Well, during the day I did what all leaders do: visit polling stations, tour polling places, etc. And then in the afternoon, late at night when the triumph was already known, and I did not participate in any celebration. I came home because I had a feeling of sadness because this was over, which was a unique experience of a mystic delivery of a generosity of the people, of a camaraderie, of a friendship, a very great fraternity that I supposed and with good reason, he agreed with me, sorry for the redundancy, what happened afterwards never again, as I supposed at that moment, something similar happened again. So that’s how I lived the plebiscite in October ’88.

In July we already knew that there was going to be a plebiscite in the first place. In the constitutional court that already existed at that time, it was discussed whether the existing law, dictated by Pinochet himself about plebiscites, was valid – the campaign, for example – for that occasion. And it was won by one vote. A vote that said “Yes, indeed the law begins to apply right now”, that is, it is valid for this plebiscite. A single vote from a guy whose name I will never forget was Eugenio Sommarriva, that guy was the one who cast the single vote, the vote he won out of seven. So those things happen too. There was a person there who committed himself to this, his witness, a lawyer, a lot of prestige and he was committed with the matter and voted and decided, by a majority, that the law was indeed going to apply for that plebiscite, and that is why there was campaign and there was a strip. If not, there would have been nothing. So, the story also has some surprises, as it happened on that occasion.

What happens is that the executive secretary of the campaign called me and said, “These people have been working for a month and they haven’t even come up with any idea.” He told me, “I want you to take care of this.” Well, I told him, that’s perfectly fine… and I went to a meeting of this large group, and I immediately realized what was happening and I also saw who could serve there… well, I put together a group of five people. And we went near the beach, we had a weekend. It was a place called La Pataguilla, a very strange name that is not exactly on the beach, but nearby. And we had a briefing that was fundamentally oriented to the idea of inclusiveness. Well, we therefore began to work on that idea. Then it was little by little that we realized that it was an idea that was not up to the task, that it did not have the level of call, of emotionality, of what was required. It was quite a rational thing: “The country for everyone” -something that you had no idea was quite important after Patricio Aylwin’s campaign where, yes, the issue of inclusivity played a role- so Patricio Aylwin’s slogan was talked about It was… no, it wasn’t the slogan, but the idea, let’s say, was “The president for all Chileans”. Making this a counter idea of what Pinochet was, who was not the president of all Chileans. So, when we concluded that that was not the way there, I put it into discussion, I said “hey look, let’s finish with this, let’s start from scratch.” So, I discussed – the dynamics of these groups is well known – walk there, walk here. Even suddenly an idea contrary to the previous one is the one that means a leap in creation.

So, I put a discussion there in that group “What happens if the No wins?” Ideas began to be suggested. Fundamentally, the term returns to democracy, to focus more or less on how the ideas that arose there were expressed. So, democracy returns. So, I said, “No, we can’t talk about something coming back, we have to talk about something that’s coming.” Well, then the exchange of ideas takes place, which is very dynamic, very fast, in that the idea of what is to come was quickly formed there. Then, of course, very rational ideas appeared, but, suddenly, the idea arose from there for the time of year – spring is coming. So, of course, spring is coming but it is something very obvious precisely because of the time of the year. So, I said, “But what does spring mean?” They begin to have ideas about spring and there arises the idea

that spring brings joy. Well, that was the key point of the question and there we began to put together the details of the sentence. Joy comes. Joy comes at last. Then, Chile, comes joy. And we were missing something that in parentheses, Americans find it very difficult to translate, which is the word “ya.” Well, there when we realized that something was missing, the word “ya” arose, which in Spanish means imminent. It is something that necessarily happens and then. That it is a word that has a very great complexity and is so simple. No matter how [inaudible] you try to translate it, they don’t have a word in English that means that, that implies such great content in such a simple way. Well, with that idea we came to Santiago. The following day, on Monday, I presented this campaign to a group of politicians, a group specifically of people who were the communication people of the parties. I had some charts written by hand like this, imagine on Monday morning to be at six in the afternoon presenting something very primary, but I went through the reasoning, the rational as they say in advertising, chart by chart and when I finished, Well, I finished with “Chile, joy is coming”, there was a deep and long silence until someone said…well, this was at Andrés Zaldivar’s house, this meeting. Well, he says “okay, very nice about this but now present the campaign.” I told him, “This is the campaign, there is no other campaign, there is no option B here, this is the campaign. I’m going to go through each argument again, you’re going to have to say if you agree or disagree.” And I started chart by chart, there were about ten. “Are you okay with this?” “Yeah sure, its OK”. And so they followed the line of argument themselves, faced with this challenge. And so, “Do you agree or do you disagree?” with each step we took. We had to work on Monday morning just putting it together…because it happens that since the way of working that we did is primarily creative, we had to invent a rationale so that it would be understood by others. So we had to work there all morning making this up; but in the end that led to the conclusion that the end was “Chile, joy is coming.” Well, and there it was approved. Without prejudice to the fact that in other meetings, because several presentations had to be made, there were even insults.

Well, that was the story. And what we were proposing was a way out into the future, a bright future. Ending the dictatorship meant moving on to a different country or a democratic country. An idea that made sense to all Chileans. Let’s say, to the majority of Chileans. All of that was implicit in that sentence. People perfectly understood what we were talking about. And in that for the music there was a very important role because that represented the spirit of this whole thing. There it was also a curious thing because the meetings were held at the ILET, which is where Juan Gabriel is, which was an institute for I don’t know, something dedicated to international relations. From which the agreement was, at that time it was the Agreement for the No. The Concertation of parties for the No. That is the political superstructure that later began to pass itself off as the Concertation of Parties for Democracy. And rather the Agreement. When Jaime de Aguirre introduced us to music in that office, well, we applauded him. He had a sketch anyway, but he had the lyrics aside and something very fantastic happened, that several of us began to intervene in the lyrics and, in fact, Jaime took note and put it because it was in metric, it was done so it was very easy. For example, I put the phrase “after the storm the rainbow always comes out”. And that’s where it comes from…because I had the idea of the rainbow fixed. I had no idea that this conjunction of colors had to do with the gay movement. I didn’t know, I had no idea. But anyway, it seems that no one here had any idea because the only one who knew was Ricardo Lagos. And Ricardo wrapped up the issue. So, Lagos said this is what represents the variety of ideas that make them up here, of the parties, the movements that participate. Here is the diversity of colors that represent the diversity of ideas and movements and parties. And so that was the idea that was handled and it was the idea that ultimately was, the one that was captured by most people.

A characteristic of that campaign was precisely a massive participation, gigantic as it has certainly repeated to us again. What we did was -from a technical point of view- was to use advertising language, but that does not mean that the strip itself is not a matter of very high political density and therefore there are many people who stayed with the appearance of the music. And finally, there was a very strong and categorical confrontation directly with Pinochet, directly with Pinochet. Therefore, and not only that, but the campaign was a matter of high political level and high political density. Within that and from the decision to ask a question that had to do more with hope for the future, this necessarily implied an empathic language. The campaign was not, as you very well know, a question of its being focused on denouncing, on the darkness, but on the contrary, it was something hopeful that made sense to people that they had to get out of the tunnel. You had to go out to find the light after the tunnel and not stay like the strip of the Sí. They made a brutal mistake because they did exactly what shouldn’t be done. A black, black, unpleasant thing, in short and comparatively speaking, as it was vis-a-vis, night after night, one attached to the other. The difference was noticeable in a spectacular way. And we saw that from day one. We said the first day, we saw it and we already won. These guys are lost. And they were lost, and they couldn’t get out of it or they didn’t want to, or they couldn’t, I don’t know, but it was a tremendous mistake that they made. On the contrary, we did something happy from the start, as the slogan said, right?: “Chile, joy is coming.”

On the other hand, it was no longer easy to fill fifteen minutes every day, it was not easy. In fact, there are things that had to be used without much thanks, let’s say because it was made of existing material. Regarding this, there were many external people who made contributions. For example, there are cartoon things that they carried and delivered to us. And others that I cannot remember the name of who it was, it was key, and I have done the vote, when he says “without violence, without fear and voteNo.” Did you see that, right? And we repeated that a lot and that question was a brutal force.

In the end there are other things that Mrs. Yolita was called, that if you see yourself is a deconstruction of an advertising commercial. But done, deconstructed and put back together again. But there is the place, the place of sale, the buyer, the seller, those who look, those who are looking, what they sell and buy. It is a question exactly the same as a commercial, with the difference that it is made in a poor bowling alley of some town, probably. That had a brutal effect during, while the strip was being put together in the studio where it was made, there were very strange surveillance events that happened, and then we had to, as a person or two came from there to take the tape to the National Television Council that I had to wear it every night. And then we realized that they were watching and that they were following these people. So, one night we invented eight or ten, they went out with tapes on different roads, in different directions, in different cars and there they painted themselves completely. They didn’t know who was wearing the real one. In other words, we had to resort to that thing, which made us laugh, on the other hand, because we knew that we had, that it was impossible for them to do anything to us. Once they turned themselves in, they said there was already a plebiscite, there was a campaign, everything else; and it was impossible that they could carry out an attack or something similar. Good thing. The only thing that happened, in that sense, was one, an interview that appeared, you will see the data, of a Minister of a Court in Santiago –minister, at that time– who denounced the

torture. And it was censored. There was censorship from the Television Council that we had to remove that, and the decision we made was not to broadcast it. That day, when there was censorship, we did not go on the air, which has a tremendous communication force, because this is known, it spreads; interpersonal communication in this time was one thing that was, it was a wildfire. People are extraordinarily intercommunicated, in such a way that information spreads, spread throughout society very easily. So that was the only thing, I would say that it was decidedly a repressive act. That, that censorship that they did not let us display the campaign. That was