing, everyone has recourse to health care," he indicated. "There you won't ever find a man without clothing." Consulted on "what people in poverty in Chile lack" he responded: "Work. One has to give them work. Not raise their salaries, rather give them work." [Appeared in Los Tiempos (Cochabamba, Bolivia), 4 December 1997, p. B1. Translation is mine.] To go from Bolivia to Chile, then, is not a simply a movement in space, but also in time -- or so we are told by the neoliberal theocrats -- to the way things ought to be. Chile: a thriving, hustling, bustling exemplar of successful capitalist development in the late 20th century. This was the first bit of baggage we bore. The other load of preconceptions was the combined weight of all those voices which over the years related to us the experience of Allende's Unidad Popular (UP) government, Pinochet's coup, and the subsequent years of terror. In Tucson, I remember a woman, at the time of the coup a student organizer, who told me calmly, proudly, defiantly, of how during the UP government scores of students worked with poor barrios to help organize land seizures for settlements. Another refugee, by then in her late 50s, described how frustrating and exhausting life became in the last years of the UP government: waiting in long lines for bare necessities, hollering at merchants before almost empty shelves. She also told me how in many places literally the day after the coup the store shelves were restocked, at prices often twice to three times that established by the Allende government. The merchants, she noted, had hoped and prayed for the golpe that finally transpired. Then the mass arrests; the Chile Stadium, where from 11 September on people were "processed": sorted out, identified, their bodies subsequently the site of violence meant to (a) neutralize the person in every human and political sense, and (b) serve as an example. Actor, poet, director and songwriter/guitarist Victor Jara was there. A well known figure, he was quickly identified; they tortured him for days, in the process smashing his hands, though not before he penned a last poem, later smuggled from the Stadium. The 1991 report of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation noted his body had 44 bullet holes it. Etched in my mind were also two visual images from the documentary The Battle for Chile: * In the abortive pre-coup of June 1973, a Swedish cameraman films the movement of troops, and his own death as one soldier turns to face the camera, shoots, the camera drops to the ground and darkness falls. * Teams of fighter plans swooping low over the center of Santiago to strafe and bomb La Moneda (the presidential palace), sent by the president Allende had believed in to support civil government. The bombing was an act both totally unnecessary, and harrowingly revelatory. In it's violence, the massive imbalance between the threat posed and the force of reaction deployed, it clearly foretold what was to come. Inside La Moneda, the elected, governing president, armed only with a submachine gun and accompanied only by his closest associates, blows his head off. In his extraordinary study of "Chile Today" (which indicates, I would argue, the utility of post-structuralist political theory for exploring where we are today) Tomás Moulian writes: "The suicide was the formalization of an execution already consummated. This was so both in real and symbolic terms. "In the real sense, because the militarily unnecessary bombing of the Moneda represented the will to finish off Allende or revealed how little importance his life represented for the conspirators. Aerial bombardment of the Palace of Government expressed a desire for a tabula rasa, to create a new State over the ruins of the old.... "[And] in the symbolic sense because when Allende killed himself in fact he was already dead. Dead by the bombs hurled at him. Dead because he knew he had reason on his side, but was unable to impose it.... Dead, because of the pain of betrayal by the one in whose hands he had placed the life of the State and his own." Chilean friends also related to us the ensuing reign of terror and exemplary violence. 3 November 1974, MIR leader Lumi Videla died during a torture session. Her body was later thrown over the wall of the Italian Embassy, where others awaited processing of their asylum requests. The papers of the day dutifully reported she had been victim of the asylum seekers in the Embassy, killed during an orgy. Violence and profanation without boundaries. In such a context otherwise insignificant acts of kindness or solidarity took on an almost revolutionary hue. One friend told how, in very bad shape after weeks of torture, a Navy prison guard who had been a friend of a friend chanced to see him. On his own initiative, and at great personal risk, the guard sent word to my friend's family of his whereabouts and condition. By giving people on the outside a direction for their inquiries, this treasonous act very possibly spared my friend's life. Around the time I was becoming politically active, "Chile" stood for pain, loss and betrayal. Now, we are told, this trauma was, well, unfortunate, but things are looking up. No pain, no gain, and it's hard to argue with "success". GNP growth 85-9 (the last years of Pinochet's rule) was 6.4% per annum, and 90-93 6.3% (the first years of "transition" government). Rates of investment 85-9 were 19.8%, and 90-93 an astounding 24.3%. The perfect transition; the fantasy of any Latin American finance minister. In Chile, we were told, people have put all that behind them, gotten on with their lives. Our original idea was that we (my 6 year old son, his Bolivian mother and I) would " get away from it all", spend a few days on the beach in Arica, then take a plane to visit friends in Valparaíso and Santiago. Perhaps this isn't the kind of baggage one should take on vacation if relaxation and recuperation are what you're after. But in truth, we (the grown-ups anyway) get bored after a couple of days on the beach. Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
