Chile in the time of cholera

Some Lord Copper readers will have read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book ‘Love in the time of Cholera’. A story of undying unrequited love in a crumbling Spanish colonial country set in an unfixed place within South America. Where Marquez and Chile come together is in 1985 (the same year ‘Love in the time of Cholera’ was written) when he wrote ‘Clandestine in Chile’; an account of exiled documentary film-maker Miguel Littin’s under-cover journey through Chile in the same year.

Chile is a fact-collector’s paradise – the longest thinnest country in the world (4270 km long, averaging 175 km wide), a country of four climatic zones (desert, sub-tropical, sub-polar, glacier), a country with the driest desert (Atacama with average annual rainfall of 2 mm), a railway (Antofagasta to La Paz) that stretches almost a thousand miles with an elevation up to 4500 metres. But also, a country that had forty different leaders in the 20^th century; not to speak of one non-elected one – Pinochet.

On December 27^th 1831, HMS Beagle left Plymouth for South America; its 26-year-old Captain, Robert Fitzroy, leading a mission to hydrographically map the Pacific coast of South America (Chile). It was a venture typical of British naval interests – to identify inlets, ports and hazards. His room mate was of course a very seasick Charles Darwin (22 yrs of age). After 20 days sailing the Beagle reaches last landfall before crossing the Atlantic to South America - The Cape Verde Islands. Its purpose - to take on supplies of water and food. But HMS Beagle is instructed to quarantine and remain at anchor for 12 days as there has been an outbreak of cholera in England. After months of delay fitting out Beagle, Fitzroy impatiently weighs anchor and heads for South America.

I mention this because that year, 1832, was the first year that cholera, with all that it implies, came to South America. It is not thought Beagle carried the bacillus – but the action of Fitzroy means she could have. The story illustrates a more important point – that colonialism and trade was one of the vectors for cholera. And both brought another kind of disease – the greed for land and resources, Europe’s presumed superiority over indigenous peoples, and the disease of its politics. The New World soon became a very old world – one reeking of class, vendettas and, in the 1970s, the bitter struggle between left and right.

I have written previously (a review of Philippe Sands book 38 Londres Street) about the Pinochet years, the overthrow of Allende; and how Sands showed that Pinochet’s system of detention camps and torture was given assistance by Walther Rauff (the Nazi engineer responsible for the invention of the gas trucks). What I want to write about today is healing – and how this can come about after brutal civil strife between people who must subsequently live together. How do you live on a street when your neighbour was once your enemy?

It is often said states cannot apologise – only people can. But perhaps in instances when individuals are unable to apologise or forgive, states have a higher power? Can states for example apologise for slavery? Many would say no. How or why should a modern enlightened state apologise for the actions of a previous era?

The case I want to make is that I think states can be an agent to give recognition to sufferings of the past that is impossible by other means. In the UK we have the Crown as the expression of our continuity, its sovereign power expressed through her elected ministers. One argument is that public apologies are lame because they are anachronistic and do not cost money. However, this view omits an important fact – the effect of apologies on the recipients. So, for me at least, I judge an apology by its healing effect on those who suffered past wrongs. In my lifetime there have been two big apologies made by resource-rich countries for the actions of a previous regime – those of South Africa and Chile. I do not know how well known it is that Chile’s ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ preceded that of South Africa’s memorable one led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Chile’s was called the Rettig Report issued in 1991, a document that detailed human rights abuses resulting in the deaths and/or disappearances instigated by General Pinochet after the coup of Sept 1973. South Africa’s commission started in 1996 and continued to examine the injustices of the apartheid era up until 2002.

Chile is one of the most amazing countries in the world for the breadth and depth of its landscape, its resilient people, and for the resources it provides to the world - from lithium to iodine, and copper to rhenium. But one of its greatest contributions to the world is the manner of its healing. Chile is today led by the youngest President of the present era. His name is Gabriel Boric, a student demonstrator against the privatisation of healthcare and high public transport fares in 2019, who became president in 2021 at the age of 35 (just pipping Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, who acceded to power at the age of 37). His youth does not guarantee goodness but it establishes distance and direct implication in past strife. His youth provides hope.

In a country that must be presently perplexed as to why the USA should be placing high tariffs on the copper it is mining for the world, it may also provide unity.