El Museo de Memoria y los Derechos Humanos

Yesterday, we went Santiago to visit the Museum of Memory and Human Rights. It is hard to put the experience into words. In the days before the 40th anniversary of the golpe de estado, the halls of the museum felt especially hollowed. The walls exploding with clips and images of La Moneda (National Palace) in smoke, chaos filling the street we had walked just hours before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d'état

We read a letter to the dictators wife. It was from a nine year old girl, begging for her grandparents to return. Clips on screens throughout the museum showed protests, accounts of torture victims, and pictures of Men, women, and children who disappeared during the sixteen years of oppression. There was a memorial at the end of the tour; half of the nearly three thousand victims staring back at us. Along with their pictures were  black and white squares to symbolize all the people whose stories have yet to be uncovered.

http://www.museodelamemoria.cl/

Before we left, we took a picture in front of a mural that displayed the last words of Victor Jara, a famous musician and activist, one of the first people to be killed under  the dictatorship:

Somos cinco mil en esta pequeña parte de la ciudad.
Somos cinco mil. ¿Cuántos seremos en total en las ciudades,
en todo el país?
Solo aquí, diez mil manos que siembran y hacen andar las fábricas.

I didn't understand how we could be posing in front of it, smiling for the camera, as if this trip, the last stop on our tour of the capital, was meant to be nothing more than a check on our lists of "cultural" experiences and a paragraph or two in our study abroad blogs. Some people in the museum were laughing or complaining of being tired and I wondered, how many of the people around us were victims of the regime, grew up in fear, or lost a loved one to the struggle for freedom? Often here people tell me that memory is short and this is true all over the world. But for the women in the clips accounting their torture, for the woman and her son fighting through the line of police to lay flowers down in commemoration of the husband and father they lost, memory is alive, it is as present as thought or action, because everyday it is relived. Everyday in Chile is a struggle between remembering, honoring the memories of those lost, and moving forward.

It is humbling to realize that in my lifetime I have not had to carry such a burden. I look at the people here, weighed down by so much frustration, suffering, and anger and I am inspired by their ability to continue on, to commemorate the ones they lost and to find joy everyday, in the present. In that moment I looked back on my life with so much gratitude for not growing up in such fear and suffering, but also in shame for the part my country played in the events of September 11, 1973.

This poem I came across in a movie I watched last year. It has stuck with me ever since. Learning about the violent history of humanity and the current suffering that is taking place all over the world, I often feel overwhelmed by emotion without ever being able to find the right words to express it. Ironically, it was in my second language that I found this poem that speaks to these feelings. Hay golpes en la vida tan fuertes...

César Vallejo
(Perú, 1892-Paris, 1938)

Los Heraldos Negros
(1918)

Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes... Yo no sé.
Golpes como del odio de Dios; como si ante ellos,
la resaca de todo lo sufrido
se empozara en el alma... Yo no sé.

Son pocos; pero son... Abren zanjas oscuras
en el rostro más fiero y en el lomo más fuerte.
Serán tal vez los potros de bárbaros atilas;
o los heraldos negros que nos manda la Muerte.

Son las caídas hondas de los Cristos del alma,
de alguna fe adorable que el Destino blasfema.
Esos golpes sangrientos son las crepitaciones
de algún pan que en la puerta del horno se nos quema.

Y el hombre... Pobre... pobre! Vuelve los ojos, como
cuando por sobre el hombro nos llama una palmada;
vuelve los ojos locos, y todo lo vivido
se empoza, como un charco de culpa, en la mirada.

Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes ... Yo no sé!

Here is a translation of the poem into english (which gets the message across, but doesn't do the poetry justice). 

                                  Black Messengers (Translation of Los Heraldos Negros)

There are in life such hard blows . . . I don't know!

Blows seemingly from God's wrath; as if before them

the undertow of all our sufferings

is embedded in our souls . . . I don't know!

There are few; but are . . . opening dark furrows

in the fiercest of faces and the strongest of loins,

They are perhaps the colts of barbaric Attilas

or the dark heralds Death sends us.

They are the deep falls of the Christ of the soul,

of some adorable one that Destiny Blasphemes.

Those bloody blows are the crepitation

of some bread that burns  us on the oven's door

And the man . . . poor . . . poor!

He turns his eyes around, like

when patting calls us upon our shoulder;

he turns his crazed maddened eyes,

and all of life's experiences become stagnant, like a puddle of guilt, in his gaze.

There are such hard blows in life. I don't know.

Last night, there was a soccer match between Chile and Venezuela in El Estadio Nacional, the site of a large part of the torture and killings in the days following the golpe de estado. As I walked home, the streets were filled with cheers and screams, a TV blarring inside every bar, restaurant, and shop. There was an overwhelming sense of solidarity and unity, of festivity; a country brought together by a love for the game, their team, and their country. As we ate "once", my host mom told me that the first goal scored by Chile (Score: 3-0) was planned to be met with silence for all those that had lost their lives there in the stadium. She added with a chuckle that with soccer fans that was easier said than done. The stadium is a site of remembrance, but also the center of some of the nation's greatest moments joy and pride. Something tells me that all of the fans in that stadium, coming together to cheer on their team, is one of the greatest honors that could be given to those that lost their lives there in the hopes of a better future for their country. 

It is a blessing to be in Chile in September. It is a month of anguish, anger, and remembrance, but also the month to celebrate independence and culture with the week of Fiestas Patrias; filled with Chilean flags, traditional dances, food, and dress. The more time I spend here, the more grateful I am that I chose this city and this country to live in these six months. There is so much to learn from the stories of others and I have been lucky enough to have had the chance to hear the thoughts, memories, and hopes of so many incredible people and to have had so many amazing experiences.