Yes, I remember very clearly the night before the plebiscite. Personally, and collectively, in my Teleanálisis working group and personally, familiarly I was very concerned because we believed that the military dictatorship could carry out very violent acts to ignore the process, to interrupt it. We lived for many years with that uncertainty in the air and our stomachs were tight. We were quite scared and what I remember very well is that the night before, just before going to sleep, to get up very early – at that time I lived in a collective apartment with other people, including Cristián Galaz, who is part of Teleanálisis – and we were late trying to understand what was going to happen the next day. And there was an explosion, a bomb in which the electricity was cut off in practically all of Santiago. And we were on a terrace watching. We lived in a high-rise apartment and we could see all of Santiago, the light of Santiago. And suddenly we heard the explosion. We saw how a large part of the lights of Santiago went out and we had no doubt that it was part of the maneuvers of generating fear on the part of the dictatorship in terms of what they were going to accuse and that is what they did that terrorists were doing, not planting bombs. And it was to prepare the climate of terror for fraud, for violence. And it was super strong because we were talking about, do you think we are going to achieve it? Do you think Chile is going to achieve it or not? Do you think that the dictatorship is going to be overcome by the will of the people? What are they going to do? And suddenly, in the middle of that dialogue, a huge explosion is heard and half of the lights in all of Santiago go out. And it was a confirmation that what was coming the next day was very difficult because the dictatorship was already announcing that they were going to ignore if there was a vote [for No]… So that was the start of the plebiscite for me. We went to bed quite late. It was hard for me to fall asleep and the next day we woke up very early. Cristián left for a low-income sector of Santiago and I left for another. I remember that I left to record in a fairly poor sector of Peñalolén. And Cristian also went to a southern sector of Santiago. We left very early. We wanted to record starting at dawn that day, I don’t remember breakfast at all, I only remember that we knew that we had a very important fight and that we left at dawn. It was still dark and we arrived in these areas to try to feel the atmosphere in the air. And the first thing I did was to start interviewing and talking with people from that area to find out how they felt that this day was going to be. There was a lot of fear in ordinary people. This is in The Weapons of Peace. And there were a lot of testimonies there…there was a lot of fear but also a lot of courage. The women, the older women, were afraid that something violent would happen, that it would not be recognized, that the [military] would enter the poor sectors. But there were a group of people who began to lift my spirits. Young people or gentlemen from the area who were in a much braver mood and were capable [of speaking] in front of a camera… They understood that we, with our enormous hair – at least they believed that we were real – we were not undercover agents, they said. It was evident that we were people from a production company that was watching rather from their side. They felt that it was possible to beat the dictatorship and that gave us courage during the day.
Well, afterwards, I was in that town all day. We went into the people’s house. I remember that they very affectionately served us cookies and drinks and tea and we began to listen to the results on the radio and people began to worry because the dictatorship began to apply what we all knew. The results were favoring the Yes. The bombs and some attacks and people wearing balaclavas were being reported. So, we all felt that the dictatorship was orchestrating the disregard of the results of the plebiscite. But in spite of that, the people wanted to fight and they had a hope with their stomachs tight and we were all in it. But the people in the low incomesectors, I would tell you that they had awakened a little flame of hope in my heart. And there was a very beautiful, collective thing, in all these sectors. They received us in many houses, they opened their hearts to tell us what they felt and then I left with the recording equipment.
We went to the Diego Portales, which was the official organization of the dictatorship, where the counts were being delivered and right in front of the Diego Portales was the command of the Concertación and the command of the No. So my afternoon, after being in the town all morning, was to cross between this official place where there was in the air a feeling of manipulation and enormous discredit. That room was very cold. It was a room where the correspondents, some dared to ask relatively strong questions. Most did not dare. In the air floated or pulsed the fear or rather the truth of a fraud that was taking shape. The minister came out to give some absolutely manipulated results, while we among Teleanálisis were listening to the radio. In one of the radios, the Cooperativa, they delivered parallel counts. We crossed the street, La Alameda Street, the main avenue in Santiago. We crossed over to where the No command was and there was concern because it was evident that a fraud was being prepared, which is true. Pinochet was preparing a fraud. The data was completely different from what was being reported on the other side of the street. So we were between shame and… I would say, the atmosphere of the Diego Portales had something very particular and the atmosphere was quite cold. In sensory terms, the light was a little greenish or dim. People hardly talked. In the air, there was a certain evil on the way. I could perceive it. I could feel it. You crossed the command of the No and there was a lot of energy. There was fear. There was will. There was, uh. And it was a different tone. There was a very different energy, to a point where I remember that on the radio – at that time I was in the command of the no with our cameras – one of the members of the Military Junta, General Matthei, officially recognized, formally, in front of a microphone that the No option had won. And it was shouting and an enormous euphoria. Not everything was won, but one of the generals saying before entering a meeting with Pinochet: “I recognize that the No won” made it easier.And in that sense there was… a piece of that fear, that tightness was released. There was a lot of energy, there was a lot of energy going around in that place and that energy began to be transformed into people who came to the command, to perhaps dare to march along the Alameda and a few among whom I joined with our camera. It was at 12 at night, I think. We made a small march. The big march along the Alameda was the day after the plebiscite, but at that moment a group of us dared to go, about 300, 400 people. We walked to La Moneda at night. And in that sense, there was a moment when there was a click, an energetic change of information, when the fraud that was being hatched in La Moneda was stopped. And I felt it on the faces of the people, in the expression of the people and that the Diego Portales building began to be empty, to be empty because there was not, there was not much to look for there, because the lie was no longer useful and had been discovered. And really, physically. The Official Information Center of the plebiscite ta ta ta ta ta. You entered and it was a dead desert and everything was in the street. I think it is very symbolic, really. The street, the people shouting, jumping. The cops are coming! Run! No, don’t run! The energy of Chile was moving in the street, no longer in this Diego Portales building.
That’s how I remember it that particular day. The next day. Well, let’s see, another thing about that day that I have to tell. After these marches, when it seemed evident that the regime had had to recognize with our cameras, with our backpacks, with our ponchos, we went to the house of Teleanálisis, which was a house that was in the Providencia neighborhood, which is a neighborhood like Cívico, a house, the last of the houses that we had as Teleanálisis and we got together to celebrate. And it was wonderful. It was wonderful because there was a lot of emotions, and we remembered the fallen and we laughed and opened champagne. It was very strange because it was hard to believe that the dictatorship could be won through an electoral process. It was hard to believe that the dictatorship had been defeated or that it seems that it was being defeated. No doubt. We were young kids who dedicated all our professional youth to this. We really worked earning no money and absolutely nothing mattered. We gave many years to this, like many other people who fought for human rights, for the dictatorship, to break the dictatorship. Some followed other paths of arms, others political path, we the audiovisual path. But we were all fighting against the same thing and we got together and we were young. So,there was music, there were speeches, there were tears, moments when we laughed a lot, we took out a lot of bottles of champagne. It was very strange to be celebrating a kind of New Year, a new life, still with the fear that at any minute the dark night could come and someone would open the door and tell us The party is over, children. So, it was a very unforgettable party, a very strange mixture of sorrow, joy, pain, hope. But there was a celebration in the house of Nueva Imagen. We are all cameramen, distributors, the oldest journalists, Góngora, the youngest, us. And it was a party until very, very, very, very late, mixed with many emotions. And the next day we got up again very early because we wanted to confirm in the street with our cameras what was happening and what happened was an unstoppable national party is recorded in the images of Teleanálisis. It is very clearly demonstrated in the documentary The Weapons of Peace. The streets were a place of celebration, a place of celebration, of hope. I think I believe that the dark beasts that dominated this country would still dominate them. But they retreated. They retreated. No, the darkness of Chile that one when you got up and there was something gray and one always felt that these hands were there and these dark tentacles retreated. They remained therebecause the dictatorship took a long time to make a complicated transition process and things continued to happen, but rarely, and this is very clear to me on a perceptual level… The streets were with a much more open energy, much more pristine, much freer. People like never dared for years, they went out to the streets to dance, to uncork champagne, to hold hands, to cry making collective rounds around the Carabineros. It was a party of peace. It was a celebration of the joy that existed. It had managed to defeat something very hard, very dark, very violent, which was the dictatorship. This, this, this, this, this, this slogan of the No campaign that “joy is coming”, which was very criticized – and I understand, with the following years the Concertación did not do what it said it was going to do, it did not dare to do everything and that is how joy came and it seems that it did not come – but that day joy did come. Joy in the great sense of the word. Democracy was imperfect, complex, many things. But that day was a very pristine day in which people dared to do many things, which they never dared and contagious. When I saw you, I used to pass by you and I didn’t know if I dared to put a face on you of “it seems that we are going to win, or not?”, or “we have to achieve it”. As people came out and saw that people dared to do in the buses, in the cars, in the streets, in the squares, in the Alameda, in front of La Moneda, the people turned out, the areas with the most economic difficulties and a beautiful street party. People went out, danced, everyone hugged each other. It was a lot, a lot of openness, a lot of freedom. And we were recording that all day with our cameras from 09:00, when people began to go out until 12 at night when there was a tremendous congregation of people in front of La Moneda. We were living, recording that party and I personally experienced it that way and professionally we recorded with our cameras that energy that was going around there in the street, which is very unique, very authentic and no one can because no one can refute that joy had arrived there. I say this because in terms of long-term political reflection, there is an enormous criticism of whether or not the Concertación was brave enough to make the transition faster or less quickly with the dictator in the Senate, that is, very long. And some criticize, but in strict terms, that day and those days, the joy effectively came, which is to recover the possibility of having a country in peace, in dialogue and to finish removing over the years that enormous evil that got involved as a country.
Yes, I remember very clearly the night before the plebiscite. Personally, and collectively, in my Teleanálisis working group and personally, familiarly I was very concerned because we believed that the military dictatorship could carry out very violent acts to ignore the process, to interrupt it. We lived for many years with that uncertainty in the air and our stomachs were tight. We were quite scared and what I remember very well is that the night before, just before going to sleep, to get up very early – at that time I lived in a collective apartment with other people, including Cristián Galaz, who is part of Teleanálisis – and we were late trying to understand what was going to happen the next day. And there was an explosion, a bomb in which the electricity was cut off in practically all of Santiago. And we were on a terrace watching. We lived in a high-rise apartment and we could see all of Santiago, the light of Santiago. And suddenly we heard the explosion. We saw how a large part of the lights of Santiago went out and we had no doubt that it was part of the maneuvers of generating fear on the part of the dictatorship in terms of what they were going to accuse and that is what they did that terrorists were doing, not planting bombs. And it was to prepare the climate of terror for fraud, for violence. And it was super strong because we were talking about, do you think we are going to achieve it? Do you think Chile is going to achieve it or not? Do you think that the dictatorship is going to be overcome by the will of the people? What are they going to do? And suddenly, in the middle of that dialogue, a huge explosion is heard and half of the lights in all of Santiago go out. And it was a confirmation that what was coming the next day was very difficult because the dictatorship was already announcing that they were going to ignore if there was a vote [for No]… So that was the start of the plebiscite for me. We went to bed quite late. It was hard for me to fall asleep and the next day we woke up very early. Cristián left for a low-income sector of Santiago and I left for another. I remember that I left to record in a fairly poor sector of Peñalolén. And Cristian also went to a southern sector of Santiago. We left very early. We wanted to record starting at dawn that day, I don’t remember breakfast at all, I only remember that we knew that we had a very important fight and that we left at dawn. It was still dark and we arrived in these areas to try to feel the atmosphere in the air. And the first thing I did was to start interviewing and talking with people from that area to find out how they felt that this day was going to be. There was a lot of fear in ordinary people. This is in The Weapons of Peace. And there were a lot of testimonies there…there was a lot of fear but also a lot of courage. The women, the older women, were afraid that something violent would happen, that it would not be recognized, that the [military] would enter the poor sectors. But there were a group of people who began to lift my spirits. Young people or gentlemen from the area who were in a much braver mood and were capable [of speaking] in front of a camera… They understood that we, with our enormous hair – at least they believed that we were real – we were not undercover agents, they said. It was evident that we were people from a production company that was watching rather from their side. They felt that it was possible to beat the dictatorship and that gave us courage during the day.
Well, afterwards, I was in that town all day. We went into the people’s house. I remember that they very affectionately served us cookies and drinks and tea and we began to listen to the results on the radio and people began to worry because the dictatorship began to apply what we all knew. The results were favoring the Yes. The bombs and some attacks and people wearing balaclavas were being reported. So, we all felt that the dictatorship was orchestrating the disregard of the results of the plebiscite. But in spite of that, the people wanted to fight and they had a hope with their stomachs tight and we were all in it. But the people in the low incomesectors, I would tell you that they had awakened a little flame of hope in my heart. And there was a very beautiful, collective thing, in all these sectors. They received us in many houses, they opened their hearts to tell us what they felt and then I left with the recording equipment.
We went to the Diego Portales, which was the official organization of the dictatorship, where the counts were being delivered and right in front of the Diego Portales was the command of the Concertación and the command of the No. So my afternoon, after being in the town all morning, was to cross between this official place where there was in the air a feeling of manipulation and enormous discredit. That room was very cold. It was a room where the correspondents, some dared to ask relatively strong questions. Most did not dare. In the air floated or pulsed the fear or rather the truth of a fraud that was taking shape. The minister came out to give some absolutely manipulated results, while we among Teleanálisis were listening to the radio. In one of the radios, the Cooperativa, they delivered parallel counts. We crossed the street, La Alameda Street, the main avenue in Santiago. We crossed over to where the No command was and there was concern because it was evident that a fraud was being prepared, which is true. Pinochet was preparing a fraud. The data was completely different from what was being reported on the other side of the street. So we were between shame and… I would say, the atmosphere of the Diego Portales had something very particular and the atmosphere was quite cold. In sensory terms, the light was a little greenish or dim. People hardly talked. In the air, there was a certain evil on the way. I could perceive it. I could feel it. You crossed the command of the No and there was a lot of energy. There was fear. There was will. There was, uh. And it was a different tone. There was a very different energy, to a point where I remember that on the radio – at that time I was in the command of the no with our cameras – one of the members of the Military Junta, General Matthei, officially recognized, formally, in front of a microphone that the No option had won. And it was shouting and an enormous euphoria. Not everything was won, but one of the generals saying before entering a meeting with Pinochet: “I recognize that the No won” made it easier.And in that sense there was… a piece of that fear, that tightness was released. There was a lot of energy, there was a lot of energy going around in that place and that energy began to be transformed into people who came to the command, to perhaps dare to march along the Alameda and a few among whom I joined with our camera. It was at 12 at night, I think. We made a small march. The big march along the Alameda was the day after the plebiscite, but at that moment a group of us dared to go, about 300, 400 people. We walked to La Moneda at night. And in that sense, there was a moment when there was a click, an energetic change of information, when the fraud that was being hatched in La Moneda was stopped. And I felt it on the faces of the people, in the expression of the people and that the Diego Portales building began to be empty, to be empty because there was not, there was not much to look for there, because the lie was no longer useful and had been discovered. And really, physically. The Official Information Center of the plebiscite ta ta ta ta ta. You entered and it was a dead desert and everything was in the street. I think it is very symbolic, really. The street, the people shouting, jumping. The cops are coming! Run! No, don’t run! The energy of Chile was moving in the street, no longer in this Diego Portales building.
That’s how I remember it that particular day. The next day. Well, let’s see, another thing about that day that I have to tell. After these marches, when it seemed evident that the regime had had to recognize with our cameras, with our backpacks, with our ponchos, we went to the house of Teleanálisis, which was a house that was in the Providencia neighborhood, which is a neighborhood like Cívico, a house, the last of the houses that we had as Teleanálisis and we got together to celebrate. And it was wonderful. It was wonderful because there was a lot of emotions, and we remembered the fallen and we laughed and opened champagne. It was very strange because it was hard to believe that the dictatorship could be won through an electoral process. It was hard to believe that the dictatorship had been defeated or that it seems that it was being defeated. No doubt. We were young kids who dedicated all our professional youth to this. We really worked earning no money and absolutely nothing mattered. We gave many years to this, like many other people who fought for human rights, for the dictatorship, to break the dictatorship. Some followed other paths of arms, others political path, we the audiovisual path. But we were all fighting against the same thing and we got together and we were young. So,there was music, there were speeches, there were tears, moments when we laughed a lot, we took out a lot of bottles of champagne. It was very strange to be celebrating a kind of New Year, a new life, still with the fear that at any minute the dark night could come and someone would open the door and tell us The party is over, children. So, it was a very unforgettable party, a very strange mixture of sorrow, joy, pain, hope. But there was a celebration in the house of Nueva Imagen. We are all cameramen, distributors, the oldest journalists, Góngora, the youngest, us. And it was a party until very, very, very, very late, mixed with many emotions. And the next day we got up again very early because we wanted to confirm in the street with our cameras what was happening and what happened was an unstoppable national party is recorded in the images of Teleanálisis. It is very clearly demonstrated in the documentary The Weapons of Peace. The streets were a place of celebration, a place of celebration, of hope. I think I believe that the dark beasts that dominated this country would still dominate them. But they retreated. They retreated. No, the darkness of Chile that one when you got up and there was something gray and one always felt that these hands were there and these dark tentacles retreated. They remained therebecause the dictatorship took a long time to make a complicated transition process and things continued to happen, but rarely, and this is very clear to me on a perceptual level… The streets were with a much more open energy, much more pristine, much freer. People like never dared for years, they went out to the streets to dance, to uncork champagne, to hold hands, to cry making collective rounds around the Carabineros. It was a party of peace. It was a celebration of the joy that existed. It had managed to defeat something very hard, very dark, very violent, which was the dictatorship. This, this, this, this, this, this slogan of the No campaign that “joy is coming”, which was very criticized – and I understand, with the following years the Concertación did not do what it said it was going to do, it did not dare to do everything and that is how joy came and it seems that it did not come – but that day joy did come. Joy in the great sense of the word. Democracy was imperfect, complex, many things. But that day was a very pristine day in which people dared to do many things, which they never dared and contagious. When I saw you, I used to pass by you and I didn’t know if I dared to put a face on you of “it seems that we are going to win, or not?”, or “we have to achieve it”. As people came out and saw that people dared to do in the buses, in the cars, in the streets, in the squares, in the Alameda, in front of La Moneda, the people turned out, the areas with the most economic difficulties and a beautiful street party. People went out, danced, everyone hugged each other. It was a lot, a lot of openness, a lot of freedom. And we were recording that all day with our cameras from 09:00, when people began to go out until 12 at night when there was a tremendous congregation of people in front of La Moneda. We were living, recording that party and I personally experienced it that way and professionally we recorded with our cameras that energy that was going around there in the street, which is very unique, very authentic and no one can because no one can refute that joy had arrived there. I say this because in terms of long-term political reflection, there is an enormous criticism of whether or not the Concertación was brave enough to make the transition faster or less quickly with the dictator in the Senate, that is, very long. And some criticize, but in strict terms, that day and those days, the joy effectively came, which is to recover the possibility of having a country in peace, in dialogue and to finish removing over the years that enormous evil that got involved as a country.