ReVista HARVARD REVIEW OF LATIN AMERICA • SPRING 2004
Chile A Changing Country
DAVID ROCKEFELLER CENTER FOR LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES, HARVARD UNIVERSITY EDITOR’S LETTER
I was hesitant to do an issue on Chile when I had other topics broader and richer in content. Although in a way Chile seems like an obvious choice because of the DRCLAS Regional office there, I felt there were other priorities in terms of substance. But on the invitation from the regional office, I prepared to go to Chile, where I had not visited since the dark days of the dictatorship in 1977. ReVista, you may have noticed, emphasizes the work of visual artists who capture the spirit of the people and places we write about. So I called my friend Susan Meiselas, who edited a moving book of Chilean photography, Chile from Within (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990). It was Susan who set my memory in motion, and Susan who connected me with many of the excellent photographers featured in this issue. After our conversation, I realized how much Chile had already been a part of my men- tal landscape, from the creative Chilean exiles whom I met in Panamá in 1975 on a Tica Bus trip to the entreprenurial Chileans I met during my years in Berlin (West) who intro- duced me to the concept of Pan-Latino through their imaginative restaurants with Argen- tine steak and Mexican tacos, along with the Chilean pastel de choclo. Arriving in Chile I expected to find a polarized nation, divided between those who insisted on remembering the past and those who insisted on forgeting it. What surprised me was how polarized the nation was around the issue of identity. It was almost as if there were two Chiles, a modern, multicultural, prosperous and cul- turally avant garde country inserted into the larger region and world—and a conserva- tive, inequitable country resistant to immigration and change. The truth, it seemed to me, was somewhere in between. But almost noone seemed to be in the middle. I feared Chile would be boring and mired in its past—instead, I found a country of peo- ple eager to debate about their future. With its annual per capita income of $5,000, Chile is considered almost a developed nation by UN standards. The mall culture and the local Starbucks sometimes made me forget I was in Latin America, but the thoughtful conversa- tions always made me remember that I was in the middle of a changing country. Chile, I found, is a country with a newfound responsibility to its region and to the world. A non- permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, Chile opposed the United States on the issue of Iraq, and yet is prepared to sign a free trade agreement. The more I heard, the more I was intrigued. I stood looking at the cordillera among the Chilean stars in wine country one December night with my friend Marcela Renteria from the DRCLAS Regional Office. I had just returned from visiting a civil society project which turned vacant lots into landscaped public space. As I was explaining to her what I had seen that day, I realized that among the seemingly polarized voices of the citizens, of the photographers, of the intellectuals and all the other Chileans I had met, they shared these mountains and stars, this "little Chile." This ReVista shares with its readers many aspects of this changing country. After my trip, I realized, there were no certain answers about this changing country. But one thing was certain for me: I want to go back.
HARVARD REVIEW OF LATIN AMERICA • Volume III, Number 3 ReVista Published by The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
DRCLAS: John H. Coatsworth, Director (on sabbatical) Thomas B.F. Cummins, Acting Director
EDITORIAL STAFF: June Carolyn Erlick, Editor-in-Chief Amanda Austin, Editorial Assistant Neida Jiménez, Creative Consultant Marcela Renteria, Special Collaborator Kelly McMurray/2communiqué, Design P+R Publications, Printer 61 Kirkland Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Telephone: (617) 495–3366 Facsimile: (617) 496–2802 Cover photograph TO SUBSCRIBE: Email:
2 ReVista • SPRING 2004 Chile’s Role in the World Independence and the Rule of Law
BY JUAN GABRIEL VALDÉS
ow can the foreign policy of a small tutional forms has permitted a successful open rules. That both decisions could be reconciled nation have a credible impact on economy to function since the restoration of with each other is undoubtedly positive because Hglobal politics? democracy. It has allowed for a market that it confirmed the value of a policy based on Chile’s February 2003 refusal to support has produced high growth rates without cor- principles. the war in Iraq in the United Nations Security ruption and without creating a social abyss I believe that it is important to value this Council surprised many and irritated quite a among its inhabitants as has happened in other policy, as we begin this new turbulent phase few. How was it possible that a small coun- developing countries. This success is not sim- in the history of our region. Chile belongs to try preparing itself to sign a free trade agree- ply a matter of adherence to a certain eco- Latin America, not just culturally and politi- ment with the United States, a measure to nomic model, as some have readily asserted, cally, but because we share some unresolved which it had aspired for almost a decade, was but also a reflection of Chile’s insistence on problems of underdevelopment such as taking the risk of nay-saying in a matter so institutionality. poverty and shameful income distribution. important to the world’s leading power? What In the light of these constant Chilean char- However, after a decade and a half of sus- national interest could justify saying no to the acteristics, our foreign policy has no other basis tained development in which the country has United States about a topic apparently so far than to regulate our insertion into the inter- combined democratic recuperation, the off from regional interests? The debate briefly national system and to contribute at the same strengthening of institutions, economic growth shook up Chileans, but the need to examine time to the collective creation of norms that and visible social progress in the reduction of this question seemed to lose relevance with govern political and economic globalization. poverty, we ought to be capable of a greater the signing of the trade agreement a few Has it not been our institutional—not just com- contribution. months later. mercial— determination that has pushed us to What are the principle courses of action? Today I find it imperative to take up this sign these free trade agreements that we have Chile should deepen its associations with its theme once again. Chile cannot remain indif- successfully negotiated with all of Latin Amer- neighbors, particularly with MERCOSUR, to ferent to the precarious situation in the Latin ica, the European Union, the United States and spur with imagination and audacity new pro- American region. It must examine the basis of South Korea? posals for the physical and economic inte- its international projection. Only in this way A country with a small population like ours gration of our countries in a framework that can it act consistently. desires a world with stable and recognized also includes civil society actors. I believe that Chile should also contribute to assuring that the states in the region assume more collective A country with a small population like ours desires a responsibility in the realm of democratic sta- world with stable and recognized rules in which bility, security and standardization of inter- national trade. The risk of the decomposition collective action, subject to majority consensus, takes of the state and national disintegration in some of the region’s countries can be prevented by precedence over unilateral action. collective regional action sooner rather than later. One cannot help but notice that the pre- The only solid bases for Chile’s foreign pol- rules in which collective action, subject to sent signals in the face of the recent crises in icy are those tied to the country’s very identity, majority consensus, takes precedence over uni- Haiti and Bolivia indicate the opposite ten- what Montesquieu referred to as “the spirit lateral action. For the same reasons, in the dif- dency. However, it is more and more evident of the nation.” The genius of Chile has his- ficult moments we experienced a year ago, that it is unacceptable for Latin American coun- torically resided in its institutions. From the could Chile refuse to recognize the authority tries to evade their responsibilities in the face Republic’s founding, the talent of its political of the United Nations and international law? of crisis in their own region. elite has been to persist in making state insti- Could Chile evade its deliberative and deci- If indeed the road toward regional co- tutions function well to become capable of self- sive role in the Security Council in which we responsibility is a long one, Chile today can regulation and of self-correction in the were elected members? The answer is clearly count on the consistency of its own history to framework of a political order that has been no. The grounds for this answer leads us to a help move that agenda forward. embued with legitimacy. This predisposition paradox: the refusal to lend support to the war has led the country to develop political democ- with Iraq and the signing of the free-trade Juan Gabriel Valdés was the Chilean Foreign Min- racy for more than a century, as well as to agreement with the United States constitute two ister from 1999-2000. He is presently Chile’s defend and restore democracy when it has sides of the same coin, a manifestation of a Ambassador to Argentina. From 2000-2003, he been trampled. policy in favor of a more normative interna- was Chile’s Permanent Representative to the Likewise, this passion for rules and insti- tional order made up of universally respected United Nations.
SPRING 2004• ReVista 3 POLITICS AND IDENTITY A Changing Chile p. 4 An Identity in the World p.8 Chile Today: Two Viewpoints p. 10 Politics and Corruption p. 13 A Look at Chilean Media p.16
Chile Has Changed ....but in what ways has it changed?
BY PEDRO E. GÜELL
ciate these facts, one has to remember that in Chile, the media Chile after a few years away receives a crystal clear impression has historically been dedicated to legitimize the institutions and upon arrival: Chile has changed. What he (or she) sees confirms to protect the privileged few. A press descriptions and favorable commentary in the hallways of Perhaps one of the newest symptoms of the change has been the the First World. The country has carried out a successful process of way the 30-year anniversary of the Pinochet coup stimulated a debate reform that seems to set it apart from the historic ills of the region. without fear and with free expression of differences, hatred, suffering Government affairs are more stable; there is sustained economic and remorse. As never before, Chile can now look at one of the dark- growth; levels of corruption are low; the atmosphere is more cos- est periods of its history with honesty and calmness. mopolitan; cities are more modern and it’s easier to do business. There are many more significant and unexpected symptoms of This impression has a solid basis. Statistics from the 2002 national the change, and many more will appear in the months to come. census demonstrate Chile’s historic evolution and provide com- These many signals are enough to make us ask what is happening parative international data that confirm that the country has changed. with the Chileans that we are now able to do all of these previ- In fact, it has changed for the better. The quality of political and ously unthinkable or frankly dreaded things. economic life is better today than before. However, this measure- The answer is not very difficult. In Chile, the type of culture ment, based in economic statistics, institutional performance and that has defined the relationship between individuals and estab- political matters does not manage to tell the whole story. Moreover, lishment institutions is changing very rapidly. The reverential fear it does not demonstrate what has really changed in Chile. of the weak towards the powerful is lessening. That traditional Chile’s cultural history made it one of the most repressive coun- fear had long hindered questioning ties of dependence on the pow- tries in the region in regards to the bodies of its inhabitants and one erful and their institutions. This cultural transformation has begun with the highest rates of interpersonal mistrust. Yet in August 2003, to weaken two profound myths of our political culture. several thousand Chileans gathered on a cold winter morning in The first myth holds that order and containment of violence can response to a call by the U.S. photographer Spencer Tunick for a only be produced by the conservative elite, because the rest of the nude photo shoot. They came not only to show their bodies, but country—the “ignorant” masses—are, by their nature, prone to vio- to demonstrate that it was possible for thousands of people who did lent disruption of order and unreasonable demands. In his time, not know each other to come together to form a sort of commu- Pinochet used this myth for this own benefit. The aggravating of nity without fear of the greatest vulnerability: nudity. Chile is chang- the ancestral fear of disorder allowed him to justify himself as a fatherly ing, and the event took on significance as a benchmark in that savior and disciplinarian. In its beginning, the transition to democ- cultural change. racy also somewhat relied on this tradition to reassure “governabil- But the surprises don’t stop there. The press has lately denounced ity.” This myth, it could be suggested, set the groundwork for the the corruption of political institutions, sexual abuse by some clergy authoritarian and conservative traits of the Chilean political cul- members, private perversions of some powerful figures, dark deal- ture, as well as the difficulty of creating a citizenry that is not depen- ings by some judges, and wheeling and dealing between economic dent on the authoritarian institutions representing law and order. and political powers. The most successful Chilean films in recent The second myth holds that work, public goods and state sup- years have ironically exposed the poor quality and double stan- port are possible only within a conservative order constructed by
dard of our sexual life; the most innovative and best-selling news- the elites and for the elites. According to this myth, societal bene- [email protected] papers and magazines have dedicated themselves to uncovering and Top: Girl with doll, “individualization“; bottom: parking lot keepers, challenging the powerful elite, tradition and prejudice. To appre- “increase and demand for liberty and autonomy.”
4 ReVista • SPRING 2004 PHOTOGRAPHS BY LUIS WEINSTEIN
Newsstand dealer, “transformation of the media” fits should be received as a gift which elites have made through their to culture. Several authors have already begun to detect this phe- own generosity. As a result, the masses should, in turn, recipro- nomenon and to give it a name. They talk about Chile’s desoligar- cate this gift through obedience, not raising any demands for an quización—the retreat from oligarchy, the “agony” of the conservative increased or better distribution of wealth. This primitive idea of gift elite, the final arrival of long-awaited modernity and the passage and submission as a form of social reciprocity underlies much elit- from a society ordered by the state to one ordered by the market. ist discourse, especially in its concept of work and labor rights, However, it is very early to attach a name to this emerging cul- and has also manifested itself in the difficulty of ordinary folk to tural stamp and it is even more premature to deduce its direction formulate their needs in terms of demands and rights. In this myth, and future consequences. one finds many of the explanations for the relative absence of a cul- Cultural changes always come about over long periods of time, ture of equality as the basis for Chilean social relations in spite of in different places and with diffuse tendencies. We’ll attempt to the abundance of empty words spent promoting this concept. describe briefly some of the cultural processes that have been stim- These two myths have worked together to produce the para- ulating these changes. doxical form of institutional stability and social discipline that has The first and doubtlessly the most important process is the indi- characterized Chile for long periods and which, without a doubt, viduation of Chilean society. The manner of imagining social order has differentiated the country from much of the region. Together, is rapidly changing from the primacy of the collective to that of the the two myths have produced a social cohesion based on fear – individual as a subject of social order. Already, it is not the collec- fear of calling the elite into account because of the belief that, with- tive histories and belongings that give meaning to personal life but out its benevolence, it would not be possible to live in peace and rather one’s own biographical project—what Americans call invent- prosperity. This is perhaps why on the day Pinochet abandoned ing oneself—and loyalty to that project. The collective sense of life power in the midst of a booing public, he could only manage to and order are not disappearing, but the bonds that make up that declare “Ungrateful people!” collective sense are not necessarily seen as set in stone. The new bonds These two myths have begun to collapse. The historical way in are increasingly chosen, changeable and varied; they should be rein- which Chileans have understood themselves and their way of form- vented from time to time in order to better take advantage of the new ing part of society is losing the basis, discourses and experiences that diversity of biographical projects corresponding to one’s feelings. made this way of seeing things possible. This is what is really new The second is the increase in the demand for liberty and auton- in Chile. New forms of imagining and constructing social bonds omy accompanied by affirmations of rights and agreements as a have begun to appear. This change has not occurred because of polit- form of regulation of these liberties. As never before in public con- ical or intellectual criticism. It is the unintentional effect of the coin- versations, Chileans today are demanding the right to choose their cidence of many experiences and diverse aspirations in many distinct own lifestyles and rejecting institutions that seek to mold individ- spaces within the society. The great task of democratic transition ual actions with criteria external to individual choice. The present has created, in a completely unintentional manner, the conditions public discussion about divorce—Chile is the only western coun- to express these practices and aspirations and to evolve into the try that still does not have a divorce law—is a good example of this. changes we are discussing here. This affirmation of freedom has simultaneously happened with the The debate about change in Chile that is really important refers development of the idea of politics as a framework for free and con-
6 ReVista • SPRING 2004 PHOTOGRAPHS BY LUIS WEINSTEIN Workman on a cellphone, “the transformation of conversations.“ sensual regulations. This has led to an important transformation formations, there is a diminishing of the ancestral terror of disorder in politics, making increasingly less room for debate about the desired and intolerance of differences that has characterized the cultural form of social order and increasingly more space for demands for history of Chile. This is basically a transformation of the image regulation emerging from conflicts between private parties. Chileans have of themselves. The former indoctrination of Chileans The third is the transformation of the role of the media. They with images of their own tendency toward irrational destruction of have been principal actors in the expression and acceleration of order contrasts with the experiences of recent years, some of which the cultural changes in the country. In oligarchic Chile, the media we mentioned at the beginning of this article. These new ways of fulfilled the almost liturgical role of representing to the masses the being have demonstrated that one can affirm one’s autonomy, demand goodness of the institutions of law and order. As a result, one of the his or her rights, criticize tradition and make fun of threats, and basic codes for representing reality was to depict the unrestrained that not a single one of these actions will cause a painful catastro- and irrational common folk contrasted with the civilized elites. This phe. At the same time, the gradual installation of a meritocracy, which has changed abruptly. Today, the media have begun to ally them- means that one can confide in one’s own efforts, has limited the selves with the demands of the masses in order to unmask the irra- paralyzing effect of the traditional threat of denying access to public tionality and corruption of the institutions. What was previously goods and work to those who rebel against the established order. represented as the public’s immoral lack of restraint is now seen as These developing tendencies of Chile are indications that the the “right to entertainment.” What lies behind this change is cer- society is undergoing a transition from an authoritarian and con- tainly the discovery of the commercial advantages of satisfying the servative culture to a culturally modern society. This change is a great demands of consumers, rather than those of the authorities. opportunity for Chile, but also a great challenge. None of these trends The fourth process is the transformation of the forms of conver- in and of itself guarantees that Chile will achieve longed-for moder- sation. Cautious conversations are characteristic of an oligarchic coun- nity in its social relations. These tendencies also have implicit threats. try that survived by taking precautions for the “good order” through One is especially important: without a society of strong bonds and fear and reverence for the elites. What can and can’t be said, what can social consciousness that serves as support and a roadmap for the be seen in public and what must remain private were strongly regu- construction of biographical projects of individuation, individual- lated affairs. Antiseptic legal vocabulary proclaimed the rule of the ism becomes aggressive. The cultural challenge for Chile is to replace “good order.” Mention of sources of irrationality such as the body, the oligarchic and authoritarian order with a sense of history and conflicts and thirst for power had to be cloaked in the language of collective relations capable of strengthening ties of solidarity among ambiguity and veiled remarks. Today, from the affirmation of dif- individuals who are increasingly diverse and sovereign. ferences to the role of denunciation of the media to the legitimiza- tion of popular passions, language has become self-assured and more Pedro Güell is the Executive Coordinator of the Reports on Human direct. The use of obscenity has become normal on television as expres- Development of the United Nations Development Programme sions of disagreement or as self-affirmation. In Chile, where the pure- (UNDP). With a PhD in sociology from the University of Erlangen- ness and neutrality of legal vocabulary once dominated speech, Nuremberg, Germany, he specializes in themes of cultural change. language now names the passion of the body and the force of will. This article reflects the personal opinion of the author and does not Finally, perhaps as the profound consequence of the previous trans- necessarily reflect the position of the UNDP.
SPRING 2004• ReVista 7 CHILE An Identity in the World Not Just an Island
BY MARCELO JUNEMANN, JUAN WALKER, AND HERNÁN PASSALAQUA
, , ITS OWN WAY Messen felt a gust of heat as he deplaned at Touissant L’ Without a doubt, Chile’s unique path has resulted in great Ouverture Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Under his political and economic benefits, yet it has left ample gaps in social O command, the first 120 of 340 soldiers that Chile will be concerns such as poverty, education, health and housing. sending to maintain peace and order in this tension-filled country Nevertheless, the country shows remarkable progress, placing it in arrived on Haitian soil. Once again, this South American country first place for human development in Latin America, according to is going its own way, contrary to what its neighbors have to say. the most recent report from the United Nations Development The sending of troops to Haiti, which stirred strong internal Programme (UNDP). For statistical information, see
8 ReVista • SPRING 2004 POLITICS AND IDENTITY
Iraq, even though at the time they were negotiating the FTA with the United States. On the negative side, the events of 2003 highlight the estrangement of Chile’s relations with the region. The Bolivia situation was taken as an opportunity by some countries to blame Chile for following their “own way”, especially for matters that concerned “regional loyalties.” An symbolic illustration of this was that Chile had negotiated free trade agreements on their own and not within the framework of the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR), of which Chile is an associated member. As a result of this separate negotiation, Chile has noticeably lower tariffs than the South American commercial bloc. For Chilean foreign policy, this year will be key in regaining trust and understanding from its neighbors. Having concluded the commercial agreements with the main global commercial blocs, the government knows that in the end, its future is linked to the region. However, it is a notable fact that Santiago opted to link its development with its economic opening to global commercial partners: North America, Europe and Asia. More than two thirds of the country’s exports go there, and that is where almost all of the investment in Chile originates. That Chile wants to be an actor on the international stage is probable. It has solid political and economic platforms, but it also knows its limitations: distance, a small market and a serious social weakness in which the distribution of wealth is still one of the most inequitable of the continent. Both the government and the right-wing opposition have a common objective to become a developed country by the year 2010, Chile displays an iceberg during the 1992 Sevilla Expo, the first international marketing foray according to the parameters of the Organisation of a newly democratic Chile. for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an international body that groups This situation reflected the intense session that the Chilean developed countries and to which Chile is applying to join. Ministry of Foreign Affairs held midway through December of The real question is not whether Chile is an island. Rather, the last year, where all international strategies were drawn up for 2004. essential debate is what is the best option for development in a complex This session concluded that 2003 was an exceptional year for world—for all countries, particularly for small and distant ones. With international achievments: the political and economic agreement all its deficiencies and its tragic history, one could say that Chile has with the European Union was put in effect, achieving a 15% increase managed to follow the path which has just begun to produce benefits. in Chile’s exports to Europe; the free trade agreement with the United States was signed, probably the most emblematic achievement the Marcelo Junemann is the Publisher and Creative Director for Big country has accomplished regarding exterior commerce. The magazine. Juan Walker is Editor-in-Chief of La Nación. Hernán agreement has been in force since January 1, 2003. Expectations Passalaqua is the CEO of Fitzroy Management & Development are extremely positive. Recently the South Korean Parliament ratified and President of the Tourism Commission of the Engineer’s College a Free Trade Agreement with Chile after a difficult battle with strong and MBA Imperial College, U.K. opposition coming from Korean farmers. It was not all about commercial diplomacy, however: in a March 2003 meeting of the For a special ReVista Web feature on tourism by these authors,
[email protected] United Nations Security Council, Chile rejected the invasion of go to our website,
PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEJANDRO BARRUEL SPRING 2004• ReVista 9 CHILE Chile Today Two Viewpoints
BY ALFREDO JOCELYN-HOLT
. tion to perpetuate the military legacy, while the Right awaits its be self-complacent, optimistic and officialist. The other comeback, gaining more at this stage by being in the opposition is more marginal, sceptical and sour. than in La Moneda. Consequently, this critique questions the T The first of these visions builds on the premise that Chileans moral motives of those who are now in power, seeing them as a have suffered too much and too long. A different country is what self-serving coterie bound to ideological betrayal, accommodation they deserve; one no longer torn by dissension nor economically and personal ambition. Needless to say, people holding this view destitute, ruled by civilians, but as unlike as possible from the rad- are seldom admitted to political circles. They are labelled nostal- ical Allende regime which brought us to the brink of civil war. In gic, bitter, unrealistic, premodern, elitist and too quarrelsome. short, a consumer market economy, open to new international Without any effective organization behind them, nor any con- opportunities, bound to economic growth and orthodox fiscal poli- crete alternative proposal, these Chileans are often viewed as a cies, respected by international financial agencies and foreign chorus of lamentation that should be left alone, marginalized and investors, without forgetting the poor and the less competitive. In generally unheeded. other words, it is a line of thinking that envisions a government not Fortunately or not, this group cannot be dismissed so easily. willing to waiver its right to raise taxes when it finds it convenient What they have to say periodically generates debate. In 1997 and nor wanting to relinquish the control of copper and other strate- 1998, a number of bestselling publications diagnosed a growing cli- gic industries in order to maintain macro-economic balances. mate of frustration. They could not have been more timely: in 1997, This position more or less coincides with what the military tried the Concertación lost popular support in the parliamentary elec- to accomplish. Paradoxically, though, this time former opponents— tions. Almost four million Chileans (40%) either did not register, watched over firmly by the armed forces as constitutional “guar- abstained, annulled their votes or left the ballot blank. antors”— are in charge of the implementation of these goals. As The economy also accounts for this increasing malaise. Annual if this were not enough oversight, a number of additional institu- economic growth from 1998 to 2002 was 2.4%, compared to 7.7% tional mechanisms require the consensual agreement of the pow- between 1990 and 1997. If in the earlier period employment rose erful right-wing opposition. This is a scheme hard to swallow—but not without its ben- How is it that a country can be so conservative and yet efits. After all, it has given an electoral advantage to three center-left Concertación so apparently modern? The obvious explanation is that governments, in power since 1990 when Pinochet lost the 1988 plebiscite that sought it is meant to work that way and has been doing so to perpetuate his regime yet another eight ever since the Pinochet years. Whoever rules Chile years. Former socialist-minded politicians have been able to leave behind their past has to be acrobatic. reputation as poor administrators and rad- ical subversives to the point that no member of the establishment 2.4% annually, in these last years, the average increase in new jobs would at present care to disdain them. And, whatever their past has been a poor 0.4%. If the number of Chileans below poverty ideology, the fact that they can control a still-potent state—if not level descended abruptly from 5 million in 1990, the number has wealthier now, at least more businesslike—has given them the remained around 3.1 million since 1998 (21%). Other variables chance to carry out what they have always aimed to achieve, to point to a more complex picture. According to the 2002 census, engineer revolutionary change from above, nowadays via the mar- 87% of households own a color television; one out of five families ket. That they may be the envy of Latin America, not unlike when owns a computer; one out of ten is connected to Internet; 51% they were being proclaimed revolutionary models, has given them has at least one cell-phone, and three out of four families are home- a further cause to be boastful—enough to pass over the bad years, owners. However, the 2002 United Nations Development Pro- and any remorse for what they are now defending. History, for gramme (UNDP) report still posed anguished questions such as: them, today as well as 30 years ago, is not so much dead as sur- “We Chileans: Who are we? What is happening to us? Where are mountable. we going?” Answers were even more sulky; at least 52% felt they The other position holds that the Concertación governments were “losers”, 54% expressed doubts with respect to the economy,
have compromised too much. They were elected to reform the and 43% said that their incomes barely allowed them to live decently. [email protected] AND [email protected] Constitution and the neoliberal system, put an end to dictator- ship and bring about some justice in compensation for the atro- Clockwise from top left: President Ricardo Lagos Escobar in the Presiden- cious human rights violations. Since none of these objectives has tial Palace; a couple in southern Chile; a construction foreman partici- been fully met, the Concertación appears to be a mere machina- pates in government program “Chile Capacita,” and a city street portrait
10 ReVista • SPRING 2004 PHOTOGRAPHS BY OFER WOLBERGER, COURTESY OF BIG MAGAZINE (TOP LEFT), CRISTINA ABAD ANGEL (TOP RIGHT, BOTTOM LEFT), ALEJANDRO BARRUEL (BOTTOM RIGHT) POLITICS AND IDENTITY
SPRING 2004• ReVista 11 CHILE
No wonder the 1998 UNDP report focussed on what it called this, the worst crisis in the past decade, the President of the Cen- “the paradoxes of modernization.” tral Bank and the Vice President of Corfo, Lagos’s son-in-law, and A number of recent events have damaged public confidence in high functionaries of the Universidad de Chile had to step down institutions. Pinochet’s London detention and his subsequent from their posts. At the beginning of 2003 there was serious talk acquittal by Chilean courts, as well as a streak of scandals involv- that Lagos might not end his term. All came to nothing, though, ing the illegal appropriation of public monies by high government after Pablo Longueira, the leader of the Unión Democrática Inde- officials to finance their political parties, may explain why only pendiente (UDI), Chile’s main political party, linked to Pinochet 50% of people polled in 2002 answer that democracy is the best supporters, literally saved the President and agreed to reorganize political system; 30% think “it does not matter”; only 23% have the state. confidence on the judiciary; and a mere 12% trust political par- In addition to this panorama of mistrust and corruption, dis- ties. In 2002-2003, two former ministers were formally accused. turbing statistics show that 61% of crimes go unreported; 40% One of them was Lagos´ succesor in the Ministry of Public Works, of Chileans show some form of mental disorder; half of Chilean the other was a close friend and political confidante. In addi- women suffer family violence; and 19,000 children are mistreated tion, an undersecretary and half a dozen Concertación congress- each year. Data on education is contradictory. University atten- men were also involved and are under present investigation. In dance may have increased from 120,000 twenty years ago, to approximately 500,000 at present. However, one of the 70 new private universities can invest $8 million in a brand new library— and have only 40,000 volumes in its shelves; tax breaks explain high expenditures in infra- structure, while effective research commit- ment is still to be seen. Chile systematically ranks well below average in almost all inter- national tests, and reading levels could not be poorer; nevertheless the Minister of Edu- cation insists on making Chile a bilingual English-speaking country. Supposedly, this ought to make us more “globalized.” Let us hope so; the main daily devotes 14 pages to “social life” against 4 dealing with inter- national news. In the last years of dictator- ship we had a more progressive and critical press than today. According to Human Rights Watch, Chile ranks immediately above Cuba as the worst record in freedom of speech in all of Latin America. In terms of personal freedom, it is not doing that well either; there is still no divorce law. How is it that a country can be so con- servative and yet so apparently modern? The obvious explanation is that it is meant to work that way and has been doing so ever since the Pinochet years. Whoever rules Chile has to be acrobatic. Witness the last bombshell, involving rightwing opposition politicians, which has kept us daily in sor- did shock these past five months. A conservative Renovación Nacional con- gresswoman informs the country that two UDI senators were regular participants in pederastic orgies. This bickering amongst rightwing allies takes place when Lagos´ government is barely surviving and UDI Joaquín Lavín, the 2000 election runner-
up, seemed unbeatable as potential Presi- [email protected]
A Santiago street scene
PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEJANDRO BARRUEL POLITICS AND IDENTITY dent in 2006. Longueira fights back and denounces a conspir- acy, but tells us that he has received word of this from beyond, In Memoriam while praying. In the meantime, the judge in charge of the inves- tigation has to resign because he confessed that he had attended Norbert Lechner, Chilean Social Scientist a gay brothel, after he was filmed by a secret television camera. This “reality show” takes place as gay characters are becoming increasingly visible in the leading popular soap operas. Congress , , immediately passes restrictive legislation on press coverage, Chile’s mourn the profound loss of Norbert Lechner, a renowned most credible anchorman is taken to jail and the age of sexual con- Chilean social scientist. Born in Germany in 1939, Lech- sent is steeply raised. Yet it is well-known that more than half of Wner visited Chile as a young political science doctoral stu- the population is born out of wedlock, and adolescent pregnan- dent from the University of Freiburg, and there he remained. cies are commonplace. At press time, Longueira’s contentions that Last year, in an official ceremony, the Chilean Senate awarded this has been a communication ploy is making slightly more sense, honorary Chilean citizenship to Lechner. Lagos and the Concertación feel partially relieved and are mak- Beginning in 1974 and for almost a quarter-of-a-century, ing plans for a fourth term. Lechner was a member of the faculty of the Facultad Lati- What are we to make of all this? My guess is that Chile is an unsta- noamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Chile. He was ble society undergoing rapid change. It obliquely deals with its past director of FLACSO-Chile from 1988-1994 and was a visiting traumas, all of which center on violence, in the absence of a strong professor of FLACSO-Mexico from 1994-1997. Lechner then consensual agreement that would permit us to deal with them frankly returned to Chile to become a senior analyst at the United on an institutional level. Consensus politics is built into the Con- Nations Development Program (UNDP). stitution. However, in many cases, it simply serves to maintain Lechner made an extraordinary intellectual contribution to fragile equilibria amongst powerful sectors. Chile is not an open soci- some of the most important debates in contemporary Latin Amer- ety and has a long way to go before it can meet the standards of a ican politics. His intellectual legacy includes path-breaking con- demanding modern world. It may be progressive economically, but ceptualizations of the relationships between subjectivity and only to a point. Poverty and unequal distribution of wealth are press- politics, politics and temporality, theories of the state and the- ing dilemmas that neither the military nor the Concertación have ories of state-market relationships. In recent years, Lechner solved adequately. People in power are not as transparent as they like focused intensively on the questions of the pervasive insecurity to make us believe; unfortunately, we have little, except scandal- and alienation from politics, relating such trends to disaffec- mongering, to detect this flagrant contradiction. tion and a lack of collective identity. Much of his work high- Moreover, there are prospective conflicts to be dealt with. Our lights the deficits in the processes of Latin American transition alliance with the U.S. and Bolivia’s recent demand for multilat- and democratization, as well as the constant need to reflect deeply eral negotiations concerning sea access are headaches we might about politics and the construction of community as a basis be facing in the future. The argument that we are being called to for social development. account because we are doing things right and are living well in a “bad neighborhood” is simply sham. Ethnic revindications are another of these destabilizing factors we should be considering; 15 Norbert Lechner’s untimely death from years ago, most Chileans’ only contact with the Mapuche was in cancer is a profound loss. We will miss history textbooks. Finally, if we have learned anything during these past years, it his collaborative scholarly spirit, and is that Chilean society resists any clear-cut definitions. This situa- tion is not unlike what happened, back in the early 1970’s, when will continue to cherish his legacy. it turned out that we were not the Latin American exception that confirmed the rule, nor as institutionally bound as everyone wanted Among Lechner’s principal books is Sombre del mañana, pub- to think. If so, in the near future, Chile will be a far more surpris- lished in 2003, for which Lechner received the Municipality of ing place than anyone in or out of power, self-assured or not, might Santiago prize. One of Lechner’s books of greatest influence is be guessing at this present time. Los patios interiores de la democracia, published in 1988. Other works include La conflictiva y nunca acabada construcción del orden Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt, a Chilean historian, is Director of Universi- deseado and Qué significa hacer política? During the Chilean tran- dad Diego Portales´ Instituto de Estudios Humanísticos and sition period, Lechner contributed Capitalismo, democracia y refor- teaches at the Universidad de Chile. With a B.A. and M.A. in mas, published in 1991. Humanistic Studies from The Johns Hopkins University, a law Lechner’s untimely death from cancer is a profound loss. degree from the Universidad de Chile, and a doctorate from We will miss his collaborative scholarly spirit, and will con- Oxford University, he is the author of several works, amongst them tinue to cherish his legacy. El Chile Perplejo: Del avanzar sin transar al transar sin parar (1998), Historia del siglo XX chileno (2001), and is presently working on a five-volume Historia General de Chile, the second This statement was prepared by Francisco Rojas, FLACSO volume of which will be coming out this year. Chile, and translated by Katherine Hite, Vassar College.
SPRING 2004• ReVista 13 CHILE Politics and Corruption The Underside of Chilean Democracy
BY ALFREDO REHREN
The political debate surrounding the redemocratization in 1989, numer- scandals led to the creation of a Com- ous allegations of corruption in local mission on Ethics in the Chamber of S government, the judiciary, min- Deputies, as well as similar commissions istries, public services and public enter- within political parties. Congress enacted prises have impacted public opinion. The an anticorruption legislative package to magnitude of the phenomenon cannot ensure transparency in public bureau- be compared to that of other Latin Amer- cracy by the end of 1999. However, very ican countries. According to Transparency few of the proposals had been imple- International (2003), Chile is the least mented by the end of the Frei govern- corrupt country in the region and the ment, just at the time when several public 20th least corrupt country in the world. executives collected huge retirement ben- However, the new plight has no prece- Santiago residents protest corruption. efits, causing public outrage. dent in Chilean political history. Four scandals shocked Chilean pub- The Chilean General Comptroller’s Office investigated 241 cases lic opinion in the first half of the third government of the Con- of corruption at the local level between 1993 and 1994. Public enter- certación led by President Ricardo Lagos. In the first case, a former prises such as Chile’s huge Copper Corporation, Concún Oil Refin- Minister of Public Works was accused of diverting large amounts ery, a water and sewage plant in Valparaiso, the Maritime of public funds to a private contractor to increase the salary of high- Corporation and the Port Authority have been accused of corrup- ranking officers within the ministry. The consulting firm, GATE, tion. Services such as the National Housing Service, the Sports owned by a former regional authority of the same ministry and and Recreation Department, the National Emergency Office in the belonging to the minister’s political party, was charged with adju- Ministry of Interior, the Military Hospital, the National Police dicating concessions to private constructing firms all over Chile. Retirement Service and the Office for the Return of Political Exiles In a related case, the same minister was indicted, temporarily jailed also faced accusations of corruption. Moreover, in a couple of iso- and is currently being sued for asking two construction firms to pay lated scandals, members of the congressional staff were prosecuted large sums of money through the same private contractor for non- for drug consumption and one member of the judiciary appeared existent consultancies. The money went to apparently finance the to be involved in drug trafficking. Finally, the accusation that an 1999-2000 presidential campaign of candidate Lagos, a former Min- informal political network functioned by the mid-1990s in Val- ister of Public Works himself. The Construction Chamber acknowl- paraiso, the seat of National Congress, led to the revelation of edged the misbehavior of its associates, promising to enforce ethical links among regional public enterprises, private contractors, regional standards. authorities, mayors and members of congress to divert public funds In a second case, all members of the cabinet acknowledged receiv- into the 1997 congressional election. ing extra money in cash as a supplement to their monthly official An April 1994 poll conducted by the Centro de Estudios de la salaries. Funds came right out of the reserved funds of the Office Realidad Contemporánea (CERC) revealed that 57 percent of the of the Presidency, not subject to scrutiny, either by congress or sample considered corruption a malaise affecting both the public the Office of the General Comptroller, an independent agency and private sectors. Corruption was considered a serious/very seri- created in 1926. Though salaries of cabinet members are well known ous problem by 83 percent of the sample; 80 percent of those inter- to be low, the irregularity of the procedure was strongly questioned. viewed thought politicians took people into account only for A third case involved a highly ranked officer in the National elections. Development Corporation (CORFO), who illegally transferred gov- Events moved President Eduardo Frei to create a National Com- ernmental titles and bonds to a private investment corporation, mission on Public Ethics in 1994, four years after the re-inaugu- INVERLINK. One former Lagos government minister was closely ration of democracy. The initiative counted with the support of associated with the firm, and helped capture short-term investment all political parties. Simultaneously, several ad-hoc commissions from governmental institutions, private health corporations and in the Chamber of Deputies investigated charges of corruption that pensions funds. Much of INVERLINK’s financial success stemmed acquired the tone of national scandals. However, the performance from the firm’s privileged access to crucial information from the of these commissions was subject to partisan control and their personal secretary of the Central Bank president, who resigned after recommendations and sanctions never affected senior political the scandal. The scandal—more than a corruption case per se—is appointees involved in the misdemeanors. Only minor and token an example of white-collar crime. However, it illustrates how sin- administrative measures were taken by the government, in spite uous the relationship between corruption and white-collar crime of recommendations by the General Comptroller’s Office. can be.
14 ReVista • SPRING 2004 PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF EL MERCURIO POLITICS AND IDENTITY
Finally, six deputies belonging to parties of the governmental entrepreneurs.” Moreover, the media, especially television, made coalition were stripped of their immunity by the judiciary. They politics and electoral campaigns in Chile more burdensome by cre- await final verdict on a trial for bribery accusations after an inves- ating greater need for financial resources. Current changes in the tigation conducted by two Supreme Court-appointed special pros- nature and structure of Chilean political parties have made party ecutors. The scandal demolished one of the most precious assets and intra-party competition a personal contest, weakening party that made the Chilean political class very proud—congressional discipline, encouraging factionalism and giving rise to political ethics and probity. The scandal added to an already protracted entrepreneurship. crisis of participation a further element of erosion of legitimacy What is interesting is that the 2002 Latinobarómetro showed for the Chilean political class. Most importantly, it unveiled a new that only 13 percent of Chileans manifested that they or some- and dark side of Chilean politics, corrupt representation, raising the body in their immediate families had a direct experience with classical concern of “who guards the guardians.” corruption. This means that most Chileans have clean access to A December 2002 poll conducted by the Center for Public Stud- basic public services such as health, education, police, tax rev- ies (CED) showed that 57 percent of a national sample of Chileans enue and utilities, which Transparency International Global Cor- considered that “many/almost all” public servants were corrupt and ruption Barometer (July 2003) reported as corrupt in many of involved in bribes. Seventy-five percent agreed that corruption the 44 countries surveyed. The data, plus the cases of corrup- was caused by the handing out of bureaucratic positions through tion analyzed, point to the fact that corruption in democratic partisan connections, in other words political patronage, and not Chile is limited to a small elite and displays the characteristics through a competitive merit system. Forty percent considered polit- of “grand-corruption.” ical parties as the most corrupt institution in the country and 67 Following Frei’s initiative, in January 2003, Lagos created a percent across the left-center-right of the political spectrum agreed Transparency and Probity multiparty commission, charged with that political parties financed campaigns through illegal and ille- proposing a major governmental overhaul to fight corruption. gitimate means. The last figure confirms another well-known fact Proposals included designing a new civil service, streamlining the about Chilean politics: political and campaign financing has been bureaucracy, diminishing the number of political appointees, until very recently a non-regulated activity and a virtual “black box” establishing new recruitment patterns and a merit system in the conducive to corruption. public service, reducing the amount of discretionary funds man- A working hypothesis suggests that corruption in Chile is the aged by the Office of the Presidency, and creating public subsi- outcome of two interrelated processes. First, corruption is caused dies to finance electoral campaigns. The initiative, most of whose components became law by mid-2003, is According to Transparency International (2003) Chile is a second wave of required reforms com- plementing the successful implementation the least corrupt country in the region and the 20th least of market economics in the 1980s. How well will they work to control incip- corrupt country in the world. However, the new plight ient corruption is something that will need has no precedent in Chilean political history. A December to be monitored in the near future. Whether public subsidies to finance electoral cam- 2002 poll conducted by the Center for Public Studies paigns will contribute to control corruption or not is to be seen, but comparative analy- (CED) showed that 57 percent of a national sample sis suggests that perspectives should not be of Chileans considered that “many/almost all” public very encouraging. Corruption and party finance are inex- servants were corrupt and involved in bribes. tricably linked. It is obvious that whatever the origins, structure, character and ideol- by traditional clientelistic structures—historically linking the ogy of a political party and irrespective of the prevailing party sys- Chilean political elite and the electorate—that endured beyond tem, political parties solicit funds over and above those received the authoritarian experience but are currently in crisis. Second, pri- from their members or, where available, from state subsidies. (Robert vatizations introduced deep changes in the dependent nature of Williams, “Aspects of Party Finance and Political Corruption,” in political parties from the entrepreneurial state and dismantled for- Robert Williams, ed., Party Finance and Political Corruption, Macmil- mer clientelistic mechanisms. A reduced and much less powerful lan, London, 2000, p. 8.) state left political parties without the lubrication necessary to main- However, the emergence of ethical concerns in Chilean public tain the previous clientelistic machinery. The successful intro- opinion together with a free press and the new activism displayed duction of market economics made the Chilean political elite more by the judiciary and civil society are positive trends that will help dependent on the market and on a new and empowered entre- control corruption. preneurial class. At the same time, political parties also experienced deep trans- Alfredo Rehren is an Associate Professor at the Instituto de Ciencia formations. Traditional parties, including those with class-based Política, Universidad Católica de Chile. He was a Luksic Visiting orientations, moved into the direction of business parties with polit- Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Stud- ical leaders and representatives performing the role of “political ies, Fall 2003.
SPRING 2004• ReVista 15 CHILE Naked in Santiago A Look at Chilean Media
BY CONSUELO SAAVEDRA
, dren are born out of wedlock. So much for being told what movies four thousand people euphorically took off their clothes in a to watch (a censorship law was finally repealed in 2002). So much downtown Santiago park. Spencer Tunick, the American pho- for a media that do not truly depict what Chileans are like in the O tographer working on a project of nude pictures in public 21st century. spaces, could not believe the scene in front of his lens. Neither could It took a while for the conservative elites that historically con- millions of Chileans who watched this collective catharsis on tele- trolled the Chilean media to realize how disconnected they were vision: grannies, couples, children, naked people of all sizes and ages from their audiences. As Roberto Méndez, the director of a leading and social classes jumping and hugging each other while shouting Chilean polling firm, has said, it took a multitude of naked peo- “I feel free” and “I have nothing to hide.” That happy mass of ple for the media to realize they were ignoring the new Chile. flesh marked the start of the Chilean destape. The Internet, the rise of cable television and the appearance of Destape. It is strange that there is no such concept in English. It an alternative and independent press (the best example of which is a blend of uncovering, untying and liberalizing, all at once — a is the satirical bi-weekly “The Clinic,” named after the London bit like the lifting of a lid that has covered the simmering stew for establishment where Augusto Pinochet was arrested in 1998) have too long. After 40 years of dictatorship in Spain, it took only six also forced the traditional media to react. In an increasingly com- months for a magazine like Interviú to become a success thanks to petitive market — with five national networks, 198 cable stations, a bombastic combination of tits, ass and independent journalism. 1,297 radio stations, 236 newspapers and 1,597 magazines — tra- Chileans, having lived through 17 years of dictatorship, had to ditional media have to adapt or to die. Goodbye press releases and wait 15 more years for their own version of destape to take place. spokespersons. Welcome hidden cameras and unnamed sources. As in Spain and later in post-authoritarian Argentina, the Chilean Journalists are learning to be inquisitive and editors are con- destape has been a heady mix of sex and freedom of expression. Some stantly looking for the scoop that will uncover the next scandal. It of it is playful, bold or downright silly. Television audiences have can be as serious as a politician taking bribes from a businessmen recently turned a prostitute who swindled a Japanese con man or as futile as a comedian cuckolding his wife. The era of secre- into a national public figure. They have gone crazy over reality shows tiveness and the double standard is coming to an end. One conse- that allow them to snoop around the private life of young people quence is the blurring of the thin line dividing the public and private desperate for fame. And massive numbers of them have tuned in spheres. In one of the latest scandals, a judge was discovered to to watch a soap opera in which one of the protagonists is gay and frequent gay sauna baths. A debate over whether homosexuals can another has a sexual dysfunction — a show that ironically enough serve as judges has ensued. In Europe or North America, the ques- aired on a Catholic TV network. tion might be moot. In Catholic Chile it is not — at least not yet. But some of the new material is dead serious. In the last eigh- It is revealing to notice that the same glamorous TV presenter teen months, Chileans have learned of corruption in the govern- who, in the 1980s, was fired from a Catholic TV station for say- ment and of Catholic priests molesting children. They have endlessly ing that she would have a child with or without a marriage license, revisited every painful aspect of the 1973 coup on its 30th anniver- now makes regular appearances in the talk shows of the same sta- sary. Television viewers have seen public figures — from judges tion to discuss her recent marital infidelities. “Well, why not if to celebrities — come out of the closet and openly discuss their her presence gives high ratings?” a media executive may argue. homosexuality. If that is what people want, give it to them. The new media prin- The shift has deep political implications. Now that they can peek ciple is to treat the public as the ultimate consumer. The power of into the private lives of celebrities, television audiences and newspaper readers also want As in Spain and later in post-authoritarian Argentina, to know what their leaders are really up to. As never before, Chileans are demanding the Chilean destape has been a heady mix of sex and transparency at every level. For most of the 1990s Chileans had been persuaded by the freedom of expression. ruling elites that the democratic transition required stability, homogeneity and consensus to succeed. Chal- the remote control has extended to the phone. Chileans are increas- lenging authority or even expressing a dissenting opinion was per- ingly calling in and giving their opinion live on the air; or they ceived as dangerous and threatening to the newborn democracy. hit the pound key and decide who stays in the reality show that Not any more. Nowadays Chileans value diversity, honesty and evening. People feel as though they have a say in what they watch dissent because they understand that these values make democ- and read. While it may be only an illusion of influence, that is racy stronger. These are not abstractions, but concrete realities. So not the point. What is relevant is that the media, particularly tele- much for not having a divorce law when 56 percent of Chilean chil- vision, are now part of the destape and are pushing it to its limits.
16 ReVista • SPRING 2004 PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF EL MERCURIO Destape: the heady response to Spencer Tunick’s project of nude are largely determined by which items in LUN’s website get the most photographs in a Santiago park. hits on the previous day. As a result, the sexual escapades of soap opera stars and sports celebrities dominate the headlines. LUN This is particularly evident in the case of television. As sociolo- has quickly become Chile’s most widely circulated newspaper, with gist Eugenio Tironi observes, it is ironic that television, the most more than 180,000 copies sold on an average day. heavily repressed and censored medium during the dictatorship, Chilean media are a work in progress. They are struggling to is the one now testing the newfound tolerance of Chile’s democ- strike a balance between scrutiny and respect for privacy and human racy for unrestricted freedom of speech. Intellectual elites may think dignity. They may err along the way, but they are learning fast. And Chilean TV has turned vulgar and irrelevant. But the Chilean peo- so are audiences. They may be demanding tacky variety shows, ple are consuming that “vulgar” stuff at an impressive average rate but they also desire better reporting and plainer answers from politi- of three hours and thirteen minutes per day. cians. In the process, those who never before withstood much Even old-style newspapers are fighting to catch up. Competi- scrutiny — congressmen, political party leaders, media moguls, cor- tion from La Tercera for high-income readers has forced stodgy El porate chieftains and even bishops — are discovering that they, too, Mercurio to become more agile — and, recently, a bit less conser- may be naked in the park. vative politically. But the biggest change involves Las Últimas Noti- cias, a once-sleepy mid-brow paper also belonging to the El Mercurio Consuelo Saavedra is a Chilean journalist and TV news anchor. A group. LUN, as it is known in Chile, has put into place a system former Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, she is currently pur- that may well be unprecedented anywhere: the paper’s contents suing a Master’s degree at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
SPRING 2004• ReVista 17 FOCUS ON ECONOMICS Chile: The Lonely Success Story p.18 The Wine Industry p. 22 The Chilean Free Software Movement p. 23 Two Portraits of Development in Southern Chile p.25
Chile: The Lonely Success Story Economic Reform in Latin America
BY JUAN CARLOS MORENO-BRID AND RENÉ A. HERNÁNDEZ
, , sis and the slowdown of the U.S. economy, reforms in Latin America. From 1980 to 2000 considered the paragon of open trade Latin America’s economic recovery has lost the Chilean economy expanded rapidly (See and the economic miracle of Latin steam in the last six years. Its GDP per per- Chart 1). Its subsequent slowdown has been C America, a region where such mira- son shrank in real terms. It is now 1.5% milder, scarcely affected by its neighbors’ deep cles are rather scarce. lower than its 1997 level. Such anemic eco- economic troubles. Recall that in the peak of After two decades of radical macroeco- nomic performance arrested its progress in the 2002 financial crisis in Argentina and nomic reform, Latin America has yet to suc- poverty alleviation, an urgent, still pend- Uruguay, Chile was still able to place a bond ceed in its quest to achieve high and sustained ing task in the social agenda. According to in the international capital markets under rates of economic growth. Although since the UN Economic Commission for Latin very favorable terms and its Central Bank the mid-1980s it has adopted a new devel- America, 44% of Latin Americans live in kept rather low domestic interest rates. opment strategy based on market mecha- conditions of poverty, with 19% enduring With its annual national income rapidly nisms and trade liberalization, the region has extreme poverty. Particularly worrying have approaching US $5,000 per person—just been unable to enter a path of stable and been the series of financial crises in below that of Mexico—Chile is poised to join robust economic expansion. Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Dominican the ranks of developed nations. It has a rel- In fact, during 1990-2003 almost all Republic, Peru and Venezuela and other atively high index of human development, Latin American economies grew at a slower countries in the region, that have plunged and is currently ranked in 38th place world- pace than in 1960-80, when they followed them into episodes of political turmoil and wide of a total of 150 countries, a position the then traditional strategy of import sub- economic instability. comparable to Portugal, Poland and Hun- stitution and state-led industrialization. Chile is the conspicuous exception to this gary. Its sustained dynamic expansion was
Moreover, in the aftermath of the Asian cri- dissatisfying experience to date with macro accompanied by a substantial improvement [email protected]
18 ReVista • SPRING 2004 PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALEJANDRO BARRUEL Chile boasts one of the best economic performances in the region. This section looks at diverse aspects of the country’s economy, ranging from traditional wine-making to the cutting-edge free software movement. in social development. Chilean data indi- it among the top economies in the region in had as a consequence the demise of the old cate that the incidence of poverty fell from terms of international competitiveness, busi- development model based on the state’s active 45% in 1987, to 22% in 1998 and 21% in ness conditions, transparency and corrup- interventions in the economy. Instead, the 2000. In turn, the proportion of its popula- tion. It now regularly ranks among the top dictatorship favored market mechanisms and tion living under extreme poverty conditions 20 most attractive business destinations in private competition as the key agents of cap- fell from 17% in 1987 to 5.6% in 1998, the world. What are the determinants of ital formation and production decisions. The but rose slightly to 5.7% in 2000. It is one Chile’s economic success? What are the chal- economic rationale for such change, inde- of only two Latin American countries that lenges and lessons for Chile to sustain such pendently of its political motivation, was have already met the Millennium Develop- outstanding economic performance? clear. The state’s intervention in the econ- ment Goals of achieving a 50% reduction in omy was perceived as a fundamental dis- the incidence of extreme poverty relative to THE BENEFITS OF BEING AN EARLY tortion in the allocation of resources, thus its 1990 level. Social progress was also favored REFORMER provoking high indebtedness and inflation. by the introduction of new anti-poverty pro- It should be remembered that Chile was a Applying this new strategy, by the mid- grams targeted to low-income households. pioneer in Latin America’s experiment with 1970s, Chile began to undertake key reforms: Chile boasts one of the best economic radical market reforms. Indeed, General eliminating import controls, unilaterally performances in the region, with compara- Augusto Pinochet’s September 1973 coup bringing down import tariffs to a common tively high investment ratios, low inflation against the democratically elected govern- level of 10%, opening financial markets to rates, and prudent fiscal management. More- ment of Dr. Salvador Allende and the sub- over, international surveys systematically rank sequent military regime that lasted until 1989 Left: packing pears; above: miners
SPRING 2004• ReVista 19 CHILE foreign competition, reducing the public sec- help to explain its economic success in the 1997, the annual budget showed a surplus tor and eliminating many government con- 1990s and its resilience to the adverse effects and a reduction in government debt (Econ- trols on economic activity that had become of external shocks. omist Intelligence Unit, February 2004). standard practice. In 1976 Chile withdrew And since then the deficit has not exceeded from the Andean Pact, at the time a regional ON CAPITAL FLOWS 2.5% of GDP, and has sometimes too shown organization marked by protectionism and Capital inflows offer opportunities to finance a surplus. Such fiscal prudence outperforms its adverse view of foreign direct investment investment and boost economic growth. that of most members of the European (FDI). But the results of this first attempt However, to depend on volatile short term Union, not to mention the United States. at macroeconomic reform were far from capital is a risk that may impose severe penal- An important source of public revenues favorable. Crucial errors in financial liberal- ties on a developing country. Abrupt fluc- comes from its high value added tax rate, ization in the absence of adequate bank reg- tuations in capital inflows may lead to a (currently 19%, one of the highest in the ulation coupled with a fall in the international sudden sharp rationed access to foreign region). It should be also pointed out that, price of copper and a sudden halt in foreign exchange that detonate balance of payments notwithstanding Chile’s commitment to pri- lending. The Chilean economy was pushed crisis, and push domestic activity into a vatization, the Corporación Nacional del to an acute crisis in 1982-83, leading to the severe recession. To reduce such risks, but Cobre de Chile (CODELCO), the world’s bankruptcy of the private banking sector and still enjoy some of its benefits, during most leading copper producer is still state-owned, its nationalization. of the 1990s Chile successfully imposed taxes and is a considerable source of public rev- The authorities responded by imple- on short term capital inflows, with the tax enues. And, as the World Bank admits, the menting a conventional economic stabi- rate adjusted to the time-holding period. Copper Stabilization Fund—established by lization package to control inflation, relying This tax was lifted in 1998 reflecting the the Chilean government—has reduced the more on a flexible exchange rate and a rise contraction in the volume of international impact of external shocks on fiscal revenues. in import tariffs to face foreign sector dise- capital flows to the region, as a consequence Most important, and in sharp contrast quilibria. The process of structural reforms of the Asian crisis and the burst of the U.S. to the rest of the developing world, since the lost impetus for some time. However, in stock market. However, not withstanding early 1990s Chilean fiscal management has 1985, structural reforms once again began the operation of its various FTAs, the been based on a commitment to maintain to be profoundly implemented. Trade lib- Chilean government has retained to poten- on average, and in a medium term per- eralization was again pushed forward, inde- tial capacity to reestablish such controls in spective, a structural fiscal balance equiva- pendence was awarded to the Central Bank, the future if it is deemed necessary. lent to 1% of the GDP. In other words, the a new regulatory framework for the bank- policy means that, if the economy grows ing sector was adopted and privatization ON FISCAL POLICY at its medium term potential rate (5% per of public enterprises was accelerated. Relative to the rest of the region, Chile’s fis- year), then its fiscal results would show a cal policy has been particularly prudent. surplus of 1% of GDP. In this way the gov- CONTINUITY IN SOUND According to the UN Economic Commis- ernment may carry out its planned expen- MACROECONOMIC MANAGEMENT sion for Latin America (ECLAC) from 1994 ditures in a manner relatively independent CONSISTENT WITH AN OPEN ECONOMY to 2003, Chile’s public sector current rev- of the business cycle and its inherent fluc- The Concertación—the democratic govern- enues systematically represented more than tuations from its different fiscal revenues. ments that have held presidential office in 30% of its Gross Domestic Product So, for example, a rise in the budget deficit Chile since 1990—have gradually and per- (GDP)—several points above those of Costa due to a decline in income tax revenues, sistently pushed to restore Chile’s historical Rica, Mexico, Uruguay and most countries associated with a downturn in the business respect for civil liberties and human rights, in the region. For more than ten years until cycle, will not necessarily lead to a cut in systematically violated during the military regime. In the economic realm, they have LATIN AMERICA AND CHILE: ECONOMIC EXPANSION maintained essentially the same development FROM 1960-2003 (REAL GDP, ANNUAL AVERAGE GROWTH RATES, %) model regarding the role of the market and 7.0 the state as the previous regime. Macroeco- ■ LATIN AMERICA ■ CHILE 6.0 nomic policy has emphasized two areas. The first is a deepening and modernizing the 5.0 structural reform process, explicitly extend- 4.0 ing it to cover health and education areas. 3.0 The second emphasis is on stressing the fun- 2.0 damental importance of maintaining low inflation rates. 1.0 Given this overall standard orientation, 0.0
Chile’s macroeconomic policy has intro- -1.0 duced key non-conventional elements in its 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000-2003 fiscal management and treatment of inter- SOURCE: CEPAL national capital flows that, in our view, may Economic expansion in Latin America, compared to Chile
20 ReVista • SPRING 2004 FOCUS ON ECONOMICS public spending. Indeed, the policy assumes exports grew at double-digit annual rates dur- The second key challenge concerns Chile’s that such tax revenues will be compensated ing the 1990s. It is so far Latin America’s only severe disparities in income and marked dif- in the upward phase of the business cycle. case of success at macroeconomic reform. ferences between demographic groups. This approach to fiscal management ensures However important challenges are open. Despite the advances in poverty reduction, domestic and international markets that the The first and crucial one is rather sig- income distribution is still dramatically government will uphold fiscal prudence. At nificant: to boost export dynamism once uneven. As recently noted, Chile “…has the the same time, this structural approach leaves again. Indeed, even though the United States largest gap on the continent between the rich margin to implement a counter-cyclical bud- economy is recovering from its slowdown, and the poor” (UN Notebook, February 17, getary stance to reduce the impact of adverse it is unlikely that it will reach and sustain 2004). Moreover in 2000 income distribu- external shocks on domestic activity, employ- the extraordinary high rates of expansion tion was more disparate than in 1987 (EIU, ment and social conditions. experienced during the 1990s. The Euro- 2003). Such stark inequality undermines pean Union does not appear to be poised growth potential, by concentrating saving and investment. And, more important, it What are the determinants of Chile’s economic success? may deteriorate social cohesion and the basic principles of democracy, as income inequal- What are the challenges and lessons for Chile to sustain ity also means unequal access to health, edu- such outstanding economic performance? cation and ultimately political power. So far, the Chilean combination of economic growth and targeting of public spending OTHER KEY ASPECTS for quick economic growth soon. In addi- towards the poor has been ineffective to The strength of Chile’s domestic savings is tion, the short-term outlook of Chile’s neigh- reduce inequality. In particular social poli- remarkable in a region where the absence boring countries is complicated. Argentina’s cies and programs need to be revised to meet of savings practices is the norm. Such suc- problematic external debt position, if not the needs of especially vulnerable groups like cess is usually explained in part by Chile’s soon resolved, may deteriorate the South- indigenous populations, youth, female- pioneering role in the reform of the pen- ern Cone´s intrarregional trade, business cli- headed households and the rural poor. sion system. Indeed the country has enjoyed mate and investor expectations. An important and—yet hard to accom- a fully-funded private pension system since Chile urgently needs to reduce its depen- plish—element in this agenda concerns Chile’s the 1980s. But the incentives to promote the dence on exports of commodities as a source structural failure to date to create sufficient reinvestment of profits by private business of foreign exchange. Copper still accounts jobs. The economic slowdown from 1998 to also played a relevant role in boosting domes- for 34% of Chile’s total export revenues. 2003 has pushed up the level of open unem- tic savings. The strength of Chile’s saving Such dependence on commodities increases ployment to critical peaks (close to 10%). capacity has now allowed local businesses the Chilean economy’s vulnerability to exter- Chile’s current unemployment insurance to borrow long-term in pesos, something nal shocks. It also constrains its growth scheme partially alleviates some of the nega- which in most developing countries can only potential, given the unfavorable long-term tive impacts of this phenomenon. But, the per- be done in foreign currency. Finally as UN trends in their terms-of-trade and its effects sistence of high unemployment —especially Under Secretary-General for Economic and on the allocation of investment. Indeed, in among the youth—undermines the poten- Social Affairs José Antonio Ocampo empha- recent years, FDI to Chile appears exces- tial production capacity, distorts incentives sizes, Chile, the reformers’ darling, did not sively concentrated in the mining sector, and and, most critically, creates severe social ten- rely exclusively on open trade to promote thus adversely affected by the decline in the sions that threaten the progress made towards development. It also adopted technology and world prices of copper. more democratic forms of government. innovation policies with a selective and clear Chile’s free trade agreements (FTAs) with Chile has indeed come a long way, but identification of “strategic visions” for cer- the European Union, the United States and the challenges it faces are significant and may tain economic sectors, as well as fostering Korea—which became operational in the require a deep transformation of its pro- small and medium enterprises. last fourteen months—may somewhat rein- ductive structure and a much more even dis- vigorate exports. But by themselves, they are tribution of its social benefits. The road CHALLENGES insufficient to place Chile back on a high ahead remains an open question. Sound macroeconomic policies and trade lib- long-term growth track and to change eralization-in addition to its orderly transi- Chilean export structure toward more Juan Carlos Moreno Brid is Regional tion towards a more democratic political knowledge-intensive products. Recall that Advisor for the United Nations’ Economic context-have been key factors in sustaining the FTA with the United States does not Commission for Latin America and the Chile’s robust economic expansion and avoid- alter the subsidy scheme for American farm Caribbean. He was a DRCLAS Visiting ing crisis. Exports have become its engine products. Moreover, such change in trade Scholar, 1994-1997/1999-2000. René A. of growth, as conspicuously evidenced in the preferences may be insufficient to attract the Hernández is Economic Affairs Officer for boom in external sales of forestry, fishing, foreign direct investment in the volumes the United Nations’ Economic Commission wines, fruits and other agro-based products. required to transform Chile´s productive for Latin America and the Caribbean. The Chile and Mexico were the only two large apparatus into a modern robust export plat- opinions here expressed may not necessarily economies in the region whose volume of form of manufactures and services. coincide with those of the United Nations.
SPRING 2004• ReVista 21 CHILE A Foray into the Mystique of Chile’s Wine Industry Local Culture and International Commerce
BY RICHARD FREEMAN
, land and the culture first make their mark. Chilean geography, the countryside and its with the undergraduate advisor at the On a weekend trip to the Festival de la traditions, and the patriarchal, family-cen- David Rockefeller Center for Latin Amer- Vendimia, the annual celebration of the tered business practices – the product is now I ican Studies and announced that I would grape harvest, I witnessed first hand the mag- focused in an outbound direction, ready to be taking myself to Chile. I needed help ical influence of the traditional Chilean compete on the world market. Here is where dreaming up an internship suitable for a countryside on the wine industry. Chileans my internship picked up the process, assist- Russian Literature major interested in learn- traveled from all over the region to sample ing in the search for importers and distrib- ing about international business, something the new wines and to cheer on the partici- utors in the Americas and Asia. I researched more cultural than numerical. The answer pating winners of the cueca contest who were the wine market in countries as far away as I received was simple and immediate: you awarded the privilege to go on stage and China, Korea and Indonesia. In exploring should work at a vineyard. There was no hes- stomp the grapes. Here, not only the cul- potential clients, I often investigated which itation on my part; I knew we had found the ture, but the land itself endows the wine dealers had already shown an interest in perfect solution, an industry that would be with a quality particular only to Chile, whose Argentine wine, sometimes a competitor, particularly pertinent to Chile, profoundly unusually elongated geography makes pos- but often the indication of a more general cultural and also extensively international. A sible the region’s ideal grape-growing terrain, interest in South American products. When few months later, thanks to the assistance perfectly embedded between the Pacific speaking with contacts in Asian embassies, of the DRCLAS Regional Office in Santi- Ocean and the Andes mountains. I learned of the vast extent to which the ago, I was offered a job in the export depart- Having turned inward to infuse the wine wine’s high esteem has spread. Chilean vine- ment of Viña Bisquertt Ltda. with these highly localized influences — yards such as Viña Bisquertt have succeeded Viña Bisquertt, known for its in seizing worldwide attention Casa La Joya wine, runs its opera- because of their high quality, award- tions out of an old colonial house winning wines and affordable in Providencia, Santiago. Its com- prices. In fact, Viña Bisquertt’s 2000 fortable office space maintains an La Joya Merlot was actually appropriately homey quality. After awarded Best Merlot of the World all, the wine business is most often by the London International Wine a family affair. Don Osvaldo, the and Spirit Competition. The indus- owner and family patriarch, worked try’s reputation only continues to downstairs and staffed much of the garner even more accolades. It came office with his own sons and daugh- as little surprise, therefore, when ters. The grapes were grown on the that summer, even while working Bisquertt family’s hereditary estate on the other side of the globe in in the Colchagua Valley, three hours Moscow, Russia, I walked into the south of Santiago. Leisurely lunches local grocery store only to discover of familiar, home-cooked Chilean a great big showcase, featuring none traditions, like cazuela chilena and other than the exotic and marvelous pollo arvejado, coupled with a work- wines of Chile. space crafted out of former living quarters, made for a remarkably Richard Freeman is a senior at close-knit staff with an intimate Harvard College, concentrating in sense of family and community. Russian Literature and Culture. However, the Chilean culture He thanks the DRCLAS Regional infiltrates the industry long before Office, which made possible this one arrives at the main office. Back unique internship experience. in the Colchagua Valley, one of Freeman can be reached at< free- Chile’s most prestigious wine-pro- [email protected]> and wel- ducing regions, the essence of the Chilean wine country comes any questions or comments.
22 ReVista • SPRING 2004 PHOTOGRAPH BY JUNE CAROLYN ERLICK FOCUS ON ECONOMICS Freedom in Code The Birth of the Chilean Free Software Movement
BY EDEN MILLER
, when MIT programmer Richard Stallman with this technology in hopes of discern- Alejandro Navarro Brain announced his drafted a manifesto criticizing software com- ing how this emerging debate over software intention to introduce Chile’s first piece panies for denying programmers the right alternatives will take form in Chile’s dis- I of legislation requiring the use of free to access and modify the software they pur- tinctive neo-liberal landscape. software in all branches of public adminis- chased. The manifesto served as a rallying tration. For Navarro Brain, a socialist pub- cry to programmers everywhere, urging BUILDING A MOVEMENT licly committed to issues such as indigenous them to protect their rights by adopting a I met with Eric Baez over beer at an out- rights and environmentalism, free software new model of software development in door café in Santiago’s bohemian comuna of serves as yet another extension of his pro- which programs would maintain their Nuñoa. Baez, a journalism graduate, has gressive platform for social and economic integrity by remaining open to user scrutiny, dedicated the past few years of his life to justice. The legislation, tentatively titled modification and distribution. The Linux fomenting public interest in the free soft- “Proyecto de Ley: Software Libre,” argues Operating System and the Open Office ware movement. Besides running the major that viewing, altering and freely dissemi- Suite (an open source equivalent of Chilean website dedicated to the dissemi- nating the software code underlying many Microsoft Office) are but two examples of nation of free software related news state operations is fundamental to Chilean the products that have evolved in the wake
SPRING 2004• ReVista 23 CHILE
Universidad de la Frontera de Temuco, a uni- Chilean success in the private sector. In a software giant, although they are certainly versity located near a large indigenous pop- spacious conference room overlooking the reaping the highest returns. In recent years, ulation, reached an agreement in which the city, I had the good fortune of meeting with a large informal sector of the economy has software giant would develop a version of company president and founder Andrés evolved in tandem with the private sector to Windows XP and Microsoft Office in the Navarro Haeussler and discussing his posi- supply the growing gap between demand language of the Mapuche Indians, tion on free software in Chile. and affordability. According to recent esti- Mapudungun. The announcement angered Navarro Haeussler proved to be surpris- mates in PC Magazine Español, the private members of Mapuche communities. An arti- ingly open to the technical advantages of sector loses $73 million annually due to cle published in the December 2003 Mapu- free software, but wary of the ideological Chilean pirated software and more than express cast Microsoft’s intention as more tone associated with the movement. “I 62% of all software applications in Chile sinister than charitable. Members of the believe in freedom. I love free software. If have been acquired through illegal channels. Agrupación de Mapuche de Temuco argued you can use it, great. But I hate to force peo- And therein lies the quandary. Microsoft’s plan would steal Mapuche intel- ple.” SONDA already has begun using free On any given workday, street vendors lectual property and “the patenting or com- software to implement solutions for several crowd Santiago streets selling their wares mercialization of whatever form of Pueblo of its more innovative clients, but prefers to the businessmen and women that pop- life, such as a language, is unacceptable and proprietary software when a customer ulate the high-rise office buildings of the very dangerous.” Mapuche and free software demands reliability. commercial districts. Pirated software is one activists now find themselves as unlikely bed- “The computer industry,” Navarro of the more popular items for sale, with a fellows in the struggle against Microsoft’s Haeussler continued, “has always had its single program selling for around US $5. Although sales vary from day to day, ven- dors in one of Santiago’s commercial sectors Software, a technology most view as politically neutral, reported selling between 10-12 discs daily actually exerts power. The free software movement and pocketing around US $15, more than twice the national minimum wage. Of these provides an opportunity for poorer countries to create software sales, Microsoft products consti- tute the majority. software applications tailored to their needs and helps Microsoft’s market dominance and sever longstanding relations of economic dependency. Chile’s informal sector arguably occupy two sides of the same coin, complicating the issue of who benefits from this set of economic intellectual hegemony, a political turn that share of politics. There was a movement relationships and who will go hungry. When has united Mapuche concerns of cultural against IBM, now there are a lot of peo- I asked a Santiago street vendor what he preservation and control over local knowl- ple who don’t like Microsoft. It’s very irra- would do if the pirated software market col- edges with the ideals promoted by the free tional. It’s like Don Quixote, they lapsed he replied, “I don’t know. I’d proba- software movement. [members of the free software movement] bly start selling something else, umbrellas, Chilean free software groups are currently fight against monsters that don’t exist. I belts, watches, whatever moved me. But it working with Mapuche representatives to believe much more in freedom. Let every- wouldn’t be nearly as profitable.” develop the first operating system written one do what they want.” As this article goes to press, a “virtual in Mapudungun, a project known as Kümee Yet for some, including Baez, these mon- community” of congressional staffers and Linux. Several free software groups have also sters are quite real. Baez cites a recent exam- free software advocates are putting the fin- joined forces to bring computerized gov- ple where Microsoft donated computer ishing touches on Navarro Brain’s legisla- ernment services in Mapudungun to equipment to the financially pressed state tive proposal, although Navarro Brain fears Mapuche communities. “The development office that runs the national libraries, muse- private sector interests will generate strong of software applications for free distribution ums and archives. The gift, however, failed resistance in Congress. For years, the in Mapudungun,” Baez writes on his web- to provide all the resources needed to put Chilean government has adopted a policy site, “is the logical road for the social and the expanding Chilean library systems of “technological neutrality,” allowing the practical use of this people’s cultural rich- online. The office subsequently needed to market to decide which technologies best ness.” purchase expensive hardware and software serve Chilean needs. However, when to make the gift usable, becoming long-term debates such as these arise, we see that tech- BREAD TODAY, HUNGER TOMORROW Microsoft customers that will pay high nologies are rarely neutral and even soft- Walking up calle Teatinos in downtown San- prices for software upgrades and new ware has politics. tiago, it is difficult to overlook the large glass releases. For Baez, “Microsoft’s donation building that houses Chile’s largest computer creates a situation of bread today and Eden Miller is a doctoral student at MIT company, SONDA (Sociedad Nacional de hunger tomorrow. We see this all over the in the Program for Science, Technology Procesamiento de Datos). With $300 million developing world.” and Society. She is finishing a dissertation in annual sales and offices throughout Latin However, Microsoft is not the only entity on the history of state ideology and com- America, SONDA offers the model for profiting from Chile’s dependence on the puter development in Chile.
24 ReVista • SPRING 2004 Poverty or Potential? Two portraits of development in southern Chile
BY SCOTT RECHLER
eresa stops me three blocks from Nueva tuce and chard aren’t selling well this month— the poorest of Chile’s thirteen regions, in a Imperial’s main plaza on a quiet only 100 pesos a head. Meticulously counting, country where 20% of the population qual- Wednesday morning, eager to chat. She she wonders out loud whether she has earned ifies as “poor” (“Indicadores Económicos y T is wearing a light blue sweater and a the 500 pesos (about US $0.85) she needs to Sociales: (4.2) Medición de la Pobreza y la matching blue headband glowing slightly catch the bus back home, 18 kilometers up Indigencia,” Fuente: MIDEPLAN, Encues- against her dark black hair. She leans against dusty dirt roads in the campo outside Nueva tas CASEN 1987-1998.
PHOTOGRAPH BY SCOTT RECHLER SPRING 2004• ReVista 25 CHILE
Clockwise from top left: Daniela and Gustavo taking an English quiz; Josefina Lemunao Canio, of the Fundación Chol Chol, weaving in Vilcun; and Daniela on a cart.
organic agriculture and the protection of native species, believes in the importance of preserving Mapuche language and cul- ture, and is currently trying to create an iden- tity for her region as the home of “huevos azules” (blue eggs)—known for their bigger, through Friday in the pueblo with their aunt ily and their neighbors in and around Salta- thicker yolks and richer flavor. With time Luisa in order to study. How they have no pura can now watch the evening news after and money she doesn’t have, she travels reg- running hot water inside their home in the their favorite teleserie, read comfortably at ularly from the campo into Nueva Imper- campo. How until November 2003, Teresa night, and see their food at dinner without ial to negotiate with the municipio, and to and her neighbors had to light their homes first fumbling for matches or worrying about participate in Comunidades Emprendedo- with candles and gas lamps because electricity exhausted batteries at just the wrong ras, an initiative of the Chilean non-gov- had not yet reached their sector. How in moment—all thanks to Teresa’s hard work. ernmental organization Gente Expresa, many ways Chile does live up to its “third aimed at helping leaders in la Araucanía world” stereotype. , develop their skills as leaders and social entre- But this paints only half the picture. What in just two small greenhouses and a few plots preneurs. if I told you that for three consecutive years more, produce more vegetables than your Teresa realized that electricity doesn’t just Nueva Imperial’s public library recognized salad could possibly hold: from tomatoes and appear in the campo, passive light from an Teresa as the comuna’s most avid reader? That cucumbers to green beans and broccoli, from effortless hand. In 1998 Teresa, then pres- by candle-light and the gas lamp in her potatoes and cilantro to quinoa and black ident of the indigenous community of Salta- kitchen, Teresa would strain her eyes to make raspberries. Teresa is one of the founding pura, took over as president of the comité de out black letters on dark pages after spend- members of Falinche, an association of small- electrificación—the electrification commit- ing a long day of baking tortillas and pan scale local farmers who sell their produce tee—jump-starting an initiative begun, but amasado, feeding chickens, tending crops and at a series of stalls they established near the abandoned, five years earlier. Over the attending meetings. And that Teresa’s fam- centro of Nueva Imperial. She supports course of the following years, she knocked
26 ReVista • SPRING 2004 PHOTOGRAPHS BY SCOTT RECHLER FOCUS ON ECONOMICS
Araucanía, meanwhile, has an even higher passively for change to come to them. Héc- rate of 74.4 organizations per 10,000 inhab- tor acknowledges that structural barriers itants dedicated to improving education, exist, and might even be at the root of such employment, health, and housing, among distrust and resignation. However, he sug- others, in their communities. In a 2002 gests that this collective mal ánimo—nega- speech at Harvard University’s Kennedy tive attitude—unnecessarily reinforces these School of Government, USAID director structural concerns. Andrew Natsios declared Chile, along with As a response to this social concern, Héc- Costa Rica, as one of the two Latin Ameri- tor introduced Comunidades Emprende- can countries with the strongest civil society. doras through Gente Expresa. He aims to Yet after empty workshops and struggling change participants’ “ser y hacer”— their way attempts to promote civic participation in of thinking and doing— through intense the region—part of my task here with Gente individual “coaching” and strengthening col- Expresa—many have told me that it’s laborative teams of diverse community lead- Chilean “culture” to stick out one’s hand and ers. Community workshops and one-on-one wait for coins, food, water, homes, to fall conversations emphasize the importance of into place. In other words, citizens will par- listening closely to others’ interests, critiques ticipate, but only insofar as necessary to and concerns. receive concrete, tangible benefits for them- At the core of the work is an important selves and their families. The work of ded- attitudinal shift, a new focus on opportu- icated leaders such as Teresa—looking nity and possibility, rather than problems beyond herself to her community, her town, and failure. If Chile continues to focus on her region—certainly exists, but is rare. The its poverty and underdevelopment, the lingering question is: Why? If Chile’s civil country will remain poor and underdevel- society is so active, with such demonstrated oped, drowning in its own distrust and res- potential, where is the missing link? ignation. Only if its leaders—social, public on door after door, registered each house- Citizens and civil society organizations and private—take on these problems as chal- hold in her community, sought municipal typically blame the Chilean government— lenges, obstacles as opportunities, and begin and regional support, invited two other local, regional, and national. They cite over- to work together will the country and its cit- communities to join the process, negotiated spending and poorly managed budgets, izens, move forwards. Only if Teresa and her with electric companies, and oversaw the promises without follow-through, and sys- neighbors see the lack of electricity as room installation of the electric wires through tems of political organization, support, and for an improvement, not a sentence to fail- to the inauguration of electricity in Salta- incentives that work against local interests, ure, and take it upon themselves to build pura and neighboring Bolonto, Millecoi and particularly those of Chile’s poor, rural, and the bridges needed to make that change, will that change take place. If Chile’s civil society is so active, with such Scott Rechler (Harvard FAS ’03) is cur- demonstrated potential, where is the missing link? rently working in Temuco, Chile with the non-governmental organization Gente Huichahue on Monday, November 24, indigenous populations. Why participate, Expresa, on a Trustman Fellowship admin- 2003. As we stood talking that Wednes- they wonder, if they ultimately have no istered by Harvard’s Office of Career Ser- day morning in mid-November, Teresa was- influence over the decisions and institu- vices. Scott wrote his social anthropology n’t telling me about how hard it is to live tions that affect them and their commu- senior thesis on “social entrepreneurship, without electricity. She was describing her nities? social capital, and social change in south- final negotiations with the municipio of Gente Expresa’s executive director Héc- ern Chile.” For more on these topics, please Nueva Imperial and the Intendente of la tor Jorquera offers a more “cultural,” as e-mail him
SPRING 2004• ReVista 27 CITIZENSHIP: DIVERSITY AND EQUITY Integration and Exclusion p.29 Gender and Chile's Split Culture p.32 Homosexual in Chile Today p. 35 The Struggle of the Mapuche Peoples p.38 Migration: The Hidden Face p. 41 of Globalization Education and Equity p. 44 The University Student Movement p. 47 As Chilean sociologist Gonzalo de la Maza points out, economic inclusion in Chile has been “precarious, partial and profoundly unequal.” So has cultural inclusion. The poor, women, gay, indigenous and rural citizens take up the challenge of diversity and equity in a modernizing Chile.
Modernization a la Chilena Integration and Exclusion
BY GONZALO DE LA MAZA
, The situation described above permits a rereading of the post- celebrated two decades of practically uninterrupted economic dictatorship period. The majority of the population had been objec- growth and 15 years of peaceful transition from dictatorship tively and subjectively excluded because of unemployment, O to democracy. The last two processes differentiate Chile in a repression and poverty before then. In the post-dictatorship period, positive sense from many of its neighbors in Latin America and in the majority of the people were summoned to a new kind of inclu- a certain way is an unexpected result of the struggle for democ- sion through consumerism and institutional democratic partici- racy in the 1980s. pation. But actual economic inclusion has been precarious, partial Even those post-1990 new democratic authorities who did not and profoundly unequal. believe in the neoliberal economic model imposed during the mil- In the political realm, the limitations of the transition, the reduced itary dictatorship continued and deepened it—with certain varia- role of the state and “authoritarian enclaves” impede significant tions. This has produced good macroeconomic results. More than changes and real participation. Citizens experience insecurity, the a decade of growth beyond historical rates, was followed by another sensation of a powerlessness, fear and lack of control over their own period in which Chile surpassed most of Latin America, a region lives. The public sphere is weakened because of a perception of “the severely punished by different economic crises. In the political arena, lack of recognition and representation of public institutions, espe- on the other hand, after 15 years of democracy, the anti-democra- cially those charged with creating ties for the related with modern tic 1980 political constitution imposed by Pinochet is still in effect. citizenship,” as the United Nations Development Programme Many of the institutions he built are still operating. (UNDP) pointed out in its 1998 Report on Human Development. Since 1990, active social policies have helped to reduce Chile’s rate of absolute poverty in contrast with the rest of the continent. PARTIAL INTEGRATION IN MODERNIZATION A LA CHILENA In spite of economic growth, political stability and a overall improve- Social policies, including higher wages and minimum pensions, as ment in income levels, an effective strengthening of civil society— well as low levels of unemployment until 1998, contributed to an greatly weakened by 17 years of dictatorship— is still lacking. increase in Chileans’ income during the 1990s. Yet inequality of Indeed, inequality of opportunities among social groups is more opportunities increased during this period. Workdays became longer entrenched and various types of social disintegration are on the rise. and Chilean families found themselves deeper in debt. Inequality Political participation, as well as democratic commitment, has declined has gone hand in hand with economic modernization, creating a considerably since the first years of transitional governments. social fissure that is now having political consequences. The road of “modernization” agreed upon by economic and polit- In 1990, 38.6% of the population received monthly income ical elites at the end of the 1980s did not look at the shaping of below poverty level. In the year 2000, the number had declined society as a goal. Rather, it focused on economic growth, institu- to 20.6%, some three million Chileans, according to the Poll on tional political “normalization” and so-called “payment of social Socio-Economic Characteristics. Yet even this positive showing has debt.” The goal was to try to maintain the conditions of economic not reached the level of 30 years ago, when in 1973, only 17% of growth and to add on a more active social policy. Naturally, that the population was below poverty level. As the economy improves, could not change the basic course of the productive structure. There- the contrasts are sharper. Statistics show that 10% of today’s poor- fore, the transition’s relevant social achievements could not be trans- est Chilean homes have decreased from receiving 1.5% of the wealth, lated into stable integration and social participation. to only 1.3 % with an average income of $80 monthly. In con- [email protected] AND [email protected] trast, the wealthiest 10%, captures 41%, of Chile’s total income and Top: Casa Ritoque, bottom: bathrooms for rent earns an average of $3,000 monthly. Poor households have a larger
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALEJANDRO BARRUEL (TOP) AND MARCELA RENTERIA (BOTTOM) SPRING 2004• ReVista 29 CHILE number of members, which means that each person in the wealth- The amount of resources destined toward social policy has increased iest sector of the population has income 40 times greater than steadily, particularly in the areas of health and education, although each of Chile’s poorer citizens. the impact of this investment has been relatively low. Meanwhile, the Recent studies, including a World Bank report, indicate that the majority of the innovative agencies in the public sector created since structure of income distribution in Chile is not much different from 1990 have experienced crisis after crisis and have not managed to inte- that of other Latin American countries, except in relationship to grate themselves into the traditional structure of the state. the highest income group, which enjoy a disproportionately great Chile’s public social expenditure has doubled in absolute terms concentration of resources and opportunities. At the beginning of from 1990, according to the official report of the follow-up meet- the decade, Chile put the problem of the “five million poor” on the ing of the World Social Development Summit. It has grown a bit table as the main challenge for social policy. We can now say that more than two percentage points of the GNP and represents three- the “five hundred thousand rich,” richer by the day, are the coun- fourths of all public spending. How is it possible that in spite of these try’s main problem. The society has managed to increase resources efforts by the public sector, the increasingly unequal structure of for the poor so they can survive. However, by not reducing inequal- Chilean society has not been altered? We don’t understand why, ity, it has blocked the social availability of the necessary resources World Bank economist Guillermo Perry recognized at the beginning to live together in harmony. Because sobrevivir is not the same as of the year. Probably the answer is that only public expenditure is convivir. redistributed, while the major sources of income tend to be highly concentrated. Almost half of public expenditure is used to pay pen- POLITICAL POLICIES OF A SMALL STATE sions, a percentage that will only increase in the future as Chileans The contribution of public policies has been crucial to the increase grow older and the state assumes responsibility for its uncovered or in income of the poorest. However, employment, closely linked under-covered citizens. Many of them work for the exportation activ- to the evolution out of poverty, and other key factors have not been ities, the dynamic “modern side” of Chilean society. tackled. While economic growth averaged more than 6% in the last Public expenditure also has a limited impact because it repre- decade, employment has only increased 0.8% yearly. This means sents only a fifth of total economic expenditure. Thus, paradoxi- that poverty decline has also been slower, particularly among poor cally, state monetary transfers represent 31% of the income for women and youth. The latter experience unemployment at three Chile’s poorest 10%, but their income participation has only times the rate of adults. The jobs that have been created are mostly improved 0.1%. At the same time, consumers are more frequently in the informal sector and thus precarious, with low wages and paying for public services themselves, 50% in health, almost 40% bad working conditions. in housing and 10% in education with a growing tendency for shared costs between the consumer and the state. Fishing scene in the south of Chile. CITIZENSHIP: DIVERSITY AND EQUITY
THE ARCHIPELAGO OF CIVIL SOCIETY and women—who work in precarious tasks without access to basic The capacity of social groups themselves to act upon the public labor rights. Especially those temporary workers in the“modern” stage has diminished since peaking in the early 1990s. No norma- export-oriented sectors such as the fruit and fish processing indus- tive framework exists in Chile to favor the growth, consolidation tries and in the lumber trade. Labor rights have to be sought for the and influence of an active civil society. Non-governmental organi- distinct forms of work that are prevalent today among the poor- zations, previously a factor in setting the social agenda, have been est: subcontracts, domestic work and other labor carried out in peo- reduced to carrying out the spending of public funds, as a way of ple’s homes. The inclusion in the workforce of the poorest broadening the outsourcing of government programs. women—with little education and without access to services—must The associative tradition subsists, but it is materialized in an infi- be improved by widening services to take into account the reality nite number of organizations without common links nor any real of a broad range of women. weight in public affairs. In 1999, UNDP identified the high num- The traditional rural sector throughout the country lacks access ber of associations of all types in Chile as reaching 83,000 without to new productive activities, not experiencing any improvement even counting religious organizations. This high number reflects only in their capacity to earn a living, in spite of large investments in social infrastructure. The Mapuche peasants, not only expelled from their lands, but also At the beginning of the decade, Chile put the problem of enduring the pressure of multinational lum- the “five million poor” on the table as the main challenge ber companies, fall into this category. But so do urban youth, with high rates of unem- for social policy. Now, the “five hundred thousand rich,” ployment, low salaries, increased school dropout rates and increased participation in richer by the day, are the country’s main problem. crime and drug networks. The “stigma” of these youths as dangerous has increased with- a potential strength but not a social dynamic with the correspond- out taking into account the origins of the problem. That’s not ing capacity of influence. The labor sector, in which the rate of union- limited to Santiago, but has extended to rapidly growing medium- ization has dropped and the number of union members have fallen sized cities because of lack of opportunities in the rural sector. by a third, is an example of this trend. The only thing that has actu- Some social sectors also experience cultural marginality: sexual ally increased is the absolute number of unions, little entities with- minorities, families who do not conform to traditional patterns, out any real power. According to UNDP data, a greater number of ethnic groups and traditional cultures. Basic rights in the sexual and participation in formal organizations is found only in the upper classes, reproductive areas are not recognized; neither is divorce legal in together with a greater “informal social capital of its members.” Chile. Freedom of expression exists, but not the channels of com- The disintegration and subjective fear reflect the loss of “power” munication with which to sustain discussion about culture and val- of civil society concerning matters in its area of competency and ues reflecting the country’s diversity. have led to a lack of political participation. This has permitted the Another priority is the democratization of public spaces, increas- emergence of a powerful neo-conservative populism: technocratic ingly in the hands of private interests. In this case, effective social and authoritarian with an anti-political discourse constituted as participation and public access to instruments of influence need an alternative to real power. to shape societal decisions and directions. The democratization of During the 1990s, the relationship between society and the state public spaces spans a broad range that includes from physical access were once again redefined. The state—looking “upward”—concerned to public spaces such as plazas, beaches, sports facilities, natural itself with guaranteeing optimum conditions for the operation of an resources, cultural and communitarian infrastructure to the need export economy in which foreign investment and the financial sec- to democratize and regulate the mercantile operation of the media. tor predominate. Looking “downward,” the state focused its actions A particular concern is the need for equitable and high quality edu- on the poorest of the poor with fragmented strategies and without cation that does not discriminate and is culturally relevant to the a framework of universal rights necessary to foment social integra- country’s different realities. tion. In Chile, there is no normative framework to favor the devel- Finally, the key is to strengthen citizenship: to keep on advanc- opment, consolidation and influence of an active citizenry. ing in the promotion and effective respect of women’s rights, the stim- ulation of popular participation in decision-making, particularly in NEW CHALLENGES FOR AN INTEGRATED CHILE local measures, new forms of social organization adapted to Chile’s The previous arguments allow us to identify challenges in the search technological, educational, demographic and cultural changes, actions for a new social integration in which the role of the civil society is against distinct forms of discrimination and the deepening of the fundamental, given the limitations of the state action and priori- decentralization process and the democratization of local spaces. All ties. Social and cultural exclusion must be placed on top of the agenda. these factors will lead to all Chileans becoming equal citizens. The process of economic modernization integrates some and excludes others, increasing social differences. In this fashion, poverty and mar- Gonzalo de la Maza, sociologist, is director of the program on ginalization are not clumped together in large homogeneous groups, Citizenship and Local Management at the Fundación para la but assume multiple guises throughout the country. Superación de la Pobreza in Santiago, Chile. He was a Spring Social action in those sectors in which diverse factors for mar- 2003 Ford Foundation Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller
[email protected] ginality and discrimination are concentrated in such workers—men Center for Latin American Studies.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CRISTINA ABAD ANGEL SPRING 2004• ReVista 31 CHILE Gender and Chile’s Split Culture Continuing Contradictions in Women’s Lives
BY MARGARET POWER
( ) chal power in society and the family. “Having a job is fine, but what most women really want is a Although this dynamic movement no longer exists, it placed fem- house and children,” according to a July 2003 study by the inist demands for equality on the political agenda. Today, many of its S Santiago-based Centro de Estudios Públicos. That same study leaders occupy important positions in government, influential think reveals that 52% of women (versus 38% of men) strongly disagree tanks, and universities. The Concertación government created SER- with the statement that “Married people are, in general, happier NAM, (Servicio Nacional de la Mujer), whose director holds min- than those who are not married.” (El Mercurio, July 19, 2003) isterial rank. Under SERNAM’s direction, the Chilean government This apparent disconnect reflects the tensions and contradictions has incorporated legal equality for women and men into the Con- that frame the lives of many women in Chile today. stitution. It also fostered the passage of a law that eliminated legal dis- In Chile, as indeed throughout the rest of the world, norma- tinctions between children born in or out of wedlock. tive ideas about gender strongly influence women’s lives, expecta- Several Chilean universities now teach women’s and gender stud- tions and possibilities. Chileans typically conflate womanhood with ies. Yet much of the Chilean right and the Catholic Church fer- motherhood. They associate women with the home, family, and vently oppose the demands of the feminist movement because children. Yet, for many women, the gendered expectations they feminist goals challenge patriarchal relations and entrenched ideas receive and frequently internalize, conflict with the drive to moder- about gender. Further complicating the issue, some sectors of the nity that dominates the national discourse and shapes public val- Concertación fail to support certain goals of the feminist move- ues and goals. These expectations also clash with many women’s ment, such as divorce and abortion rights, thus undermining fem- quotidian reality and desires. In this article, I seek to explore dif- inists’ ability to pass legislation on these issues. ferent expressions of this conflict among Chilean women today and The second legacy of the Pinochet era to the women’s movement offer some explanations as to why it has emerged. is Chile’s insertion into the world market. This opening exposed a Chile today is a product of the wrenching political, social, cul- formerly insular country to an influx of ideas and images about tural and economic projects of the last forty years. The Chilean expe- women and men that directly challenged the conservative discourse rience has ranged from the leftist government of Salvador Allende of the Pinochet regime and the women’s organizations that sup- in the early 1970s, to the military dictatorship of General Pinochet ported it. While the Pinochet regime preached the idea that women’s in the 70s and 80s, to the post-dictatorial Concertación govern- fundamental, essential role in life was to be a mother, U.S. and Euro- ment of today. Perhaps ironically, the Pinochet dictatorship had pean media showed women performing a range of different roles, the most profound impact on gender relations; its legacy influ- many of which reflected the politics and achievements of the global ences many of the tensions that define Chilean women’s lives today. feminist struggle. Furthermore, the neoliberal focus on the indi- The Pinochet dictatorship, like many preceding governments, vidual and consumerism encouraged women to work in order to pledged to modernize Chile. For the military dictatorship, mod- have money to buy products for themselves, as opposed to being ernization meant neoliberalism and the privatization of the Chilean the self-sacrificing wife or mother who submerges her own needs economy. These policies (which subsequent governments have basi- into those of her family. cally followed) signaled the termination of state subsidies to indus- These different political, social, economic and cultural influences try; Chile’s intensified insertion into the world economy; and play out in a variety of ways in Chile today. Women’s gendered reali- substantial changes in production, such as the increased growing of ties shape many of their political preferences and a gender gap exists fruit and wine for export and the introduction of computers. These in Chile, just as it does in the U.S. However, unlike the U.S., Chilean changes led to a rapid decline in men’s traditional sources of employ- women tend to vote more conservatively than do men. For example, ment, along with the trade union movement that had defended the majority of Chilean women opposed the Allende government and, them. They opened up new areas of work, many of which women at least initially, supported the Pinochet dictatorship; in the 2000 now occupy. Thus, while the military regime’s patriarchal discourse presidential elections a majority of women voted for rightist Joaquín defined women as dependent wives and mothers, its economic poli- Lavín, a member of Opus Dei, the extremely conservative Catholic cies either forced or allowed them to take on new roles as wage labor- organization. (Margaret Power, Right-Wing Women in Chile) ers, in some cases as the sole financial supporter of their families. Today, 46.7% of women work outside the home, the highest Two other factors explain why the Pinochet period has had such percentage that has ever done so in Chilean history. This percent- a deep impact on Chilean women today. First, a feminist movement age is low compared to Sweden (81%), but only slightly lower than emerged in Chile in the 1980s in opposition to the highly repres- other South American countries such as Brazil (50%) and Colom- sive practices of the government and in support of the emancipa- bia (48%). (El Mercurio, July 19, 2003). Economic necessity, the tion of women. With its slogan, “Democracy in the streets and in development of new jobs, and women’s willingness to work explain the home,” this movement broadened the definition of politics to the increased number of women workers. Women workers typically include personal and domestic relations and challenged patriar- receive less than their male counterparts, however. For example,
32 ReVista • SPRING 2004 CITIZENSHIP: DIVERSITY AND EQUITY
Clockwise from left: Artist Daniela Tobar in her glass house, Foreign Relations Minister Soledad Alvear; a woman plumber; and Defense Minister Michelle Bachelet gets ready for flight [email protected]
PHOTOGRAPHS: ALEJANDRO BARRUEL (LOWER RIGHT), SPRING 2004• ReVista 33 ALL OTHERS COURTESY OF EL MERCURIO CHILE women in industry earn only 71.3% of what men do and women did so, however, indicate that sexual relations for women do not nec- in mining receive only 60%. (ICFTU, December 4, 2003) Neolib- essarily equate with women’s empowerment or choice. About 49% eral economic policies encourage the large-scale production of fruit of the women said they engaged in sexual relations for pleasure, while and wine for export to Europe and the United States. Women an equal number said they did so in response to pressure from their have obtained the majority of the jobs in the fruit industry, in boyfriend or because they feared they would lose him if they did not. large part because the companies pay women less than they would Certainly, more women now assert their right to sexual pleasure, but men, thus making female employment more lucrative to the fruit as is true in many parts of the world, that does not mean they are companies. A high percentage of women work in the informal getting it. According to a 2000 study conducted by Fundación Futuro, sector, which is not unionized and lacks security or benefits. Women’s more than 50% of Chilean women are not sexually satisfied (neither growing participation in the labor force has not translated into gen- are roughly 50% of Chilean men). The recent bestseller, Women, der equality. However, it may have increased women’s self-esteem, Their Secret Sexuality, by Chilean psychologist Maria Eugenia Wein- capacity to support themselves and their families, and their unwill- stein and award-winning author Patricia Politzer, argues that dis- ingness to accept abusive treatment from their male partners. cussions about sex between couples are still taboo in Chile. Many The Catholic Church wields enormous power in Chile, espe- women fake orgasms, which make them feel both guilty and defi- cially over the lawmakers. Although 95% of Chileans routinely state cient, since they assume it’s their fault they don’t have them. Lesbian they believe in God, only about 34% regularly attend church ser- realities and sexuality remain fairly invisible, although groups like vices; and only 27% of young people do. (Santiago Times, May 4, the Colectiva Lesbica Feminista Ayuquelen, whose goal is to strengthen 2001) Equally significant, Protestant churches (which support the the lesbian organization, do exist. right to divorce) are growing in Chile. For many Chilean women Chileans’ response to the “Glass House” reveals much about cur- professing belief in God is not synonymous with following the rent Chilean attitudes towards gender and sexuality. In January 2000 dictates of the Catholic Church on social issues. Although the (the Chilean summer), the actress Daniella Tobar took up residence Catholic Church fervently opposes divorce, since it perceives the in a glass house, specifically constructed in downtown Santiago as a granting of divorce as the beginning of the slippery slope that will living art exhibit on the issue of privacy and Santiaguinos’ attitude inevitably lead to support for abortion and “homosexuality,” Chilean toward it. Instead, the site became an unbridled display of male sex- public opinion overwhelmingly supports it. And many Chileans are ual repression, aggression and lust. Tobar conducted all of her daily simply voting with their feet: larger numbers of young Chileans are activities, including taking a shower, in full view of the increasingly large male crowd that gathered outside the exhibit to watch her. At times, the male crowd Women’s gendered realities shape many of their yelled at her to take her clothes off and take political preferences and a gender gap exists in Chile, a shower. On various occasions, the men groped and harassed women who happened just as it does in the United States. to be walking by. Despite the fact that scant- ily clad women serve men coffee in down- simply not getting married. Recognizing that their marriage may town cafes, and that the kiosks of Chile have an overabundance of not last, they choose to live together rather than face the cost of newspapers displaying women in varying stages of undress, the Glass an annulment or the impossibility of a divorce. Only 73% of House scandalized much of Chilean society, which vocally condemned Chileans hope to marry while in Argentina 95%, Venezuela 88%, it. A comment made by Tobar in an interview reveals much, I believe, and Brazil 94% of young people do. (El Mercurio, June 21, 2002) about why her presence evoked such a response and speaks volumes Because so many Chileans do not marry, more than one half of all about gender and sexuality in contemporary Chile. When asked how Chilean babies are born to unmarried parents. she felt about what she was doing, she replied, “Every day I am get- Chilean women do not enjoy reproductive rights. As in the case ting more and more calm. I am in control now.” of divorce, hypocrisy pervades the public debate on abortion. The Modernization, despite the tensions and contradictions associ- Catholic Church is firmly opposed to abortion. Yet roughly one in ated with it, has made it more possible for Chilean women to exert three pregnancies ended in an abortion in 1990. (CEDAW, U.N. Con- more control over their lives. Economic realities, gender restraints, cluding Observations, 1995) Without access to a safe way of ended and women’s own desires limit the extent to which women can exer- unwanted pregnancy, many women seek unsafe clandestine abortions. cise or enjoy this control. At the same time, the history of a vibrant Thus, one in five women who induces an abortion requires subsequent women’s movement, new economic possibilities, and the higher pro- hospitalization. The current Ricardo Lagos government maintains a file of women in government, the media, and intellectual centers contradictory position on the issue of reproductive rights. It simulta- offer women images and realities that are constantly expanding the neously declares its opposition to abortion and “supports both parents definition of Chilean womanhood, opening new interpretations and freely deciding the desired number of births.” (Adriana Delpiano, U.N. possibilities for women to emerge from the glass houses they inhabit. General Assembly on “Women 2000,” June 5, 2000) It is hard to gauge to what degree attitudes toward women’s sex- Margaret Power is an assistant professor of history at the Illinois uality are changing. Few women or men expect women to be vir- Institute of Technology. She is the author of Right-Wing Women gins when they marry and, according to a 2000 study, Power within in Chile and co-editor, with Paola Bacchetta, of Right-Wing the Couple, Sexuality and Reproduction by sociologist Teresa Valdés, Women around the World. Her current research explores the con- 77% of the women in her study had premarital sex. The reasons they nections between modernity, gender, and technology in Chile.
34 ReVista • SPRING 2004 CITIZENSHIP: DIVERSITY AND EQUITY Homosexual in Chile Today Lights and Shadows
BY GABRIEL GUAJARDO
Gay, lesbian and transgender social organizations, as well as a at the end of the 1980s as a social response to the HIV/AIDS thoughtful academy, civil society stakeholders and public state-con- epidemics and the fight for democracy. Homosexual groups trolled services, have placed homosexuality in the context of its cul- H such as Liber-H began in a town in the central region of Chile, tural significance. Chilean writer and cultural critic Juan Pablo Paine, a place scarcely affected by the political repression during the Sutherland, referring to the proliferation of writing on the homo- military dictatorship. In 1987, the Corporación Chilena de Preven- sexual issue, commented, “The advancement of the Chilean les- ción del SIDA came into existence as a collective response to the bian-homosexual movement and the visibility of its proposals have HIV/AIDS epidemic. A constellation of organizations soon emerged accustomed the public and the society in general to these out- on the scene: the so-called “Historic” MOVILH, MUMS, the bursts generating at times significant discussions regarding cultural— Movimiento Unificado de Minorías Sexuales and more recently, Traves and not just literary—production.” Chile. Lesbian organizations have forged their own way in a cer- In spite of recent advances in terms of political and cultural tain dialogue of inclusion and distinct autonomy in relation to male spaces, the homosexual in Chile today faces many challenges, includ- homosexuals. They have built their own social organizations and ing persistent homophobia. These shadows include discrimination, created their own ways of communicating. (See page 37 for web- exclusion and identity issues that reflect the sometimes hostile envi- site information on these organizations.) ronment. For example, in 2003, Chileans vehemently discussed The Chilean homosexual today finds expression in this prolif- whether homosexuals should have the right to donate blood for eration of civil society organizations and lively Gay Pride parades. blood banks. Those opposed argued that homosexuals would donate Legal restrictions on sexual relations between persons of the same HIV-infected blood, resulting in possible death for innocent per- sex have been removed from the books. As in the rest of Latin Amer- sons. The underlying implication, of course, was that all homo- ica, the number of publications and studies on sexuality and gen- sexuals are AIDS-carriers. Blood banks ended up accepting blood der issues has increased. Certain topics such as sexual diversity donations from homosexuals, but shadows of prejudice against this and the HIV/AIDS epidemic have been integrated into the pub- kind of donation still linger. lic agenda. Radio and television have begun to broadcast positive Another recent case involved public knowledge about the homo- reflections of homosexual life. Literature often deals with issues of sexuality of a judge in charge of an investigation related to a homosexual identity. pedophilia case. The case caused intense debate in the media as to
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PHOTOGRAPHS BY CRISTINA ABAD ANGEL SPRING 2004• ReVista 35 CHILE whether homosexuals should be allowed to serve as judges, an One recent example of this paradox was the television series issue that finally had a positive outcome with the judge confirmed Machos, the most successful soap opera in Chilean history, recently in his position. But in this case, as in the one mentioned above, it exported to Spain. Although we never saw the character’s boyfriend is still possible to feel the violent tone of certain attitudes. or any intimate contact between men, his love and loss and his strug- The Chilean backlash, or homophobic reappearance, can be gle for family acceptance captured the Chilean audience. Eventu- placed in a larger context, including the continent’s economic glob- ally everyone accepted him, including his overly macho father and alization that has resulted in transformations of the cultural map of brother, a direct negation of the transgression message perpetu- Latin America. National social and political aperture and regional ated in the news media. Perhaps most important, the protagonist integration have led countries such as Chile to insert themselves was not a stereotypically gay character in the vein of Will and Grace competitively in the global market. Thus, the public expression of and Queer Eye. sexual diversity becomes more difficult because of the inclusion of The Chilean alternative media have been encouraging non-stereo- new meanings that not only can be ascribed to the countries them- typical images of homosexual presence for much longer. The radio selves, but to the integration and exclusion process that globaliza- program “Triángulo abierto,” on the air since 1993, allows the broad- tion generates (García Canclini, 1995; Brunner, 1998). cast of different types of journalistic venues, including the partici- pation of lesbian/gay movement public speakers and the presence MEDIA, POLITICS AND GAY PERFORMANCE of homosexuals or homosexual themes from the academy, politics The globalization of communications requires theoretical and empir- and culture. (See
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36 ReVista • SPRING 2004 PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF CANAL 3 CITIZENSHIP: DIVERSITY AND EQUITY a 2003 survey approved the statement: “Medical doctors must study sure in 1999 found that 71% of the cases were homosexual or bisex- the causes for homosexuality, in order to prevent their continuing ual men (Gobierno de Chile-Ministerio de Salud, 2000). Then, birth” (Chilean Government, 2003). based on official numbers, the question of who are homosexuals Homophobia results in serious lesbian and gay human rights in Chile is still pending. in Chile. Modification of legal regulations has not necessarily guar- In the 1990s we can find many ways of representing identities anteed the pacific and respectful co-existence with homosexual per- in the field of sexual diversity and the multicultural richness of the sons and groups in our country. We lack the educational, different countries in the region. Each term—“lesbian,”“sissy,” “homo- communication and judicial strategies to allow for the restitution sexual” or “gay”— has a specific recognized meaning that does not correspond to mere technical descriptions of In spite of recent advances in terms of political and behavior and varies from country to coun- try. For example, the term “lesbian” agglu- cultural spaces, the homosexual in Chile today faces tinates a constellation of identities and affective and sexual experiences of women many challenges, including persistent homophobia. that can be considered alien to certain cul- Modification of laws has not guaranteed respectful tural or linguistic contexts. This also has to do with such cultural generalizations about co-existance. the “Latin American man” or the “macho latino,” ignoring the differences, complexi- of homosexual dignity as persons and citizens. Illegal arrests and ties and subtleties of masculinities and everyday experiences of men intimidation continue. Social stereotypes and restrictions persist, (Ramírez, 1993; Gutmann, 1996). hindering the possibility of filing a suit in defense for acts of dis- The possibilities of building a homosexual-lesbian and trans- crimination and defamation committed against gay, transsexual gender identity must be seen in the context of individual processes or lesbian persons (Ahumada y Sánchez, 2000). and family arrangements of inclusion or exclusion. Under a mar- Homosexual stakeholders in Chile have filed 66 denunciations ket/consumer logic we can find social areas as bars, discotheques for discrimination in 2003 (MOVILH, 2003). Sociocultural and and other meeting places that offer various types of sociability. More- economic inequities are also reflected in the definition of homo- over, social organizations have given legal standing to basic ways phobic behavior and ways of living homosexuality. Poor homo- of knowledge and acknowledgment of being homosexual in Chile. sexuals experience more violent and aggressive behavior. On April Literature also has something to say, as we can see in Pedro Lemebel’s 12, 2003, the transgender organization Traves Chile publicly reported Manifiesto(Hablo por mi diferencia), Loco Afán, crónica de un sidario: that a gang of 30 men wielding knives and guns attacked their head- quarters in downtown Santiago, when they were having a party. “En Nueva York los maricas se besan en la calle In the act the transsexual Alejandra Soto was stabbed. Pero esa parte se la dejo a usted The homophobia and its violent consequences, of course, are Que tanto le interesa not exclusive to Chile. Amnesty International (1994) refers to extra- Que la revolución no se pudra del todo judicial executions and forced disappearance of persons identified A usted le doy este mensaje as homosexuals throughout Latin America. These grave basic rights Y no es por mí violations are intertwined with police control and repression in Yo estoy viejo entertainment venues such as discotheques and bars throughout the Y su utopía es para las generaciones futuras hemisphere (Montalvo, 1997). Hay tantos niños que van a nacer Con una alita rota GAY, LESBIAN AND TRANSGENDER Y yo quiero que vuelen, compañero IDENTITY AS A POSSIBILITY Que su revolución RESOURCES The importance ascribed to the sociocul- Les dé un pedazo de cielo rojo tural, political or legal context of the dif- ■ Corporación Chilena de Prevención Para que puedan volar”. ferent manifestations of homosexuality in del SIDA Chile is not the result of a mere analytical http://www.sidaccion.cl As the writer suggests, the future in Chile exercise, but a consequence of the possibil- ■ “Historic” MOVILH may allow a more true liberation for Chilean ities of living/experiencing homosexuality. http://www.naciongay.cl homosexuals. Under the present conditions, self identifi- ■ MUMS cation as a homosexual or bisexual person is Movimiento Unificado de Minorías Gabriel Guajardo is a Chilean anthropol- very low. In a survey on these issues in Chile, Sexuales ogist with years of experience in research. less than 3% of the population identified http://orgullogay.cl One of his main topics refers to homosexu- itself as homosexual or bisexual. Contra- ■ Traves Chile ality and gender issues. A bibliography dictorily, the very low rate of homosexual or http://www.traveschile.cl for this article can be found at bisexual self-identificatiion does not corre- ■ Lesbian organizations
SPRING 2004• ReVista 37 The Struggle of the Mapuche Peoples Deepening Democracy in Chile
BY GUILLAUME BOCCARA
’ , , respect of basic human rights. Second, because this same case shows becoming a central protagonist of the new Chilean political the increased negotiation capacity of the Mapuche organizations, and cultural panorama. Since the beginning of the 1990s and particularly since the reconstruction process in the “neotraditional” C with the return of democracy, Mapuche organizations have territorities. Third, the Mapuche activists cited in this issue of ReVista emphasized the recuperation of usurped lands, socio-territorial recon- directly tackle the dark side of the conflict between the Chilean struction and the recovery of their collective rights. The Chilean state, the Mapuche nation and the large multinational corporations state has been slow to react in an appropriate manner. The 1993 (for more lengthy interviews, see ReVista on the web indigenous law recognizes the existence of cultural pluralism in
a pluri-national or a multicultural state is built above all on the commune member. [email protected]
38 ReVista • SPRING 2004 PHOTOGRAPHS BY GUILLAUME BOCCARA From left to right: A horse-mounted bodyguard at the moment of opening the retaining wall. The estate owner admitted he was afraid about being among so many Mapuche; The flooded left side of the retain- ing wall constructed more than 40 years ago contrasts with the green fields of the Durán estate on the right side; Members of the Mapuche- Lafkenche commune open the retaining wall; Leader Hernán Levío breaks through the wall.For extensive interviews with indigenous leaders, see ReVista web
Thus, community members consider September 9, 2003 a his- the communities. “By opening this wall, the horizon is opened toric date. “It is a dream come true,” say Rosa Levío and Lucinda to us” declares another emotional community member, dressed Huenuman—women from the Pilolcura community—with much in a Chilean soccer jersey on the day of the Chile-Peru match. emotion. “To achieve the opening of the retaining wall is a great He notes, with much happiness, that when the land dries they will victory resulting from several decades of struggle and mobilization,” be able to plant crops and build sturdy homes. The communities declare Bladimir Painecura and René Huenchuñir, leaders of the will continue to work together to drain the water. According to Newen Pu Lafkenche Association, representing eight communities René Hunchuñir, 130 families will benefit from the drainage work. in the coastal Mapuche territory. Actual estate owner Juan Carlos Durán, present the day of the wall opening, recognizes that maybe SATISFACTORY PUBLIC SERVICES his father committed an error in constructing this dike so harmful The Mapuche of Champulli, Coi Coi, Pilolcura, the three com- to Mapuche farmers, saying “nowadays it is necessary to work munities in the valley of Coi Coi, are not the only ones that are together in order to construct a country for all.” Leaders Fernando happy. Ruben Cariqueo, a consultant for the regional government Huenchuñir of Champulli-Costa and Hernán Levío of Pilolcura say and coordinator of the public service project in the zone, shares that three factors allowed for the dike opening: the return to democ- the general sense of achievement. A few months after the sign- racy, community mobilization and the good will of the regional gov- ing of an agreement between the public services of the region and ernment and of public services. “We go about things in a legal the Association Newen pu Lafkenche, “concrete problems have been manner,” said Levío. “We the Mapuche are not contentious like able to be solved through negotiation and conversations,” he they would like to claim. Rather, we would like the support of the observes. Environmental specialist Mario Castro from the South regional government. We would also like to construct a better future Araucanía Health Service also observed that opening of the wall for our children through the work of the Mapuche organizations,” can be considered an act of sanitation. Author of a report about insists the president of Pilolcura. “We fight for what corresponds the retaining wall’s impact, Castro says that the opening of the to us and we have looked for a solution through dialogue, the wall is the result not only of the pressure from Mapuche organi- most beautiful thing there is.” Good will and dialogue were not zations but also of the support of several public services. Rodrigo always the case; during the time of the dictatorship, some of the Fuentes, substitute director of the water company (DGA), points leaders mobilizing in opposition to the wall disappeared. Lucinda out that “here a integral and definitive solution was sought so that of Pilolcura and Champulli community members Marta and Mirta this type of illegal situation will never be repeated again.” “Accord- give thanks to God and the Virgin for this dream come true, adding ing to the 1991 water code and to the much older civic code, it that they are happy that “Don Juan Carlos now realizes that what is not allowed for any property to produce a flood in another prop- he was doing was unjust.” erty” emphasizes Fuentes. Given the region’s size, public services The longko (traditional chief) of Pilolcura, Juan Colicheo, anx- cannot be aware of every illegal diversion of water, he observes. In iously grabs the shovel and pickaxe to break a hole through the the case of the Lobería sector retaining wall, the DGA acted in wall and allow the water trapped for more than four decades to run response to requests by the Association of Newen Pu Lafkenche freely. The longko emphasizes the collaboration and support of all communities. The situation reached a quick settlement because
SPRING 2004• ReVista 39 CHILE the substitute director, in addition to his own fieldwork, experi- retaining wall, the Mapuche organizations and the Chilean state enced collaboration with united and organized communities. Com- both seemed to draw strength from the episode, rather than enter- munity participation, trained indigenous leaders and the public ing in conflict. This represents a concrete example of how the solu- sector’s new way of looking at issues of land and Mapuche terri- tion to the so-called Mapuche problem passes through reform of tory led to a peaceful resolution. The Mapuche demonstrated their the state and of its agents to the recognition of the Mapuche nation capacity to negotiate but, above all, the State, in respecting the as a political, cultural, social, and juridical subject. That is how a new agreement appears possible through the daily construction of democracy adapted to “We the Mapuche are not contentious like they would the plurinational reality of the country. Even like to claim. Rather, we would like the support of the more so, the respect of the particular rights of the Mapuche nation tends to reinforce regional government. We would also like to construct a the universal rights of all citizens or groups of citizen, Mapuche or non-Mapuche. Far better future for our children through the work of the from representing a danger for Chile’s unity, Mapuche organizations,” —HERNÁN LEVÍO, PILOLCURA COMMUNITY LEADER. the Mapuche social movement represents an opportunity for the deepening of the democracy in a socio-culturally diverse ter- rule of law, contributed to reopening dialogue. In fact, the estate ritory. The government itself seemed to share this idea, since it owner himself explains that what pushed him to accept the open- placed the notion of interculturality at the center of its reform of ing of the retaining wall was that “in legal terms it had to be the state. The government has also aimed to strengthen dialogue, that way.” although often confronted with economic and political interests that go beyond the interests of Chilean civil society. The lesson THE CHILEAN STATE AND THE MAPUCHE NATION: of this story is that dialogue and negotiation are possible when TOWARDS A NEW AGREEMENT democracy exists—which is not always the case when it involves Community president Hernán Huenuman, DGA substitute direc- respecting and recognizing the rights of the indigenous people of tor Fuentes and owner Durán emphasized that the solution to Chile. the conflict would have been impossible without the willingness of all the parties to have a dialogue, as well as respect for the cur- SEPTEMBER 9TH: THE MAPUCHE-LAFKENCHE-CHILEAN rent law. In this case, the state fulfilled its role of ensuring respect DAY OF PATRIOTISM for the laws and of protecting the rights of the citizens, the com- To conclude, let us listen to the Pilolcura community member munities and of the nations that live within the national terri- Richard Levío who summarized with humor and lucidity the sig- tory. It is a good example of how democracy is constructed in a nificance of this important moment in both the Mapuche- diverse or plurinational society through actions. In the end, the Lafkenche history and in the relationship between the Chilean State state did not do anything more or less than reestablishing a right and the Mapuche nation: “At least now the indigenous person is that had been violated, but that ended the long conflict. An agree- heard; before we were marginalized, we had no rights to any- ment signed on March 28, 2003 by the Newen pu Lafkenche Asso- thing. Today is a patriotic day for us. All we needed was the music ciation with the regional public services made easier the resolution to dance a pair of purunes (a Mapuche dance) with a pair of cueca of the longstanding problems between the Durán estate and the (Chilean national dance). But given that we are all focused here on indigenous communities. According to Association President the opening of the wall, instead of the instruments we’ll use picks Bladimir Painecura, “This precedent can be imitated, but certain and shovels.” conditions must be met in order to be able to do that,” a point of view shared by sociologist Augusto González, technical advi- Guillaume Boccara (Ph.D, EHESS, Paris, 1997), an anthropolo- sor to the Newen pu Lafkenche Association. González believes that gist, is a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scien- the return to democracy, the new rapprochement of the state with tifique (France). He has worked for several years with Mapuche the most distant parts of the country and the flourishing of the communities in Chile. He has been a fellow at the Program in Mapuche rights movement help explain why what had not been Agrarian Studies at Yale, visiting professor at Yale University and accomplished for more than 40 years was accomplished in five at the Casa de las Américas (Spain). Among his more recent publi- months. The organizational capacity and the management of the cations are "The Mapuche People in Post-Dictatorship Chile” in Lafkenche Association both at the community level and the ter- Etudes Rurales 163-164: 283-304 (2002), Guerre et Ethno- ritorial level permitted it to knock on the correct doors. The vic- genèse Mapuche dans le Chili Colonial (Paris, Editions L’Har- tory underscored the organizational capacity of the communities mattan, 1998), and Colonización, Resistencia y Mestizaje en las in the Lafkenche territory; it was not just a successful resolution Américas (Quito-Lima, Editorial Abya Yala/IFEA, 2003). Boc- of the simple technical challenge of figuring out where to go to cara is currently working on the process of reterritorialization make one’s rights count. The organization of the communities among the Chilean and Argentine Mapuche, neoliberal global gov- according to an in-bred territorial ordering does not contradict the ernmentality and the reconfiguration of the nation-state in Chile work of public services nor the state’s ambition to find integral and Argentina (E-mail
40 ReVista • SPRING 2004 Migration The Hidden Face of Globalization
BY DIEGO CARRASCO CARRASCO
, , , , Migration is not a new phenomenon in Chile, but these new Argentina and Cuba have flocked to Chile. They migrated to immigrants are finding a completely different context from previ- Chile with expectations based on the stability of the economic ous migratory flows. Like most Latin American countries, the I model, university system, health services and the structure of the Chilean society has its roots in migration. The first wave in the 19th Chilean labor market. Although this migration has not been a large- century resulted from specific national policies to promote Euro- , scale phenomenon, the presence of foreigners has generated some pean migration in order to populate and develop the local economies instances of discrimination that have been denounced by organi- in remote places. German families settled in the south, in regions zations of migrants in neighboring countries: exclusion based on inhabited by mapuches. English, Yugoslavian and French families nationality, mistreatment, employment in underpaid jobs, and other immigrated to Patagonia. As migration grew stronger in the 20th excluding actions. century, Spanish, Italian and English families settled in Chile’s Cen- In the 1990s, the economic, political and financial situation of tral Region. the country differed greatly from the shaky democracies and economies Most of Chile’s first waves of immigrants came from groups of other countries in Latin America. As a result, many of these Latin affected by Europe’s critical situation at the end of the 19th century American nationals expect to find in Chile the right destination for and the two World Wars. European migration was promoted and finding a job and improving the living conditions of their families. encouraged through the allocation of land or some benefits stipu- This was the beginning of an important migration from Peru and lated by specific laws. In those days, the basic assumption was to Ecuador, but this time on an individual and job-oriented basis that favor European citizens because they were better at developing a has resulted in around 60,000 migrants in the last three years. The work ethic as pioneers in areas not inhabited by Chilean citizens. GONZALO LEIVA HOPPE * ELALVARO QUIJADA, A OJO LA HISTORIA countries of origin have reacted by establishing high migration rates,
FROM COLECCIÓN IMAGINARIOS,SANTIAGO, CHILE 2003,
PHOTOGRAPH BY ALVARO HOPPE SPRING 2004• ReVista 41 CHILE
The truth is that the German nationals were taken to areas that had dence clearly requires a deeper reflection about the need to con- recently been under dispute with the mapuches, and the English solidate a “globalization of citizens" as the basis for the construc- subjects and Yugoslav citizens were taken to areas that required a tion of a global economy. population that could guarantee territorial control in Patagonia. At These considerations trigger the daily questioning of the actual the same time, the migratory flow of Chilean citizens of the Cen- validity of the human rights of around 13 million migrants in our tral Region to the northern territories that resulted from the war continent, as they move from one country to another mainly for with Peru and Bolivia was encouraged. economic reasons. Attention has focused on Mexico, El Salvador, In our more recent history, in the 1970s and 1980s, Chile was Haiti, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Bolivia, and more recently, Argentina. characterized for being a banishing country, mainly for reasons asso- These facts pose one of the most interesting challenges of our ciated with political and economic events. General Augusto Pinochet’s time, not always met at Economic or Regional Integration Forums: military regime and the early-1980s economic recession led to the the need to establish a status of Inter-American Citizenship. Every migration abroad of at least 500,000 Chilean citizens. person has human rights in view of their condition as a human In the late 1980s, as a result of the highest macroeconomic growth being, and discrimination based on nationality cannot be tolerated. in Latin America, the existence of a democratic system and the Every person has a natural citizenship the bases of which are the improved level of expectations about living standards, some 80,000 International Human Rights Treaties. It is the duty of our countries Chileans living abroad returned home—a phenomenon known as to set up the conditions for migrants to enjoy, exercise and demand the “retorno.” To favor this migration, special laws were passed to such citizenship. establish settling privileges and benefits, special franchises to bring This need assumes the joint action of the countries of the region. duty-free goods into the country and special loans. The government Policies to protect the rights of workers or migrant families in the created an official office to provide assistance and advice to those host country will not be effective unless they are accompanied by who were returning to Chile. policies in the country of origin. It is this increasing and very often The situation of today’s immigrants contrasts with not only pre- “hidden” demand that will make it necessary for our countries to vious European immigrants, who easily integrated into the cultural, adopt specific and definite agreements that should be compulsory, economic and social elite, but the structures provided for the mandatory and widespread in the Americas, a continent that is grow- “retorno." Policies must now be formulated in Chile to encourage ing and defining its character as a result of migration. the acceptance of diversity and non-discrimination and the con- struction of values and practices for integration. The migratory vari- THE VALUES OF TOLERANCE AND NON DISCRIMINATION able must be increasingly taken into account in the design of the In Chile, public policies have established a difference that favors the economic, social and cultural model of any country aspiring to be migration of “white” Europeans by regulating migration from neigh- modern—and that is Chile’s highest aspiration, to be an integral boring countries. It may be of interest to observe whether the Chilean part of the globalized world. society has discriminating or excluding features, and whether dif- Migration is one of the most important phenomena of global- ferentiation between individuals is the result of a discriminating ization. Integration is only possible among people. In other words, social pattern. we are interested in globalization at a human scale. According to IDEAS Foundation statistics, Chilean society is International law provides no definition of migration or migrant; clearly discriminatory, but through “passive” differentiation. In terms it is getting increasingly difficult to distinguish between those who of gender, the statistics are clear: there is a clear inequality in the emigrate from a country for political, social or economic reasons access to political and even economic decision-making posts for women. Women’s share of seats in the Migration is not a new phenomenon in Chile, but the National Congress is an average 9.5%; their share in political parties is 26.2%, all this context these new immigrants are finding a completely in a country in which the percentage of validly returned votes of women exceeds that different context from previous migratory flows. of men (See
42 ReVista • SPRING 2004 CITIZENSHIP: DIVERSITY AND EQUITY
tion. In short, a solid foundation must be laid to enable the creation of a culture of tolerance and diversity. The academic world must take up this challenge through research, high-level events and proposals in the field of migra- tion and fundamental rights. It must continuously test the coher- ence of equality in each context and laythe foundations for experience-based training in tolerance and even in the process of mutual acceptance. An important issue is how to involve the corporate world in this process. Economic integration agreements have a high impact on the economic, social and cultural rights of both the associ- ated countries and their populations. There has been a shift from the person who demands rights from the State to the person who increasingly demands more rights from companies. It is in this space that the question arises about the role of economic actors as promoters of human rights for one and all.
THE STATUS OF CHILEANS ABROAD One of the debts still to be settled and one of the most serious contradictions of the migration policy of the country is the sta- tus of Chilean migrants in (and from) other countries. Because of issues of money, employment or resettlement, almost one mil- lion Chilean nationals do not have full civil and political rights. Groups of Chileans have repeatedly expressed their willingness to take part in the country’s economic, social and cultural life. Coalición governments have designed plans for their integra- tion and social insertion, but the actual materialization of their political rights is still pending. Despite the fact that in the early 1990s a specific policy was designed for the return of Chileans to the country, including tax exemptions and duty free rights, there is a legal, political and social scenario that in practice prevents these thousands of Chileans from resettling in the country. There are no interna- tional treaties that guarantee the exchange of pension or wel- fare funds, double taxation that works properly, trans-country border information flow and other aspects that must be regu- lated so as to allow for the full exercise of citizenship. If the coun- “Chile, our promised land” try aspires to true globalization, it should acknowledge the rights of Chileans at all levels, beyond politico-electoral or party-politi- only limited to criteria for the economic management of large cal considerations. amounts of public spending money, or whether it is possible to build In signing economic integration treaties with Canada, Mexico, an integrating, tolerant and diverse modernity based on human the United States, the European Union, Korea, Central America, rights. China and Japan, Chile should consider essential such issues as To build from these rights, development should be consistent migration, protection of human rights of migrant workers and their with the social, cultural and economic conditions. The recent expe- families, as well as the definition of policies for the protection of riences in Bolivia, Venezuela and Argentina show that the imple- the economic, social and cultural rights of nationals in the associ- mentation of economic plans based on purely economic criteria ated countries. imply the risk of social crisis and exclusion. It will be thought provoking to get a glimpse of Chile’s capa- To sustain the Chile’s growth model, social and cultural inte- bility to develop leadership in social and cultural issues, migration gration policies must be implemented and the participation of being one of them. The definition of a modern country assumes citizens at all levels encouraged. Other necessary goals include the the consolidation of non-excluding citizenship. promotion of the culture of public interest, recognition of collec- tive rights, improvement of low-income sectors’ access to justice, Diego Carrasco is director of the Observatorio Interamericano de generation of a culture of respect for sexual and reproductive rights, Migraciones, FORJA – PIDHDD, as well as legal counsel and encouragement of the use of public spaces, promotion of micro- consultant for the foundation IDEAS. He is a lecturer at Univer- practices of tolerance and the opening up towards a society that sidad Diego Portales and Universidad de las Americas. He can be includes cyber-rights or the right to transparency and informa- reached at
PHOTOGRAPH BY ALVARO HOPPE SPRING 2004• ReVista 43 CHILE Open Schools, Open Minds, Open Societies Education and Equity
BY FERNANDO REIMERS
after 18 years in Europe, it was hard to believe how much this school the people of a nation. They also leave deep marks in an edu- and the university had changed. The best faculty were no longer here, cation system. On a trip to Chile in June 2003 to study the and I realized I would have to work with those that were left, many S effects of education policies on the quality of education, I found of whom had been hired during the dictatorship. I quickly realized that the devastating effects of those 17 years were still all too visi- the daunting challenge of trying to improve what was left here.” ble in educational institutions. It is no wonder. In addition to talking to many educators, I looked at the cur- Those who in 1973 thought that the perceived threats to free- riculum to develop literacy, and at the textbooks distributed to dom posed by the policies of the socialist government of Salvador elementary schools. The consequences of the 17-year intentional Allende would best be contained by eliminating civil liberties, by state-led destruction of the educational research and development negating people their basic human rights, by controlling what system were all too evident. Little educational research existed in thoughts and ideas were legitimate, targeted the very institutions the country. Scarce support existed for the production and accu- designed to help develop the mind. The military who ruled Chile mulation of knowledge to improve educational practice. The results for almost two decades dealt with educational institutions in the very of this deficient research knowledge base are painfully evident. same way that authoritarian governments of the left and of the right The Organisation for the Economic Co-operation and Develop- in Latin America have done for a very long time. This exacerbated ment (OECD) recently coordinated a study of basic literacy skills problems that Chilean schools share with schools elsewhere in Latin of 15-year-olds in 41 middle income and high-income nations. It America schools, namely that they insufficiently prepare children found that among these countries, Chile has one of the largest to think for themselves, to value their freedom and the freedom of percentages of youths who can’t identify the principal ideas pre- others, to learn at high levels and to construct strong social networks sented in a text. One in five Chilean students can’t demonstrate this of trust at the local, national and hemispheric levels. basic level of literacy, compared to 6% on average in the OECD. This authoritarian regime replaced freedoms with fear and sub- Compounding the effects of weak institutions to prepare teach- stituted the honest search for truth with dogma. It traded respect ers and to generate knowledge to improve educational practice, for obedience and supplanted critical reasoning with forced accep- the culture of educational decision making and management still tance of the ideas that supported a regime whose legitimacy rested reflects legacies of the recent authoritarian past. I talked to many in the ability to eliminate those who opposed it. local education administrators and teachers in the south of Chile Thus, the Pinochet government closed entire university social who reported that their suggestions often went unheeded. They had studies departments. It replaced academic university presidents with suggested ways to improve teacher professional development work- military officers. The curriculum of elementary schools was purged shops and ideas for responding to local educational problems. Pro- of contents considered a threat to national security. The govern- grams of instructional improvement supported by the Ministry of ment asked school supervisors to take on functions of political Education reflected the central administrators’ limited views of vigilance and control. School administration was placed under the the most pressing needs and their potential resolutions. supervision of regime-appointed municipal authorities who could The results of these lingering educational difficulties are troubling. control them more effectively. Educational research would have As is clear to the democratic leaders of contemporary Chile, the all but disappeared were it not for the work of a handful of research prospects for increased productivity and for deepening a democratic centers that received financial assistance from international foun- culture rest to a great extent in the development of the human poten- dations and development agencies and some of which received pro- tial of all Chileans. Sharp gaps exist in the achievement of curricu- tection from the Catholic Church (such as the Academia de lum objectives among children of different income groups, as shown Humanismo Cristiano or the Centro de Estudios y Desarrollo de la by tests administered by the Ministry of Education. Children in the Educacion). poorest 20% of the income distribution obtain test results in language In my trip last year, I discovered that education schools, where and math that are only two thirds of the results obtained by their peers teachers are formed, are only now slowly beginning to respond to in the richest 20%. As a consequence of these different odds to learn the democratic government’s initiatives to prepare a new genera- in elementary school, children from different income groups face tion of teachers. These fledgling teachers must be ready to appreci- different odds of finishing elementary school, of beginning and com- ate and develop the ability of children to think for themselves and pleting secondary and eventually of accessing college. One in four to value their freedoms and the freedom of others. In the words of (23%) of the students aged 15-19 in the poorest quartile drops out the dean of a School of Education who has played a leading role in of school before finishing high school, in comparison to 4% of the this reform of teacher education: “When I returned to this school, students in the wealthiest quartile. (ECLAC, 2002), Social Panorama
44 ReVista • SPRING 2004 [email protected] AND HELEN HUGHES/TERRE DES HOMMES SWITZERLAND© Top: Children from the town of Talagante preparing their work for a science fair; bottom: Nueva Imperial, Chile. Nov. 2000. MAPUCHE children study Eng- lish—a government requirement—as well as their native language Mapudungun in the We Malal school. Children from outlying communities board at the school during the week, others are bused in daily. Behind are three oval “rucas” with traditional thatched roofs, two are used for workshops and the third for the school’s daycare center.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY LUIS WEINSTEIN (TOP), HELEN HIGHES (BOTTOM) SPRING 2004• ReVista 45 CHILE of Latin America,Santiago. p.112). These differences in turn are exac- moral initiatives increased incentives to attract qualified candidates erbated in differences in access and completion of college. to the teaching profession, apparently with good results as the num- These low educational results and severe gaps in educational ber of candidates for university entrance who choose education has opportunities for students from different income groups are prob- increased dramatically filling all available spaces in schools of educa- lematic for a democratic state whose legitimacy rests in part on tion. New programs were developed to support reform of teacher edu- the perception that it offers equal opportunities to all citizens, a case cation institutions. The school day is being gradually expanded. Other made by Harvard President James Bryan Conant five decades ago. efforts include the revision of the curriculum and provision of instruc- Newspaper articles point out that 82% of the business leaders and tional materials to all students. Several special programs support 45% of the political leaders are graduates of private schools, even improvement of the most marginalized schools, as well as scholar- though such schools serve only 9% of the students. These figures ship programs to support high school and college attendance of low suggest that much of Chile’s talent is either untapped or insuffi- income children. More recent initiatives support educational oppor- ciently developed (La Tercera, June 7, p. 3). tunities for Mapuche children, who have been traditionally seriously Perhaps these deficient educational results are one of the reasons marginalized. In my June visits to schools, I was particularly impressed why support for democracy appears to be declining in Chile. In by the innovations introduced in the curriculum by the use of infor- 2001 less than half of those polled indicated that they preferred mation technologies. Recognizing the importance of preparing youth democracy to other forms of government, (45%, down from 61% to communicate with others in the hemisphere, recent policy initia- in 1997). This was lower than support for democracy in Argentina tives are supporting the introduction of English instruction in pub- (58%), Costa Rica (71%), Peru (62%), Uruguay (79%) or Venezuela lic school curricula. Judging by the public reactions and controversies (57%). (Latinobarometro. Cited in The Economist. July 28, 2001. surrounding Bolivia’s recent claims to have access to a sea port, Chile— Vol 360. Issue 8232). In the same survey one in three persons (31%) as the rest of the Americas— needs global education to build inter- hemispheric trust. The prospects for increased productivity and for I believe that the most valuable results of these efforts are the resulting cultural shift deepening a democratic culture rest to a great extent in in Chile to allow the development of chil- dren’s capacity to think for themselves, to the development of the human potential of all Chileans. speak without fear and to value and respect the views of their peers. I was equally stated that they were indifferent to a democratic vs. a non-democ- impressed by the openness and ease with which indigenous chil- ratic regime type. In comparison, a very small proportion of the dren communicated in rural schools in the south of Chile, as I population in Uruguay (9%) and Costa Rica (7%) said they were was by the enthusiasm and assertiveness of students in crowded indifferent (Latinobarómetro, Informe de Prensa Latinobarómetro urban municipal schools. I marveled at the courage and self-con- 2002). Only one in four Chileans surveyed is satisfied with how fidence of future teachers in schools of education in Temuco and democracy works in the country. Perhaps more troubling, only 13% Concepción as they challenged reforms implemented by the Min- of those surveyed in Chile say that they believe most people can istry of Education in a meeting with several of the most senior Min- be trusted, a weak base for the legitimacy of democratic leaders. istry officials. What impressed me the most was the effervescence While democratic leaders have been working to help educational of the conversations among educators, the desire especially on the institutions recover from 17 years of effort to turn Chile into a closed part of government officials, to critically reflect on what they are society: educational change takes time. As evident by their results, doing and their openness to contrarian views. present reforms have insufficiently addressed ways to improve ped- It is in this openness that lies the true difference with 17 years agogy to prepare children for democratic life. of fear and abuse. Chile is not a newcomer to educational reform. It will take several decades to replace the faculty of schools of More than a century ago, Chile built a public education system, even education and to build solid research and development institutions sending out advisory missions to help other nations who were under- and traditions. New faculty and teachers who are hired to bring taking the same task. The democrats now governing Chile—by the in new perspectives and practices have, with the exception of those authority delegated in them by the people—now face the challenge returning from exile, received a good part of their education under of staying the course and deepening the latest reforms to make schools authoritarian rule. The process of replacing an authoritarian cul- into institutions to strengthen an open society. This will require that ture with a culture of democracy will be gradual and slow. they create and nurture a new education culture where students, and Numerous initiatives launched during the last decade are trying teachers, can think for themselves, learn to think deeply about com- to stimulate this process of cultural change. These efforts need to be plex problems and learn to value their own freedom and the free- sustained and deepened. Most significant is the new social consensus dom of others to think independently. If they can do that, Chile will on the importance of education to help the nation achieve its goals once again, as it did a century ago, have much to contribute to mak- of improving the living conditions of all in Chile. This consensus ing Latin America more democratic, inclusive and open. resulted from a skillfully managed process of social dialogue in the mid-1990s. As a result, the zone of acceptance within which educa- Fernando Reimers is Associate Professor of Education and Direc- tion and social policy are crafted expanded substantially. Chilean soci- tor of the International Education Policy Program at the Harvard ety significantly increased financial resources for education and launched Graduate School of Education. His research focuses on policies to several initiatives to expand educational opportunity. Financial and improve the quality and relevancy of education in Open Societies.
46 ReVista • SPRING 2004 POLITICS AND IDENTITY The University Student Movement ’68 is only a memory
BY CECILIA RIVEROS ROMERO
a concrete platform that satisfies their needs. control of the power in the Federation of an event that truly describes the situa- We were able to obtain the necessary sig- Students. tion of the students in my country. The natures to register this list–two hundred–at While writing this anecdote, I realized A elections for the director of the Fed- the last moment, because it is still feared that in many other places of Chile, similar eration of Students were happening at the in Chile to say “ I am of the left.” We went events often occur. I believe that after the Universidad Católica de Chile, one of our to the inscription place and received our bal- arrival of democracy in Chile, we students two more prestigious universities. I stop to lot sheets, thinking we had already won. are no longer valuable interlocutors. Over clarify that this University, where I study, Hours later, I received the news that it had thirty years ago, student organizations were is characterized by an extreme conservatism. not been possible to register our list because, solid, conscientious and applied in their Because the economic right, to a large extent, controls many of the most important I believe that after the arrival of democracy in Chile, Chilean companies, the graduates of my uni- versity were and are the most fervent fol- we students are no longer valuable interlocutors. lowers of the neoliberal policy imposed by the dictatorship of Pinochet. Indeed, the mysteriously, a page with names had dis- objectives. Today, on the contrary, student rightist tradition has obtained year after year appeared and therefore, we did not fulfill leaders are not more than the germ of future the support of the Federation of Students, the minimum signature requirement. There political leaders, the political parties use with some exceptions. For this year, we was no other copy of those wrinkled pages them to extend their increasingly fragile wanted to teach a lesson and we tried to reg- that we thought would serve to wake up the bases of support. The streets are the scene ister a left list using a name that has been lethargy of the students of the Universidad of violent manifestations repressed like in traditionally used by the right (a child’s Católica, and with empty hands and impo- the most severe years of dictatorship, but, in game, perhaps) to prove that the students’ tent faces, we saw, once again that the right, addition, I see with frustration that the vote is conditional upon a name and not on with almost sixty percent of the votes, took young people who march do not know why they do it, nor know if they want to really do it. The voice of the students becomes the voice of the young people, a voice that is not heard in the middle of the applause for the Free Trade Agreement, nor in the discussions about the next president of Chile. There’s a lack of valid reference points to encourage students to organize themselves and work toward a common cause. I dare to say that nowadays, a solid stu- dent movement in Chile does not exist. The ideas of change, university reform and edu- cation for everyone are stuck in the mid- dle of the generalized apathy that young people feel about these policies. The prob- lem is that we who really felt the necessity to create a student group resurgence were lost in the same networks which we want eliminated. I can only hope that more sooner than later the great tree-lined avenues are witness to mobilized students with new objectives of solidarity, hope and change.
Cecilia Riveros Romero is a history stu- dent at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She can be reached Students at Adolfo Ibañez University rest on the steps. at
PHOTOGRAPH BY GUY WENBOURNE, COURTESY OF BIG MAGAZINE SPRING 2004• ReVista 47 MEMORY AND RECONCILIATION The Other 9/11 p. 48 Reflections on the International Reaction p. 56 Chile's National Stadium p. 58
The Other 9/11 My Coup Diary
BY PETER WINN WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALVARO HOPPE
- national pariah—except in Washington. The nates a darkened landscape, attracting 1973 military coup would change Chile for- everyone’s attention, the recent com- ever, and alter the regional and hemispheric L memoration of the 30th anniversary of balance of power as well. It was a historical the military coup of 9-11-1973 has compelled watershed of transcendent importance. Chileans to confront a traumatic history that many had preferred to ignore or “forget.” The THE OTHER 9/11: A COUP DIARY outpouring of television specials, commemo- When the army tanks started firing at the rative events and political controversy—and presidential palace, I was standing across the the flood of individual memories and battles Plaza de la Constitution.By then, his police over the collective memory that they pro- guard had deserted Salvador Allende, leaving voked—may not have settled old debates or the desperate defense of his democratic road persuaded old antagonists. However, they did to socialism to a score of friends and associ- underscore that “silencio” and “olvido”—con- ates who had chosen to remain with him in scious “forgetting”— are no longer viable ways La Moneda in the face of certain defeat and of dealing with this past. This is even true probable death. I had also chosen to remain— for foreign observers of the coup—like myself. across the plaza. I was a historian, I had rea- As a result, I decided to make public my soned, and I had to bear witness to this private “Coup Diary, ”published here for the watershed historical event. But as the bul- first time. The diary’s particular value is that lets started to rain down all around me, it it is a first-person account by a witness who began to look like I had made a poor choice. was also a trained observer acutely aware of the historical significance of the events he was It was all because I had gone to get my witnessing. I have edited it to remove purely Chilean Resident identity card that morning. personal references and have added a few I awoke at dawn on that gray and chilly explanations for ReVista readers. Otherwise late winter day, after a night of too little sleep it is as I wrote it 30 years ago—the diary of filled with dreams of foreboding. my personal experience of that other 9/11. I left my house early that morning to get Chile’s military coup brought Chile’s downtown before the offices of Identifica- model democracy and President Salvador ciones opened. I had been there the Friday Allende’s “democratic road to socialism” to before to get my identity card, but so many a violent end. Out of its ashes would emerge people were on line to get their safe conducts the 17-year dictatorship of General Augusto to leave the country that I had waited in vain Pinochet, whose repressive politics, regressive to be seen. social policy and neoliberal economics were One of them was Andre Gunder Frank, the polar opposite of Allende’s Popular Unity the German leftist intellectual and adviser government and whose gross violations of to the MIR, the activist Revolutionary Left human rights would make Chile an inter- movement, who gave me the incredulous look
48 ReVista • SPRING 2004 September 11, 1973, made an indelible mark in Latin American history: it was the day a democratically elected Chilean government was overthrown by a U.S.-supported coup. Now, 30 years later, Chileans are coming to terms with that piece of their history.
PHOTOGRAPH BYF ALVARO HOPPE SPRING 2004• ReVista 49 CHILE reserved for fools and madmen when I told positions around La Moneda, joined by tan- A little before 10 a.m. army tanks suddenly him what I was there for. “Don’t you know quetas, the light tanks of the Carabineros, used arrived in front of La Moneda. One took that there is going to be a rightist military to control street demonstrations. up position at the corner of the square near coup,” he asked pointedly. I had been told by us, its gun turret facing away from the pres- the head of Allende’s foreign press office that A few minutes went by and then the tele- idential palace. The crowd cheered, thinking it would take place on September 12th. “Yes,” phone rang. My friend picked it up: “Si, si, that it was there to defend Allende. Then, I said, trying to sound brave and principled, si” I heard him say disconsolately. He put slowly, ever so slowly, its gun turret wheeled “but I’m staying.” I was not only a historian down the phone and turned to me. “And now and aimed at the presidential palace. There researching a book but also a journalist with the Carabineros,” he said sadly. I looked out was first stunned silence and then an audible a weekly radio program from Chile on WBAI. the window and saw the tanquetas begin to gasp, as the enormity of this act became clear. When the doors opened on 9/11/1973, I was leave the square and the Carabineros pick up We were standing near a shopping arcade. first on line outside the ID card office. The their machine guns and get back on their olive The Carabineros told everyone to go into the young woman who had not been able to green buses, leaving the presidential palace arcade, whose gates would be pulled shut and attend me the Friday before smiled at me and all but unguarded. “Where is Allende?” I locked. There we would be safe from the fight- said she would call me in five minutes. But asked. “He is inside La Moneda. The presi- ing, they explained. I considered it but rejected when she returned a few minutes later it was dent has said that he will only leave [Chile’s the image. It looked too much like being shut with a worried look on her face and a hur- White House] feet first.” up in a jail. I decided to take my chances out ried statement that she would not be able on the street. Weeks later I learned that after to process my request—nor anyone else’s— It was just after 9 a.m. when orders came to the coup, people inside the arcade were taken that day. Her barely-open office was about to lock up the building. I was welcome to stay to the National Stadium for interrogation. close for the day. Something in her voice if I wanted to, I was told. I debated my deci- Some of them disappeared forever. stopped me. “Why?” I asked. “Is something sion for a minute. The office had a great view wrong?” Her response was so classically of the presidential palace and the plaza in A few minutes after ten, however, it looked Chilean: “Me parece que hay un problemita front of it. I would be able to see perfectly like a bad decision. The tanks started firing at en La Moneda” —“It seems as if there is a lit- whatever happened. La Moneda. Suddenly bullets were every- tle problem at the presidential palace.” But I remembered the Swedish photog- where, raining down from the government rapher who was shot and killed in a similar office buildings where the Socialist Youth were This was it! I raced down the stairs and out window during the tancazo, the armored reg- posted as snipers to defend the presidential the door heading for the Plaza de la Consti- iment mutiny of June 29, 1973. Moreover, palace. My corner was soon an untenable tution. Next door to the offices of Identifi- if the coup succeeded, I would be in effect observation post. There were people falling caciones were the offices of Investigaciones, the a prisoner in what its leaders would consider wounded around me. Hugging the walls, I Chilean FBI, the one security service that enemy territory. Most of all, I did not like the made my way back down the street (Morande) Allende had been able to staff with his loy- idea of being shut up, unable to leave no mat- to the next doorway, where I took refuge alists. As I passed its doorway two detectives ter what happened. “Don’t fence me in,” I behind its Neo-Classical columns, newly grate- sprinted out carrying submachine guns and thought, feeling very American. ful for the Chilean elite’s Europhile preten- heading for a squad car. I asked them if any- So, I thanked him and wished him luck sions. In back of me, the tanks and machine thing had happened. One shouted over his and dashed out of the building just as its front guns were firing away, and in front of me the shoulder—“No,” then paused and added: gates were swinging shut. I decided to watch street was alive with sniper bullets. There was “todavía”—“not yet.” what happened from the far corner of the no escape. Opposite were the offices of El
I walked rapidly to the Foreign Press Office, plaza, so that I would not have to cross an Mercurio, the leading rightist newspaper. From HOPPE,
Allende government. If that remained true, a to talk with them, but the look of rage with bolic corner, with the Congress building and GONZALO LEIVA HOPPE * ELALVARO QUIJADA, A OJO LA HISTORIA resistance to the coup could be mounted. I which they regarded me—and the civilians the Supreme Court. They gathered in went to the window and saw the Carabinero around me—stopped me. “This is going to between these two symbols of Chile’s con- buses disgorging dozens of uniformed police be a very different coup than people expected,” stitutional democracy and—as it was still
with heavy machine guns to take up defensive I thought. Allende’s Chile—they began to argue: Who ALL PHOTOS: FROM
50 ReVista • SPRING 2004 PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALVARO HOPPE
CHILE was responsible? “It was the Left.” “It was the of them with their hands over their heads out would fight, but they knew that it would be Right.” “It was the Center.” “It was the of fear, like refugees from some war movie. a futile if heroic last stand. Their pistols would United States.” I listened with a sense of Manicured men in business suits were thrown be no match for the tanks and machine guns prophetic nostalgia, thinking to myself: “This together with down-and-out beggars, house- and rifles that I had just escaped from. is the last public political debate that you will wives and street vendors. I turned the corner toward the Alameda witness in Chile for a very long time.” But I But, for the first time, the firing seemed Bernardo O’Higgins, Santiago’s central boule- also noticed that the discussion was getting distant. I stopped to rest and looked back vard, passing by the headquarters of the neo- more and more acrimonious. Then, just when across the river toward the downtown battle fascist Patria y Libertad and the Communist I thought it would come to blows—itself zone that I had just escaped. Someone had a “Comité de Pobladores Sin Casa” [Commit- emblematic of the political polarization in transistor radio tuned to the military warning tee of the Homeless]—opposite poles of a Chile by 9/11/73—the firing started again, that they would bomb the presidential palace Chilean pluralism that was about to disap- sending the antagonists scurrying in search if Allende would not surrender. In his final pear. I expected sniper fire, but there was of shelter. Ironically, they took refuge under speech, the best of his long political career, he none. The Alameda, normally a raucous river the newspapers and magazines representing insisted that he would not surrender —“Pagaré of traffic, was empty and silent. Left, Right and Center hanging down from con mi vida la lealtad del pueblo”—“I will pay the newspaper kiosk at the corner, itself a sym- with my life for the loyalty of the people.” The I made it to my building and took the eleva- bol of the political pluralism and free press young woman next to me began to cry. I tor to my apartment on the 19th floor, finally that was about to disappear from Chile, along assumed that she was an Allende supporter, safe, a privileged foreigner in a country with with its democratic constitution, its Congress but I was mistaken. She was mostly apoliti- no personal security. I turned on the radio and its independent courts. cal, she explained, but leaning toward the in time to hear the final threat to bomb the The bullets were all around me now. A Right. She had voted for the rightist candi- presidential palace. I got my camera out and man standing next to me got hit and I date Jorge Alessandri in 1970 and said to me: began to track the Hawker Hunter jets streak- decided it was time to leave. I began to run “Two days before I would have been happy ing toward La Moneda with my telephoto down Morandé, along the side of the Con- gress, when suddenly I was stopped by what The 1973 military coup would change Chile forever. seemed to be a red puddle in the middle of the street—it was a pool of blood. I gasped to see Allende hanging from a lamppost, but lens, wishing it was a telescopic site instead, and began to run again, faster this time. As this—”the Chilean military attacking the pres- squeezing the trigger over and over again, but I passed the street where the headquarters idential palace, the symbol of Chilean democ- to no avail. In the near distance I heard the of the Communist party and the labor con- racy, this should not happen. This is not the sound of the impact of their rockets. From federation were located, I saw the Carabinero Chilean way.“ The sky was getting darker,with the window I could see flames and black tanquetas firing away. Shots rang out near me a hint of rain. ”El cielo no querría ver lo que smoke billowing from the presidential palace. and a tanqueta wheeled and began to fire in pasará,“—Heaven doesn’t want to see what is I took out my tape recorder and began my direction. I ducked around the corner and going to happen,” she concluded. to record the military announcements. There kept running until I reached the old market would be an indefinite curfew…Then came close to the river. As I emerged from behind I decided that I had to return to my apart- the shock: a list of leftist leaders who had to an overturned fruit cart, I saw them: all along ment while I still could. I asked a young sol- turn themselves in to the nearest military post the broad boulevard of the Parque Forestal dier where I could cross. He motioned to a or police station. It was a strange list, includ- along the River Mapocho was the army. bridge upriver near Calle Estados Unidos. It ing many people I knew who were moder- Two regiments were drawn up –the Buin took me past the old U.S. Consulate—the ates in the Allende government, people such and the Tacna—with tanks and machine guns only foreign consulate not to offer refuge or as Mining Minister Sergio Bitar who posed and coded color armbands. The soldiers help during the coup even to its own citizens, no threat to the military coup. This list was seemed very young, conscripts of 17 or 18 one of whom, Charles Hormon, would be followed by another, a list of foreigners who –and they were very nervous. If I had been detained and executed as a consequence: later were also to turn themselves in at once. Andre afraid that the Carabineros near the Plaza to become the story of the Academy Award- Gunder Frank’s name was on the list. I would kill me out of rage, here I was con- winning film Missing. I headed down a little breathed a silent prayer that he had left the cerned that they could kill me out of ner- side street toward my apartment in the Tor- country in time. Then, in a moment of ter- vousness and inexperience. res San Borja opposite what would become ror, I suddenly realized that if other innocu- the headquarters of the military regime. ous people were on the wanted list, mine They were herding civilians across the river, I passed a group of worried but deter- might be there too….I might not be safe after outside of their battle station perimeter. I mined men coming out of a doorway with all….It was a terrifying realization which crossed the bridge near the Mapocho railway a Socialist Party banner. Two of them had pis- brought home to me the new Chile that was station, and turned east toward my apart- tols tucked into their belts. I overheard them about to be born. ment. More and more people were crowding making plans for what they would do when Phone calls began to come in, from friends the Costanera, the road running along the the troops arrived. I stole a last glance at their and Chileans who saw me as a foreign jour- river, as buses were stopped and their riders tense, sad faces, at a determination born more nalist who could get the word out. “Not to were forced into the street at gunpoint, many out of desperation than optimism. They despair…loyal troops were on the way”…
52 ReVista • SPRING 2004 PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALVARO HOPPE
CHILE recently retired “General Prats was leading awakened by the sound of animals roaring right,” he said knowingly. A thought occurred them”….“loyal provincial commanders in the in agony. It was the lions in the zoo across the to me: those now banned pre-coup publica- north were still holding out”—all of them false river, who had not been fed for two days. It tions were historic documents. I asked him rumors or wishful thinking. There would be seemed to me that they were expressing what if he still had any of the old newspapers and no loyal commanders and Prats would be too many Chileans felt that night, that they magazines and if he could sell them to me. assassinated in his Argentine asylum by the were symbolic of a nation in agony…. He reached under the counter and pulled long arm of Pinochet’s Gestapo, the DINA. out a stack and handed them to me. “Take As part of Operation Condor, the secret The curfew ended at noon on Thursday, Sep- them,” he said. “No charge. Just take them.” alliance of Southern Cone security services tember 13th... I emerged from my building I was gathering up my stash of now histori- which spread terror throughout the region, into a new Chile, with buildings pockmarked cal publications when the man in back of me even assassinating a former Allende ambas- by bullets and people viewing each other with tapped me on the shoulder. He had a goa- sador in downtown Washington. unease. On this incongruously sunny and tee and an intellectual manner and pointed beautiful day, I walked up to Avenue Vicuña down the street at the hurrying figure of an By nightfall, phone calls brought truer but Mackenna and past the Argentine embassy. air force junior officer who had been on line grimmer tidings: Allende’s death in the ruins It was surrounded by a Chilean army platoon, as well. The officer had gone to report me of La Moneda, the triumph of the coup rifles at the ready. In front of its gates was a to the nearest patrol, he warned. I had bet- throughout the country. Outside my win- military pickup truck. Inside it was a tall, thin ter get out of there fast. Hiding my newly dow, fighting continued. The city was blacked intellectual with thick glasses. He was on his “subversive” literature inside my censored offi- out, and from my window high over Santi- knees with his hands tied behind his head cial publications I walked away, at first slowly, ago, I could see the helicopter gunships home and a bayonet sticking into his back. Next to then faster and faster. in on leftist factories and shantytowns, a hor- the truck was a young woman looking dis- By the time I turned the corner I was run- rific light show of headlights and tracer bul- traught but impotent. Was he one of those ning, looking over my shoulder to see if any- lets illuminating the darkened city sky. I slept named in the most wanted list? Or was he one was following me. It was far more fitfully, awakened at 4 a.m. by a loud bomb just a Chilean or foreign leftist intellectual terrifying than the hour of bullets and near- explosion. In the distance something large who had tried to reach an embassy asylum death experiences that I had had to endure was on fire. I couldn’t sleep. but failed to make it? during the coup itself—an ominous harbin- The firing went on all the following day, I stopped to stare, but a soldier raised ger of the dictatorship to come. I made it along with reports of the targets attacked – his rifle and started to point it at me, so I to my building, locked the door of my apart- the Pedagogico, the University of Chile’s edu- walked on. ment and collapsed in a cold sweat. The street cation school, the Sumar textile factory and I walked through the Plaza Italia, the mid- chant of Allende’s Rightist opposition–“Chile the nearby slum of La Legua; the working class point of Santiago, which was under military es y será un país en libertad”—“Chile is and districts of San Miguel, the “Red County” surveillance, and thought of crossing the will be a country in liberty”—echoed ironi- to the south of the city; the shantytowns near Mapocho to Bellavista, to retrace my steps of cally through my mind. the foothills of the Andes to the east. That two days before. Then, as I approached the night the armed forces commanders, the new river bank, I froze in horror. In the shallow I sat down and wrote in my diary: “It is very Junta de Gobierno, appeared on television for waters were the bloated bodies of young men, hard to learn how not to be free.” the first time. Each one addressed the nation whose clothes identified them as pobladores, It is a lesson that Chileans learned the hard in turn. Pinochet was the most enigmatic, poor residents of the shantytowns upriver. way, during Pinochet’s brutal 17-year dicta- terse and anti-Marxist, but vague, as if he had- Most had multiple bullet wounds. There were torship. n’t thought about what he would say or soldiers on the Pio Nono bridge eyeing me. It is a lesson that they are still struggling wanted to do. The scariest was the air force I turned on my heel and hurried away. This to unlearn today. commander Gustavo Leigh, who talked of the was not only a very different coup than most struggle to “excise the Marxist cancer” from Chileans had anticipated, but it would be a Peter Winn is professor of history and the Chilean body politick and of the need very different military government from the director of Latin American Studies at Tufts to reverse the preceding 50 years of Chilean dictablanda, soft dictatorship—they had University. He is the author of Weavers of history. That included not just the three years expected as well. Revolution, an oral history of Allende's of Allende’s road to socialism, but also the Chile, and editor of Victims of the Alliance for Progress reforms of the Christian I walked down the Alameda’s broad boule- Chilean Miracle: Workers and Neoliber- Democratic government of the 1960s, the vard to the newspaper kiosk where in the past alism in the Pinochet Era. welfare state and labor reforms of the Popu- I always bought the complete array of news- lar Front of the 1930s, even Arturo Alessan- papers and magazines from right to left. There Alvaro Hoppe is a Chilean photographer. dri’s introduction of mass democratic politics was a long line of people waiting to buy the He made the photographs accompanying of the 1920s. Clearly this was not going to be only two newspapers now permitted—cen- this article in Santiago de Chile from a “soft coup,” a brief period of military rule sored versions of El Mercurio and La Ter- 1983 and 1988. Published in Gonzálo to calm things down and then return power cera, a centrist tabloid. When I got to the Leiva Quijada’s Alvaro Hoppe: El Ojo a to the civilian political leaders as in past mil- front of the line, the newsvendor greeted me La Historia, the photos used here are cour- itary interventions. Later that night I was as a long lost friend. “I am glad you are all tesy of Hoppe.
54 ReVista • SPRING 2004 PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALVARO HOPPE
CHILE The Coup in Chile Reflections on the international reaction
BY ALAN ANGELL
oners waiting in fear in the National Sta- This reaction was not short-lived. What coup. Like many observers it took me by dium. Even in the countries most remote was striking was how consistent the inter- surprise—I thought that, difficult though from Chile geographically, socially and cul- national condemnation was of the Chilean I the situation was in Chile, somehow a turally, those images brought home in a government up to the time of the plebiscite compromise would be worked out, proba- direct fashion a picture of what was hap- in 1988—by which time even the U.S. gov- bly with a referendum and with the Popu- pening in Chile on the 11th of September ernment had joined the critics. International lar Unity government forced to moderate its and after. And those images from 1973 were coverage of the plebiscite was intense. For radical policies. I was wrong. But then, so joined by another one—the shattered car in a European press that shows only a passing were many Chileans who also thought that which Orlando Letelier met his death in and cursory interest in Latin America, it was there would be no coup, or that, at worse, Washington in 1976. remarkable. Needless to say, the defeat of there would be a limited and moderate inter- A third factor in keeping the coup alive Pinochet was cause for celebration. Later on, vention. in the international community were the activ- the jubilant reaction of European political This is one reason for the continuing ities of the Chilean exile community. For a circles to the arrest of Pinochet in London impact of the coup — it was not expected. decade after the coup, opposition politics were in 1998 is testimony to the enduring impact Chile had an enviable record of constitu- conducted not in Chile but abroad. Many of the coup of 1973 and the military gov- tional government. Authoritarian govern- exiles were politicians with links with sister ernment on the political consciousness of ments in Spain or Greece or Portugal, parties in Europe, other parts of Latin Amer- the international community. following the collapse of fragile civilian ica and elsewhere. Chilean Socialists, Com- Supporters of the military government regimes, were not regarded as fundamental munists, Christian Democrats, and Radicals will, no doubt, take all of this as indicative departures from political practices in those all found receptive communities outside Chile. of a complete misunderstanding of the sit- countries. But Chile was different — at least The exile community was adept in seeking uation in Chile and will point to the other that is what many observers believed, and condemnation of the Pinochet government side of the story. There was increasing social with reason. The reaction was that if such in international organizations such as the conflict in both the Chilean towns and a coup could happen in Chile, then it could United Nations, and in persuading national countryside. The government had lost con- happen almost anywhere. governments to boycott Chilean trade and to trol of its own supporters. The economy was In general, the Cuban Revolution had sever links with the Chilean government. in ruins and shortages and a black market become a symbol of resistance to imperial- International sympathy for the Chilean oppo- made life intolerable for many people. There ist oppression for the world. The Chilean sition was widespread and strong—much was genuine fear of a Marxist take-over. coup became, in turn, for the world in gen- more so than for the exiles from other mili- Many Chileans, not only the upper classes, eral a symbol of the brutal military overthrow tary regimes in the Southern Cone. supported the coup. of progressive regimes. Symbols are not accu- It is difficult to exaggerate the impact But no one listened to their side of the rate history. The repressive side of the Cuban of the Chilean coup on the political con- story outside Chile—and they were not Revolution was ignored. There were far more sciousness of a wide variety of countries. helped by the crudity of the military gov- brutal coups in Latin America than in Chile. In the European Parliament, the country ernment’s propaganda of which the infamous Grasp of the complicated politics of Chile most debated (and condemned) for many Plan Zeta was amongst the most notorious. from 1970 to 1973 was very superficial. But years after 1973 was Chile. In Britain, Did this international response have any that did not matter. At the level of interna- Allende’s ambassador to that country, Alvaro effect on the internal developments in Chile? tional perception, the Cuban Revolution now Bunster, was the first foreigner to address I think it did. It contributed to the polar- had its mirror image in the Chilean coup. the Conference of the Labour Party since La ization of Chile into two camps—and helped Another reason for the profound impact Pasionaria at the time of the Spanish Civil to sustain a polarization of Chilean politics of the coup was that it was, in some ways, War. In Italy, analysis of the coup by the that persisted well into the period after the the first televised coup. Images from the days Communist party and its intellectual leader return to democracy. Widespread interna- following the eleventh of September flooded Enrico Berlinguer led to the ’historic com- tional condemnation of Chile forced the mil- the screens and newspapers of the world— promise’ by which the Italian Communist itary regime into more of a defensive and four pictures in particular. The Hunter- Party joined the government for the first hard-line posture than might have been oth- Hawker jets bombing La Moneda; the time for many years. In France, the Social- erwise the case. If the world would not accept soldiers burning books in the street; the pho- ist party debated extensively how to change the reasons for the coup of 1973 then so tograph of a grim-faced Pinochet wearing its tactics after the Chilean coup. Countries much the worse for the world—Chile would dark glasses and seated before the standing like Canada, Australia and New Zealand choose its own path, would develop its own members of the military junta; and the pris- welcomed thousands of Chilean refugees. institutions, implement its own policies and
56 ReVista • SPRING 2004 FOCUS ON ECONOMICS ignore the rest of world as much as it could. and the government was wrong. Full stop. remarkable. The only two novel, successful Those who opposed the military government Chile is not alone in finding it difficult and innovative political parties in Latin Amer- were not only wrong but were seen as allies to come to terms with its past. It took Ger- ica are the UDI and the Workers’ Party (PT) of an international conspiracy against Chile mans many years before they were prepared in Brazil—one born in support of a mili- and hence traitors to the country. to examine the Nazi phenomenon in all its tary regime and one in opposition to it. On the other side, the support given by stark inhumanity; Japan still refuses to This then is the legacy of the coup—it the international community to the oppo- acknowledge some of the gross abuses com- created two opposed worlds in one of which sition in exile reinforced its belief that it had mitted during the Second World War. Or the coup was the symbol of the salvation of won the moral argument, that no compro- what of Spain—add the half million or so Chile, and in the other, the tragedy of Chile. mise with regime was possible or necessary, killed during the Civil War to the astonish- The ’Si’ and the ’No’ in the plebiscite of 1988 and that if the struggle would be long and ing but accepted estimate of a quarter of a were much more than a simple response to hard, it would also eventually be victorious. million killed by the regime in the aftermath the question of Pinochet as president for The defining issue in this confrontation of the war, and it seems incredible that no another eight years. They symbolized support became that of human rights, and the fact trials have taken place, nor is there any for one of two contrasting views of history— that the Catholic Church, through the Vic- demand for them or even for a commission in a way it posed a question about whether ariate of Solidarity (incidentally an institu- to establish the truth. Indeed one can the coup of 1973 was justified or not. Even tion without parallel in any other argue—as I have in a chapter of a book about if Right and Left have converged in many authoritarian regime), supported the human to be published—that the Chilean govern- ways—over economic policy for example— rights cause reinforced the opposition in ment has gone further in clarifying the past the dichotomy over the coup persisted. choosing this issue with which to confront and in seeking justice for abuses than any But for how much longer? Does the the government. other government—along with South Africa. memory of the coup really matter today? In The clash between government and oppo- What was ignored in the reaction to the some ways obviously less so as memories sition in exile became one of moral absolutes coup was the fact—unpalatable as it may fade, as politics has become more a matter and in that kind of debate no one is really have been—that it had widespread support, of routine and less a matter of confronta- neutral—you either defend the government even amongst sectors of the poor. It is not tion, as economic policies have produced a or you condemn it. That dichotomy created uncommon for a military coup to enjoy ini- remarkable record of success (with, it is true, a division that split Chilean society almost tial support as the population wearies of the major problems), as the issue of civil-mili- tary relations has moved to a smoother It is to the credit of Chile that there is a real attempt to course. Yet while the human rights issue per- sists, while trials of military officers con- face up to the past, to enter—at last— into dialogue tinue, while more evidence accumulates, the memory of the coup remains alive in con- between the two camps, to secure justice, to try to temporary Chile. And it is to the credit of understand what happened and why. Chile that there is a real attempt to face up to the past, to enter—at last— into dialogue between the two camps, to secure justice, to into two halves. It is without precedent that uncertainties and turmoil of a weak civilian try to understand what happened and why. a military ruler after such a long period of government—Argentina in 1976 is an obvi- Forgetting the past is one option and many almost absolute power should request in a ous example. What is very rare, however, countries have chosen to do so. Facing up free and fair election an extension of his man- is that this support persists over a long period to the past and trying to seek understand- date for another eight years, gain a remark- of time and persists even after the return ing, justice and reconciliation is infinitely ably high if not majority vote, and then to a democratic regime. The Pinochet regime more painful but profoundly important for accept the result and organize another round was unusual in many ways. The economic establishing a just and democratic order. of elections to choose a civilian president. and social reforms followed an ideological But Pinochet’s supporters saw this not as a agenda; the government constructed an Alan Angell is Director of the Latin Amer- defeat but as a kind of triumph. They were institutionality in which it really believed; ican Centre at Oxford, England. He has the true democrats now. it accepted rejection in a plebiscite and fol- written extensively on Chile, including Pol- What marked Chilean politics after 1990 lowed the rules. itics and the Labour Movement in Chile until the arrest of Pinochet was the absence Oddly enough, these characteristics deep- (OUP 1972) and Decentralising Devel- of debate over the coup, its causes and con- ened rather than muted the polarization of opment: The Political Economy of Insti- sequences. Of course there was debate over Chile. Because the government was not sim- tutional Change in Colombia and Chile many issues—constitutional reform, social ply a crude and corrupt elite content to plun- (with Rosemary Thorp) (OUP 2001). He policies, macroeconomic policies—but not der the economy, it created a mass of loyal has also analyzed all three Presidential elec- over the coup. Witness the brusque dismissal support bound to it by ideological sympathy. tions in Chile since 1989 in the Bulletin of of the Rettig report by the Armed Forces, The most obvious manifestation of this is the Latin American Studies. The Spanish lan- its political allies, and even the Supreme formation and growth of the Democratic guage version of this article was published Court. They were right and were justified Independent Union (UDI). This again is in El Mercurio August 24, 2003.
SPRING 2004• ReVista 57 CHILE Chile’s National Stadium As Monument, as Memorial
BY KATHERINE HITE
“If, in the earlier twentieth century, modern brutality of what was taking place in the sta- societies tried to define their modernity and to dium’s stands, rooms, and tunnels. secure their cohesiveness by way of imagining In the immediate aftermath of World the future, it now seems that the major War II, the stadium was used as a tempo- required task of any society today is to take rary clearinghouse for European refugees responsibility for its past.” and immigrants. International athletes and —Andreas Huyssen, musicians perform on the stadium field. Yet Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests during the comparatively brief but horrific and the Politics of Memory moments from September to November Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 94. 1973, the military internationalized the National Stadium in an unprecedented fash- ’ ion. Among the many thousands who were national monument on August 21, held prisoner in the National Stadium in 2003. Thirty years ago, just after the 1973, several hundred were foreigners from C Pinochet coup, the National Stadium countries around the world. possessed the largest single prison popula- On September 22, 1973, in a rather tion in the country. Today, the stadium joins bizarre move to assure both Chileans and other civil-society-initiated quests to com- the international community that all was memorate Chile’s painful past. well in the Stadium, the junta opened the “You mean they actually use that place Stadium’s doors to national and international as a sports stadium today?” an American media for an official “tour” of the conditions friend asked me incredulously. I was telling there. As Chilean photographer and jour- her about a piece I was researching for a nalist Marcelo Montecino and others book on the case of Chilean friend and col- describe, the military’s gesture backfired, league Felipe Aguero, a professor of politi- as reporters and photographers observed cal science at the University of Miami. In first-hand soldiers’ cruel treatment of the 1973, Aguero had been held and savagely detainees, as well as the poor state of those tortured in the National Stadium. Three held there. Dramatic black-and-white pho- years ago, Aguero’s case made international tographs and footage of the prisoners in the headlines when he “outed” his former tor- stands made their ways into the international turer Emilio Meneses, now a retired air force media. These images have remained etched officer who had also become a political sci- in the memories of citizens across the globe. ence professor. Meneses teaches at Santiago’s Moreover, recently declassified U.S. gov- able tentage or other portable structures and Catholic University. ernment documents reveal that the CIA equipment for temporary housing until the For my American friend Jeanette, as for closely followed what was taking place in detainees can construct their own housing many around the world, Chile’s National the Stadium. The agency proved discerning and administrative buildings.” U.S. Ambas- Stadium evokes images of frightened, hag- in its assessment of the Chilean military’s sador Nathaniel Davis, who prepared the gard young men like Aguero in the stadium’s account of both the number of prisoners and cable regarding the request, noted that while stands, with soldiers monitoring their move- the behavior of the interrogators. One doc- it might be ill-advised to provide an advisor ments. For Jeanette, who is not particularly ument also reveals that in their efforts to for such an endeavor, the provision of tents political, images of the National Stadium “manage” the stadium’s burgeoning number and blankets might earn the U.S. some cred- have been seared and frozen into her mem- of prisoners, Chilean general Nicanor Díaz ibility with the United Nations Human ory from Costa Gavras’s 1982 film Miss- and Brigadier General Francisco Herrera Rights Commission, who communicated to ing. The film is about the search for the specifically approached a U.S. government him that the prisoners needed blankets. American Charles Horman and the duplic- agent to seek assistance, including a tech- Last year’s approval of the stadium as ity of the U.S. government in its active desire nical advisor that “must have knowledge in monument came none too soon. Since the for a military overthrow of the Allende gov- the establishment and operation of a deten- 1990 transition from military rule, groups ernment. Horman was held in the National tion center.” The advisor would assist in sur- representing victims of human rights viola- Stadium before his murder by the military veying for a new detention site. The generals tions have fought strenuously to seek official regime, and Costa Gavras’s film conveys the also “requested the possible loan of inflat- support for arenas that publicly expose the
58 ReVista • SPRING 2004 PHOTOGRAPH BY MARCELO MONTECINO Prisoners in the National Stadium atrocities of the past, that materially repre- sculpture, conceptualizers of the monument of the conditions and treatment in the Sta- sent the many violations of the authoritar- have developed a plan that travels through dium, the Chilean government’s Report of the ian regime. The Stadium as monument will several areas of the Stadium. In addition, National Commission on Truth and Reconcil- become an official “realm of memory” within artists will create works that consciously iation includes the following: a new political, legal and cultural milieu. This relate what occurred in the Stadium to global new environment has only recently begun to human rights representations. There is information on the practice of tor- acknowledge the need to address more sys- Their work will reflect the startling horror ture and abuse of prisoners in the National tematically the significance and consequences of executions and torture taking place between Stadium. For example, the room for med- of state-sponsored torture as well as state- September and November 1973, that the ical treatment was sometimes used for this sponsored death and disappearance. International Red Cross estimates reached purpose. Firing squads were simulated and Entitled “Open Museum, Site of Mem- “some 7,000 prisoners on September 22.” other cruel techniques were employed. As ory and Homage,” the monument proposal Between 12,000 and 20,000 Chileans and a rule the prisoners were subjected to con- contemplates an array of symbolic com- foreigners were detained in the Stadium for stant and intense interrogation. memorations, both within the Stadium’s periods ranging from two days to two months. ...’The representatives and medical rep- walls and beyond its gates. Using audio and The Stadium was no mere holding tank. In resentatives of the IRCC (International Red videotapes, murals, paintings, plaques, and a somewhat sterilized, matter-of-fact account Cross Committee) have found that many
SPRING 2004• ReVista 59 CHILE
prisoners show signs they have undergone ited infrequently as a memory site. “working through” thus becomes a central psychological and physical torture.’ The National Stadium, on the other challenge. Representations must strive for This Commission also concluded that hand, is clearly a cultural icon of the nation. empathy, a relation among human beings a number of executions took place inside As a site of traumatic memory, the Stadium that may, in fact, question the distance the National Stadium, and that in a num- thus poses unique opportunities as well as between those who were held and those who ber of instances persons imprisoned there challenges. With its 80,000-seat capacity, the could have been held. were taken out and killed. Such was the Stadium is the site of the most important In Chilean filmmaker Carmen Luz case of Charles Horman and Frank Terrugi, soccer matches in the country (and a World Parot’s elegant documentary on the Stadium both United States citizens. Cup site in 1962), immensely popular musi- (2001), former prisoners share their accounts cal concerts, and other athletic and cultural of coping and resistance strategies as well According to the truth commission report, events. It is extremely “inhabited.” Tens of as their experiences of torture and despair. at least 41 people lost their lives in the Sta- thousands constantly come and go through They describe inventing and organizing dium. Human rights groups believe the fig- the stadium’s gates. The fate of the Stadium games, and even a choir; celebrating mass ure to be well in the hundreds, given the as monument does not risk the physical, with a prisoner priest; communicating with number of those who were detained in the social and cultural relegation common to their families through conscripted soldiers Stadium, tortured and killed and then many conventional historic monuments. from the provinces in need of a lunch in dumped in Santiago streets, ditches, and the Nor will the monument assume the qual- Santiago on their days off. Through the doc- Mapocho River during those early months of ity of some static, impenetrable granite umentary, the viewer observes the high the regime. The imprints (including those object commemorating fallen heroes. Too degree of organization and innovation the etched into the Stadium’s walls by former pris- often, writes Chilean cultural scholar and prisoners achieved in the midst of a great oners) and the ghosts of those who were exe- critic Nelly Richard, a monument represents deal of pain and disbelief (“How can this be cuted in the Stadium continue to haunt Chile. “the nostalgic contemplation of the heroic; happening? Why am I here?”). Journalist The many citizens who were tortured and sur- the reification of the past in a commemo- and former prisoner Fernando Villagrán vived their Stadium experiences find the 1991 rative block that petrifies the memorial as describes that in his fits of hunger he dis- truth commission report a sorely inadequate inert material.” In the stadium, citizens will covered how tasty an orange rind could be. representation. It would take a decade for the travel in and through the monument, mak- Parot’s documentary visually accom- Chilean democratic regime to return to the ing relegation, distance, and inertia far more plishes a rendering that one might charac- meanings of state-sponsored violence in the difficult. Locating the accounts of victims terize as very “Chilean” — the depictions of Stadium for policies related to truth-telling, compensation, and retroactive justice. Politicians seem to recognize that past trauma must be Human rights groups have established that there were more than eighty detention integrated into a national identity. The nation should centers in Santiago alone. These clandestine jails used spaces ranging from schools and neither deny nor repress the trauma. public buildings, like the Stadium, to private, secret homes and clubs. One of the most and their families within the monument pain and grief are muted, shots of the Sta- notorious of these secret centers was Villa necessarily engages the representations of dium today are soft rather than sharp. Unlike Grimaldi, a place in which more than 5,000 the past atrocities with the vibrant, emo- documentaries on torture in which the film- Chileans were held and an estimated 240 peo- tional lived experiences of the present. maker re-creates graphic depictions of tor- ple lost their lives. During the first half of the Yet articulating this engagement among tuous acts, Parot chooses to rely on the 1990s, several organizations mobilized to the pain inflicted on the former prisoners, former prisoners’ accounts. For example, reconstruct Villa Grimaldi as a memorial site. the anxieties experienced by the prisoners’ Felipe Aguero’s testimony of being tortured Now known as Villa Grimaldi Peace Park, loved ones, and stadium-goers constitutes a in the genitalia conveys a horror embed- the site was conceived by Chilean architect complicated enterprise. Professor of English ded in a discourse that is quietly, discreetly Luis Santibánez to “develop a park of re- and essayist Elaine Scarry has claimed that expressed and communicated. Parot avoids encounter, with a symbolism that remembers societies have yet to develop, or have yet even visual representations of “literal memory,” what happened in that place and to pay to possess the will to develop or articulate which may fold victims into themselves, as homage, through the plants and greenery, language that can really convey, in sentient viewers shun the representations. to the triumph of life.” Nevertheless, while terms, the intense pain of the tortured. More- Inside, the Stadium-as-monument will pre- the Villa Grimaldi Park is a symbolically over, as Argentine sociologist Elizabeth Jelin serve, commemorate, educate, and project. important place of memory, it is physically writes, memorials are at inter-play with those The project will recover fragments and rem- remote. The serene while slightly disturbing who “possess” them in some way, those who nants of the presence of the prisoners, includ- quality and feel of Villa Grimaldi remain hid- often claim “ownership” based on memories ing “a tour through the property and den, masked behind high walls topped with of their own tactile, traumatic experiences in emblematic sites.” The dressing rooms of the barbed wire. Given the polity and much of the memorials’ representations or spaces. Olympic pool will be recognized, for example, society’s reluctance to confront the painful Finding points of encounter that allow indi- as spaces where the female political prisoners elements of Chile’s past, Villa Grimaldi is vis- vidual and collective, victim and viewer were held. The running track will be signaled
60 ReVista • SPRING 2004 MEMORY AND RECONCILIATION
ary change. On the one hand, resurrecting the memories of wounded and fallen comrades is a reminder of failure at a time when social- ists as governing leaders strive to convey suc- cess, unity, and authority. On the other hand, within the left, resurrections of men and women who dedicated their lives to radical visions of change are also symbolic contrasts with today’s comparatively moderate progres- sive program, one which some on the left would charge as hardly a left program at all. Resuscitating memories of the past thus raises troubling questions for the present and future The funeral of Alejandro. in terms of the nature of current political alliances and projects for a better tomorrow. as the primary torture site. Inside a “Mem- pasts. Such memorials become contested ter- As Chileans construct the National Sta- ory Park” will “harbor sculpture generated from rain between a state, anxious to convey unity dium as a place of memory, perhaps another public competitions.” Outside are plans to rec- in the face of past polarization and state dimension should also be contemplated, and ognize the prisoners’ families desperately seek- repression, and a society in which no one that is the array of relationships members of ing their release and any information on their account of the past is universally shared. the international community possess with relatives’ conditions and needs. At the outset of the democratic transition, the stadium. For years, I showed the Costa In a personalized account, Chilean writer Aylwin established an official “truth” that he Gavras film to my Vassar undergraduate Ariel Dorfman claimed that a 1990 public had hoped would contribute to reconciliation Latin American politics class. I always pref- act, in which newly elected president Patri- (thus, the name of the truth commission) and aced the showing with, “Keep in mind that cio Aylwin addressed tens of thousands of to “turn the page.” The truth commission Costa Gavras exercises poetic license in his Chileans in the Stadium, recognizing the report was eloquently written. It recom- depiction of what took place in Chile in Sep- atrocities that had taken place there, and in mended that symbolic monuments be erected. tember 1973.” Yet recently declassified U.S. which wives of the disappeared danced the Yet the report focused on the dead and dis- government documents on Chile and the “cueca sola,” “exorcised” the Stadium for him. appeared and not those who were imprisoned Charles Horman case reveal that Costa Dorfman wrote that he now felt free to enter and tortured and managed to survive. More- Gavras’ account is pretty on-the-mark. the Stadium, which until then he had vowed over, the state did not actively promote, dis- Around the world, monuments them- never to re-enter. Yet within this inter-sub- seminate or encourage public discussion of selves have become battlegrounds, as artists, jective space of relating to the Stadium as a the report. Its arrival and fading from public designers, states and societies negotiate how site of horrific memory, the notion of “exor- light mirrored the ways in which the state has to convey, or evoke, or even shock, passersby cising,” of “closing the chapter,” may not cap- tended to repress painful memories. into contemplation and reaction. Monu- ture what many victims of that space may Today, the Lagos administration’s act of ment conceptualizers have come to appre- have had to do or may continue to do to sur- approving the Stadium as an historic mon- ciate the unknowable dimension of just how vive with their memories and their scars. ument can be interpreted in several ways. deeply a monument will be perceived and Rather than exorcising their traumatic After an elite silence regarding the past by whom, as well as how perceptions of the experiences, survivors must often find ways throughout most of the transition from mil- monument will change over time, in distinct of integrating these experiences into their itary rule, politicians seem to recognize that political-historical moments. The National identities, often fitfully accomplished through past trauma must be integrated into a Stadium as monument arrives amidst these the process of recounting. And here is one of national identity. The nation should neither debates, an iconographic structure whose the essential dimensions of the Stadium as deny nor repress the trauma. The adminis- insertion in the body politic will undoubt- national monument: public recognition of tration’s approval of the Stadium-as-mon- edly be a major force in the ongoing and by the need for an environment in which to facil- ument might thus be interpreted as an no means temporally linear process of com- itate or contribute to this process. instrumentalist act. Chilean politicians across ing to terms with the past a la chilena. Like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the spectrum have come to accept the Washington DC, the challenge to concep- inevitability of the unearthing of a traumatic Katherine Hite is an assistant professor of tualize the National Stadium as a memorial past, and it might be politically strategic political science at Vassar College and the involves striking some kind of balance to take the offensive when it comes to sym- author of When the Romance Ended: between the nation’s shame and an honoring bolic representations of the past. Leaders of the Chilean Left, 1968-1998 of the dead and wounded. Memorials that Yet socialist president Ricardo Lagos and (Columbia University Press, 2000) and co- testify to the state’s violence against its citi- his fellow socialist cabinet members and elected editor with Paola Cesarini of Authoritar- zens, such as Argentina’s El Olimpo, or the representatives have a complicated relationship ian Legacies and Democracy in Latin U.S.’s Kent State, stand in stark, inescapable to the past, including their relationship to Sal- America and Southern Europe (Univer- contrast to official monuments of glorious vador Allende and his agenda for revolution- sity of Notre Dame Press, 2004).
PHOTOGRAPH BY MARCELO MONTECINO SPRING 2004• ReVista 61 THE OTHER CHILE: ART AND LITERATURE Chilean Art p. 63 Contemporary Chilean Narrative p. 66
62 ReVista • SPRING 2004 Chile is a country of poets and artists. Here is a look at just a few aspects of the “other Chile,” including the new relationship between culture and consumerism.
Chilean Art Between Reality and Memory
BY BEATRIZ HUIDOBRO HOTT
’ - ular ideology. Rather, this new generation of artists seek to understand the recent past without a sense of guilt or victim- C ization. They look to the future with a critical and construc- tive view, without hatred. Only a few artists focus on the political and social context. Instead, some vent their criticism on the economic model, the free market and the consumer society. An example is the well-received 1999 exhibition by Bruna Truffa and Rodrigo Cabezas at the National Fine Arts Museum, Si vas para Chile (If you go to Chile), taking its title from a well-known traditional folk song and making fun of consumer culture. Later, the artists produced another exhibition, Si vas para el Mall (If you go to the mall). While many artists mock the consumer society and the search for easy and quick satisfaction, few concern themselves with the poverty, unemployment, and social and economic inequality that is part of modern Chile. The degree of social consciousness in art in Chile has varied in intensity over time. At the beginning of the last century, the so-called Generación del 13 used painting to high- light social concerns by depicting local customs. An incipient mural- ist movement in the 1940s, stimulated by the Chilean sojourn of Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, and the 1960s’ “art of denunciation” somehow contributed several artistic ways of inter- preting the aftermath of the Pinochet coup (see sidebar). Yet social concerns have often been on the periphery. In addi- tion to the contemporary mockery of consumerism, much of today’s artistic expression of social concerns deals with lifestyle and identity. The liberation of morés and customs greatly influences artistic pro- duction. Topics such as nudity, eroticism and homosexuality are no longer forbidden. There is a resurgence of conceptual art, in which theorical discourse has great relevance. These trends are supported by a great number of art schools that are very keen on new aesthet- ical expressions. Painting does not escape the conceptualists’ scrutiny; it is often questioned as a means of artistic expression.
Clockwise from top left: José Balmes. “José Ricardo Ahumada Vásquez,” 1973; Carlos Montes de la Oca, “La necesidad de dormir,” 30 igloo- shaped tents lit from inside and suspended in Santiago's Baquedano metro station; Edwín Rojas, “Las Princesas;”Carlos Leppe, Instantánea del vídeo de una acción de arte (video still of an art action) ca.1980.
SPRING 2004• ReVista 63 CHILE
At the same time, technological devel- with some of the new ecological artists that opments have made it possible to incorpo- use their art for the vindication of ancient cul- rate new elements of artistic expression. The tures, particularly the Mapuche. use of interactive multimedia has attracted The recycling of discarded materials a considerable number of young Chilean evokes both ecology and meager resources. artists who explore the possibilities of com- The newspaper constructions of Andres Vio bining painting, photography, found objects are a good example of this trend, creating and video in their installations. There is an an intertwining of contemporary art’s uncer- interweaving of elements and artistic expres- tainties and forms of expression related to sion. A crisscross of traditional and concep- Chile’s living conditions. tual changes occurs as a product of a Other artists working with a different type globalized world. of recycled materials have developed a “mem- This globalized vision may also account ory of the past” by searching for lost and found for a number of ecological groups that have objects. Carlos Montes de Oca, for example, recently appeared on the artistic scene. The takes his findings out of context and pre- clay art of Zinnia Ramírez, Ana María Wie- sents them with poetic texts in boxes of impec- necken, Leo Moya and Norma Ramírez reflect cable craftsmanship. Some of his latest works the increased use of organic materials as part Geometric Visions. have included interventions in urban spaces of this newfound ecological sensibility. with small tents which reference the fragility In a sense, this ecological movement is a subtle return to Chile’s and lack of protection of the human being. artistic past, but with a twist. Chilean art began with landscaping artists Amid all these changes and experimentation, a very special type who worked in the European tradition with an elitist bent, as Chileans of inward-looking Chilean painting still persists, displaying great imag- searched for their own identity in the last century. These early land- ination in alluding to a dream-like world where timeless landscapes scape artists showed little interest in Chile’s ancestral civilization, reflect- are filled with eccentric human figures and illogical objects. Most pre- ing the relative absence of indigenous culture and pre-Columbian past dominant among these artists are Mario Gómez, Edwín Rojas, and compared to other Latin American countries. This attitude contrasts Lorenzo Moya. These artists recoil to a private subjective world, which
A QUICK TOUR OF CHILEAN ART HISTORY
1955–1960 ist brigades spring forth with energy, 1975–1982 ■ The Rectángulo group breaks off with including the famous Ramona Parra ■ A new iconography appears in the the naturalist model, instead producing brigade in which Chilean expatriate Chilean art scene. The traumatic experi- rigorous geometric art that never strays Roberto Matta participated. One of the ence suffered by artist Guillermo Núñez at away from the primordial role of Chilean most emblematic places of collective his exhibition at the Chilean-French Cul- landscaping. This generation's main theo- work for these brigades was the banks tural Institute is a case in point. Núñez’s rist Ramón Vergara Grez entitles many of the Mapocho river. installation consisted of various bird cages works in relation to the Chilean landscape. individually filled with diverse objects ■ Years later, Vergara Grez forms a SEPTEMBER 11, 1973, AND ON such as bread, flowers and a Chilean flag. group called Forma y Espacio. Matilde ■ The military coup brings brutal repres- After the opening day, the artist was Pérez, a main figure in the Retángulo sion, torture, exile and censorship. In the detained by the police, subjected to six group, uses geometric structures inspired first few years of military dictatorship, months of imprisonment, partially blind- by pre-Columbian art. pessimism and desolation paralyzes the folded and eventually released into exile. artistic community. Little by little, new ■ Local artists had to develop strategies to 1961 ideas, proposals and artistic creativity elude censure. The social message of their ■ The Signo group sees painting as an reappears, mirroring the historical context work became hidden through the use of agent of change. Influenced by the Catalan of the country. Some of these artistic artistic metaphors and indirect language. abstract expressionism movement, mem- expressions have been referred to as Many artists felt that the traditional way bers of the group establish a strong rela- estetica de la expiación, emerging as a of expressing their art such as painting, tionship with politics and the social issues conscience of a sort of a collective guilt for sculpture and prints insufficiently of the time. Principal artists include José the loss of democratic values. Still other expressed what they felt and created new Balmes, Gracia Barrios and Alberto Pérez. expressions rise from the ashes—la estet- avenues in relation to materials, social ica del escombro, born out of pondering reality, and politics of the times. Documen- 1964 –1973 on the devastated democratic scenario tary photography and other new material ■ Street mural painting—with a heavy (Milan Ivelic in “Arte Latinoamericano del became frequently used to express social dose of leftist ideology—appears. Mural- siglo XX”, Editorial Nerea, 1996, p.309). reality. In tandem with the international
64 ReVista • SPRING 2004 THE OTHER CHILE: ART AND LITERATURE they splash on the canvass with rich imagination and dexterity. the very act of incorporating art into public life is a social statement. Despite its diversity, Chilean art is now only beginning to become Within the overall cultural framework of Chile, successive democ- an integral part of the international and domestic scene. The scarcity ratic governments put great effort into elaborating a cultural policy, evoked by Vio and other recyclers is also an artistic commentary encompassing all artistic tendencies and expressions. The recently on the difficulty in catapulting contemporary Chilean art into estab- created Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (National Coun- lished international circuits due to the lack of resources. Until the cil for the Arts and Culture) has created great optimism within Chile’s 1950s and early 1960s, Chile had been insulated from the inter- cultural community. national art world. Private corporations—in keeping with the current free market Within Chile itself, one can see that there is a growing relation- economic model— continue to play a major role not only in financ- ship between art and the general public, as attendance to galleries and ing artistic endeavors but in the promotion and diffusion of art. The museums increases. Exhibition spaces—private and public— have role of private enterprise in fomenting art began for the most part increased as well. The opportunity for viewers to permit themselves during the military regime when the dictatorship shied from fos- moments of confrontation and reflection with art has greatly expanded. tering cultural expression. However, much of the general public has difficulty understand- During the period of the dictatorship, an art market developed ing the complex theoretical proposals of conceptual art, neither grasp- in Chile. New galleries opened up and the public timidly began to ing the codes nor possessing the necessary facts. As pointed out by acquire contemporary art. The patrons who financed exhibitions and Tomás Andreu, director of the avant-garde art space Galería Animal, contests were the large corporations of the private sector, looking some art dealers draw on the seduction of material, shock impact with favor on those artists who did not overtly politicize their works. and the surprise element as way of attracting the public’s attention. Today, Chile’s democratic governments seek a mixed participa- Nevertheless, art is becoming an integral part of the urban scene. tion between the public and the private sector for all sorts of art, Large scale sculptures, not only in Santiago but also in Chile’s socially conscious or not. Art expressions in today’s Chile are as provinces, bring art to urban spaces. Among the prominent sculp- diverse as the perceptions of every artist vis-à-vis his or her own tors that have taken part in these projects are Osvaldo Peña, Ser- life experience. Art will be the mirror that will rescue and preserve gio Castillo, Francisco Gacitúa, Aura Castro, José Vicente Gajardo Chile’s cultural memory. and Alejandra Ruddoff. Chilean art may not necessarily incorporate a social message, but Beatriz Huidobro Hott is an art historian and curator in Santiago.
trend, this subversion of traditional means neatly folded packages. the artist, where fantasy´s flight plays a of artistic expression gave way to a con- ■ Juan Dávila uses forms of Pop art with fundamental role. Principal figures ceptual art experimentation such as instal- great irreverence and Carlos Leppe include Mario Toral, Rodolfo Opazo and lations, art auctions and body art. injures his own body to project his art. Gonzalo Cienfuegos. ■ CADA (Colectivo Acciones de Arte), an ■ With the onset of the economic crisis of interdisciplinary group of visual artists and 1980S 1983, censorship became weaker. An intellectuals, utilized urban space to create ■ In 1981, the first French- Chilean meet important group of exiled artists return, new circuits for the flow of art. Main figures of video art occurs. In this gathering we including José Balmes, who spearheaded a were: Lotty Rosenfeld, Juan Castillo, Raúl found the works of Juan Downey and more politicized and testimonial art. Street Zurita, Diamela Eltit and Fernando Balcells. Alfredo Jaar. In opposition to the French mural painting appears in the shantytowns, ■ The so-called Escena de Avanzada, com- video artists, who place great emphasis suburbs and closed spaces. In 1988, the posed of artists such as Eugenio Dittborn, on the technology, these Chilean artists government called for a plebiscite, and the Carlos Altamirano, Juan Davila, Francisco are more interested in the link between muralist brigades became visible again in Smythe, Gonzalo Mezza, Carlos Leppe content and technology. support of “No” vote to decide whether the and Gonzalo Díaz, ponder over what is to A neo-expressionist trend emerges, influ- military regime should continue in power. be a painter in Chile. The Escena de Avan- encing mostly younger artists fresh out of zada, a term coined by the art critic Nelly art schools like Bororo, Samy Benmayor, 1990 Richard (Richard, “Margins and Institu- and Omar Gatica. Their work, a sort of ■ With the inauguration of a new democ- tions:Art in Chile since 1973” Art & Text, action painting with open-minded ideas ratic government, the art scene changed. Melbourne, 1986) point through their the- and technique, is perceived as an act of Young artists who did not live in a dicta- oretical discourse to changes in the codes liberation against repression although no torial regime took charge of the memo- of cultural communication. theoretical underpinning supports this ries of their parents. The awareness of ■ Dittborn acknowledges the precarious body of work. It is impetuous and spon- human rights violations is a recurring conditions of the country and plays taneous with some influence by the Ital- theme for some. Because of the recent around with it. He underscores the mar- ian Transvanguardia movement. 30th anniversary of the military coup, the ginality of Chile in different aspects ■ Another group of artists, sculptors and mass media revisited the history of the including the international art circuit. Dit- painters base their work on a personal dictatorship, helping to relive or narrate tborn sends his works through the mail in vision that originates in the inner soul of the process with more maturity. —BHH
SPRING 2004• ReVista 65 CHILE Contemporary Chilean Narrative Literati Between the MP3 and Zanjón de la Aguada
BY LUIS E. CÁRCAMO-HUECHANTE
, - The Catcher in the Rye in a late twentieth century South American hood of Vitacura in Santiago, Chile, gave rise to the Los Cobres city. Fuguet’s 1994 novel Por favor rebobinar (Please rewind) accen- and Bulevard Kennedy shopping centers. Chile’s first full- tuated this cityscape. One of its chapters occurs in a multimedia T fledged mall, located in Vitacura’s Parque Arauco, soon fol- hotel setting, populated by images of the Allende and Pinochet years, lowed. The importation of consumer goods imports boomed. In images that playfully become part of the visual decoration, without 1989, the Plaza Vespucio mall was built in La Florida, a populous major historical or political density. In addition, U.S. mainstream mixed middle- and working class neighborhood, a world apart from culture is incorporated in celebratory ways—no longer a traumatic the economically elitist areas of Santiago. Since then, malls in Chile North/South dilemma. Many narrative texts of the period exhibit have become a major component of contemporary mass culture and lightness in regards to issues of political history, media and global especially a place for many young people to hang out. culture. This has become a major feature in books ranging from Fuguet’s Mala onda to other more recent ones such as his Las pelícu- VIRTUAL REALISM? las de mi vida (2003) to Andrés Velasco’s Lugares communes. Readers do not need exclusively to go to graphs and statistical data Alberto Fuguet’s narrative aesthetics have aimed to reshape not to learn about this Chile of the recent decades. Short stories and only Chilean literary imagination but also Latin American narra- novels are excellent manifestations of “the great transformation” tive. In a 1998 collection of short stories entitled McOndo (1998), of this period. Without a doubt, by the mid-1980s, Chilean nar- rative is no longer about casas de campo (country houses), the pre- ferred setting of one of the most influential contemporary Chilean novelists, José Donoso (1924– 1996). Indeed, after his thick and masterful novel Casa de campo, Donoso himself incor- porated a more urban scenario in his narrative: the Santiago of political repression (Pinochet’s years) and that of neo-modern- ization can be traced in the Clockwise from to left: Alberto Fuguet, Pedro Lemebel and Gonzalo Contreros 1986 La desesperanza (Curfew). Within this context, Chilean narrative has become increasingly bringing together seventeen Latin American writers, Fuguet sug- about cities, shopping centers, television, movies, the culture of cell gests in the prologue that new Latin American writers have radi- phones, DVD and MP3. These are the recurrent elements in the cally shifted from magical realism to a sort of virtual realism. narrative of one of the most visible writers of the period: Alberto Fuguet (1964). His 1990 book of short stories Sobredosis (Over- RECONVERSION OF THE MARGINS dose) opens with a movie-like scene in a fictionalized Apumanque, What is left of the traditional political and social commitment of a typical shopping mall of the barrio alto in Santiago—the locus for the writer? Is the new wave of modernization making meaningless the book’s literary imagination. Sobredosis has become a key refer- any literary project aimed to remain politically and socially ence in the genealogy of the literary and publishing phenomenon “engaged”? There is no doubt that the old-fashioned “committed known as the “New Chilean Narrative.” writer” has left the intellectual and literary scene of contemporary During the 1990s, Alberto Fuguet moved into the novelistic Chile. In this process, some new writers have invented suggestive genre. His 1992 Mala onda (Bad Vibes) became one of the most ways to critically talk back about issues of public culture and pol- widely read novels of the first half of this decade. Like José Donoso’s itics in society. Two interesting, but very different, literary styles La desesperanza, Fuguet’s Mala onda takes place in a city whose have developed what we may call “literatures of the margins” in the atmosphere is marked by political tensions, with the heavy hand late 20th and early 21st century Chile: Diamela Eltit (1949) and of the military siege as a very faded background. In Fuguet’s novel, Pedro Lemebel (born in the mid-1950s). in contrast to Donoso’s narrative, fashion, TV culture, movies, Diamela Eltit’s 1991 publication of Vaca sagrada (Sacred Cow) and publicity form the fabric of the daily life of its main charac- in the Biblioteca Sur Series of Planeta Press, a mainstream publish- ter, 17-year-old Matías Vicuna, a boy who evokes J.D. Salinger’s ing house, represented a shift for the development and circulation
66 ReVista • SPRING 2004 PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF EL MERCURIO THE OTHER CHILE: ART AND LITERATURE of her narrative, formerly limited to the avant-garde elite of the 1980s In 1999, the prestigious Prize Rómulo Gallegos, considered by in Chile and the MLA academic circles in the United States. The many as the Latin American Nobel Prize, was awarded to Roberto influential literary critic of the period, Ignacio Valente, from his Bolaños for his 1998 novel Los detectives salvajes (The Wild Detec- literary column in the Sunday edition of El Mercurio, praised Eltit’s tives). The prize placed Bolaños’s narrative on the spotlight as a writing. Vaca Sagrada is a text that delves into the poetic and nar- path-breaking literary talent in the contemporary scene of Latin rative potential of language in order to convey a hallucinating and American narrative. Los detectives salvajes is about two men who deep journey into the realm of the female body. In this manner, Eltit’s become nomadic figures traveling around the world in search of a text defies also the canonical code of the novel. By mixing poetic, disappeared female writer. Bolaños’s novel takes place in many coun- narrative and conceptual writing, and collapsing the traditional notion tries: Mexico, Liberia, Israel, Angola, France, the United States, and of history or narrative plot, Vaca sagrada—like many of Eltit’s books— Spain. In my view, Bolaños’s narration poses fascinating questions undermines the boundaries of literary genres. This type of neo avant- about the issue of displacement, nomadism, and transnational garde exploration is critical to Eltit’s narrative. In fact, her first book, imagery. Lumpérica (1983) (translated into English as E Luminata) shocked The works of Contreras, Bolaños, Eltit, Lemebel or Fuguet sug- many readers. This text—perhaps, the best way to define it, or not gest a dramatic relocation of “lettered culture” within the context of define it—develops a highly codified literary language. It is a nar- a country strongly marked by the advent of the global era. The cohab- ration about the nightlife of a female body and its exposure to the itation, or at times tension and disjunction, between the literati and violent signs of the city. Eltit’s most recent book, Mano de obra (2002), the market, the literary field and the new media ecologies, the lettered takes place in an imagined supermarket in which the characters seems subject and the social margins, has evolved into new ways in the to be enslaved to an nightmarish commodity culture. contemporary intellectual and cultural scenario of Chilean society. While sharing with Eltit a certain critical edge, the writing of Pedro Lemebel has become more assimilated into the mainstream Luis E. Cárcamo-Huechante is an Assistant Professor of Romance literary market. By the early 1990s, the signature of Pedro Lemebel Languages and Literatures in Harvard University’s Romance Lan- began to circulate as the author of anti-establishment chronicles in guages and Literatures Department. He is also a literary columnist alternative, left-oriented magazines, such as Página Abierta and Punto for El Mercurio. His “1975: The Friedman Lecture and Chile’s Final. He also founded, along with Francisco Casas, the Performance Cultural Adjustment” is the newest addition to the DRCLAS Group Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis. His 1994 La esquina es mi corazón Working Paper Series. and his 1997 Loco afán , Lemebel’s first collections of crónicas urbanas (urban chronicles), brought to the fore both a creative and a trou- blesome way to speak openly, insolently, bitterly, and yet seductively A COUNTRY OF POETS about the daily and nocturnal milieu of homosexuals, lesbians, and A CELEBRATION OF PABLO NERUDA, 1904-1973 transvestites, vis-à-vis the urban glamour of modernization and the political history of Chile. His most recent book of chronicles car- A Celebration of Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) at Harvard’s ries as a title the name of a poor neighborhood in southern Santi- Houghton Library honored the centennial of the Chilean poet Pablo ago: Zanjón de la Aguada (2003). Through Lemebel’s writings, lo Neruda’s birth. Items featured include manuscript drafts of popular has become again popular in Chilean reading communi- Neruda’s play, Fulgor y muerte de Joaquín Murieta, (Splendor ties. His first novel Tengo miedo torero (2001), translated into Eng- and Death of Joaquín Murieta), about a legendary Chilean (or lish as My tender matador (2004), is the story of a transvestite and Mexican) bandit during the California Gold Rush. In addition, a radical leftist militant who often hang out in the poor southern Neruda’s political views were illustrated through several of his let- periphery of Santiago, while participating in underground politics ters to the Argentine literary figure Victoria Ocampo and his illus- and planning the assassination of General Pinochet. This novel— trious career as a poet represented by various first editions of his like Fuguet’s Mala onda in 1994—became a best-selling book in works that were published in Chile, Argentina and Spain. 2003. Sexual difference, conspiratorial political plots and anti-estab- Neruda’s literary works include some 47 books, of which 35 lishment views have taken the literature of Lemebel to the center are poetry. He published his first book of poetry, Crepusculario, in of the literary market, on a national and international scale. 1923 and went on to write prolific, abundant, and ever changing material. As critic René de Costa writes, “Neruda’s writing does THE “LETTERED CITY” STILL SURVIVES? not evolve in the traditional way, according to a smooth trajectory In 1991, Gonzalo Contreras (1958) published his first novel La ciu- of growth and refinement. Instead, after each triumph there is a dad anterior as a result of receiving a prestigious literary prize by the series of spurts, of experimental compositions, followed by a vol- El Mercurio literary supplement. Like Fuguet’s Sobredosis, this novel canic outflow of verses that result in a totally new book and, to be represented a milestone in what was then called the “New Chilean sure, a new and somewhat different poetic.” Narrative.” La ciudad anterior relates the story of an arms merchant Exhibition curators were Harvard Romance Languages and Lit- who ends up in an unknown provincial city, near a highway and eratures Assistant Professor Luis Cárcamo-Huechante and Lynn somehow stuck in the past. Highly visual and cinematic in its lan- Shirey, Assistant Librarian for Latin America, Spain, and Portugal guage, well-crafted in its literary style, and compact in its structure, in Harvard’s Widener Library. this novel—along with his 1998 El gran mal (The Great Evil)—has placed Gonzalo Contreras among the most talented and skillful This article was adapted with permission from the Harvard College Library writers in contemporary Chilean literature. website.
SPRING 2004• ReVista 67 FOCUS ON HARVARD Harvard in Chile p. 68 ELEMENTAL social housing p. 70 Harvard School of Public Health p. 72 Harvard Study Abroad p. 74 Magellan Telescopes p. 75
Harvard in Chile “So what’s Harvard doing in Chile?”
BY STEVE REIFENBERG
’ ” unteers at community organizations. “He has us setting our sights very high,” is a question that I am rather often So the first answer focuses on the rich says DRCLAS Director John Coatsworth. “ asked as program director for Harvard’s diversity of research, teaching or other pro- “This new Regional Office represents an S Regional Office of the David Rocke- fessional activities of Harvard faculty from important institutional experiment in how feller Center for Latin America Studies across the University, and study, internships Harvard is working to both make a difference (DRCLAS) based in Santiago, Chile. There and work involvement of Harvard students. in the world and to have what is happening are at least three answers to this question. “A bold institutional experiment for Har- in the world reflected back at Harvard.” “Many different things,” is the obvious first vard University,” is a second answer. For the Since its August 2002 opening, the answer, especially for anyone who even first time ever, Harvard University has estab- DRCLAS Regional Office has hosted more quickly flips through this edition of ReVista: lished an office outside of the United States than 40 Harvard faculty members and Harvard astronomers are studying the stars with a mission to serve all parts of the uni- administrators working on projects in the from some of the most powerful telescopes versity—faculty, students, and administra- region, as well as organized dozens of Har- in the world atop the Andes, Harvard pub- tion—in promoting the work that Harvard vard-faculty led conferences and seminars. lic health specialists are exploring lessons wants to do in this region of the world (in Working closely with Harvard’s Office of from Chile’s health reform, and Harvard this case, in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, International Programs, the Regional Office architects and urban planners are exploring and Uruguay.) Based in Santiago, the in Santiago administers Harvard’s only Uni- innovative designs in low-cost housing and Regional Office is designed to enhance versity-administered study abroad program. in the process transforming the way their opportunities for Harvard faculty to carry The Harvard College study abroad program respective fields think about these challenges. out their research and collaborative projects, in Chile is more than just one more oppor- At the same time, Harvard College as well as greatly expand the opportunities tunity for Harvard students; it is a first-time students are studying at local Chilean uni- for Harvard students studying, working, or institutional experiment for the University. versities, Harvard medical students are par- doing research in the five countries. “This Santiago program is a model for ticipating in international service learning Harvard’s President Lawrence Summers what we hope to see a lot more of in the projects and doing clinical rotations, while has challenged those who work at Harvard future: experimentation that leads to good other enterprising Harvard students are to think about international issues, global- DRCLAS regional office in Chile that occupies a working as interns at vineyards and as vol- ization, and the role of Harvard in the world. portion of the third floor of the FLASCO building.
68 ReVista • SPRING 2004 FOCUS ON HARVARD What’s Harvard doing in Chile? A lot, ranging from devel- oping innovative social housing designs to exploring the solar system to experimenting with a bold, new institutional model for the University.
opportunities for our students to engage in orating with the Museo Chileno de Arte Pre- critical role that a leading academic center the local culture and university life,” says colombino in Santiago on a major exhibition like Harvard can play, and that the DRCLAS Jane Edwards, the Director of Harvard’s and research project on the Incan khipus. Regional Office can facilitate, in creating the Office of International Programs. “The Harvard alumni in Chile have been space that allows leading actors from gov- “I went to study in Chile because that invaluable in raising awareness about our ernment, military, business, church, media, is the one place that Harvard runs a study work, and the current exhibition of the civil society and cultural institutions to learn abroad program,” explained Melissa Dell, Incan khipus that is cosponsored by Har- about how each other sees the problem and a junior economics concentrator currently vard and the Museo PreColombino is one of think together about a better future. These studying in the program. the most successful exhibitions in the are incredible opportunities.” “I wanted to have access to Harvard’s museum’s history,” says Urton´s partner in So the answers to the question, What is resources while studying abroad,” says Santiago, Carlos Aldunate, Director of the Harvard doing in Chile? are multiple: many Manuela Zoninsein who participated in the Museo PreColombino. things, an institutional experiment, and fall 2003 program. “I liked the balance in the The presence of the Regional Office has building bridges. But those answers raise program. After the initial two-week Harvard also made connections across international other questions, particularly as Harvard orientation, I was given the independence to boundaries through initiatives such as the thinks about its international strategy. be a normal Chilean student. At the same time, Bolivia-Chile-Peru Project: Exploring Oppor- “In my view, this experiment of the throughout my time in Chile I had access to tunities for Mutual Gain. DRCLAS office in Santiago has proven to a great Harvard staff if the need arose.” “People solve problems better when they be a huge success for a growing number of “Having the opportunity to study and at are able to meet face to face, without the pres- Harvard faculty and students, administra- the same time do research at the United sure to make a commitment,” says Harvard tors and alumni,” says John Coatsworth, Nations Economic Commission that is right Law School professor emeritus Roger Fisher, “but it also raises an important set of ques- next door to the Harvard office was an who has helped lead two week-long sessions tions for the University about the future of incredible opportunity,” says junior gov- for influential actors from the three coun- internationalization at Harvard.” ernment concentrator Lewis Smith who also tries at DRCLAS in Cambridge this past year. The questions include: should Harvard participated in the fall 2003 program. “Chile and Bolivia are the only two coun- continue the experiment in Chile past the “Building bridges and creating synergies,” tries in South America that do not have initial three-year pilot phase? (There will be is a third answer to what is Harvard doing diplomatic relations, and there are few venues a full evaluation of the pilot project by the in Chile. for them to explore creatively, and without University in the summer 2004). Should the “Harvard’s decision to establish a formal commitment, new ideas in how to improve University as a whole draw lessons from the presence in the region has had an incredible the relations,” Fisher explains. “The Bolivia- global strategy of Harvard Business School energizing impact on the local Harvard Chile-Peru project represents an important that has set up HBS offices around the alumni,” says Harvard Club of Chile Alumni dialogue that is very difficult to organize world? Should the University establish a net- President Andrés Rodríguez. The Harvard without a third party facilitator. There is a work of field offices in every major world alumni of Chile have helped dozens of students region, each with a university-wide man- find internships and work opportunities, and date? Should Harvard manage its own study- have organized and hosted numerous acade- The DRCLAS Regional Office is housed abroad programs in other countries, as it mic conferences and seminars with Harvard in independent offices on the third floor does in Chile? faculty. The Harvard Alumni Association, Har- of the new FLACSO building (the Latin In the end, the hope is that experiments vard Alumni Club of Chile and DRCLAS orga- American Faculty of Social Sciences) in like the DRCLAS Regional Office will help nized a reception for President Lawrence Santiago, Chile with office space for answer some of these questions by explor- Summers on March 30, 2004 prior to a major visiting Harvard faculty and graduate ing, defining, and refining the ways that address he gave on “Globalization and Edu- students and its own seminar room. Harvard can have an impact in the world cation” at the United Nations Economic Com- Through the adjoining United Nations and bring those experiences back most suc- mission for Latin America & the Caribbean Economic Commission for Latin America cessfully to the University. (ECLAC) in Santiago. and the Caribbean (ECLAC) complex, “Making the connections to Harvard the Regional Office has access to large Steve Reifenberg is the Program Director alumni in Santiago has been an enormous help conference spaces and state-of-the-art for the DRCLAS Regional Office in Santi- to our project,” says Harvard anthropology teleconferencing facilities. ago, Chile. He served as DRCLAS Execu- professor Gary Urton, who has been collab- tive Director from 1996 to 2002.
SPRING 2004• ReVista 69 CHILE ELEMENTAL Architecture for a difficult equation
BY ALEJANDRO ARAVENA AND PABLO ALLARD
deprived interests of the constructors to gen- in the history of social housing. The erate an efficient and active market of social first one was in Germany in 1927, housing. According to the Chilean Build- T when, the best architects of the time ing Chamber, in ten years, Chile could arrive tried to solve the problem of low cost hous- at deficit zero in terms of housing. ing with construction in Stuttgart’s Weis- Under the innovative VSDsD program, senhofsiedlung. each family receives a subsidy of a $7,500 The second moment, in 1970, was the voucher; the program includes those without Previ-Lima project in Peru, when the world’s the capacity to pay back a loan or without best architects collaborated to overcome hous- access to financial credit. Considering cur- ing shortages. The end of the project marked rent values in today’s Chilean building indus- the closing of the second chapter, a long hia- try, this low budget allows for just 300 square tus in the involvement of big-name architects feet of built space. This means that the ben- in the challenge of housing for the poor. eficiaries have to build their own housing. Well, we are planning to write the third They must transform the mere housing solu- chapter of this story by bringing back the tion of a simple subsidy into a dynamic What happens as a result of that equation is best international architects to work on the dwelling (hence the program’s name). that one isolated house becomes stuck in the most challenging of architectural issues: how What’s important about resolving the middle of a lot. Two major problems derive extremely low cost housing can be a real housing problem and making the new hous- from having this assumption as a starting means to overcome poverty. ing policy a success is to provide the proper point. First of all, the subsidy (traditional ELEMENTAL, as our social housing framework for analyzing the problem and subsidies or the new $ 7,500 one) has to pay program is called, seeks to build seven model providing solutions. for everything: the land, the infrastructure projects, of around 200 units each, through- Until the ELEMENTAL project, Chile’s and the house itself. out Chile. These projects will use the best housing programs had lacked the participa- Therefore, the tendency is to look for the practices in construction, engineering, social tion of top-rate architects. Indeed, in Santi- cheapest pieces of property, most likely on work and architecture to offer a real and con- ago’s XII Architecture Biennial, the social the city’s periphery, far away from the oppor- crete contribution to the problem of hous- housing prize category didn’t even have a win- tunities such as work, education, trans- ing access for the poor. We began our search for a way to con- The program includes those without the capacity to pay tribute in March 2001 when we met with Chilean Minister of Housing Jaime Ravinet. back a loan or without access to financial credit When we told him that we wanted to con- tribute ideas and projects in the area of social ner for lack of participation, even though 60 portation and health facilities. Social isolation housing, he eagerly responded that the tim- % of all Chilean construction in terms of and lack of opportunities in turn maintain ing was right: the government was about square footage is dedicated to social housing. these families in poverty, creating belts of to start a new housing policy. Looking at the way the housing market resentment and violence. Building on inex- The new concept Vivienda Social Dinam- operates today, we can find three principal pensive land, the natural following step is to ica sin deuda—Dynamic Social Housing architectural types in low-cost housing. We resort to the least expensive architectural type: Without Debt (VSDsD)—intended to favor understand previous errors and their social the isolated house in the middle of a lot that, people in extreme need. Our contributions consequences, so we are in a position to cor- after a while, tends to disappear, consumed regarding that new policy were highly wel- rect them. However, this new policy intro- by self-construction, generally completely come, he told us. duces some terms into the already difficult incapable of defining a decent urban space. In the last 25 years, Chile has experienced equation of low cost housing, which rec- In trying to keep costs down, we see that radical changes in its housing policies that ognized building types are unable to respond the market follows a strategy of finding an made it become a case study at a world-wide to. We need to find precise answers for these easy way out, be it in the way to look for level. This interest is mainly in the fact that new conditions. sites or in the way of choosing an architec- Chilean housing policy has focused on sub- Let start by looking at how the market tural type. sidizing the demand more than the supply. operates today: The second traditional way of thinking It acts as a facilitating and coordinating state The first typical kind of low-cost hous- about low-cost housing involves more effi- between the necessities of the settlers and the ing assumes that one family equals one lot. cient use of land, using a more “compressed”
70 ReVista • SPRING 2004 ILLUSTRATION COURTESY OF ELEMENTAL FOCUS ON HARVARD
to construct seven sets of very-low-cost hous- ing in Chile” We set out to seek the best possible archi- tectural design, the best possible engineer- ing and construction using development and lab tests for new pre-fabricated components and antiseismical systems, and the best pos- sible social and community work. To get the best possible architecture, we organized an international competition attract- ing more than 730 architectural teams from all over the world. The jury included Chilean Housing Minister Ravinet, Chilean Build- ing Chamber President Fernando Echeverria, Architects Association President José Ramon Ugarte, well-known architects Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Luis Fernandez-Galiano and Rafael Moneo, and Harvard Design School Profes- sor Jorge Silvetti, who chaired the competi- tion that garnered winning proposals from professionals and students from Iran, Venezuela, the United States, Uruguay, Spain, Children enjoy the social space around housing in an architectural rendering. Holland and Chile, among others. Winning architects will incorporate the architectural type: the row house with two housing policy, and specifically the ones ideas of communities benefited in the design floors. However, because we are talking of regarding this VSDsD new policy, we would process, as well as those of local building 300 square foot houses, that compression say the following: companies, architects and engineers. means 10-13 feet wide lots, about a room’s ELEMENTAL has managed in his first width. Thus, whenever a family wants to To design months of life to revitalize to a large extent add a new room, they block access of the 1. neighborhoods the interest in the “problem” of ELEMEN- original rooms to light and ventilation, pro- 2. made out of good quality, flexible to grow TAL housing. Nevertheless, the proposed ducing severe problems in the environmental housing units ideas must now pass the sieve of the reality quality of the house. Instead of efficiency, 3. well located in the city and must actually get constructed within the what we get then is overcrowding. 4. with the capacity of being developed har- restrictions of the system. The confidence of Finally, we have tall building construc- moniously in time the Chilean government and the different tions. This type of housing has received the 5. structurally safe partner institutions is a good sign that we worst evaluations in every possible respect. ______might make a difference in this relevant prob- It is not even a possibility in Dynamic Social everything x U.S. $7,500 per family. lem and reaffirm the university’s role as a Housing because it blocks any possible bridge to the country’s development. expansion. To solve this extremely difficult equation, . A project’s first goal should be more effi- we had to meet at least two conditions: actu- Alejandro Aravena, a Visiting Professor at cient land use so sites can be located within ally building the housing and following the the Harvard Graduate School of Design, is the network of opportunities of the cities. same rules as everybody else so that the pro- Adjunct Professor in the Architecture School The second goal is to develop an architec- ject could be replicable. of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de tural type with a strategic position in the lot In this context, a group of professors Chile and has run his own independent to guarantee future quality of urban space. from the Harvard Design School—Andrés professional practice since 1994. Pablo That architectural type should also allow an Iacobelli, Pablo Allard, Jorge Silvetti and Ale- Allard is head of the Cities, Landscape and easy and safe self-expansion of housing for jandro Aravena—got together the Faculty Environmental Studies Unit at the Pontifi- every family. Finally, house design should of Architecture and the Program of Poli- cia Universidad Catolica de Chile and is anticipate the best possible scenarios of that cies of the Universidad Catolica de Chile, the principal of ALLARDESIGN architec- future expansion. Good design (and there- the Housing Ministry of Chile (MINVU) ture and urban design. A former DRCLAS fore good public policy) should take care and the David Rockefeller Center of Latin graduate student affiliate, he received his of all the aspects that individual initiative— American Studies of Harvard University doctorate in Design Studies from the Har- no matter how much money, time or energy with a group of important Chilean con- vard Graduate School of Design in 2003. is spent—will never be able to produce. struction companies and social institutions If we could synthesize with a kind of to develop the Fondef/CONICYT project For more information on ELEMENTAL, equation, both the fundamental goals of a ELEMENTAL: “Initiative to innovate and see
SPRING 2004• ReVista 71 CHILE Health Reform Process in Chile HSPH Students Observe
BY THOMAS BOSSERT
. of my contacts and friends who are now tions, as well as a university professor who Doctors had been striking against major actors and observers of the health got her MPH degree in 1978. We also had the health reform laws two weeks reform process and community medicine a stimulating interview with the editor of Wbefore we arrived. Newspapers were initiatives. the leading newspaper, El Mercurio, who is full of debates over the proposed reform. The course came at a critical time in the also an HSPH alum. We’d organized a course for 15 Harvard health reform debate. We could not have The program began with an overview School of Public Health Masters students to had a better opportunity to observe the of Chilean politics and urban planning by experience this remarkable and exciting process of health reform in practice since we two Harvard alums, one from the Graduate period of innovation in Chile for public were there during an intense period of debate School of Design and the other from the health issues. The students came to see first over the new reform laws, including strikes Kennedy School. The students then hand the process of reforming health sys- and demonstrations by the Colegio de Médi- attended a day of lectures on the Chilean tems and innovations in community med- cos. And, as we were nearing the end of the health system, focusing on epidemiologi- icine approaches, including the assessment third week one of the key pieces of reform cal trends and the history of health reforms of social capital initiatives—the two major legislation passed the Congress just as we beginning in the early 20th century. This public health issues in Chile today. were having a celebratory group dinner with overview, led by a former Minister of Health, Chile was one of the first countries on some key reform advocates. We were able to now head of the Department of Public the continent to significantly reform its congratulate them collectively in person over Health of the Medical School at Universi- health system in the 1980s. It introduced food and wine. dad Catolica, was followed by another day new programs of public and private social The 15 masters students were a great mix of lectures at the Ministry of Health where insurance schemes, promoting the growth of medical students (who were comple- the Minister began to inform the students of private sector providers and decentral- menting their program with a year for an of the new proposals for health reform. All izing their public health services. Chile has MPH) and other social scientists (many of the key officials involved presented differ- been a model for health reform in many whom were taking courses mainly on the ent aspects of the reform package. The next other countries. Since the restoration of U.S. health system in our Health Policy and day we met with two officials from the major democracy in the 1990s, many in the health Management program). They quickly caught opposition, the Colegio de Médicos, with pas- sector have been proposing new reforms up on the system issues and consistently sur- sionate defense of their position and an to correct many of the problems that prised me and the Chileans with their well- introduction to the intensity of debate in emerged in implementation of the initial targeted and penetrating questions and Chile. Then we met with the editor of El reforms. comments. In addition, they were a friendly Mecurio and other outside observers who A leader in promoting community-ori- and cooperative group who were very sup- outlined several key issues and offered ented health systems, Chile is also a labo- portive and good-natured throughout the thoughtful evaluations of the nature of the ratory of innovations in outreach programs, program—a chemistry that does not always debate over reform. community participation, 24-hour emer- happen in these kinds of courses. Since four With this introduction to the current gency service units and special programs for of the students did not speak Spanish, the debate, we spent the following week visit- the elderly and other specific risk groups. others took it on themselves to do whis- ing the actual facilities in several munici- The Universidad Católica has implemented pering translations that worked out better palities in the Santiago metropolitan area pilot programs with recent innovations in than we expected. We also had three Chilean and in rural areas in the Aconcagua region. community medicine around Santiago. medical students in the Universidad Católica At these visits we were introduced to a new Complementing these programs is a research family medicine residency program who model for community health programs project to assess the role of social capital were fully integrated into the course. They based on segmenting the community into (trust in others and participation in volun- gave useful detailed commentary, but also territorial districts with a team of health pro- tary groups) in health care services and found that the course helped them to bet- fessionals responsible for an integrated pro- health status. ter understand their own system and the gram of health care for the community. The As the faculty member in charge of the reforms. students were able to observe the conditions course, I have had considerable experience Four HSPH alums devoted enormous in both public and private facilities, dis- in Chile—beginning with my Ph.D. dis- energy and time to getting key officials to cuss the reforms and community health sertation research on the Allende regime in speak to the students and to organize field issues with health providers, with insurance 1973 and continuing over the last ten years trips to hospitals, clinics, insurance com- providers and with mayors. They were even in various public health research and con- panies, mayors and community groups. The treated to traditional Chilean hospitality sulting activities. I was able to draw on many alums included officials in key ministry posi- with local children performing “cueca”
72 ReVista • SPRING 2004 FOCUS ON HARVARD dances for them and with generous lunches support. Evaluations of the family medicine resource for students to do their indepen- in beautiful surroundings. We were con- programs, decentralization at municipal dent work and for some of the classroom stantly surprised and often overwhelmed level, private insurance, pharmaceutical activities. Steve also generously had the final with the generosity and warmth of our problems and social capital research were group dinner at his house and led a discus- Chilean hosts and their willingness to share also topics of the individual projects. sion of the students to elicit what they had balanced observations and thoughtful opin- Another project may lead to collaborative gained from the Chilean visit. ions with us. research on cancer with the faculty of Uni- I think with this success, we will be plan- During the final week the students versidad Católica. ning to do the course again next year—to worked on individual and group projects The course could not have been a success observe the first year of reform implemen- and presented the results in a seminar that without the wide support and participation tation. All the Chilean participants are enthu- was attended by the key alum organizers. of the Harvard community and the tremen- siastic about continuing this collaboration. Some of the projects were so professionally dous work of the Santiago office of the David We are also planning other collaborations— done that they will be taken into consider- Rockefeller Center for Latin American Stud- having just joined with Universidad Católica ation by local officials—particularly one ies. Steve Reifenberg’s network and excellent in our proposal to National Institutes on impressive survey of patient satisfaction in reputation made it possible to contact some Aging to form a Center for the Study of a local clinic that will be used to guide of the key alums and to call on others who Adult Health in Middle and Low Income changes there. One team did a political fea- knew and worked with him. He put his staff, Countries. sibility study using a computer program particularly Alejandra Méndez, at our dis- developed at Harvard to assess the politi- posal for the initial organizing and for many Thomas Bossert is the Director of the cal feasibility of the reform package and to of the detailed logistics needed throughout Politics and Governance Group at the develop innovative strategies for increasing the course. The Center was an invaluable Harvard School of Public Health.
THREE STUDENTS, THREE EXPERIENCES LOOKING AT HEALTH REFORM IN CHILE
POLITICAL ACTORS term but a shifting concept that is actively worked out I was extremely impressed with how successful the Chilean amongst government groups, NGO’s, physicians and the pub- health system has been in improving the health of its citizens lic. As a family physician, I had the chance to learn how my despite its limited resources. Its success, however, in many profession functions in Chile and came to respect the differ- ways have led to one of its current problems: it now has to ences in Chilean family practice. It was interesting to see this respond to the chronic health care needs more typical of richer form of family practice adapt itself to the climate and needs of countries without the luxury of a large health budget. I also the Chilean system. found it interesting to observe how the various political actors have aligned themselves either for or against the health Sharmila Chatterjee, MD, is a Masters of Public Health student in the reforms currently under discussion. I learned how important Department of Health Care Management, Harvard School of Public Health political analysis and strong communications are in implement- ing successful health reform strategies. My experience in Chile INCREDIBLE HOSPITALITY was extremely rewarding in that it allowed me to develop a Spending three weeks in Santiago and learning about and deep understanding of the Chilean health system and also pro- watching health policy-making in action undoubtedly was a vided me with some insight that I will bring with me as con- very unique opportunity. We had incredible access to key play- tinue my career as a public health professional. I hope to ers and stakeholders in the health policy-making process. By return to Chile again in the near future! the end of the program, we had a very good sense of the pro- posed reforms and their strengths and weaknesses, and more Karen Pelley is in her second year of the two-year Masters of Science (MS2) in importantly, a new framework for analysis and approaching Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). health sector reform in any country. Most touching during my stay was the incredible hospitality A FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE our hosts constantly showered on us. They answered endless I learned a great deal during this class. Although, I had previ- questions, provided mountains of information, and graced us ously read about health reform in other countries and dis- with elegant lunches, warm greetings, and an openness that cussed it in the classroom, I had no firsthand experience with one typically reserves for family or close friends. And time and what it was like to be “on the ground,” sorting through infor- time again, I thought that we could learn about much more mation and assessing people’s positions. Being in the middle of than health care from our Southern neighbors. the reform process in Chile in the way we were was just like being consultants and it was really exciting. I learned that Caron Lee is a Masters of Science (MS2) Candidate, Class of 2004, in the public health for the “public good” is not a static textbook Department of Health Policy and Management, HSPH.
SPRING 2004• ReVista 73 CHILE Salamanca of the Southern Cone Harvard Study Abroad in Chile
BY ERIN GOODMAN AND ANÍBAL SEPÚLVEDA
, before university classes begin to take part children. This diverse combination of expe- perceived as a long, earthquake-prone in a two-week orientation program in which riences allows the students to have a broad country in South America with a tough they are introduced to the history of Chilean perspective of Chile politically, economically A human rights record that made even culture and the quirks of Chilean Spanish. and socially providing them with the tools intrepid travelers wary. Today, the return Harvard students live with Chilean host necessary to form their own analyses. to democratic rule, increasing prosperity, active social and cultural life, and excellent Program participants are able to matriculate at one of universities have all helped convert Santiago into a Spanish-speaking destination of choice three universities: the Pontificia Universidad Católica, the for foreign students, a sort of the Salamanca of the southern cone. While the strange lingo Universidad de Chile, and the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez. spoken by young Chileans may make some students nervous, soon the chilenismos families to enhance their experience and DRCLAS is able to provide a cushion of become like passwords into a unique lin- their Spanish. Throughout the semester, stu- logistical support for students so that they are guistic club (¿cachai?). dents are encouraged to travel both within able to take full advantage of their experiences In February 2003, the DRCLAS Chile and beyond. The DRCLAS Regional and the new environment around them with- Regional Office in Santiago and the Har- Office often facilitates many program out the hesitation that comes with stepping vard’s Office of International Programs options—including internships at local, where one hasn’t stepped before, while feel- established a semester-length study abroad national, and international organizations. ing confident that Harvard University is program for Harvard College students. One During the orientation program and behind them in this endeavor. Recent par- year later, as participants return to Harvard throughout the semester, students visit ticipant and History concentrator Carlos and word of mouth spreads, the program’s famous and less famous sites, including Isla Rojas (Harvard College ’04) observed: “The enrollment has doubled. The Harvard study Negra, poet Pablo Neruda’s coastal home- program made each step of getting to Chile abroad program in Chile is the first-ever turned-museum, and La Victoria, the first and into the university easy. Receiving credit Harvard University-administered study squatters’ settlement in Santiago and South was also very easy. I believe that DRCLAS abroad program anywhere in the world. America, dating back to the mid-1950s. In and its many links with individuals and orga- Program participants are able to matric- the same week that the students are wel- nizations in Latin American made any inter- ulate at one of three excellent universities: comed to the Santiago office of CEPAL- est a possibility. Normally the difficulty in the Pontificia Universidad Católica, the Uni- ECLAC, the United Nations’ Economic studying abroad is the effort necessary to bring versidad de Chile, and the Universidad Adolfo Commission for Latin American and the together different institutions for your own Ibáñez. The selected students—meeting Caribbean, they have the chance to visit needs; DRCLAS eliminated this stress.” requirements of intermediate Spanish and orphanages such as the Hogar Domingo Savio, an adventurous spirit—arrive in Santiago providing social services to underprivileged Erin Goodman is Student Services Coordi- nator at the David Rockefeller Center. She spent two years as an exchange student in Chile and in Brazil. She holds an under- graduate degree in International Relations from Wellesley College and is currently pur- suing a Master’s degree in International Education Policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Aníbal Sepúlveda is a certified simultaneous translator and holds a diploma in International Relations from the University of Chile. He formerly was Assistant Resident Director at Univer- sity of Chile Butler program. Currently, he works as the Student Programs Coordinator for the Regional Office of the David Rocke- feller Center for Latin American Studies in University students at their studies. Santiago, Chile.
74 ReVista • SPRING 2004 PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEJANDRO BARRUEL FOCUS ON HARVARD Magellan Telescopes Linking Chile with the Universe
BY ROBERT P. KIRSHNER
cost of $67.5 million. Gifts from directly overhead Las Harvard alumni provided the Campanas in Chile. Velvet resources for Harvard to join the T dark night skies and long Magellan Project. About 10% of the stretches of clear weather provide observing time on this and most extraordinary opportunities to study other telescopes in Chile, is used by astronomical objects not visible from Chilean astronomers, providing the Northern Hemisphere. them with an extremely valuable That’s why the twin Magellan resource in return for hosting the Telescopes, an enormous 6.5 meters observatories. in diameter, provide a sharp and inti- Harvard is also a member of mate view of the Magellanic Clouds, AURA, the organization that runs satellites of our own Milky Way the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Galaxy. Harvard professors and stu- Observatory in Chile for the NSF, dents, astronomers from other U.S. and of AUI, the organization that universities and their Chilean coun- runs the National Radio Astronomy terparts are finding this outpost Observatory, which is building the located at an altitude of 8000 feet Atacama Large Millimeter Array on the fringe of the Atacama Desert high on the altiplano in the extreme is bringing them closer to under- north of Chile. standing our universe. Together with our Magellan Astronomers use Magellan for a partners (MIT, Michigan, Arizona, wide range of programs, from finding and the Carnegie Observatories) we new (small) planets in the solar sys- are exploring the possibilities for the tem, through studies of stars, galaxies, Giant Magellan Telescope with and galaxy clusters, all the way up to seven huge mirrors. This would be measuring the properties of the Uni- the world’s largest optical and verse on the largest scales. My own infrared telescope. We hope that work at Magellan focuses on deter- Outside the Magellan Telescope Harvard will continue to have an mining the properties of the myste- important role in the development rious Dark Energy that appears to be making with about 140 nights of observing time of astronomy in Chile. the expansion of the Universe accelerate. each year, typically in four- or five- night One recent discovery at Magellan by Kris blocks reserved for them. Some undergrad- Robert P. Kirshner is Professor of Astron- Stanek and my postdoctoral student Tom uates have also arranged to work at obser- omy at Harvard University and an Associ- Matheson helped crack open the mystery of vatories in Chile and we hope to expand this ate Director of the Harvard-Smithsonian the origin of gamma ray bursts by showing activity. Contacts with Chilean universi- Center for Astrophysics. Joining the Har- vard Astronomy Department in 1986, he My own work at Magellan focuses on determining the served as Chairman of the department from 1990-1997. He is an author of more properties of the mysterious Dark Energy that appears to than 200 research papers dealing with supernovae, the large-scale distribution of be making the expansion of the Universe accelerate. galaxies, and the size and shape of the Universe. He is also the teacher of Science that, after the light from the burst had faded, ties are cordial, but not as close as those of A-35, a core curriculum course for 250 there was a supernova at the site of a type Princeton and Columbia, which have joint Harvard undergraduates entitled “Matter we recognized. These events probably mark postdocs who spend time at each institu- in the Universe.” The vivid (and slightly the formation of a black hole at the center tion, but are entitled to apply for the tele- hazardous) demonstrations in Science A- of a massive star. scope time reserved for Chileans. 35 led to Kirshner’s being featured in Harvard faculty, postdoctoral and grad- Harvard is a 20% partner in the Mag- Boston Magazine in its October 1998 uate students are frequent visitors to Chile, ellan Telescopes, completed in 2002 at a article on “Nutty Professors”.
SPRING 2004• ReVista 75 BOOK TALK Constructing a Multiparty System in Mexico
Julia Preston and Samuel Dillon, Opening Mexico. The Making of a Democracy, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.
A REVIEW BY SOLEDAD LOAEZA
HE DEFEAT OF THE INSTITUTIONAL found political transformation. The man’s budding political career. In Revolutionary Party, known book is therefore organized the weeks to follow, Newman put by its Spanish acronym as around critical moments that the country on the verge of an T PRI, in the July 2000 pres- sparked a new political aware- institutional collapse. The manner idential election was the anti-cli- ness among Mexicans: the 1968 of relating this story in the book matic finish to the process of student movement; the 1985 suggests that it was told to Preston democratization that had lasted earthquakes in Mexico City; the and Dillon by Newman himself, nearly three decades. Many were turbulent presidential election of attempting to rewrite history expecting emotional explosions 1988; the Zapatista uprising and through this venue. It would have of joy for the PRI’s defeat, popu- political assassinations in 1994; been interesting for the authors to lar demonstrations such as those the subsequent scandals involving check his account of events with in Argentina and Chile or in the PRI and conflicts within the other protagonists or documents Poland and East Germany with ranks of the official party; and from the period. the collapse of dictatorships. But finally, Vicente Fox’s campaign. In the same fashion, each one in Mexico, the celebrations for The result is a story that at times of the episodes related by Preston Vicente Fox’s victory were not takes on the tones of a political and Dillon are controversial mat- very different from those of any thriller as it relates the saga of the ters in Mexico, about which many winning candidate in ordinary construction of a multi-party sys- a certain Oscar De Lasse headed different versions exist. For exam- democracies. At midnight on vot- tem in Mexico. up this program and is fingered ple, the reader can very well ing day, the then-president of the Preston and Dillon write their in the book as the frivolous per- imagine that Manuel Camacho, a Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), history based on many histories— son who pushed the Secretary of PRI militant since his youth and José Woldenberg, announced the those personal versions of their the Interior to commit to an early a thwarted presidential candidate conclusion of the day’s results to interview subjects. The great delivery of the official results. In in 1994, gave the authors much a drowsy audience who, between advantage that the authors of effect, a few days before the elec- of the information about the pres- yawns, congratulated each other Opening Mexico give us are ver- tion, government officials rashly idential succession that year. Like- on the success of the electoral sions of the events narrated from made a public announcement— wise, the 1994 financial disaster, process. The routine nature of the the point of view of different without any kind of legal obliga- the cause of which is still a sub- voting sealed IFE’s triumph as a activists and politicians in power tion—that thanks to a ject of harsh debate, is discussed credible and effective institution. or in the opposition. In spite of the computerized system, they would in Opening Mexico from the Through the application of new fact that the authors do not name be able to reveal the voting results viewpoint of Jaime Serra, the electoral rules, the institute had many of their sources, these can just a few hours after the closing unsuccessful Treasury Secretary, managed to modify both the be identified relatively easily sim- of the polls. José Newman was the who some see as a victim and oth- abstentionist behavior of citizens ply through their versions of official who made the announce- ers as a culprit. The voice of Pres- and fraudulent actions of politi- events. One notable case in point ment in an arrogant manner that ident Ernesto Zedillo’s personal cal parties. is that of José Newman, who in many saw as a permanent char- secretary Liébano Saénz can also Julia Preston and Samuel Dil- 1988 was director of the National acter trait. This presumptuous act be heard in the book’s description lon, reporters for The New York Electoral Registry, and whom became the touchstone for the of the tensions between the pres- Times in Mexico from 1995 to many consider responsible for the opposition who from very early ident and Francisco Labastida, the 2001, recognize in this experi- debacle of that year’s presidential on that election eve began to losing PRI candidate in the year ence—sometimes an exasperat- election. Opening Mexico tells us demand results. The government’s 2000. All these testimonies are ingly slow process— the profound quite a different story, recount- refusal led to an explosion of dis- valuable, although biased, and reach of the restrained changes. ing a parallel system of vote tal- trust on the part of the opposi- therefore cannot be taken as fac- Their book, Opening Mexico. The lying, also set up in the Secretary tion about official election results, tual accounts. For non-Mexican Making of a Democracy, cap- of the Interior, that was rumored particularly because of the infa- and younger readers, it would tures the dramatic quality of key at the time and out of Newman’s mous "computer system crash" have been useful for Preston and episodes that translated into a pro- control. According to this account, that also led to the crash of New- Dillon to have allowed room for
76 ReVista • SPRING 2004 BOOK TALK other viewpoints and to provide ship between Mexican politicians bility of The New York Times. This than compensated by the fresh- more context about the personal and foreign correspondents, in follows the historical example of ness of many of their pages. Their bias of their interview subjects. particular those from The New Díaz, who appeared to address descriptions are better than their This addition would have shed York Times, is a factor in local himself more to a Mexican pub- explanations that resort to his- more light on the political treasure political life. There have been lic than U.S. readers. Because of torical predetermination by seek- trove they have present in the nar- some correspondents so close to this, one of the most interesting ing in the legends of the Aztec rated accounts. the political elite that they aspects of this book is the self- past the key to electoral fraud. It In February 1908, reporter appeared more PRIist than the PRI. description of each one of the is as if to understand the elec- James Creelman of Pearson’s That is not, to be certain, the case interviewed subjects. Neverthe- tion of George Bush in Florida Magazine published an interview of Preston and Dillon. However, less, the journalists should have in the year 2000, we would look with the dictator Porfirio Díaz, in the reading of their book evokes intervened to reestablish a bal- for the answer in the systematic which Díaz announced that he Creelman’s Díaz interview ance between what their sources extermination of the American would not run for re-election in because the reader has the sen- were willing to tell and what they Indians, who after all are closer 1910. We do not know if the arti- sation that those interviewed saw hushed up. to us in time than the Aztec cle had some impact on readers in the work of the correspondents Opening Mexico does not Empire. in the United States, but the trans- for the prestigious newspaper a aspire to be an academic book. lation in the Mexican newspaper means to relate their own version It is the work of two newspaper Soledad Loaeza, professor of politi- El Imparcial had serious politi- of events or to settle accounts with correspondents who had the cal science at the Colegio de México, cal repercussions. The publication some enemy. At the very least, the opportunity to live surprising is a 2003-2004 Radcliffe Fellow. She of the interview set off the elec- interviews presented to their sub- moments in Mexican political life. is the author of El Partido Acción toral race that would end with jects an opportunity to describe Preston and Dillon fulfill their role Nacional, la larga marcha, 1939- Madero’s uprising, Díaz’ fall and their own version of events and as historians of the present very 1994, (Fondo de Cultura Economica, the beginning of the Mexican rev- shape for posterity their self-image well; at times, their reporting lacks 1999) and is currently researching olution. Since then, the relation- with the assistance of the credi- a touch of skepticism, but is more presidential power in Mexico.
Inside the Ring of Fire
Beatriz Manz, Paradise in Ashes: a Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004
A REVIEW BY TARAYN A. GRIZZARD
RADITIONALLY, ANTHROPOLO- difficult to ascertain and even more observer’s perspective on modern- gists have divorced them- difficult to achieve. Few U.S. day genocide. The culmination of selves emotionally and anthropologists have provided per- her 20+ years working and liv- T physically from their sub- sonal examples of how to manage ing in the village Santa Maria jects, placing the highest priority ethical and professional issues Tzejá, Paradise in Ashes is not on objectivity and the role of the inherent in working with commu- only perhaps the most detailed lon- anthropologist as expert observer, nities in crisis; very few have used gitudinal account of the civil war while often neglecting or de- their vantage point as researchers but also provides a sterling exam- emphasizing the potential for to educate others on a broader ple of an optimum balance of advocacy that anthropologists may level about the on-going tragedies advocacy and ethnographic have, particularly those who work their work encounters. analysis in the face of human with populations in which torture, Providing this example is Beat- tragedy. Manz, Chilean by birth genocide, or other human rights riz Manz, a recent speaker at Har- and influenced by the coup of the violations may be occurring. Cur- vard and an anthropologist at the Pinochet era, shows the reader rent concerns over the ethical ram- University of California-Berkeley, through well-done ethnographic ifications of observing without whose latest work, Paradise in analysis how the war marches on intervening in populations where Ashes, is an intense, detailed through generations of Guate- and army intervention during the these violations are present have account of the atrocities of the civil malans born to Santa Maria Tzejá, war. Throughout the book, Manz made ethnographic work in vul- war in Guatemala in the 1980s. the first village visited by the unflinchingly details not only the nerable groups a difficult task, one This work gives Manz a distinct Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres immense loss of life that the vil- in which the ideal balance of the place among a small handful of (EGP), or the Guerilla Army of the lagers endured throughout the war roles of observer and advocate is other notable books describing an Poor, and a central site of conflict but also those whom she lost as
SPRING 2004• ReVista 77 BOOK TALK well, dedicating the book in part story of war to come but also encap- also due to the personal perspec- the Americas. The details of her to Myrna Mack, a friend and sulates the local setting for much tive from which Manz occasion- personal journey as anthropolo- Guatemalan anthropologist mur- of the Guatemalan civil war, where ally relates. Using clear, objective, gist, advocate, and friend to the dered by the military for her ’sub- Indian villages, Catholic priests and and direct language, Manz also people of Santa Maria Tzejá also versive’ activities organizing nuns, and church groups of all provides appropriate ’remedial make a significant contribution to Guatemalan women’s groups. descriptions became targets for the history’ for those who, for what- public anthropology as a guide for Manz’s straightforward per- government’s war against its own ever reason, may not have been those who might seek to integrate spective on the war, coupled with people. cognizant of the extremes of this political activism and advocacy into her excellent analyses, gives the Also notable is her account of particular era in Guatemala and their academic inquiries. With skill, reader a rare and intimate per- the army’s “re-building” of Santa showcases the political and social sensitivity, and a trained eye, Manz spective on Guatemalan politics, one Maria Tzejá in her chapter “A Mil- forces at work in the creation, expounds not only on the tragedy rarely seen in other foreigner- itarized Village”. After its destruc- destruction, and eventual rebirth resulting from the civil war in penned accounts of the Guatemalan tion by the army, government of Santa Maria Tzejá. Manz’s own Guatemala but, importantly, also civil war. Particularly well-done is forces, in an effort to control the efforts to be an accurate and eth- the intricate web of social and polit- Manz’s account of the creation and nearly annihilated indigenous pop- ical witness are also detailed as ical factors contributing to it, giv- settlement of Santa Maria Tzeja in ulation, invited new settlers to Santa Manz describes her own personal ing academia and a broader the 1970s. In the chapter, “Settling Maria Tzejá to replace those vil- actions in the light of the civil war audience alike a foundation for in the Promised Land,” Manz dis- lagers who had fled to Mexico, cre- through work with local activist future work in Guatemala as it con- cusses the arduous journey, personal ating tensions between the village’s groups, reporting “disappear- tinues to arise from two decades of sacrifices, and immense work that previous settlers, the antiguos, and ances” and murders to the often- terror and repression. the village’s future inhabitants put the new settlers or nuevos; Manz unconcerned authorities, or forth in order to settle what they had describes not only these tensions writing editorials and articles to Tarayn A. Grizzard is a 4th year med- presumed to be an inconspicuous, but the solidarity eventually broadcast the Guatemalan army’s ical student pursuing a combined relatively worthless bit of rain forest achieved between antiguos and reign of terror, showcasing the MD/MPH program at Harvard Medical so that they might have land and nuevos despite the original intent author’s own delicate negotiations School and Harvard School of Public a better future for their families. Her and the army’s psychological and between advocacy and academia. Health. A recent intern at the Universi- account of the hope and optimism physical control of Santa Maria Finally, Paradise in Ashes dad de Chile’s CEMERA (Centro de with which the villagers raised up Tzejá during that time. makes an enormous impact as a Medicina Reproductiva y Desarrollo de Santa Maria Tzejá, assisted in part Paradise in Ashes is deeply first-hand observer’s account of la Adolescencia) clinic in Santiago, her by Catholic organizations such as engaging in part due to the com- perhaps one of the largest-scale research interests include adolescent MaryKnoll and church groups, not pelling, emotionally gripping and genocides in Latin American his- medicine and cultural aspects of only poignantly frames the horrid often horrific subject matter and tory since the first “settlement” of women’s health in Latin America.
Civil Society: Facing New Challenges
Aldo Panfichi, editor, Sociedad Civil, Esfera Pública y Democratización en América Latina: Andes y Cono Sur, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and Fondo de Cultura Economica, Mexico 2002, 655 pages
A REVIEW BY EDUARDO DARGENT
CIVIL SOCIETY IN ARGENTINA, income women’s organizations. The 23 authors—senior schol- starting points, the authors exer- Chile, Colombia and Peru has The book, part of a three-vol- ars and promising younger cise broad freedom in highlight- contributed to democratic ume series including Mexico and researchers—in this 19-chapter ing the ways in which diverse A governance over the last two Brazil, stems from a worldwide volume share a minimum defini- processes—social, political, eco- decades. Relations between civil research project directed by the tion of the concept of civil soci- nomic, cultural—imprint the col- society and State in this region are University of Sussex’s Institute of ety, while recognizing the difficulty lective actions and organizational complex. In this edited volume, Development Studies and funded of applying it in practice. They also dynamics in each country. Peruvian sociologist Aldo Panfichi by the Ford Foundation. Project par- recognize the normative value of Four national overview chap- has set out to examine such diverse ticipants share the conviction that the concept, sharing the conviction ters (by Argentine sociologist actors as unions and professional the social sciences in the southern that democracy is much more than Enrique Peruzzotti, Chilean civil associations, human rights groups, hemisphere need to focus more periodical elections and involves society specialist Gonzalo de la environmental groups, corporate closely on the social and political an active participation in the pub- Maza, and political scientists foundations, feminists and low dynamics within civil society. lic sphere. From these common Mauricio Romero from Colombia
78 ReVista • SPRING 2004 BOOK TALK and Farid Kahhat from Mexico) ing civil and political liberties, autonomy of civil society organi- occurred as a result of internal con- make evident that diverse national towards an agenda focusing on zations vis-à-vis other sources of flicts under civilian rule. All of these experiences lead to different maps social, economic and cultural finance, especially in the case of organizations have collaborated of civil society and different paths issues— and on how to defend the NGO’s. An examination of in the constitution of more plural of civil society action. However, as basic human rights against eco- how domestic public agendas and democratic societies, but their Panfichi points out in his intro- nomic change. However, no con- may not always be constructed impact in the public sphere varies ductory piece, common themes sensus exists about the ways in from within the countries, but con- from country to country. allow for a comparative analysis which “control” over state action ditioned by external aid, would For Saba, for example, the of the cases involved. in these areas could be estab- have been an interesting addition environment of crisis and violence One common theme involves lished. The chapter by Argentine to this otherwise thorough book. in which human rights groups the impact of the last two decades’ lawyer Roberto Saba states well The examination of feminism developed in Argentina, and their economic reforms on the mobi- the need to make such criticisms and human rights across these own decisive actions, allowed soci- lization and organizational more professional and technical in countries is both broad and deep. ety in general to initiate a diffi- capacity of civil society. Authors order to be effective (p. 174). The four articles about feminist cult process of learning to build in this volume, to varying degrees, At the same time, the decision movements present a paradox: a more plural and deliberative share the view that free market by civil society organizations to despite the generalization of society. The Chilean case is in reforms have only exacerbated become more technical and pro- diverse feminist demands in these some ways similar. According to poverty and inequality, factors that fessional can also be a problem. societies, feminism remains weak Saba, because these organizations in turn impede the consolidation Civil society in these countries is as a political discourse. “Spon- defend universal liberties and not of democracy. Several chapters far from homogeneous. To some taneous feminism,” as sociologist sector-specific interests, they are stress that much-affected labor degree, there is a “richer” civil María del Carmen Feijoo calls it more disposed to adopt a plural- unions have been the actors most society with considerable resources (p.198), means that many young istic position. These organizations profoundly weakened by the move and comprised of largely middle women now lead their lives in the had a key role in post-dictatorship away from statist economies. class professionals, and a “poor” public sphere according to femi- transition processes in Argentina In this respect, I believe the civil society formed by the poor nist values and question traditional and Chile, and in the defense of book properly shows the tension themselves. Many of the examples sexist practices. These women, life and rule of law in the context between recent economic reforms presented in this book of success- internalizing aspects of the femi- of internal armed conflict in Peru and the interest of diverse civil ful institutions—in terms of their nist agenda, are increasingly and Colombia. Each has con- society groups in defending Latin contribution to democracy—are assuming positions of public tributed to the construction of a America’s precarious welfare part of the “richer” civil society. If prominence (including as minis- more egalitarian society, without states, which are gradually being we concentrate on the requirement ters of defense and foreign which a democracy would not reduced in the name of interna- of professionalization in order to affairs). Hence common sense have strong legitimacy. tional competitiveness. Yet despite gain access to the public sphere, may lead us to believe that the old Finally, a word about our pre- general enchantment, there is also a different kind of social exclusion feminist battles have been won. sent. I believe that recent dramatic recognition that the social policies may develop. However, the authors point to events taking place in the coun- of the 1960s and 1970s were also A related issue is the degree of a loss of the ideological strength tries discussed in the book—and ineffective at overcoming poverty autonomy that these institutions of the feminist movement, which in others such as Bolivia— illus- and increasing social inclusion; have in respect to the State. weakens it as such. Furthermore, trate the pertinence of its publi- “answers” developed by critics of Although remaining “independent” there are suspicions that the cation. Whether responding to today’s reforms smell distinctly like is a problem for all organizations changes are not as profound as economic crisis in Argentina, the old recipes. that in some way or another have believed. The authors share the bringing Lula to power in Brazil The book is crossed by this ten- relations with the State, again the conviction that machismo is alive or carrying out a Truth Commis- sion: that the egalitarian policies, challenge is far greater for those and well within society and defend sion in Perú, civil society organi- the basis of the welfare democ- institutions comprised of citizens the necessity of articulating diverse zations have been fundamental racy the authors believe in, are from lower classes. The extreme feminist voices in order to develop agents of social and political limited by the necessity to main- case seems to be Peru. Kahhat´s a more political agenda. change, and fundamental to the tain competitiveness in the inter- chapter shows the extreme vulner- In the field of human rights, the defense of democracies that are national sphere. How to obtain ability of organizations principally authors show how violence has responsive to their citizens´ needs. enough economic growth to main- funded by the Peruvian state as marked the processes of consoli- tain a welfare state that will reduce they grapple with issues of poli- dation as well as the policies Eduardo Dargent is a Peruvian lawyer inequality seems to be the ques- tics and patronage. developed by human rights orga- with a MA in Political Philosophy from tion that Latin Americans want Nonetheless, in the opinion of nizations in different contexts. the University of York, UK. He was for- their politicians to answer. this commentator, the discussion Argentina and Chile, under mili- merly a researcher for the Andean Various authors also analyze about autonomy should not focus tary dictatorships, have birth to a Commission of Jurists. He is now a how regional human rights orga- solely on the way in which such strong group of organizations ded- researcher and lawyer for the Spe- nizations have recently shifted from poor peoples´ organizations relate icated to the defense of basic lib- cial State Attorney’s Office for the Fuji- their traditional interests in defend- to the State. It fails to examine the erties. For Colombia and Peru this mori-Montesinos case.
SPRING 2004• ReVista 79 COMINGS & GOINGS Leading from the Front President Summers visits Chile and Brazil
THE WORDS OF LAWRENCE SUMMERS
RESIDENT LARRY SUMMERS HAS been pushing more students “ to study abroad—and now P he’s leading from the front,” was how the Boston Globe reported on the first official visit by Harvard’s President to South Amer- ica where he visited Santiago, Chile and São Paulo, Brazil from March 30 to April 2. In addition to meet- ing with Harvard students who are studying, working, or researching in the region, he also met with edu- cational, business and policy lead- ers, including Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, Harvard alumni and friends, and in each country made a major public speech. Summers’ public message at the United Nation’s Economic Com- mission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Santiago and the Fundação Getulio Vargas in São Paulo stressed the impor- “At time when there has been more misunderstanding by the tance of the U.S.-Latin America partnership, the historic imperative United States of the world and of the United States by the of narrowing the gap between the world….it seems to me profoundly important that we all do developed and developing worlds, the important role of universities our part to promote understanding in all directions. There are in stimulating growth and reducing inequality, the high priority Har- few things that can do that like the interchange that a vard gives to strengthening its ties University makes possible.” to the region, and the key facilita- tive role he sees DRCLAS paying in enhancing these ties. President Summers was accom- panied on his visit to Chile by Har- vard Professors John Coatsworth, Jorge Domínguez, and Andrés Velasco.
Clockwise from top: President Summers, Harvard Club of Chile President Andrés Rodríguez, and John Coatsworth at the DRCLAS Regional Office reception in Santi- ago with about 120 Harvard alumni and Harvard students.
80 ReVista • SPRING 2004 COMINGS & GOINGS
“I am convinced that in next gen- eration, it will be so important for Harvard to become a truly global university. If Harvard is to lead in the intellectual life it must under- stand what is going on not just in the United States, not just in West- ern Europe, but in the entire world.”
ECLAC Deputy Executive Secretary Alicia Barcena and Summers at public address at ECLAC head- quarters in Santiago.
Summers with former Chilean Secre- tary of the Treasury, Eduardo Aninat
“I am here in Chile to visit what is probably Harvard’s most signifi- cant external presence, a regional office which services all the Uni- versity,” he said to a group of about 100 Harvard alumni and 25 Harvard students at DRCLAS’s Regional Office in Santiago.”
“The David Rockefeller Center is a remarkable and vibrant institution which is making a great contribution to Harvard University...It has also given our students an opportunity to live and learn outside of the United States using a formula which is new to Harvard.”
Summers on DRCLAS Regional Office Terrace with Harvard students engaged in study abroad program, as well as doing research and internships in Chile.
SPRING 2004• ReVista 81 UPDATE The Eyes of Time Viewing the work of Leo Matiz
BY MIGUEL ANGEL FLÓRES GÓNGORA
EO MATIZ, A LEGEND IN 20TH influenced the caricatures of Leo throughout the 1940s. With his of Matiz in Mexico City’s Pala- century photography. was Matiz, providing his drawings with inseparable Rolleiflex he achieved cio de Bellas Artes. Indignant at born in 1918 in Aracataca, agility, penetrating observation and portraits endowed with intimacy, seeing his images redrawn and L Colombia, the hot and mar- irony. Above all, he refined his fascination and profound socio- used in unauthorized murals, ginalized mythical territory on the sharpness for outlining faces—an logical penetration. Frida Kahlo, Matiz made strong accusations of banks of the Magdalena Riverthat art that he subsequently transferred Diego Rivera, Ester Williams, Jan- plagiarism against Siqueiros in is also Gabriel García Márquez’ to photography and which he exer- ice Logan, David Alfaro the Mexican press. birthplace. cised with mastery in portraiture. Siqueiros, Agustín Lara, the first In turn, the muralist politicized Matiz was not only a photog- The Colombian photographer’s castings of de María Felix, the case, accusing Matiz of being rapher, but a painter, caricatur- arrival in Mexico in 1940 trans- Gabriel Figueroa, Esther Fer- a North American imperialist ist and creator of newspapers and formed his vital and aesthetic per- nández, José Clemente Orozco, agent and an enemy of muralism. art galleries. As a gallery owner, spective. The discovery of cinema, Mario Moreno “Cantinflas”, Luis He set fire to Matiz’s studio and in 1951, he held the first exhibi- muralism, the polychromy of the Buñuel, Marc Chagall, Dolores had him expelled from Mexico. tion of the Colombian painter Fer- landscape, the Mexican history del Río and Pablo Neruda all fig- Leo Matiz died in Bogotá, on nando Botero in Bogotá. plagued with popular insurrections ure in his memorable, seductive October 24th in 1998. His images As a 24-year-old in 1940, and betrayed revolutions and the and nostalgic galleria of people. and artistic legacy are conserved Matiz set off through Central cultural inheritance of the Aztec and promoted by the Foundation America on foot to reach Mex- and Maya civilizations, served as AN UNEXPECTED EXILE Leo Matiz as an intense and sug- ico where he hoped to to live off a fountain of existential liberty and Matiz’s friendship with Mexican gestive breviary of the 20th cen- of painting, cinema and carica- artistic creation. muralists, especially the the painter tury, which Matiz was able to turing. He defined his artistic voca- He traveled around Mexico, David Alfaro Siqueiros, led to the communicate with beauty and tion by affirming: “I am a painter taking photographs for magazines visual documentation of the mural expressive force. because of atavism, photographer such as Así, Life, Reader’s Digest, Cuauhtémoc contra el mito because of hunger and crazy Harper Magazine, Look and through more than 500 pho- Miguel Angel Flóres Góngora is a because of talent.” Norte. Matiz evokes that intense tographs. However, a few years Colombian journalist. He is the author Much of his youth took place journey through the rich and later, Siqueiros exhibited 70 paint- of La metáfora del ojo, a biography of in the anarchic and agitated diverse Mexican geography, ings inspired by the photographs Leo Matiz. atmosphere of Colombian and affirming that “The magazine Así Central American cafés and news- launched me as a graphic reporter rooms, earning money by selling in Mexico. I began to look for caricatures to illustrate the literary themes and discovered the old and and political pages. deep Mexico, eternal and fleeting. His abundant long hair, his There before my eyes was the absurdly colored jackets, his mus- baroque architecture, the paint- tache in the style of a Mexican cin- ings, the murals, the Maria islands ema gangster, his indiscreet and and the poignant histories of its impulsive guffaws, the folder presidents, the pulque, the starv- under his arm full of caricatures ing coyotes in the desert, the day and color drawings turned him of the dead, the sacred temples into the center of the intense intel- and the purity of Yucatan, the red lectual bohemia of Bogotá and ants in the desert, the women of Central American capitals. Pancho Villa, the dead trees, the Matiz scrutinized the faces, ges- divas in the movies, the cemeter- tures and defects of the people he ies, the colour of the folk crafts, the observed, converting his carica- peasants and the remote hope of tures into scathing and incisive their redemption.” commentary. Important film mak- Matiz’s camera recorded cin- ers, painters and caricaturists like ema and art celebrities painting Gustave Doré, George Grozt, Nadar and Guadalupe Posada Leo Matiz: “El Quijote”
82 ReVista • SPRING 2004 READER FORUM Reader Forum
I just wanted to pass on congrat- being one of the most international The Merriam-Webster’s Col- ulations on another terrific issue universities in the world I never legiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition of ReVista. I thought the Winter expected to read a document such defines xenophobe as “one number on Children was stunning as “The Hispanic Challenge” by unduly fearful of what is foreign in both its depth and breadth. You Samuel P. Huntington, chairman and esp. of people of foreign ori- managed to bring together so of the Harvard Academy for Inter- gin.” This definition looks famil- many issues, concerns, and national and Area Studies. iar, does not it? approaches to understanding the As a Mexican, Huntington’s I can’t understand how the lives of children in Latin America words offend me. However, what chairman of the Harvard Acad- and more broadly in our global- is behind them scares me more. emy for International Studies, who ized world. I’m impressed. While reading this paper, I started should be in favor of interaction Keep it up! to reflect on the beginnings of the and integration among civiliza- LIZ COHEN ideology that became the Nazi tions that results from lowering the HOWARD MUMFORD JONES Party’s justification for the Holo- barriers between states, (in other PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN STUDIES will agreed with the content of the caust, where millions of Jews were words, globalization), spends his DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY paper signed by John H. brutally killed. If I remember time finding a threat in applying HARVARD UNIVERSITY Coatsworth on Internationalizing clearly, it all began with argu- that kind of relation between the Human Rights, especially with ments based on economic data, United States of America and Quizás pueda interesarle la sigu- his last two prophetic paragraphs. religion, culture and yes, lan- México. Maybe this answers why iente información. Es una coinci- Is there some hope that the U.S. guage. Latin America has not been closer dencia feliz, que indica un aporte authorities in charge of foreign The author of “The Hispanic to the U. S.—because the elites de Harvard al Informe de la affairs could take Mr. Coatsworth’s Challenge” carefully leaves out of like Huntington oppose it. Comisión de la Verdad y Recon- advices into consideration for his game data that could under- Everyone knows that the his- ciliación del Perú. Yo he partici- changing their bossy policies mine his theory. For instance, it tory and success of the American pado en el Harvard Project on toward Latin America and its peo- seems strange that he omits data people is based on a JOURNEY Justice in Times of Transition - ples? on the economies in those states OF MIGRANTS strengthened by Peruvian Intelligence Reform Ini- DANILO SALCEDO V. with the highest presence of His- the diversity that immigration has tiative.
SPRING 2004• ReVista 83 A CHANGING CHILE
EDITOR’S LETTER MEMORY AND RECONCILIATION by June Carolyn Erlick 2 The Other 9/11 by Peter Winn 48 The Coup in Chile by Alan Angell 56 GUEST INTRODUCTION Chile’s National Stadium by Katherine Hite 58 Chile’s Role in the World by Juan Gabriel Valdés 3 THE OTHER CHILE: ART AND LITERATURE POLITICS AND IDENTITY Chilean Art by Beatriz Huidobro Hott 63 A Changing Chile by Pedro E. Güell 4 Contemporary Chilean Narrative 65 An Identity in the World 8 by Luis E. Cárcamo-Huechante by Marcelo Junemann and Juan Walker Chile Today: Two Viewpoints by Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt 10 FOCUS ON HARVARD Politics and Corruption by Alfredo Rehrens 13 Harvard in Chile by Steve Reifenberg 68 A Look at Chilean Media by Consuelo Saavedra 16 ELEMENTAL social housing 70 by Alejandro Aravena and Pablo Allard FOCUS ON ECONOMICS Harvard School of Public Health by Thomas Bossert 72 Chile: The Lonely Success Story 18 Harvard Study Abroad 74 by Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid and René A. Hernández by Erin Goodman and Aníbal Sepúlveda The Wine Industry by Richard Freeman 22 Magellan Telescopes by Robert P. Kirshner 75 The Chilean Free Software Movement 23 by Eden Miller BOOK TALK Two Portraits of Development 25 Constructing a Multiparty System in Mexico 74 in Southern Chile by Scott Rechler by Soledad Loaeza Inside the Ring of Fire by Tarayn A. Grizzard 75 CITIZENSHIP: DIVERSITY AND EQUITY Civil Society: Facing New Challenges 76 Integration and Exclusion by Gonzalo de la Maza 29 by Eduardo Dargent Gender and Chile’s Split Culture by Margaret Power 32 Homosexual in Chile Today by Gabriel Guajardo 35 COMINGS AND GOINGS The Struggle of the Mapuche Peoples 38 President Summers Visits Chile and Brazil 80 by Guillaume Boccara by Lawrence Summers Migration: the Hidden Face of Globalization 41 by Diego Carrasco UPDATE Education and Equity by Fernando Reimers 44 The Eyes of Time 82 The University Student Movement 47 by Miguel Angel Flóres Góngora by Cecilia Riveros Romero READER FORUM 83
PRST.STD Harvard University U.S. POSTAGE David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies PAID 61 Kirkland Street PERMIT NO. 55 Cambridge, MA 02138 PLYMOUTH, MA