OLIVER'S ILLUMINATIONS

 

PART TWO

 

50.
   The next morning as we floated over a mountain range hanging with glaciers, the horrors and near death that had almost swallowed me in this undulating current of a throat throttling dream vanished in the vision of the breathtaking woman in my arms. I was filled with the wonder of life, at the disbelief that I could be worthy of her affection. She brushed her fingers through my hair and ran them down my face. She let loose a long sigh and pressed her head in my chest. She gazed into my eyes and mouthed a thank you. She turned her eyes to the panorama below. Suddenly her face darkened. I felt the magic of this refuge flutter away and prepared myself for another dive into monstrosity. She pointed to three spires of stone that rose up out of the mountains. “These peaks are called The Towers of Pain, a monument to the agony Chile suffered on our own September eleventh in 1973. For decades, eleven Chilean oligarchies and several international corporations, mostly American controlled and exploited my country’s resources and its people. In 1970 the people elected a socialist by the name of Salvadore Allende. His government began to buy land from the oligarchies and compensate the corporations for the nationalization of industry but the haves never give up power and wealth without a fight. The Doctor set the tone when he said, ‘I don’t see why we have to stand idly by and let a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.’ From that moment on, Allende’s time was limited.”                                                                        

51.
   We touched down near a graveyard on a bluff above the sea. A graceful steam ship crested the horizon. I felt we were children lost in wonder. Claudia led us down a white stone path framed by twenty-foot manicured cypresses. “The Doctor and the CIA had done their best to start a coup before Allende was inaugurated. The commander in chief of the army, general Rene Schneider spurned the CIA's demand that he overthrow Allende. He refused to subvert the constitution and actually backed Allende’s victory as the only thing that would prevent an insurrection by the Chilean people themselves. He was assassinated for his courage. Edward Korry, the US ambassador to Chile was incensed with Allende. He sent crazed letters to your president Nixon. ‘There is a graveyard smell to Chile, the fumes of democracy in decomposition.’ and his threats were visceral. ‘Not a nut or a bolt shall reach Chile. Once Allende comes to power, we shall do all in our power to condemn Chile and all Chileans to the utmost deprivation and poverty.’ Hand in hand, the military, the CIA and American corporations planned Allende’s downfall. The CIA’s Project FUBELT worked to embargo Chilean copper in foreign ports. It funded mass media propaganda and fascist paramilitary groups who sabotaged railroads, bridges and power lines. A lock down of the country's industry was staged to instigate an economic crisis that would force Allende out. The workers responded by running the farms and industry themselves, without the owners and managers. They protected the infrastructure from sabotage and distributed food directly to the people. Nixon was enraged and the Doctor obliged by arranging the cancellation of all foreign aid to my country.”

52.
   We wandered into the necropolis and strolled past stone and marble testaments to past glory. We stopped in front of a mad architectural folly of riotous excess crowned with alabaster Corinthian columns and dripping with ferns. Claudia gazed at the monument in wonder and read the letters engraved on a plaque. “Los Magallanes,”, she sighed. “The mysterious islands around Cape Horn and the last words out of the mouth of our founding father, Bernardo O’Higgens.” Then the wistful look on her face vanished. “The CIA was impressed with the resilience of the people. They realized that the only way to get rid of Allende was with a military coup. With general Schneider out of the way, the generals fell in line and the oligarchy was right behind them. The CIA found the snake it needed in one Augusto Pinochet, the general Allende himself had appointed as commander in chief of the army only a month before. This time everything went as planned. On September eleventh, 1973, with infantry, tanks and warplanes, the generals attacked the Palacio de la Moneda and the forty-two men and women defending Allende. Allende gave his last speech from the palace over Radio Magallanes. Referring to himself in the past tense, he urged his countrymen and women to fight on. ‘Surely Radio Magallanes will be silenced and my calm voice will no longer reach you. It does not matter. You will continue hearing it. I will always be next to you. At least my memory will be that of a man of dignity who was loyal to his country.’ It took five hours to capture the palace, kill Allende and stage a gruesome suicide. Within days, anyone suspected of supporting or even sympathizing with Allende was rounded up. Fifteen thousand were murdered.”

53.

   Tears flowed down Claudia's face. She walked into a field and collapsed. I dropped down beside her. Startled insects took to the air and hovered around us. “When my people elected Salvador Allende, your president Nixon told the head of the CIA to make the Chilean economy ‘scream’. After the coup, Pinochet was appointed President by the junta. With the help of lists provided by the CIA, thousands were murdered and thousands more were soon screaming in the torture cells of Chile. Our national troubadour, Victor Jara, a beautiful man with a beautiful voice who sang our revolution with a beautiful heart was arrested and thrown into prison. His guitar, his hands and his fingers were crushed before he was shot forty-four times. I never knew my parents. My mother was eight months pregnant when she and my father were arrested. My father was a university professor with no ties to Allende. His crime was his education, and he was tortured to death for it. My mother was tortured and repeatedly raped by her captors. She went into premature labor. After I was born, they murdered her. I was left on the doorstep of my aunt who was a friend of the poet Pablo Neruda, our Nobel Prize Laureate and a great ally of Allende. She fled with me to Neruda’s home in Santiago hoping that his international status could protect us both, but he had been poisoned. He had died the day before and the police had ransacked the house. My aunt found the poet’s body in the house where his wife had left it in tragic defiance, lying in state among the smashed furniture and burned books.”

  

54.

   I lay back in the grass letting the gravity of Claudia’s words sink in. I marveled at this angry, wounded beauty. She looked into my eyes and smiled a weary smile. I wanted her to tell me more but I dared not ask. We lay next to each other watching the towering thunderclouds that marched along the horizon.
   Claudia ran her fingers through the blades of grass. “Life is full of tragedy, Oliver. I’m sure you have faced it yourself. But how is it that men thousands of miles away in another country could feel we were just pawns in their sadistic games? Your president and all his men and the CEOs of your country’s ravenous corporations were responsible for thousands of people being tortured to death. And for what? To prove the to the Russians that they would not allow a socialist country to exist in their own back yard?”
   I had nothing to say to her. I looked down at the grass in shame. When I looked up, I was confronted with a startling sight. A socialite heifer the size of an elephant had waddled over the top of the hill and spotted us. “You who! Wooo Who!!”, she squealed. “I see a couple of party poopers!” As she strutted towards us, rolls of fat jiggled and quivered everywhere on her body. She was an extraordinary sight bent over at the hips in an impossible posture. Her enormous breasts that almost touched the ground looked like fore legs. Her arms waved from her shoulders like pointed sticks. A handbag hung off one of them. She stroked the thick makeup troweled over her face and pursed her huge, lipstick smeared lips. She wagged a head almost as large as the rest of her that was crowned with a ridiculous beret.

55.
   The dogs flew up in the air and landed on our heads with their ears flattened. Oh, Christ, another angry monster, I thought.
    “What’s all this fuss I hear?”, she whinnied. “Who’s been filling your head with such nonsense? So we overthrew a commie who confiscated our investments. Did you expect us to just walk away? This is the real world. Things like this happen all the time. Get over it.”

   Claudia was having none of it. “Who the hell are you and what gave you the right to eavesdrop on a private conversation? Salvador Allende was a democratically elected president! That’s democratically elected, you bitch. You constantly crow about how your country is a beacon of democracy that shines the light of freedom throughout the world while you snuff out any democracy that gets in the way of your money and power. You instigate a coup that results in the horrors of Chile and continue to prop it up for decades. You send your secretary of state, your ambassador to chat with the dictator while he tortures and kills thousands. You turn Milton Friedman loose to pull a Dr. Mengele on the economy. His Chicago Boys bankrupted the country to level all opposition to the Free Market. Labor, social services and above all, Chilean businesses were swept away. You killed our president, tortured our people and crippled our country. The Free Market!” Claudia spat out the words as if she had a mouthful of brandy and coke. “What a pathetic euphemism for the corporate rape of the world.”

56.
   Pat took to the air and snapped at the interloper. She raised straight up. Her enormous head twitched on her snake like neck. He swooped down and nipped at her beret. “You stupid hag! Milton Friedman is dead but his ghost is coaching his disciples from hell. You are doing the same thing in America as you did here thirty years ago. First you privatize as much as you can: the government, the infrastructure, the public schools, even the military then you bankrupt the country and steal what’s left.”

   The bag was on her toes now breathing heavily and scowling. Nanette flew straight for the heifer’s nose and snapped at it. “You brainless cow, you throw people out of work, wages plummet, unions vanish. You wash away the last vestiges of the middle class with desperation and a Free Market is born. Everyone is supposed to benefit in your dog-eat-dog world. It didn’t work in Chile. Sixteen years after the coup workers earned less than before it, the poverty level was 41%, the economic growth was one of the slowest on the continent, the environment one of the most polluted, but the rich became very much richer.”
   The beast angrily swatted at the dogs. “So, you sic your mosquitoes on me?” She snorted. “What class. What hospitality. You and the rest of the insects in this world can buzz around us all you want. We are the only super-power and we have plenty of bug spray!”