For me the process, the process of this pseudo return to democracy, was quite interesting as a person, formative also as a person and because it caught me in my twenties, that is, I was 20, 21 years old, I lived practically all my life in a dictatorship. In other words, I was six years old in 1973 and therefore I lived my whole life within the framework, regulated by a military regime. Also, within a family that had a military background because my father was an Air Force officer, he worked specifically in the Air Force printing press and you can imagine all that it means, let’s say, to live under a State that is ruled by the military and in your home, you also have a father, who is military. So a life within that framework, in the background. And then as, as I go along in my youth to other studies, other schools, what do I know, I get to know other truths that I did not have before I was 15 or 14 years old and I wake up to a world that, that starts to turn your head.
And perhaps that too, coupled with the natural impulses of the human being. This sense of freedom, and what do I know. It became, let’s say, in a way a little more powerful in me this desire to achieve freedoms. In personal terms, but also in political terms, and it caught me absolutely vulnerable, we could say. In other words, when I was 13, 14 years old I started to know things. Then when I was 15 I started to develop, they started to appear in the guitar, they started to appear in the songs, the music, Inti-Illimani, Quilapayún everything, everything, everything you can imagine and absorbing absolutely all of that. Then I suddenly joined high school and began to learn about history from other perspectives and from other points of view. And I begin to know that deeper history, to get my hands on books that you didn’t have. And this is justly carried by the hand of history teachers or philosophy teachers, language teachers who open up a world to you. They also open up the world of politics, of knowing a little about political trends and political needs. And participatory processes. I am in a school where, for example, the participatory process was permanent, that is, not stable. No, they don’t put us in a kind of laboratory and tell us, let’s see, we are going to work on a project basis, that’s how I was formed and suddenly culturally enriched, because before that there was a cultural poverty. So, all these processes of searching for democracy start to appear with great force from the age of 15, 16 years old.
Situations appear in Chile, for example, such as the death of priests. Well, the persecuted, the tortured, the detained, the disappeared, there was a period in which not much was said, but suddenly the information began to surface again and people began to open up that information much more and democratize it a little more.
Finally, the plebiscite is held. It had an effervescence in terms of media effervescence, because we never saw a fringe, a political fringe that showed the alternative, for 16 years we never saw it. And then you began to see that it was possible, because there was one, it was a more political fringe that presented you with a new horizon, with colors. Many people who had never voted in their lives at that time did not know what it was. For the people, for all the Chilean people, including the military, I believe that everything that was happening was absolutely new. It was complex and in my house in particular it was a very, very delicate issue, because my father as a military man had certain responsibilities and he had to fulfill them, because that’s just the way it is. And he was out of sight from home a lot, because he had to be on guard, as they call it over there, every other day. So, I was out one night. Then I would come in, sleep, and the next day I would go on and be out for a night again. And it was the case of almost all the military personnel in the country who were under a state, not of siege, but of permanent alert, on guard for a full month, and so they were rotating. Therefore, a very hard period for our family. In that sense, let’s say.
And there my mother, I think she must have been the one who channeled the whole process within the family. And, well, I am the eldest of three brothers, we are three boys, and I am the most politically restless of all, the others watching from afar. I participated a lot in movements, student movements during ’85 and ’86, and my relationship within the family was quite complex in that sense. Then. But as the older brother, and looking a little bit also at what was going on with my younger siblings, I felt a responsibility to try not to involve them in anything and my theme was absolutely solitary and hidden in the background. But in the family way, let’s say, it was a subject that, with this amount of years of difference, one can observe and, with a little bit of melancholy, let’s say, see how they lived it all. It was very hard. I don’t know, maybe the last year, from the moment this possibility of opening is established. Everything that my father and, well, my mother, obviously, lived through.
The day of the plebiscite was an incredible day. The country moved. The country moved. My barracked father was assigned to a school, a school they had to take care of, and he had been away from home for two nights already. Two or three nights, I don’t remember well. And well, my mother with her soul on a string, as they say in Chile, right? That is, with the permanent worry, because I didn’t know if this was going to work out or not, that my father was there with a gun in his hand. Evidently I had to stand guard and I don’t know what. I do not know how much. And with his three children there, one a little crazy and the other two who were still small. So, it was quite a unique situation. And on the day of the plebiscite, well, my mother votes, I vote. My father I understand votes where he was working. But in my house it wasn’t talked about much. No, not much was said, because I believe that it was precisely because it was known that there was one, that we had opposing visions; with much respect, yes, but opposing visions. But we don’t talk. And I remember I was glued to the TV all day long after I went to vote. I was there all day, all day, all day, until the last minute. When Cardemil already recognizes, let’s say, the triumph of the No vote. I understand that many people went out to celebrate at that minute, they were in the street, what do I know. But I couldn’t because I was; deep down I was the man of the house, that day. I had to stay home because I had to see my brother and support my mother. And my mother sleeping, suddenly I tell mom No won and her response was, “that’s good, son! I hope we are calmer now.” That was it. That was his sentence and then he went back to sleep.
The next day I left very early and spent the whole day in the Alameda. I walked the Alameda from end to end. Celebrating with joy with the people, the people of Chile, who were in the streets, who went to the Alameda, who walked, who had a gigantic feeling of freedom. I do not remember another moment before that in which, in fact, the street, the Alameda, the most important road vertebra of Santiago was ours. It was, it was, it was, it was of the people who voted, the one who voted No. You would meet Carabineros and hug the Carabineros and they would smile. Some also hugged. It was an unforgettable life experience. In other words, that joy shared with a people. I know, manifesting their joy, people with whom I worked in the Church, because I worked a lot with parishes. People from the Chilean Church were also there, actively participating in the street with the others, greeting each other, looking at La Moneda from a place where we could not usually see it, because La Moneda was always under siege, let’s say. The military or carabineros would not allow you to approach. It was a beautiful sunny day. Lots of sun I remember, lots of water too. Because I don’t know, people were throwing water everywhere, I don’t know. It was a beautiful sight. Y. A new door was opening, let’s say. We do not know. Here came another new process. It was felt at that minute that Pinochet had been defeated. The front page of Fortín Mapocho said, “he ran alone and came in second”. And now a new process has begun. The plebiscite was to say “we are starting a new process”. That.