Latin History III

the end of our adventure as stowaways, or at least the end of this adventure, since our boat was going back to Valparaiso.

THIS TIME, FAILURE

f cAN see him now, clear as day: the drunken captain, I likewise all his officers and the moustachioed owner of the vessel alongside, their coarse gestures the product of bad wine. And the raucous laughter as they recounted our odyssey. 'They're tigers, you know, bet they're on your boat now, you'll find out when you're out at sea.'The captain must have let slip to his friend this or some similar phrase. We didn't know that, of coursel an hour before sailing we were comfortably in- stalled, buried in tons of sweet-smelling melons, stuffing our- selves silly. We were just saying how great sailors were since one of them had helped us get on board and hide in such a good place, when we heard an angry voice, and a moustache, larger than life, emerged from who knows where and plunged us into the depths of confusion. A long line of melon skins, scraped clean, was floating away in indian file on the calm sea. Vhat followed was ignominious. The sailor told us afterwards, 'I'd have got him off the scent, lads, but he saw the melons and it see(ns he went into a "batten down the hatches, don't let anyone escape" routine. And well,' (he was sort of embar- rassed) 'you shouldn't have eaten all that melon, lads!'

One of our fiends from the San Antonio summed up his exquisite philosophy of life with elegant words: 'You're up shit creek because you're such shits. Why don't you stop shitting

about and shit off back to your shitty country''r{ So that's more

or less what we did; we picked up our bags and set off for

Chuquicamata, the famous coPper mine'

But not straight away' We had to wait a day for permission

from the authorities tovisit the mine and meanwhile got the

upf topti"t" send-off from enthusiastic Bacchanalian sailors''L** in the meagre shade of two lamp-posts on-tfe a1d ,oui tJtairrg to the mines, we spent a good part of the day

yelling thinfs at each other every now and again from one post

to another, until we spied the asihmatic shape of the van which

took us halfway, to a town called Baquedano'

There we made fiends with a married couple' Chilean

workers who were Communists'ls In the light of a candle'

ati"ti"g mat6 and eating a piece of bread and cheese' the

man's s"hrunken features ttt""t a rnysterious' tragic note' In simple but expressive languag" h: told us about his three months in prison, his stafrng *'ife who followed him with

"t"^pt*ty ioyulty, his children Ieft in the care of a kindly

*ighio*, his fruitless pilgrimage in search of work and his

"orit"d", who had mystlriiusly dittpp"*ted and were said to

be somewhere at the bottom of the sea'

The couple, numb with cold, huddling together in thedesert

night, were a living symbol of tfe- proletariat the world over'

Tfrey didn't have " tirrgt" miserable blanket to sleep under' so

*" jt r" them one of o,it' and Alberto and I wrapped the other

14 (Sht' hae been used instead of the v€ry common Chjlean e+Wixe-huevos

6.X"): Th; o"isi""l t"d" t 'Fstin a la hueoa de- purp hueoone* eyor que no

\:Ei;;;ffid;;; ;;; tu"'"o' o ".hu'*no dena?'f ffi;Aht;il#""tri i*,y war proscribed and many militan-ts perac- cuted undcr o" *-""ri"a u* ii, th"b"f"o"" of Democricy (1948-58).

round us as best we could. It was one of the coldest nights I've

ever spent; but also one which made me feel a litde closer to

this strange, for me anyway' human species. At eight the next morning we got a lorry to take us to the

to*r, oi Chuquicamata. We said goodbye to the couple who were heading for the sulphur mines in the mountains where the

weather is so bad and conditions so hard that you don't need a

work permit and nobody asks what your politics are. The only

thing that counts is the enthusiasm with which the worker ruins his health for a few meagre crumbs.

Althoughby now we could b*"ly make outthe couple inthe distance, the man's singularly determined face stayed with us

and we remembered his simple invitation: 'Come, cornrades, come and eat with us' I'm a vagrant too,' which showed he basically despised our aimless travelling as parasitical.

It's really upsetting to think they use repressive measures against people like these. Leaving aside the question of whether or not 'Communist vermin' are dangerous for a so- ciety's health, what had burgeoned in him was nothing more

than the natural desire for a better life, a Protest against persistent hunger transformed into a love for this strange doctrine, whose real meaning he could never grasp but, trans-

lated into 'bread for the poor', was something he understood and, more importantly, that filled him with hope.

The bosses, the blond, efficient, alrogant managers' told us

in primitive Spanish: 'This isn't a tourist town. I'll get a guide to give you a half-hour tour round the mine and then please be

good enough to leave, we have a lot of work to do.'A strike was in the offing. Yet the guide, the Yankee bosses'faithful l"pdog,

told us: 'stupid gringos, they lose thousands ofpesos every day

in a strike so as not to give a poor worker a couple of extra

centaaos. That'll be over when our General lbafrez comes to

Oo*"t."t And a foreman-poet: 'These famous terraces enable

lrr"ty scrap of copper to fl -io"a' People like you ask me lots of t""hrric"l qo"Jorm but I'm rarely asked how many

lives it

has cost. I don't know the answer, doctors' but thank you for

asking.' Cold efficiency and impotent resentment go

hand in hand in

tt "

Uig mine, hnted ,l",pit" the hatred by the common need to

.rr*ilrl, on the orre side, and to speculate on the other " ' maybe one day, some miner will joyfully take up

his pick and

;;a poison"his lungs with i-t$" Jh"y say-that's what it's

ilk" orr", there, whe.Jthe red blaze dazzling the world comes

from. So theY saY' I don't know'

tit

f\ nuourcAMATA is like a scene from a modern play. You can't L ;"; it lacks beauty, but it's a beauty which is imposing'

"irt*tls and cold- As you approach the mine' the whole

i;.;;p" creates a feeling of suffocatiol-ot the plain' There,is on" poiot at which, after"two hundred kilometres'

the slight

g.""rry hue of the town of Calama intermpting the monotonous

;;is greeted with a ioy which as an oasis in the desert it

CHUQUICAMATA

1{' Carlos Ibaiez del Campo vas President of Chile from 1952 to 1958'-He

*r;;;;p"|il, *r'. pt.tJit"J;; L;"|i"" the Communist Partv if elected'

61

richly deserves. And what a desertt The weather observatory

atMoctezuma'near.Chuqui',callsitthedriestintheworld. The mountains, devoid of a single blade of grass in the nitrlte

soil, defenceless against the attack of wind and water' display

their grey backbone, prematurely aged in the battle with the

"I"*"lrrtr, their wrinkles belying their real geological age. And

how many of the mountainssurrounding their famous brother

hide siniar riches deep in their bowels, awaiting the arid arms

of the mechanical shovels to devour their entrails, spiced with

the inevitable human lives - the lives of the poor unsung heroes

of this battle, who die miserable deaths in one of the thousand

traps nature sets to defend its treaswes, when all they want is

to earn their dailY bread. Chuquicamata is essentially a great coPper mountain with

twenty-;etre-high terraces cut into its enormous sides' from

*h"r" the extracied mineral is easily transported by rail' The unique formation of the vein means that extraction is all open

cast- allowing large-scale exploitation of the ore-body which

grades 1 pei cent copper Per ton of ore' The mountain is

iyrr"roit"d "t"ty *otirrg and huge mechanical shovels load

the material on to rail *ugott on which it is taken to the grinder to be crushed. This crushing consists of three stages

irt i"tt turn the raw material into medium-sized gravel' It is then put in a sulphuric acid solution which extracts the copper

in the form of sulphate, also forming a coPper chloride' *-hi:h

turns into ferrous chloride when it comes into contact urith old

iron. From there the liquid is taken to the so-called 'green

house' where the copp"i sulphate solution is put into huge

baths and submitt"d io t cwrent of thirty volts for a week which brings about the electrolysis of the salt: the coPPer sticks

to the thin sheets of the same metal' which have prwiously

been formed in other baths with stronger solutions' After five

;;;Jdays, the sheets are readv for the-smelter; the solution

has lost eight to a"" g,trnrnes of sulphate per titre yl-is

enriched with new q;antities of the ground material' The

,fr""* are then pl"""d in furnaces which' after twelve hours

smelting at two thousand degrees - centigrade' produce

350-poirnd ingots. Every night forty.-five wagons in convoy

take over twenty ao* of "opp""t each down to Antofagasta' the

result of a daY's work'- This is a crude summary of the manufacturing

process

*h;; employs a floating population-of three thousand souls in

d;q*;"tu; b"t thiJ pto""tt only. exlracts oxide ore' The

Chile Exploration Companv is buiJdTrg anoth3l plT::::I-

ploit the ,rrlph"." ore. This Plurrl, the biggest "t.*t :,l"^LT" l'"ria, ht, foo 96-metre-high chimneys and will

take alrnost

all future produ"tio"' *nif" Ihe old plant will be slowly phased

out since the oxide ore is about to run out' There is already an

enormous stockpile of raw material to feed the new smelter

and it will start being processed in 1954 when the plant is

opened. Chile produces 20 per cent of alt the world's

copper' and

copper ha, b""om" "i"lly important in these uncertain times

.i'it "** conflict because it is an essential component of

lrJo.r, types of weaPons of destruction' Hence' an economico-

nolitical battle it b;il; waged in Chile between a coalition of

"#;;;;;l;ft -*1sdoop*sswhichadvocatenational- izing the mines, aod tho"te"*ho' itth" cause of free

enterprise'

prefer a well-run min" (ut'"" in foreign hands) to possibly less

efficient *"o"g"m""t by the state' Serious accusations have

been made in Congress against the companies curently ex- ploitingthe concessions, symptomatic of the climate of nation- alist aspiration which surounds coPPer production.

Whatever the outcome of the batde, it would be as well not to forget the lesson taught by the mines' graveyards, which contain but a fraction of the enorrnous number of people devoured by cave-ins, silicosis and the mountain's infernal climate.

KILOMETRES AND KILOMETRES OF ARIDITY

E'D Losr our water bottle, which made the problem of crossing the desert on foot even worse. Sdll, throwing

caution to the wind, we set off, leaving behind the barrier marking the Chuquicamata town lirnits. We kept uP an ener- getic pace while within sight of the inhabitants, but then the vast solitude of the bare Andes, the sun beating down on our heads, the badly distributed weight of our rucksacks brought us back to reality. How far our actions were, as one policeman put it, 'heroic' we're not sure, but we began to suspect, and with good cause I think, that the definitive adiective was somewhere in the region of 'stupid'.

After two hours' qTallring, ten kilometres at the most, we settled down in the shade of a sign saying I've no idea what, the only thing capable of giving us the slightest shelter from the sun's rays. And there we stayed all day, shifting around to get the post's shade in our eyes at least.

The litre of water we had brought with us was rapidly consurned and by the evening' our throats parched, we set off

back towards the sentry post by the barrier, in abiect defeat.

We spent the night there, sheltering inside the little room,

where "

Irigt t fire kept the temperature pleasant despite th€

cold outside. The nightwatchman shared his food with us, with

the proverbial Chilean hospitality, a meagre feast after a whole

day's fasting, but better than nothing. it d"*t ih" next day a cigarette company's lorry passed and

took us in the direction we were heading; but while it was going

straight on to the port of Tocopilla, we wanted to go north to

Ilave] so it dropp"d ,rs *h"re the roads crossed' We started walking towardia house we knew was eight kilometres up the

road, but halfway there we got tired and decided to have a nap'

We hung our blankets between a telegraph post and 1di:tT": *"rk"rLd lay

'nder them, our bodies having a Turkish bath

and our feet a sunbathe. Two or three hours later, when we'd lost about three litres of

water each, a small Ford went by with three noble citizens in it roaring drunk and singing cuecas" at the tops of their voices.

They were workers on strike from the Magdalena mine pre-

maturely celebrating the victory of the people's cause by getting merrily plastered. The drunks dropped us at a local

,"it*"y station. There we found a grouP of nawies practising for a flotball match with a rival team. Alberto took a pair of

trainers out of his rucksack and started his spiel. The result

was spectacular. We were signed up for the following Sunday's

match; in return: lodging, food and transport to lquique'

17 Chilean folk dances.

It was two days to Sunday which was marked by a splendid

victory for our team and some barbecued goats which Alberto

"*k"i, astounding the assembled gathering with-Argentine

culinary skill. In those two days we visi-ted some of the many

nitrate purifying plants in that area of Chile'

It really isn't very difficult for mining companies to extract

the mineral wealth of this part of the world' All they have to do

is scrape off the top layer, which is where the mineral is' and

o"rrrpo* it to huge baths where it goes through a not verY

"o*pi".t"d ,"p*"tirrg Process to extract the nitrates' salt-

petreandmud.TheGermanshadthefirstconcessionsappar- irrtly, but their plants were expropriated and now they are

m"iJy British owned. The two biggest in terms of both pro-

duction and workforce were on strike at the time and were

south of where we were heading, so we decided not to visit

them. We went instead to guite a big plant, La Victoria' which

has a plague at the entrance marking the spot whel H-e1or Supicci Sedes died. He was a brilliant Uruguayan fallf driler

*ho *t, hit by another driver as he came out of the pit after refuelling.

A sucJession of lorries took us all over the region until we

fio"lly reached lg*go" warrnly wrapped in a blanket of al- falfa, the "t

go of th" tmck which broughtus on the fyt \S' Our arrival, *,ith the sun coming up behind us reflected in the

pure blue of the morning sea' was like something out of the

Thourood and One NightE. The lorry appeared like a magic

carpet on the cliffs abive the port, and on our twisting and

grumbling flight down, frst gear slowing our descent, from our

vantage point we saw the whole city come uP to meet us' - In iqigue there wasn't a single boat, Argentine or any other

kind, so it was pointless staying in the port and we decided to

cadge a lift on the first lorry to Arica'

CHILE, THE END

7Tt nn lorc kilometres between lquique and Arica are up and

I ;; all the way' The road took us from arid plateauxto 1lrtt"y. with trickle, of *ate, at the bottom, btt"ly

enough for

a few small stunted trees to grow at the edge' Pd"g the day

tfr"." totutty arid plains are oppressively hot but it gets con-

siderably cooler at night, litte ali dSsert climates' It's astonish-

i"g;.** that Vaftivia came this wav *ith his handful of

*En, t .rr"lling fifty or sixty kilometres without finding a drop

of water or even a b,,sh 'o 'h"l'"' under at the hottest time of

day. Vhen you actually see the 1e1ain t}re conquistadores

crossed, you automatically raise the f"-u,t of Valdivia and his

men to'one of the mo't rem"rkable of Spanish-colonization'

.*"fy greater than those which live on in the history of

America because the men concerned were fortunate enough to

";;;"". immensely rich kingdo-: yry:h turned the sweat

of

it "i U"ni"ose adventure into gold' Valdivia's achievement

,-yrobolir", man's undeniable desire to find a place where

he can exercise absolute control' Those words attributed to

Ct"r*, when he declared he would rather be number one in a

frrrt"Uf" "iffage

in the Alps than numb-er two in Rome' find their

echo less bombasticalty' U"t no less effectively' in theconquest

of Chile. If when facing death at the hands of the indomitable

67

Araucanian Caupolicdn,the conquistadof s laEt moments had not been clouded by the fury of a hunted animal, I've no doubt that, looking back over his life, Valdivia would have found ample justification for his death in being the supreme ruler of a warrior nation, because he belonged to that special kind of man which races produce every so often, for whom suffering seems a natural price to pay for their sometimes unconscious yearning for limitless power.

Arica is a pleasant little port which still shows traces of its previous owners, the Peruvians, and acts as a sort of halfway house between two countries which are so different despite their geographical contact and common ancestry.

The headland, pride of the town, is a hundred metres of sheer rock face. The palm trees, the heat, the subtropical fruit in the markets, give it the special feel of a Caribbean town, quite different from its counterparts further south.

A doctor, who treated us with all the disdain a staid, finan- cially solid bourgeois feels for a pair of bums (even bums with degrees), let us sleep in the town hospital. Ve fled the not very hospitable place early and headed straight for the frontier with Peru. But first we said goodbye to the Pacific with one last bathe (soap and all) and it awakened a dormant desire in Alberto: to eat seafood. So we patiently searched for clams and other seafood on the beach by some cliffs. Ve ate something slimy and salty, but it neither took our minds off our hunger nor assuaged Alberto's craving, and wouldn't have made even a convict h.ppy because the slime was so unpleasant and, with nothing on it, worse.

After eating at the police station, we left at our usual time for the slog along the coast to the frontier. However, a van picked

us up and we reached the border Post in style. There we met a

customs officer who had worked on the frontier with fugentina

so he recognized and understood our passion for mat6 and gave us hot water, biscuits and, better still, a ride to Tacna. With a handshake and a load of pompous platitudes about Argentines in Peru with which the police chief amiably wel- comed us at the border, we bade farewell to the hospitable land

of Chile.

CHILE, IN RETROSPECT

nnx I iotted down these notes, in the heat of my early enthusiasm and first impressions, what I wrote included

a few wild inaccuracies and was generally not in the approved spirit of scientific itqttty. Anyway, I don't think t should express my crrrent ideas about Chile now, more than a year after I made the notes; ['d rather do a pr6cis of what I wrote then.

Let's start with our medical speciality: health care in Chile generally leaves much to be desired (I realized afterwards that

it was much better than in other countries I visited). Totally free hospitals are very few and far between and you see this sort of notice: 'How can you complain about the treatment you

receive if you don't contribute to the upkeep of this hospital?' Nevertheless, medical attention in the North is generally free,

but hospital accommodation has to be paid for, ranging from

derisory sums to virtual momrments to legalizsd robbery. At the Chuquicamata mine, sick or iniured workers get medical

people see him as a sort of. caudillo. His power base is the Popular Socialist Party, which is supported by various minor factions. In second place, I think, is Pedro Enrigue Alfonso, the official government candidate. His politics are ambiguous; he seems friendly with the Americans and flirts with all the other parties. The standard bearer of the right is Arhrro Matte Larrain, a big shot who is the son-in-law of the late President Alessandri and has the support of all the reactionary sectors of the population. And lastly there is Salvador Allende, the Pop- ular Front candidate. He has the support of the Communist Parw, but their votes have been reduced by forry thousand, thb number of people deprived of the right to vote because of their affiliation to the part''.

Ibafiez will probably follow a policy of Latinamericanism and play on the hatred of the United States to win popularity, nationalize the copper and other mines (knowing the enor- mous deposits the US has ready to start production in Peru doesn't make me very confident that nationalizing these mines will be feasible, at least in the short term), continue nationaliz- ing the railways and substantially increase Argentine-Chilean trade.

As a country, Chile offers economic possibilities to anyone willing to work as long as he's not from the proletariat, that is to say, anyone who has a certain amount of education and technical knowledge. The land can sustain enough livestock (especially sheep) to provide for its population and enough cereals. It has the mineral resources to make it a powerful industrial country: iron, copper, coal, tin, gold. silver, man- ganese, nitrates. The main thing Chile has to do is to get its tiresome Yankee fiend off its back, a Herculean task, at least

attention and hospital treatrnent for five Chilean escudos a day but patients not from the plant pay between 300 and 500 escudos a day. Hospitals are generally poor, and lack medicine and adequate facilities. \[/e saw badly lit and even dirty operating rooms, not just in small towns but indeed in Valpar- aiso. There aren't enough instnrments. The toilets are dirty. Sanitary awareness in Chile is poor. Chileans have a custom (which I saw afterwards all over South America) of not throw- ing used toilet paper in the lavatory but on the floor or in the boxes provided.

The Chileans' standard of living is lower than in Argentina. In the South, wages are very low, trnemployment is high and workers get very little protection from the authorities (better, however, than provided in the north of the continent). All this causes waves of Chileans to emigrate to Argentina searching for the proverbial streets paved with gold which clever political propaganda has offered the inhabitants to the west of the Andes. In the North, workers in the copper, nitrate and sulphur mines are better paid, but the cost of living is much higher; they lack many essential consumer goods and the climate in the mountains is very harsh. I remember the elo- quent shrug of the shoulders with which a manager of the Chuguicamata mine answered my questions about compensa- tion paid to the fami[es of the ten thousand or more workers buried in the local cemetery.

The political scene is confusing (this was written before the elections which Ibafrez won). There are four presidential can- didates, of whom Carlos Ibafrez del Campo seems the most lihely winner. He is a retired soldier with dictotorial tendencies and political ambitions eimilar to those of per6n, and the

Overioyed, we picked uP our bags and were about to climb

aboard-when he shouted: 'Five solesle to Tarata, OK?'

Furious, Alberto asked why he'd agreed when we'd asked to

be taken free of charge. He didn't know what 'free of charge'

meant exactly, but to Tarata it was five soles ' ' ' 'And they'll all be the same,' Alberto said, venting his anger

at me with those simple words because it had been my idea to

hitch on'the road instead of waiting for the lorries in town as he

had suggested. The choice was simple. Either we went back,

which meant adrnitting defeat, or we carried on, come what

may. Ve opted for the latter and started walking' That this was not an altogether wise decision soon became apparent: the

sun was a.bout to set and there was absolutely no sign of life.

still, we imagined there must be some hut or other so near the

village and, bolstered by this hope, we carried on'

It was soon pitch dark and we hadn't come across any sign of

habitation. \fiLrse still, we had no water to cook or make mat6

with. The cold intensified; the desert conditions and the alti-

tude turned the screr'. We were very tired' We decided to

spread our blankets on the ground and sleep till da*n' The moonless night was very dark so we groPed around spreading

our blankets and wrapped ourselves up as best we could'

Five minutes later Alberto said he was frozen stiff and I replied that I was even stiffer. Since this wasn't a fridge competition, we decided to face up to the situation and collect

twigs for a fre. The result was predictably pathetic' Between .r, i" managed a handful of twigs which made a timid fire giving offno heat at all. Hunger was one problem but the cold

re Peruvian cwrency.

for the time being, given the huge US investnent and the ease withwhich it can bring economic pressure to bear wheneverits interests are threatened.

TARATA, THE NEW \YORLD

E vBRE only a few meres from the Civil Guard post marking the end of the village, but'our rucksacks

already felt as if they weighed a ton. The sun beat down and, as usual, we had too many clothes on for the time of day, although later we'd be too cold. The road clirnhed steeply and we soon passed the pyramid we'd seen from the village, a monument to the Peruvians who died in the war with Chile a century ago.tt \[re decided it was a good place to make our first stop and Ey our luck with passing lorries. In the direction we were heading lay nothing but bare hills, almost devoid of vegetation. Sleepy Tacna, with its narrow dirt roads and terracotta roofs,looked even smaller in the distance. Ve were thrilled at the sight of our f,rst lorry. We timidly stuck out our thumbs and to our surprise the driver stopped beside us. Alberto took charge of the negotiations, explaining in all too familiar words the pur- pose of our trip and asking for a lift; the driver agreed and indicated we should climb in the back, with a load of indians.

18 In the so-called'Nihate Wers' of 1879411, Chile annered the mineral- rich Atacama des€rt.