We are people from the advertising industry, so we knew how to work with that. All of us who made the campaign were advertising professionals, the important ones, we had all worked in advertising. That’s the first point. The other element is how the campaign team was formed. It consisted of people we already knew. Until that moment, audiovisual advertising in Chile was mostly in the hands of Argentinians who came from Buenos Aires. But we were the Chilean faction. As for the campaign itself, well, I was one of the many Chileans working in advertising. They came to my office. I had an office along with another gentleman, and we had a large studio with infrastructure. I remember that we were called, well, they called us to a place we often used for sound post-production called Filmocentro. There was an auditorium and so on. Jaime de Aguirre was there, well, the politicians were there, Ricardo Lagos was there, all the important gentlemen. It was the presentation of the campaign. So, Jaime de Aguirre screened the commercial, but it was made up of fragments of commercials, the jingle, the music. But it was made with fragments by – Pancho Vargas did it – fragments of commercials. It was a way to manage the content and show how it worked. And that was the centerpiece. Well, everyone loved it, and then they told us: well, we have to get to work. And a production company – which I knew – came to my office. They said: “Let’s start making material for the campaign.” Well, I came up with some funny ideas. I was good friends with Gregory [Cohen] and Luz Croxatto, an actress, and we started improvising short jokes with Luz and Gregory.
Well, that was successful, and we continued doing more or less the same thing but with more infrastructure. Marco Antonio de la Parra started appearing, and other people started coming in to help. So, we would have meetings in my office, and ideas would come up, you know. Some were good, others not so good. And well, we filmed what we thought was necessary, and we produced it super quickly. I have the impression that it didn’t have a specific strategy, I mean, we had a general strategy in mind, but there wasn’t someone coming and telling us, “Hey, you have to make a joke about this, about that.” I don’t remember anyone telling me anything. We improvised within a strategic framework. And I don’t recall ever feeling afraid, not at all. We worked as if it were a soap campaign. That’s right, with that ease. People would come to the office, and they already knew. Those who wanted to contribute would come. Well, Gregory helped me a lot, and I really liked Gregory’s humor. It was basically about showing through humor that voting No was cool, you know? That was the basic idea. “Hey, man, you can vote.” “With a pencil, you can defeat the dictatorship,” that kind of thing. Well, that was the leitmotif of the whole campaign. And of course, there were the music and other elements. We made many things. Pablo Perelman made the famous tea commercial, with an old lady who goes to a store and says, “Can I have a tea bag, please?” It was emotional, you know, because we were living in a tough situation. Do you see? Everything was quite evident, and above all, when you watch the campaign, it exudes confidence, harmony, empathy, a series of things that are the opposite of, you know, the cruelty, aggression, and paranoia that characterized the dictatorship. And the advertising professionals who made the dictatorship’s campaign – some Argentinians – well, they fell into the trap, they made a campaign against communism. It didn’t matter, it was really stupid, talking about the Russians and all that Cold War nonsense. And the Cold War had already gone to hell, more or less. So, it was a terrible campaign. Then they quickly realized it wasn’t working and tried to imitate us, which was even more ridiculous. And that gave us encouragement, and we were able to work…we worked with a lot of confidence. I never felt, and neither did any of my friends, that we were afraid. Afraid of what? Afraid of being kidnapped? By that point, we weren’t afraid of the dictatorship. Well, that was the story of the campaign.
I have one funny anecdote that appeared in El Mercurio. It was a joke I made with Gregory, in which Gregory looked at the camera, stuck out his tongue, and on his tongue, there was a No stamp, and there was a lion’s roar. It was like a rawr, showing that we were powerful but with our tongue out. So, I remember we were filming, and we had a box full of items, stamps, chewing gum, all sorts of things, badges, everyone used them, they brought them, I don’t know. And I had an assistant director, a girl named Claudia Céspedes, whom I knew quite well, and she was a communist. I didn’t have any problem with communists, by the way, I had even been a member of the Communist Party before. So, poing, we had a problem because the stamp became transparent with saliva, and it didn’t work well for filming. So, we took quite a long time to shoot several takes until it was more, and there came a point when I asked for a stamp. Then they said, “Damn, we don’t have one.” “But how can there not be a stamp?” I said. “No, there isn’t.” Then Claudia arrived, and she had a banana and took out a stamp, saying, “Here, I have one.” “Okay, pass it to me.” Poing. We did the shot, and that was the good one. So, at night, I always took the footage to Filmocentro. No, not Filmocentro, to Visual where Nacho Agüero, my friend, was editing. So, they were working on the campaign. I brought them the tape, they transferred it to inches, and they played it, “It’s funny, hahaha.” There was always a guy, a politician, who was monitoring the campaign so that there wouldn’t be – you know, that Stalinist media issue we had – they were actually afraid because of who we were, you see? A bunch of well-intentioned kids, none of us were militants. We weren’t politicians at all, and on top of that, we worked in advertising for the right-wing, for the agency, for the monopolies, for the big companies, you know. So, I don’t know how they made that decision, and then there was a Mr. Silva who was in charge of the Christian Democracy in Las Condes, I think, and he happened to be there that night. So, the campaign airs, he watches it, and suddenly he says, “Wait, wait, wait!” “What’s wrong?” “Give me, give me the thing with Gregory. But he has the stamp of the Communist Party!” “What Communist Party stamp?” I said, “It’s a stamp that says NO.” “Oh no,” he said, “the Communist Party’s stamp has some lines on it.” “Are you crazy?” I said, “I have no idea.” Then Nacho said, “Oh, come on, man.” Well, we continued, and then they took the footage, played it on the campaign, and of course, a photo like this appears in El Mercurio: “The Communist Party supports the NO.” That’s how delicate the political issue was, and we were also that innocent. Claudia says, I don’t think she did it on purpose either. It didn’t occur to her, or to anyone, it didn’t occur to me either. And I didn’t know that the communists had a special stamp…
I insist on this: You have to understand that we were all advertisers. So, what we were doing wasn’t strange. If we had done other things, we would have been more surprised. But it was within the logic. Ah! The advertising agency punished me, by the way. They took away two commercials that had already been paid for. Because I was filming that, but we also had to film a segment of the longer commercial. So, they asked me to have a worker make certain gestures, as if we were working on a construction site. I remember we arrived on set: “And the model?” “I don’t know, it seems that…” “What do you mean…?!” I caused a scene because how can you arrive on set without a model. So, I said, “Okay, fine, put makeup on me, I’ll do it.” And I got makeup, put on a worker’s shirt, a helmet, blah, blah, blah. And I appeared on camera. So, I couldn’t say that I hadn’t worked on the campaign. At most, everyone knew who had worked on it. And I was punished for it.
Well, it’s complicated, the day of the plebiscite because there are certain things that I know, and I’m not sure if I experienced them. But they somehow form part of my plebiscite experience. I suppose the same happens to everyone. What I remember is that we were in the space where the campaign was centralized, there in Pocuro, which was an office of a friend of mine, Juan Forch. And everyone was
there. And there was like a cocktail party, I don’t know, there was something. I remember going to vote. And after going to this meeting, I recall certain discussions that were taking place. One: everyone must have told you, it was strange because in Chile we’re accustomed to elections where the results are very quick. It’s a very special system because despite being manual, it’s very efficient. And they’ve never wanted to change it. So, the plebiscite elections were similar, and the problem was that they had burned the files with the voter registrations. So, it was very difficult to encourage registration. Some people immediately understood the importance of the election, trusted it, and registered. There were other friends, particularly those closest to the Communist Party, who were very skeptical and registered very late. Apparently, the PC’s policy was, don’t trust Pinochet. Now, election day was strange because the gentleman from the Ministry of the Interior who was reading the tallies began reading them, like, “Yes, No,” blah, blah, blah, you know, but he reached a not very high percentage, I don’t remember how much, but it must have been around 30% of the votes. And normally, if they give you that, very quickly they give you 60, then very quickly they give you 90. So, within 40 minutes, everything is already there, but here it stopped and it stopped for a very long time. I remember seeing it on television. When the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, Matthei, arrived. And Matthei, instead of entering through the underground passage – because you can enter the Presidential Palace through the underground entrance – well, instead of entering through the underground, he stood in front of La Moneda on Alameda Avenue. I mean, in a very visible place, and he walked towards the entrance of La Moneda, and the journalists immediately approached him and asked, “What do you think?” “Did the No win?” you know, “No, of course the NO won, and we have to respect the elections, well, that’s how it goes if we participate in this plebiscite, we have to respect each other.”
I have the impression that there was always doubt. What the hell are they going to do? Did we win or not? And if we win, what then? Well, suddenly the problem was resolved, and the deputy secretary reappeared and announced the results. And there, what do we do, and what’s going to happen? I mean, that night we went to sleep with that question in our minds. And the next day was very special. The next day was like, “Wow, we’re free.” And people started walking and coming out, hugging each other. They hugged the police. It was like an emotionally charged feeling, like a dam breaking, and the emotion of no longer being under the dictatorship, and so on. Well, Pinochet was very quick to say, “Hold on, I still have control.” Blah, blah, blah. Well, that’s another story. And that’s where the process of the Concertación and the entire psychology of the transition that allowed us to move from that dictatorship to what we went through began.