chile88

We also wanted the people of Chile to know that despite being with them in the pain of the military dictatorship, we also wanted the Chileans to see us as a different people. As a people that had our particularities and that those particularities made the struggle also be in a different way. Because we not only lost our loved ones during the military dictatorship, but we also lost our land.

Good. Iñche Juan Ñanculef Huaiquinao pigen. Kiñe mari mari pikunuan tañi mapuzugun mew. Iñche ta llewgen ta Tromen pigey ñi lof, lof mapu, Mapuche Mapu. Feita comuna Temuco mülelu feita üyüw epu mari kilómetros peno. I greet you with the fraternal mari mari, millenary Mapuche greeting. My name is Juan Ñanculef Huaiquinao. I was born

I feel that when they are claiming that joy did not come, they are referring more to happiness than to joy. And happiness, we will pass this generation and all the generations that come looking for it, but we will never find it, but it doesn’t matter. There we go.

We came to these towns to try to feel the atmosphere that was in the air […].
There was a lot of fear, but there was plenty of courage on the other hand. The older women were afraid that something violent would happen, that it would not be recognized, that the populations would intervene. But there was a group of people who began to lift my spirits: young people or gentlemen from the town who were in a much more seasoned spirit and […] felt that it was possible to beat the dictatorship.

I felt the community, I felt a vibration in which each one was a hero, an anonymous hero who in some way took risks because of what was happening, but because he really felt that it was one of the most important things he was going to do in his life. .

After the vote, I went there to the Diego Portales building to wait for the calculations by the dictatorship. I had to see there when they dilated and dilated things. And there was great expectation, we talked there with the journalists: “Hey, but this question is rare, they may not know any results. Another blow may come.” I told him: “no, how can you think of it? It would already be the maximum discredit. They have everyone on top of them, so they can do this.” And we made jokes: “the Soviet Union arrives or the United States arrives to invade us, because it can’t be!”

My school was mostly YES, but I do remember very clearly that there was a debate […] and I remember very well that Juan Diego Santa Cruz was two years above me defending NO […]. And I was very impressed because the way he defended the NO was very powerful. Not only because he denounced the violation of human rights, but because he made a distinction between what a dictatorship was and a democracy, and the value that democracy had in itself. Because he defended democracy, more than attacking Pinochet […]. And he came to say: There is something much better and more interesting than Pinochet, and it is democracy, and it is freedom, and it is public debate, and it is critical thinking, and it is the diversity of opinions, and it is competition, and it’s the political parties, and it’s the elections, and the people decide, and the parties compete and the best ideas win.

The next day everyone celebrated. Everyone called each other on the phone. In those days there were no cell phones, so the phones collapsed from calling each other, congratulating each other. At last, at last! Many people cried. I, we all cry. I think, out of emotion: knowing the board was finally going to leave.

I did not participate in any of the celebrations. I went home because I had a feeling of sadness because this was over, which was a unique experience of dedication, of mysticism, of generosity from people, of fellowship, of friendship, of a very great fraternity that […] never again, as I assumed at the time, would ever happen again.

I had a mental short circuit from which it took me a long time to recover, because I cannot understand to this day (look at the years that have passed), I do not understand to this day how that model that was bringing so much well-being to many people (only economically, right?, not necessarily in other important aspects for human life, but economically, which was what we were going to do there) was not enough to maintain that model .

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There is a moment that is super exciting. It is a moment in which they cross the field – my father enters with my mother – and they cross the entire field of the Stadium. The whole stadium applauds them. […] And the grace is that there is no police. (We came from seventeen years since every time Pinochet arrived anywhere, the security operation was there.) There was no one around the president and his wife. There was only the official television camera that was broadcasting this moment, but there was no bodyguard, no escort. It was the return of democracy and the return of freedom.

I lived in a rural area with very little information […]. My parents went to vote that day with great fear. And that I do remember perfectly, because all the people who went to vote were very afraid, because there was a lot of speculation and a lot of myth among the people (mainly the peasantry and those who could vote) that there were votes that were being asked in the polls voting.

In the case of the Radio Cooperativa, we were reporting on everything that was happening that day, and the television […] hid the information at one point, because when everyone wanted to know the news and how the count was in the different polling stations, they broadcast the Road Runner movie, which is a cartoon. And that also marked a moment of great fear.

Even relatives who were in exile were put on the phone and we put the phone there on television so that they would hear that, on television!, a mass medium, for the first time, an option against the dictatorship was having its voice.

The campaign was really beautiful. I think it left a mark on all of us because we watched it every day, and it was always something new. It gave you hope because it was so joyful, so, you know, happiness was coming. We used to laugh because there was a part where a good-looking man

At the time of Pinochet, foreigners who settled in Chile had to sign a paper specifically stating that they were not going to participate in politics. And that helped me to be able to say “no” to the YES campaign, and say “yes” to the NO campaign, but clandestinely, without anyone knowing.

We found that the people, the people, had behaved badly with the military government. We found that they were very ungrateful. We found that they had been influenced by propaganda. In no case did we think that democracy was coming.

The identity card was sacred. Almost that, from the moment you signed up and the moment of voting, you had to leave it locked away and walk around with a photocopy […]. This identity card had to be protected because it was the only document that allowed you to vote.

We were so excited, and our kids didn’t understand why, because they were kids. And there we realized that, to protect them, we had never told them what the dictatorship was. So, at that time, before leaving, we told them what had happened in Chile, there at that time.

It was my turn, together with Juan Gabriel Valdés and Patricio Silva […] to be the representatives of the NO option before the National Television Council. Forty-eight hours before the broadcast of the program, we had to take our tape to pass the censorship, and that was a routine of about 30 days. It was normally delivered at 12:30 at night two days in advance. Initially, we were very disciplined […] and then, due to some circumstances, we discovered that if the tape had some kind of technical error, we could give ourselves another 24 hours.

In those times, love, revolution, desire, were all the same thing. It was very difficult to separate them. The sense of community, cause and belonging made all relationships take on a very strong intensity within this struggle.

Day of the plebiscite. We woke up early like all Chileans. The first thing I learned was that my daughter Ximena informed me that many people were walking to vote around 6:30 or 7 in the morning, over there in La Reina, the popular sector of La Reina. I leave the condominium I had in

So I kind of said to him: “And you’re not going to celebrate? Aren’t you happy?” And as he told me: “No”. So there it was that he was of another political tendency. But we get along super well, po. He on his fly, I on mine. But as they say, at the table we don’t talk about politics, soccer, or religion.

I remember a famous journalist very close to the Communist Party who hugged me that night and said: “You were right.” Which was enough to show that those friends of mine who had said that the plebiscite was necessarily going to be a fraud, that we had no chance of winning, were admitting that they had been wrong.

In that minute, when the plebiscite of ’88 comes and the NO wins the victory, and when the general outburst occurs, so to speak, we decided […] that it was like the moment to have children, perhaps to raise children, to dare to transcend in that aspect. There was no longer fear, or rather the fear was removed, the barrier that each of us had at that moment in Chile to expand the family or raise a family was removed, right? There was one thing that the plebiscite or the result of the plebiscite allowed everyone to think about their life in a normal way, or in a more normal way, than it had been until then.

Nosotros no buscábamos directamente que la gente votara por una postura o por otra, sino que lo importante para nosotros era que la gente se atreviera el día, el 5 de octubre, que iba a ser la votación, se atreviera ir a votar y votara correctamente.

I always remember that on that day of the plebiscite I had to be empowered by the YES. And for the NO there was a close neighbor of my neighborhood, who was a Christian Democrat […]. I was with this gentleman all day. So in the end, we were able to talk a lot. And in the afternoon, we said, let’s be reasonable.

I had planned to have a family. But I said, I am not going to have a family while we are under a dictatorship. I wanted my son to be born in freedom, not in a dictatorship because I had suffered a lot […]. I always tell my son: No, you were not going to be born into a dictatorship, that’s why I had you when I was so old!