“Memory” was the key word in yesterday’s session of my Anthropology/Spanish class, Truth, Voice, and Justice in Latin America: The Cultural Politics of Violence.
September 11, 1973 rings a bell to all Latin Americans (whereas for North Americans there is only one Sept. 11, despite U.S. involvement in Chile's). We watched a documentary by Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán, called Chile: la Memoria Obstinada. Guzmán, in the 1970s, filmed a series called La Batalla de Chile, a three-part taping of the events leading up to, during, and after Pinochet’s military coup over Allende’s democratically elected socialist government. Not surprisingly, La Batalla de Chile was banned in its country during the military rule. In Memoria, the filmmaker comes back to Chile many years later and brings the original documentary with him. He then shows it to some of the people who were actually in the first film when it happened, and also tapes the reactions of a group of students watching their country’s history unfold for the first time.
We all agreed that the most striking part of the movie was the reaction of the students seeing it for the first time. They had been stripped of memory, our class concurred, by a military authority and the unexplained disappearances of so many people. Furthermore, their view of Allende, of democracy, of socialism, of human rights and of government itself had been shaped by a thirteen-year dictatorship.
We’d read the articles about the United States releasing the CIA files under Clinton that clearly established an important link between the Nixon administration and Pinochet’s rise to power. Through tries at assassination, attempts to squarely sabotage elections, and even a two-step plan for destabilizing Chile’s entire political system, the United States certainly played its part in altering Chilean history. Yet I still find it shocking how little the U.S. educational system teaches American children about the Nixon interventions. Truth be told, I only started hearing about it—in an academic setting, that is—when I got to university. Thankfully, at least here at Tufts these things are discussed quite openly and earnestly.
One blonde girl in class noted something important. “I read about this,” she said, “and I couldn’t believe it. My parents were living during this time… I asked my dad, did you know about this, how the U.S. meddled in Chile? And he was like, ‘Chile? Is that the long-shaped country or is it the one in the north of South America?’ and I was like, ‘Oh my god’…”
Memory. Many U.S. citizens alive at the time have no memory of Chile’s September 11, or of Latin America as a whole, for that matter.
At this point, I raised my hand and countered that in the USSR—a “closed” country—people were certainly aware of September 11 in Chile, even though Allende had broken with the Soviets’ pushing towards stronger revolution. I don’t see Allende as a radical, I said. I see him as more of a Marxist than a Leninist—committed to the idea of establishing a pacific socialism through the natural progression of society, rather than the violent overthrow over the bourgeoisie, as we had in Russia. Sure, there were mistakes and fiscal mismanagements; but Chile had had potential. While Allende is not a martyr, would George W. Bush be willing to die in the White House to defend his establishment of "democracy" in the Middle East?
Despite Chile and USSR’s differences, I said, students in Moscow felt for Chile’s socialists.
And then the discussion turned to the political climate in the U.S. today. “Why is it,” somebody asked, “that there is such an apathy here? Nobody knows about Chile. Nobody goes to protests because they’re on scheduled on a Sunday at 3 p.m. a month in advance and then it rains or it's cold and everyone's like, damn, I'll just stay home, it’s not like it's important!? Real protests aren't scheduled around someone's workday.”
“There’s no togetherness. There’s no ‘students’ movement’, or union movements or workers' parties.”
“We may care about the fight in Iraq, but nobody mobilizes because there is no effect on America. What happened to the 60s? Where did that go? The anti-Vietnam era?”
“You see the pictures of children in Rwanda, and yet there’s no possible way you can help because it all goes to corporations.”
“There is no solidarity among students.”
Solidarity, solidarity, solidarity.
Why? Complacency, comfort, apathy, fortune, individualism, culture... and about a dozen other theories, equally florid and equally abstract. Capitalism. Too much of it? Yet do people really need to suffer terrible pains on a personal and national level as a prerequisite for having solidarity? I hope not. I would like to believe that what united movements of solidarity was a common desire for a greater good, and not only a reaction to oppression.
The class seemed to agree. At the end of the discussion, I played a Grenada song for them.
But we did not come up with any answers—we were, after all, U.S. college students “intellectualizing” history.
Later, for about a half hour, I talked on the library steps with the thirty-something post-bacc auditor who spoke a lot during the class, mostly about the lack of protesting in the U.S. despite the presence of many important issues. She went on and on about how she has worked with Cambodian refugees, spent time in Palestinian camps, tries to organize marches on Washington, but her married friends dismiss her as the “crazy liberal” because nobody cares... she went on and on about how she thought the story I told the class about my family’s experience was just so inspiring and blah blah blah and how there is just no solidarity...
I heard myself siding with her, for a second feeling almost revolutionary. Yet by the end of the conversation, as I agreed that overdeveloped capitalism is a root cause of the decay of society and that socialism has been misrepresented by corrupt interest-seekers and needs another chance, I felt pure hypocrisy. I say it, I think I believe it... but I look up to people who truly believe in what they do, enough to do something—anything—about it. Me, however? Well, I am just a part of the system where, largely, I grew up.
I listen to the music from LA and USSR, I read the articles and the books, I watch movies, I learn Spanish, I feel myself "apart" from the gringo essence, and think about life and the universe... from the comfort of my dorm room. I have health insurance, I get to travel to Europe and other exotic places with a click of my mouse, and I have a wonderful, comfortable existence in the United States where I am content. I've seen people work hard; but I've never had to work hard at anything. I can read about Chile or Russia and listen to my family's stories. I can even go visit and write about it. Above all, I can analyze and criticize and discuss whatever I want.
Life in the United States is not the savage, bourgeois beast portrayed in the Cold War, just like life in the USSR wasn't a vapid, soulless iron curtain. Life in the United States is, in fact, a very good one compared to other options out there. I have no reason to complain about the objective quality of it. None.
But what have I done to change anything? To influence the parts of the system in this very country that go against what I might believe in? ("Yo que soy americano, no importa de que país...")
I've done absolutely nothing.
Orlando, Florida
