My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile

by Isabel Allende

  Among the most acute problems, tied to the absence of hope, were alcoholism and domestic violence. Many times I saw women with battered faces. My sympathy fell on deaf ears because they always had an excuse for the aggressor: “He was drunk,” “He got angry,” “He was jealous,” “If he hits me it’s because he loves me,” “Who knows what I did to provoke him?” I’m told that this situation hasn’t changed much despite campaigns to prevent battering. In the lyrics of a popular tango, the man waits for his woman to fix his mate and then “knifes her thirty-five times.” Police are now trained to burst into houses without waiting for the door to be opened normally, or before a corpse with thirty-five stab wounds is found hanging at the window, but there is still a long way to go. And we haven’t even touched on the subject of child beatings! Every so often there is a story in the paper about some horrifying case of children tortured or beaten to death by their parents. According to the Inter-American Development Bank, Latin America is one of the most violent areas of the world, second only to Africa. Violence in the society begins at home; you can’t eliminate crime in the streets unless you attack domestic aggression, since children who have been abused often become violent adults. Today there is a great deal of discussion on the subject, it is denounced in the press, and safe houses and education programs and police protection are available for victims, but in those days domestic crimes were taboo topics.

  There was a strong class-consciousness in those squatter’s settlements I visited, pride in belonging to the proletariat, which surprised me in a society as snobbish as Chile’s. That’s when I discovered that social climbing was a middle-class phenomenon, the poor never gave it a thought, they were too busy trying to survive. Over the years these communities acquired political savvy, they organized and became fertile territory for leftist parties. Ten years later, in 1970, they were decisive in electing Salvador Allende and for that reason had to suffer the greatest repression during the dictatorship.

  I was very serious about journalism, even though colleagues from that time believe that I invented my reports. I didn’t invent them, I merely exaggerated slightly. The experience left me with several obsessions: I find I am forever on the prowl for news and stories, always with a pencil and notepad in my handbag for jotting down anything that catches my eye. What I learned then helps now in my writing: working under pressure, conducting an interview, doing research, using the language efficiently I never forget that a book is not an end in itself. Just like a newspaper or a magazine, a book is a means of communication, which is why I try to grab the reader by the throat and not let go to the end. I don’t always succeed, of course; readers tend to be elusive. Who is my reader? Well, when the North Americans were in Panama and arrested General Noriega, who had fallen from grace, they found two books in his possession: the Bible and The House of the Spirits. You never know for whom you’re writing. Every book is a message in a bottle tossed into the sea with the hope it will reach a different shore. I feel very grateful when someone finds it and reads it, particularly someone like Noriega.

  In the meantime, Tío Ramón had been named the Chilean representative at the United Nations in Geneva. Letter exchange between my mother and me now took much less time than from Turkey, and occasionally it was possible to talk by telephone. When our daughter Paula was a year and a half old, my husband received a fellowship to study engineering in Belgium. On the map, Brussels looked very close to Geneva, and I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to visit my parents. Ignoring the promise I’d made myself to put down roots and not go abroad for any reason, we packed our suitcases and set out for Europe. It was an excellent decision; among other reasons because I was able to study radio and television and renew my French, which I hadn’t used since those days in Lebanon. During that year I discovered the Women’s Lib movement, and realized that I wasn’t the only witch in the world, there are many of us.

  In Europe very few people had ever heard of Chile, but the country became fashionable four years later, with the election of Salvador Allende. It was in the news again in 1973 because of the military coup, then because of human rights violations, and eventually because of the arrest of the former dictator in London in 1998. Every time our country has made news, it has been for major political events, except for brief notes on the occasion of an earthquake. When someone in Europe asked my nationality in the sixties, I had to give long explanations and draw a map to demonstrate that Chile is at the southern tip of South America, not in the heart of Asia. It was often confused with China because of the somewhat similar name. The Belgians, used to the idea of colonies in Africa, were surprised that my husband spoke English and that I wasn’t black. Once they asked me why I didn’t wear traditional garb; they may have been thinking of Carmen Miranda’s costumes in Hollywood movies: a multiruffled skirt and a basket of pineapples on her head. We traveled through Europe from Scandinavia to the south of Spain in a beat-up Volkswagen, sleeping in a tent and eating sausages, horse meat, and fried potatoes. It was a year of frenetic touring.

  We returned to Chile in 1966 with our daughter Paula, who at three spoke an academician’s Spanish and had become an expert on cathedrals, and with Nicolás in my womb. In contrast with Europe, where long-haired hippies were a normal sight, student revolutions were brewing, and the sexual liberation was being celebrated, Chile was boring. Once again I felt like a foreigner, but I renewed my promise to grow roots and never leave.

  As soon as Nicolás was born I went back to work, this time for a brand-new women’s magazine called Paula. It was the only journal that promoted the feminist cause and featured subjects never aired until then, like divorce, contraception, domestic violence, adultery, abortion, drugs, and prostitution. Considering that in those days you couldn’t say the word “chromosome” without blushing, we were suicidally audacious.

  Chile is a hypocritical, prudish country bristling with scruples in respect to sex and sensuality, a nation of “old ladies,” male and female. The double standard rules. Promiscuity is tolerated in men, but women must pretend that sex doesn’t interest them, only love and romance, although in practice they must enjoy the same liberties as men—if not, who are the men dallying with? A female must never seem to be collaborating with the macho during the course of the seduction, she must be sly. It is supposed that if a girl is “difficult,” the suitor’s interest is held and she is respected; on the other hand, there are some very inelegant epithets for describing her reluctance. This is but a further manifestation of our hypocrisy, another of our rituals for maintaining appearances, because in truth there is as much adultery, as many teenage pregnancies, children born out of wedlock, and abortions, as in any other country. I have a woman friend who is a gynecologist and has specialized in looking after unmarried pregnant teenagers, and she assures me that unwanted pregnancies are much less common among university students. That happens more in low-income families, in which parents place more emphasis on educating and providing opportunities to their male children than to their daughters. These girls have no plans, they see a gray future, and they have limited education and little self-esteem; some become pregnant out of pure ignorance. They are surprised when they discover their condition because they have followed admonitions “not to go to bed with anyone” literally. What happened standing up, behind a door, surely didn’t count.

  More than thirty years have passed since Paula took a prudish Chilean society by storm, and no one can deny the effect of that hurricane. Each of the controversial articles in the magazine stirred my grandfather to the verge of cardiac arrest; we would argue at the top of our lungs, but the next day I would go back to see him and he would welcome me as if nothing had happened. In its beginnings, feminism, which today we take for granted, seemed extreme, and most Chilean women wondered why they needed it since they were already queens of their households and it was natural for men to be the bosses outside, the way God and Nature had intended. It was hard work to convince them that they weren’t queens anywhere. There were not many v
isible feminists; at the most, half a dozen. I try not to remember what aggravation we had to put up with! I realized that to wait to be respected for being a feminist was like expecting the bull not to charge because you’re a vegetarian. I also went back to television, this time with a comedy show, and while doing that acquired a certain visibility, as happens to anyone who appears regularly on the screen. Soon every door was open to me, people greeted me in the street, and for the first time in my life I felt I belonged.

  DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE

  I often ask myself what exactly nostalgia is. In my case, it’s not so much wanting to live in Chile as it is the desire to recapture the certainty I feel there. That’s my home ground. Each country has its customs, its manias, its complexes. I know the idiosyncrasies of mine like the palm of my hand; nothing surprises me, I can anticipate others’ reactions, I understand what gestures mean, silences, formulas of courtesy, ambiguous responses. Only there do I feel comfortable socially—despite the fact I rarely behave as I’m expected to—because there I know how to behave and my good manners rarely fail me.

  When I was a recently divorced forty-five, I immigrated to the United States, obeying the call of my impulsive heart. The first thing that surprised me was the infallible optimism of North Americans, so different from people in the southern tip of South America, who always expect the worst to happen. Which it does, of course. The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to the pursuit of happiness, which anywhere else would be an embarrassing presumption. North Americans also believe they have the eternal right to be entertained, and if any of their rights are denied, they feel frustrated. The rest of the world, in contrast, expects that on the whole, life is hard, and boring, so they celebrate sparks of joy and diversion, however modest, when they occur.

  In Chile it is bad manners to acknowledge that you’re overly satisfied, because that can irritate the less fortunate, which is why for us the correct answer to the question “How are you?” is “So-so.” That is an opening for sympathizing with the other speaker’s situation. For example, if one person says he’s just been diagnosed with a fatal illness, it would be very bad taste to rub in his face how well everything’s going for you, wouldn’t it? But if the other person has just married an heiress, you’re free to confess your own happiness without fear of wounding anyone’s feelings. That is the sense of the “So-so” that can sometimes confuse visiting foreigners: it gives us time to feel out the ground and avoid a faux pas. Sociologists say that forty percent of Chileans suffer from depression, especially women, who have to put up with the men. You must remember, too, that our country goes through major disasters, and that there are many poor, so it seems rude to mention one’s own good fortune. I had a relative who twice won the jackpot in the lottery, but he always said “So-so,” in order not to offend. As an aside, it’s rather interesting to learn how his good fortune came about. He was a very strong Catholic and as such never wanted to hear talk of contraceptives. After his seventh child was born, desperate, he went to the church, knelt before the altar, and had a heart-to-heart talk with his Creator. “Lord, since you sent me seven children, it would be a kindness if You helped me feed them,” he argued, and immediately took a long, carefully prepared list of expenses from his pocket. God listened patiently to the arguments of his loyal servant and almost immediately revealed the winning lottery number in a dream. Those millions lasted for several years, but inflation, which was endemic in Chile during that time, reduced his capital at the same rate he enlarged his family. When the last of his children was born, number eleven, he returned to church to argue his case, and again God came to his aid by sending another revelation in a dream. The third time it was no deal.

  In my family, happiness was irrelevant. My grandparents, like the great majority of Chileans, would have stood with their mouths agape if they’d known that there are people who spend good money on therapy to overcome their unhappiness. For them, life was just difficult, any other view was foolishness. You found satisfaction in doing the right thing, in family, honor, the spirit of service, study, and your own fortitude. Joy was in our lives in many ways, and I suppose that love was not the least important, but we didn’t talk about it, we would have died of shame before saying the word. Emotions flowed silently. In contrast to most Chileans, in our family we didn’t touch much and babies were never coddled. The modern custom of extolling a child’s every move as if it were witty and charming was not in vogue, nor was there anxiety about bringing up offspring who were free of traumas. Just as well, because if I’d been brought up protected and happy, what the devil would I write about now? With this in mind, I’ve tried to make my grandchildren’s childhood as difficult as possible so they will grow up to be creative adults. Their parents are not at all appreciative of my efforts.

  Physical appearance was ignored in my family; my mother swears that she didn’t know she was pretty until she was forty, because looks were never mentioned. In that, we could claim originality because in Chile appearances are fundamental. In our clan it was also bad taste to talk about religion and, most of all, money. On the other hand, illness was a constant topic of conversation, it is Chile’s most chewed-over topic. We specialize in exchanging remedies and medical advice; everyone loves to prescribe a cure. We distrust doctors because it’s obvious that good health does not promote good business, and we go to them only when everything else has failed, after we’ve tried all the remedies recommended by our friends and acquaintances. Let’s say you faint at the door of a supermarket. In any other country they call an ambulance, but not Chile, where several volunteers will pick you up, haul you behind the checkout counter, pour cold water on your face and whiskey down your gullet to bring you to; then they will force you to swallow pills some lady takes from her purse because “my friend has these attacks and this is a fantastic remedy.” There will be a chorus of experts who will diagnose your condition in clinical terms because every citizen with an ounce of sense knows a lot about medicine. One of the experts, for example, will say that you have an obturation of a valve in your brain, but another may suspect a complex torsion of the lungs, and a third that you have ruptured your pancreas. Within a few minutes there will be a hue and cry all around you, and someone will arrive who’s run to the pharmacy to buy penicillin to inject you with—just in case. Come to think of it, if you’re a foreigner, my advice is not to faint in a Chilean supermarket; it can be a deadly experience.

  To illustrate how free we are about prescribing, once during a southern cruise to our beautiful San Rafael lagoon in the cold fjords of the south, we were given sleeping pills with dessert. At dinner the captain notified the passengers that we were about to sail through particularly rough waters, and then his wife went from table to table handing out pills, the name of which no one dared ask. We took them obediently and twenty minutes later all the passengers were out like a light, suggesting the story of Sleeping Beauty. My husband said that in the United States the captain and his wife would have been arrested for anaesthetizing the passengers. In Chile we were very grateful.

  In times gone by, the minute two or more people got together, the obligatory subject was politics; if there were two Chileans in a room, you could be sure of finding three political parties. I understand that in one period we had more than a dozen socialist mini-parties; even the right, monolithic in the rest of the world, was split. However, politics no longer brings out our passions; we talk about it only to be able to complain about the government, one of our favorite activities. We no longer vote religiously, as in the days when dying citizens were carried on stretchers to fulfill their civic duty. Nor do we, as we once did, have instances of women giving birth in the voting booth. The young don’t register to vote, some 84.3 percent of the people believe that political parties do not represent their interests, and a greater number say they are content not to participate in any way in the conduct of the nation. This is a phenomenon of the Western world, it appears. Young people have no interest in fossilized political
schemes dragged over from the nineteenth century. They are preoccupied with living well and prolonging their teenage years as long as possible—let’s say, till about forty or fifty. To be fair, there is also a small percentage who are militants in respect to ecology, science, and technology, and I have heard about some who do social service through the churches.

  The subjects that have replaced politics among Chileans are money, which there is never enough of, and soccer, which is a kind of consolation. The lowliest illiterate knows the names of all the players throughout our history, and has his own opinion of each. This sport is so important that souls from purgatory wander the streets freely when there’s a match because the entire population is in a catatonic state in front of television sets. Soccer is one of the few human activities that proves the relativity of time: the goalie can float in the air for half a minute, the same scene can be repeated several times in slow motion, or backward and, thanks to the time change between continents, a game between Hungary and Germany can be seen in Santiago before it’s played.