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Photos from #Chile : Cementerio General

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Photos from #Chile : History, Memory, Facts

I learned the facts about the dictatorship of Chile in school. I was born exactly a year after the coup making Augusto Pinochet president of Chile, and his junta the government. The dictatorship only ended when I was 15, in grade 10.

I spent my first month in Santiago simply wandering around, getting used to the city. One day, very near my apartment, I happened upon a stunning area of 19th century houses, made of two streets named Paris and Londres–after Paris and London, of course. Most of the buildings are now offices, hotels, and high-end cafes. I stood in the middle of the street that day admiring one lovely hotel, then turned around to look at the house across the street…and my brain blanked out. I didn’t understand what I was looking at. I saw cobblestones with people’s names and ages inscribed on them. The beautiful house was completely covered in rough, sprayed-on writing, saying “tortura”, “muertos,” “memoria.” It finally, sort-of clicked that, in this gorgeous, genteel enclave I had genuinely stumbled upon a site from Pinochet’s campaign of fear.

I got home, got on the internet, and looked up the address: 38 Londres.

I didn’t go back there until two days ago, and I’m leaving Chile today. First, I went to El Museo de Memoria y Derecho Humanos — the Museum of Memory and Human Rights — dedicated to showing what happened the day in 1973 when Pinochet and Chile’s military forcibly took over the country, and then what happened in Chile (and to Chileans outside the country!) until the dictatorship finally ended in 1990. It’s one of the best, most extraordinary exhibits I’ve ever seen, very effective, and affecting. It contains a bit of everything — video of newsfeeds the day of the coup, voice recordings of the president of Chile telling everyone goodbye over the radio, of Pinochet’s first address, of people recounting how they’d been interrogated, jailed, and tortured. Hundreds of photos, of people being detained, protesting, sites where “disappeared” bodies had been uncovered. Torture devices, a bent metal cross of an unknown victim buried in “Patio 29” of the General Cemetary, and pictures drawn by the children of people who’d been murdered, with “¿Donde están?” written again and again, “Where are they?”

Most of the inside of the house at 38 Londres is still empty: it’s clean, but there are holes punched in walls, exposed pipes. Near the one tiny bathroom detainees were permitted to use, a video plays, showing how a forensics team took samples–evidence–from every surface. The toilet has since been removed–everything else in the house remains exactly as it was when DINA–the army’s secret service–shut up the house and tried to hide it by changing its number to 40. The map I received explained what every room in the house had been used for. The entire second floor was for interrogating people for being “left-wing,” and then tortured. Being in that house, knowing what happened in those near-empty rooms… I can’t truly describe it. Unsettling. Moving. Overwhelming.

Just yesterday, I finally visited the General Cemetery of Santiago. The parts I most wanted to see were Salvador Allende’s tomb — which is lovely — and “Patio 29.” “Patio” in this case means “section” : the cemetery contains over 150 patios, and maps of the cemetery are marked in patios, making it easier to find gravesites. Finding Patio 29 was a bit difficult though — like 38 Londres, it appears the whole cemetery was renumbered in the past, possibly in part to hide number 29, which is now at the far northern edge of the cemetery, beside 156! They’re essentially pauper’s graves, all marked with the same bare metal crosses screwed into concrete. It’s become the site of marches by people angry that the immunity Pinochet gave himself and his junta is still in effect.

I strenuously suggest everyone visit every corner of Chile, which is mind-blowingly beautiful…and see what a dictator did this beautiful country for 17 years. It’s very, very illuminating, NOW.

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More of #Valparaiso #Chile

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Would you LOOK at this! #Valparaiso #Chile

While standing in Valparaiso, you can see the two “ends” of the bay very clearly–it’s more what you might call a lagoon. It’s relatively small. But it’s an excellent harbour, and back in the 16th century it was decided on as the best spot for the new Spanish colony’s shipping. That took a long time to really happen though, and it was only when copper and nitrate were found in northern Chile that Valparaiso really got going. It soon filled with–strangely enough–British businessmen who exploited the new resources and became VERY rich. One problem: next to Valparaiso’s bay is the thinnest strip of flat land, and then STEEP HILLS. The very rich built their beautiful houses on the hills anyway, and later, elevators (!) to actually get up and down.

Then there was a horrible earthquake in 1906, the prices of copper and nitrate dropped, and all the rich folks left Valparaiso. What’s happened to the oldest part of the town since then is pretty amazing: it’s now filled with every kind of artist–most obviously graffiti, but sculptors, theatres, and dance schools too–plus amazing restaurants, hostels, and shops. I did NOT want to leave.

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Photos of #Chile : Cerro Santa Lucia, the most beautiful park I’ve ever seen.

Maybe one day I’ll have enough Spanish to adequately describe this place. Charles Darwin gave it the high praise of “certainly most striking.”

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Photos of #Chile : #Santiago Centro

On my walk around Central Santiago, there were bells ringing from all the churches, and ladies weaving palm fronds for people as they went into mass. I’m looking forward to Easter here next week – I can’t fathom what it’ll be like.

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VOTE. You have to Vote. Part 3 – media

Quebec City mosque shooting victims include businessman, professor and fathers of young children
6 men were shot in the back as they gathered for evening prayer, mosque’s vice-president says

FIRST.

Now.

I wanted to know who did it. I was so anxious to know I was on Twitter all day. Which, we should know, is a BAD place to get up-to-date news.

I realized yesterday afternoon I was contributing to the bile by even looking at it, and made myself log out.

In the end, one person was arrested.

From now on, BE PATIENT. Police have a job to do, LET THEM do it.

STOP getting your news off Twitter. STOP. I know that’s hard, given the possible forced deportations which no one can find out anything about. BUT, this happened in CANADA. For right now, we do still have some reliable media outlets. Here they are.

Vote with your money: Start PAYING for news again. We have to. News has gone downhill, and Part of the reason is likely because ad revenue has cratered, so they feel compelled to take “native advertising” and pander to customers instead of sticking to journalistic integrity. PAY FOR reliable news so they can pay reporters and researchers to do the work.

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VOTE. You have to Vote. Part 2 #Canada #voting #nomuslimban #refugeeswelcome

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My goodness. That went well!

MoveOn.org
MoveOn.org

But it’s not remotely over yet. Next: the “hard” part.

Immediately after the inauguration, The Village Voice published a series of mini-interviews done with attendees. The very first interviewee said that the new president’s words were being parsed by the media, and he didn’t believe that all of things the president said were in fact going to happen, that it was his, very good, way of saying he was simply putting the US’s interests first. When asked if he had in fact voted for Trump, this man answered:

“No, I’m a Canadian citizen.”

I’m not linking to that article, because I don’t want to contribute to that person being tracked down and bile thrown at him over the internet — if you want to read it yourself, you’ll have no trouble finding it.

The fact that Canada has not one but two proponents of the new president’s ideology running for the PC leadership (you know who I mean — I’m not furthering the indignity they’ve heaped on other people), and that this ideology has support in Canada, might make clear-headed Canadians panic and say “no, we DON’T have time! It’s inevitable.”

It’s NOT inevitable. If you believe that, you’ve said you’re going to do nothing. Which is what happened before and during WWII. THAT’S were we are now. That is NOT inevitable in Canada, we CAN stop it.

And it’s, again, very simple, BUT. Turnout for the 2015 federal election was the highest in ages, yet over 30% of voters still didn’t show up. The only way to prove to the right-wing that the majority does not agree with them IS to utterly prove the majority is against them…that is, to VOTE AGAINST THEM.

The only way to not let either of those potential PCs have power, is to NOT let them have that power. If the majority of Canadians don’t vote for a party, they don’t get the power to enact what they want to do.

See? Simple.

Yes, we have first-past-the-post, we’ve had minority governments in recent history, blah blah. We somehow allowed Harper in power for 10 years, and finally, enough Canadians got sick of him to hand him a resounding Defeat. We can, and we must, keep fascism out of the Canadian parliament. And we can. By voting.

So do it.

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VOTE. You. Have. To. VOTE. Part 1 #vote #canada

The horrors have been coming so thick and fast that no one can process them all. Which is part of the strategy, clearly: throw in all the immigration, abortion, and press bans, one right after the other, and there are too many things to nail down and protest.

Which is why I am — for the moment — still happy and relieved to be Canadian. Because we still have time.

The solution is very simple, so simple we already know what it is, but it does take work. Part of the issue has been simple complacency, the old “we took for granted” that racism, sexism, and hate speech weren’t as bad in Canada, and we made the false assumption that “not as bad as” meant “no problem at all.” Pretty obvious now that assumption was incorrect. So the obvious, simple way to combat all that is to: STOP. IT.

People who aren’t white are being harassed. When you see that, stop it. Call the police. Yell. Start carrying a black marker with you, and when you see hate propaganda posters anywhere, DON’T tear them down, but write this across them: Section 319 (1) . That’s “hate speech”, in the Criminal Code of Canada.

CANADIANS EVERYWHERE, in Canada, living outside of it, ALL OF YOU:

Write to your MLA, your premier, your MP, and the Prime Minister. Today, every day. Tell them that what it happening in the US will not happen here.

And if the new president wants to get shirty, I am willing to live without avocados. I survived without a car most of my adult life. If things get so tough that I can’t get a job in Canada, I now have the ability to teach pretty much anywhere in the world, and come back…thanks to my Canadian passport. That’s how lucky I am.

Refugees — NOT “migrants” for god’s sake! — are worse than unlucky. They are in danger. People who are anything but white-Caucasian, are in danger.

Canada is better than the US. Prove it, and make the people we elected to represent us prove it.