Chile: «The Day of a Juvenile Combatant» or the wounds that democracy cannot heal
March 30, 2007
In the beginning a little bit of history.
At that day in 1985, when the agony of the Pinochet's regime was becoming more obvious and the new generation of the Chileans lacking fear of their parents, more boldly and more frequently was getting into the streets of Chile demanding to return of democracy, carabineers in Santiago killed the Vergara brothers – 20 year old Eduardo and 18 year old Rafael. Both of them were very well known and loved by students leaders and took part in the underground Left Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR)). After another consecutive mass protests in the native district of the brothers - Villa Francia – carabineers carried out a real military operation with the purpose to destroy it. Those running along dark evening streets were driven by the police vehicles to the blind alley and first they shot Eduardo. Seeing his brother falling down, Rafael returned back to help his brother, tried to embrace him and was struck down by bullets. They used riffle butts to crush the scull of the dying brother and inside a police van they fired a proof shot at the back of his head. The press reported a «death of two criminals-terrorists that tried to rob a shop in a shoot-out with the patrol». That same night a 20 year old student Paulina Aguirre, also a MIR member, was killed at her home during the raid. Also «resisting forces of law and order». The same night the same «forces of law and order» kidnapped a famous designer Santiago Nattino, the teacher Manuel Guerrero who has just returned back home from exile, and a sociologist Jose Manuel Parada, son of popular Chilean actors. Two days later their practically beheaded corpses with traces of tortures were found abandoned near the old road to the international airport. All the three used to be members of the banned at that time Communist party and two of them were slightly over 30. The dictator felt that the ground was giving way and people began to lose fear, and they counted on such vivid examples of horror.
My good friend journalist Nancy Ortiz at that time used to live in the same building but two stories above the Vergara bothers parents. That big family was rather religious and took part in all catholic events of their neighbours. Eduardo and Rafael grew before the eyes of all, they used to be the best pupils and example for all the kids in the yard. Nancy lived alone with a small child and the Vergara brothers in turn helped her to take heavy bags from the shop to the upper storey of the house without an elevator.
At present Nancy lives in another district of the city. Her children have already outgrown the Vergara brothers. Today at «The Day of a Juvenile Combatant» she tries to get home earlier to bypass all conflict areas of the city and avoid accidental stone thrown by the demonstrators and regular tear gas from the side of carabineers.
The press, the same one that used to write about «destruction of terrorists by the forces of law and order» today tells us about «crowds of barbarians and atrocities of the lumpens that have nothing in common with respect of the victims of dictatorship memory». Again everything seems to be very simple. At least for those, who was not used to making his life more complicated with embarrassing questions.
Yes, of course. Mobile coveys of the youth throwing the «weapon of proletariat» and bottles with «Molotov cocktail» into window-shops, buses and even clinics (today the hospital of the Labours was attacked) can hardly be called the successors of those perished fighting the dictatorship. However, some link, and rather a tight one still exists.
The present Chilean authorities, among whom there are quite a number of members of the families of the deceased and victims of the military regime, has changed a lot in the country except the main thing – imposed by Pinochet neoliberal economic model that, in its own nature, dooms some part of the population to marginalisation and perpetual fate to be the second grade citizens. The system in which the worthy education and health care is not the right but luxury to those who are able to pay for it, in the result of which, some, the minor part, are born to become masters and others – to be become servants. Such system cannot demand from its citizens to obey the laws that do not cater for their rights and interests. Today the youth that is uncivilized in its protests – irrespective of the place: whether it is Paris, Budapest, Santiago or any other megapolis of the globalized planet – represents that bigger portion of the society which is excluded by the system from life, that becomes a dead weight for the system, «extra mouth to feed», redundant burden, those from whom the system wants to get rid of.
Nowadays at the planet Earth, the overwhelming majority of human beings is excluded from modern economic processes, these people are not active consumers or producers, i.e. they do not conform into the logic of the market fundamentalism. Only about 10% of the global population uses the goods of the modern civilisation and progress; the lot of others – more or less successful survival, depending on the region, age and imagination. The gap between the rich and poor keeps on growing with every passing year, and that is at the expense of the former «middle class», that seems to be the last to believe in the reality of its own existence.
For many, and especially for the forces of law and order the notion «poor» is the synonym of the notion «criminal» as the common sense tells that very often it is just impossible to live at the minimum salary. That is why, the actions and treatment of the residents of poor quarters by the police at the remote area of any large Latin American city, despite of all argumentation of the power about democracy and «equal opportunities» more and more resemble the behaviour of occupational armies.
I think that the main problem of Chile is that there seems to be as if two countries. One part of Chileans is absolutely unaware of the life of the other part, and therefore, this society is full of myths, prejudices and mutual distrust.
A marginal teenager of Santiago outskirts getting his semieducation in the packed by similar to him «problem children» government school, where to be a teacher one should have a great calling and big heart, and such are always scarce, a child from the family where the whole life of the parents passes in 8-10 hours of work plus 3 more hours to get there and back (part of «labour flexibility», so that the country «remained competitive at the world markets»), again at the best case, when there are two parents and they are not alcoholics or drug addicts, and the father is not a thief and the mother is not a prostitue (which is rather a norm in fringe areas of Santiago than an exception, where Santiago is rather a successful capital in the region if compared with Lima and Guatemala it is almost Geneva), so, that teenager, permanently humiliated by carabineers who search him when he exits the mall or supermarket and simply in the evening streets - «because he is poor and it means that he might have stolen something», the teenager, whose only entertainment is a huge TV set at home that was bought in installments for several years or neighbour-thief let them have it half-price, as nobody reads books here for a long time, this teenager watches the screen and sees the life and things from which he is deprived for ever because he was unlucky enough to be born in the wrong family and wrong place. He watches that other successful life with other eyes, and at that age the sense of justice and injustice has not yet been spoiled, and the only accessible to his conscience form of protest is to throw a stone to a carabineer, a bus, into a window-shop – as multiple realization of that another, remote, inaccessible, indifferent or even alien towards him Chile.
If he doesn't throw that stone – nobody will ever know that he exists. This is a stone that all of us deserve, because we allow our indifference towards this reality. Because Chile and the world needs deeper than TranSantiago reforms. Of course if we do not desire all streets of our cities tomorrow to become a battleground between those who have nothing against those who have everything. If somebody thinks that I exaggerate, let him find a spare evening to visit the «popular quarters» of Santiago which are inhabited by more than a half of its citizens and let him try to rub shoulders with its residents.
Of course I mean only a part of today's protesters (in inverted comas and without those). There are many others – common hooligans, out of those who will not miss the chance, spoilt children, who decided to play «revolution», those fond of adrenalin, criminals, using that as an opportunity to break the door of the shop or kiosk and to loot as much as possible, different paid and voluntary instigators that try to compromise this or that movement or organisation, it is impossible to list everybody ... but another thing is important and interesting in the right way – the future of that teenager, expelled by our present society from life ... and charitable campaigns of any kind are as the highest degree of hypocrisy.
«The Day of a Juvenile Combatant». All romantic speculations about heroic struggle of the people – nonsense for bad (because there was also good) Soviet literature. Any dictatorship is an injury that changes the nature of any nation to the worse. This is the experience which develops and encourages the worst that exists in a human. Despite the recent death of the tyrant and sincere desire of majority of the Chileans to finally turn over that terrible page in the history, the present society keeps that injury in itself. By a strange concourse of circumstances, today, a trial started over the four carabineers who are accused of murder of the Toledo brothers. But those who clash in honour of the «The Day of a Juvenile Combatant» are not aware of that news yet. Their faces are illuminated by burning tyres and somewhere nearby one can hear the siren of the police van ... for many the same one that 22 years ago carried away the bodies of Eduardo and Rafael from the same forgotten remote streets.