Concrete dust catches in my lungs and burnt air stings my eyes as I try to make out which part of the stairs leading down to the metro is still smouldering. As rubble from once grand buildings shifts under my boots; a small voice within speaks a confusion I’d wanted to ignore.
This isn’t what Mum said home was like.
El Estallido Social (the social outburst) has been dubbed Chile’s worst civil unrest since Pinochet’s dictatorship, and I visited for the first time right in the middle of it.
My mum’s family is Chilean. They moved halfway across the world when Mum was 12, uprooting themselves and searching for somewhere new to grow. I think I was six the first time I properly understood that this meant my family was from two different places, which in my six-year-old mind were decidedly categorised as “here” and “there” (Chile feels very far away when your little hands have to spin the globe to find it).
This revelation planted a seed of belonging, watered by every cueca and merengue song that sifted through my Abuelito’s speakers while he danced me around the living room as I stood on his toes, giggling with dizziness. The little seed grew with every meal from Abuelita’s stove, served with fresh pan amasado and a side of stories from trips to the mountains or the lakes, or of the street parties that lasted into the dawn.
I’d dawdle at the fridge, trying to distract Abuelita into letting me have an ice-cream by asking about the people in the grainy, faded photos immortalised on its door. Big brown eyes just like mine smiled past me from the print, as a man twirled his beautiful wife with big brown hair, just like mine, around a courtyard. My favourite bedtime stories (up until I was perhaps too old to ask for bedtime stories) were from Mum’s childhood: growing up playing with neighbours in dirt playgrounds until the sun set at 11pm, and racing to the bakery on the corner for fresh marraquettas before school in the morning (quick aside for those unfamiliar with the absolute delight that marraquettas are – picture the fluffiest, softest, most delicious bread roll you’ve ever encountered, and then imagine it was better. That’s a marraquetta). I would listen to my Abuelita’s anecdotes, recounted with a wistful fondness, of friends and neighbours dropping in unannounced, being greeted with open arms and served with everything her pantry held – “It’s just different there, mi nietecita linda.”
And so, with these stories and songs and old film photographs, I built myself a beautiful, soft around the edges, fairytale version of a country I had never seen.
Skip forward to January 2020 and I’m standing in the centre of Chile’s capitol, Santiago, trying to understand what part I’d gotten wrong. Did I mishear all the stories? Am I in the wrong place? Through the glaring heat of midday, what used to be a proud marble building stares me down through its hollowed, burnt out windows. I break its gaze to watch my footing, careful not to lose my step on a shard of cable protruding from what I think must have once been a fence. Once.
The Australian news coverage of the riots had failed me; what had been portrayed as mere school children throwing tantrums over train ticket prices was so, so much more – the five minutes of airtime dedicated to the riots as they grew, unfolded, and spilled over into 2020 did the cause no justice. What little a internet search could offer me was splattered with sickly righteousness, likening protest groups to crazed, delinquent mobs and the state of emergency to a heralding of dictatorships past. Clips of the military police, Carabineros de Chile, marching through the smoke-choked streets, batons and shields held high, floated across the internet in varying degrees of meme-ification. Reports of hundreds of protestors being blinded by rubber bullets and tens of thousands being detained in inhumane conditions were met with international apathy. Over and over, the complexities and intricacies of Chile’s socio-political climate were boiled down to a price point on a piece of paper, leaving me reeling and lost amidst the rubble and dust of pipe-bombed government buildings.
I felt so small – so small in comparison to the ruined building before me, the magnitude and depth of the anger that had hurled stones through its windows, the strength of a people who had to fight for what they needed. I felt like a little girl again. The sense of wonder and bewilderment that had come with the realisation that the world was bigger than I had imagined came flooding back. This place was bigger than Abuelito’s favourite CDs, Abuelita’s cooking and Mum’s bedtime stories. It was proud. It was bleeding. This place, I belonged to this place, and it was a part of the world where students start rallies that turn into riots that turn into 36 people dead. Was this strength or recklessness? What was there to show for all this violence and destruction? How did I get so lucky in life that I have no idea what it feels like to fight for your rights?
Now, close to four years later, Chile is still simmering. Commemorations of the lives lost in the protests are met with water cannons and voters reject the constitutional propositions, asking again and again for the justice and dignity they deserve.
Every place is an amalgamation of its stories and people. The stories I choose for my Santiago are of my mum’s childhood, of street parties and of unyielding kindness and care for those around you. I also choose stories of riots, of Santiago Colapsa, of the strong, beating heart of a country that said enough was enough. Chile will always be my Abuelito’s living room in the same way it will always be the streets of Santiago hidden under rubble and dust. One day I will go back and learn new stories, of peace and resilience, dirt playgrounds and marraquettas.