I just wanted to share a few things we are learning about the recent dark history here in Argentina and Chile that I never learned in school. I suspect those of you reading this who are younger than me may also be ignorant on these topics, and perhaps those of you old enough to remember when it happened didn’t get the whole story at the time. I don’t mean for this to be a history lesson since I am completely unqualified to teach such a thing, rather a reminder of what’s been happening with our neighbors to the south.
I had heard before that Argentina is still a little sore at the UK about the dispute over the Falkland Islands, or as they are called here, the Malvinas. This became apparent when a group of us from the Spanish school were standing on a street corner waiting for someone to meet up with us. A man who seemed to wash car windows when they are stopped at a red light started harassing us. He wasn’t quite yelling, but speaking loudly and was obviously upset. We didn’t know what he was saying, but luckily, Sole, one of the staff members from the school was with us so she could translate. Evidently, he heard us speaking English, and therefore, thought that we must be from England. Sole was polite enough not to translate all of the details for us. She explained to him that none of us were British. He didn’t believe her. He grew more and more agitated by our presence and got a lot louder. Then he squirted one of our fellow student’s leg with the cleaning fluid he used on the windows. We decided it was time to move on. I wonder about this guy’s mental stability and don’t believe he is representative of the majority. The situation was not that big of a deal, but it was a reminder that the 1982 armed conflict over the Falklands wasn’t too long ago. I had heard that Argentina decided to invade the British held islands to draw attention away from bigger problems within the country. The whole thing backfired however, and the defeat of the Argentines in the brief conflict helped to bring down their military dictatorship ruling the country. The Falkland Islands had changed hands a bunch of times throughout history, but have been under British control for hundreds of years, and the residents mostly identify as being British. But on the other hand, it is only 300 miles off the coast of Argentina, and not remotely near any other country. Argentina still thinks they belong to them.
The dictatorship in Argentina started in 1966 when the democratically elected president was overthrown in a military coup. The military ran the country in a brutal manner until it was finally ousted in 1983 and another president was elected. That period is a very dark one in Argentina’s history. This period includes what is called the Dirty War, in which thousands of opponents of the government went missing. The common estimate is 30,000, most of whom were murdered. Pretty bad stuff, and not all that long ago.
Chile’s recent history is strikingly similar. In 1973, its own military bombed, then stormed the government palace in order to oust the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende. Allende ended up dead, and it is unknown whether he was murdered or if he committed suicide (he was found with some number of bullet holes in him). The head of the military, General Pinochet then decided that he (and the military) best run the country, which he did as an evil dictator for the next 17 years. He did all the usual stuff you expect from an evil dictator such as imprison, torture, and murder those who disagreed with him. Here is the effed up part... the United States assisted in the coup which brought Pinochet to power. Oops! This is a really complicated story that I don’t know much about, so I will withhold any opinions here. Allende was a socialist. It was the peak of the cold war and the US wanted to thwart the spread of communism, but some say that Kissenger and Nixon should have gone to jail for war crimes (of which this was just one).
In Chile, to this day, on the anniversary of the coup, September 11th, people fill the streets to celebrate and protest. To those on the left, Allende is a hero, to those on the right he is a villain. And just the opposite with Pinochet who is a hero to the right and a villain to the left. Those sides clash on this anniversary along with the police. This is a vast over-simplification, and the more research I do to try and understand, the more confused I get. Anyway, if you find yourself in Santiago on the 11th of September, I suggest staying inside, and certainly don’t wear an American flag or a Trump tee shirt.
While we were in Santiago, there were protests of a different sort. The first danger we were warned of was not theft, or muggings, or earthquakes. It was the student protests, which I think are only dangerous if you find yourself caught between the police and the protesters (pretty easy to avoid). At one point in time, university education was free in Chile, but that is no longer the case. It is now a private industry, and many students are graduating with a tremendous amount of debt. We also heard stories about how the schools keep changing the curriculum such that students must attend longer and longer before earning a degree (and paying more and more). Not surprising with a for-profit enterprise. Well, the students are fed up and are letting the world know. The protests often turn violent as the students clash with police in clouds of tear gas. More than one Chilean told us that Chile is like a pressure cooker and in the next year or so, things are going to explode.
I don’t want to paint the wrong picture here. I have loved Chile so far and it is considered to be an extremely stable and prosperous nation ranking number one among Latin American countries in income, peace, and low corruption. We have not experienced nor witnessed any crime, protests, violence, or even scams. But the dictatorships are something that people still talk about here, so it would be misleading not to mention them in a travel blog. Stay tuned for more blog posts on the out of the way places we’ve visited after Santiago.
- Jake