On the anniversary of Chile's 1973 military coup, SBSSpanish speaks to three Chileans living in Australia who lived through the historic event.
"I remember seeing the tanks patrolling the city. At every corner you would see tanks with armed soldiers," says Oscar Cardenas, a Chilean filmmaker who was living in central Santiago during the military coup, and grew up during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which lasted 17 years until the country's return to democracy in 1990.
This time, it was to offset massive nationwide demonstrations known as the 'social explosion', to demand the transformation of a country that still seems unable to reconcile, let alone agree, on the course to achieve the wellbeing of its people, almost half a century after the 1973 coup d'état. The Chilean-Australian teacher told SBS Spanish that from the moment she received an interview request from us, she has begun to relive buried memories and feelings from the past, as part of a family living in exile. This has made her appreciate even more the great sacrifice that her parents made to their daughters a better future.
Her childhood memories of Chile are few and far between and are mixed with the stories told by her relatives. While she believes that her parents did not suffer direct violence from the military regime, some of her close relatives did suffer persecution and torture. She says it forced them to flee the country.
As a journalist who also shares the experience of growing up in Chile during the dictatorship, I believe the generations of Chilean children born in those turbulent times indeed perceived what was happening in the country as nuanced. The situation was internalised and mediated by our innocence. Oscar remembers a childhood ridden with what he recognises now as anomalies. His primary school headmaster was an army general, not a teacher - something that would be inconceivable in most countries.
For Miriam Villalobos, it was somewhat different. Although she too began to understand what was happening in Chile between the ages of eleven and twelve, exile made her awareness more experiential. As he entered adolescence, Oscar Cardenas also gradually began to realise that, like many others, his own family had also suffered the violence of the military regime. Although he says, he quickly learned that talking about these issues was never to be done in public.
Democracy, ample choices of opportunities in a prosperous country, coupled with the absence of social conflict and its associated violence, convinced them that they could be happy in Australia. The trials of adolescence, a life of uprooting and growing up between two diverse cultures, forced her to struggle to find her identity, something that makes her feel happy and proud today.
"[My children] felt the urge to ask what my childhood had been like. And they found it unimaginable to have to leave a country as a child," Miriam says. "I can now explain more complex things to them, like that the government engaged in torture, repeatedly violated our human rights, or tell about the disappearances, and how they silenced opposition."
Oscar, Miriam and Nathalie all agree on the difficulty of adequately relaying these experiences to those Australians who have not had to confront them directly. While Natalie respects many feel constrained by the current lockdowns in Melbourne, and the restrictions in place in Australia to prevent the spread of COVID-19, she believes this reflects the lack of understanding by people from industrialised countries of the harsh conditions experienced by others in less fortunate countries.
She also warns it's important for Australian politicians to be more careful in their use of language as it's hurtful to those who have really suffered the strong grip of real a military regime.Forty-seven years since the military coup in Chile, and 30 years after the end of the dictatorship, the massive social protests that rocked Chile in October 2019 show that the country still seems to be struggling to find harmony.
However, the discontent of hundreds of thousands of Chileans that took to the streets does not appear to be only against one specific political party but extends to the whole prevailing political and economic system, which is why this crisis has taken such a deep root in the country. "What is happening now is a logical consequence of a system that has not changed. That is why the 'social explosion' occurred, a certain percentage of people have said, 'no more'."
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