An Ode to Joy for Chile

Abstract

This fifth of October in Santiago the springtime begins to brighten with the first hints of a victorious dawn. Even the immense crowns of the yellow aromo trees seem to radiate a breath as delicate as that of newborns. There is a gentleness in the air already promising a dawn of illusions and beginnings. By means of civic peaceful action, the people of Chile defeated the tyrannical dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet thereby turning the beautiful statement of Salvador Allende into prophecy: It is the people who make history. As in 1971 when the Marxist government of Salvador Allende was elected according to the legal requirements set forth in the Chilean constitution, so on this October fifth, 1988, the dictatorship was rejected, not by wars or revolutions, but by the exercise of that fundamental right of citizens of a free country: the right to choose freely those who will govern them. On this October fifth I said to myself with great joy, Good morning, my Chile. Today we greet each other with generous hands filled with those magical lilies and forget-me-nots breaking into blossom along the welcoming avenues. Today we say no more to sinister torture, to cruel disappearances, to imprisonments, because as of today the defeated dictator can no longer decide on a whim who lives and who dies, and who must undergo another session of torture. And the generals can no longer sit around an elegant table to discuss which type of torture is more efficient: electric shocks applied to the gums or to the genitals. Very early in the morning the streets of my city fill with people as trees in springtime fill with leaves. The city resembles a goddess awaiting a miraculous child. Spontaneously, everybody spills out into the streets to sing, but no longer chanting that famous slogan [Va a caer. Va a caer./He's going to fall. He's going to fall.]. He's going to fall because he has actually already fallen. Brimming over with happiness, we go out into the streets; we all feel so light and that gentle air that one breathes in the streets of my city seems