What did you do in the 80's, Dad? 
I returned to Chile earlier this damn year, fortunately, will end soon. I was saved by chance, the earthquake and tsunami, but could not escape the obvious calamities.
First, the electoral victory of the right, which returned control of the state to the owners of this country, without annoying managers or intermediaries.
And a wave of small disasters, culminating in the epiphany of slip of 33, shown ad nauseum. To which followed the coup in the ANFP, which aimed against Harold Mayne-Nicholls, but actually tended to topple this "broken" Marcelo Bielsa. Anyone who has never finished to understand the logic of market that prevails today in Chile, where things are decided at board meetings and does not need the opinion of the gallery.
When I returned, I should always adapt to the country, although still marked traits of self-sufficiency and insularity. Television newscasts, for example, have always been bad, now they were terrible.
Before we pretended to care what was happening beyond our noses, but now I discovered that even that and worth. There was no international feedback, even news. And so rampant, unchecked, were disguised advertorials and infomercials information.
The alleged economic success has become more navel-gazing than ever. Economy sections of newspapers that speak more than market production, innovation or that crap that nobody cares, as the editors. The Culture absent, if not mere appendages propaganda or dissemination of the publishing industry, music or film.
And Policy, a close battle for figuration, in which everyone competes to be the most unruly or media to get fifteen minutes of fame in LUN or the Telethon.
desexilio confess that my second was not easy. And at various times I was about to throw in the towel and say we just here. The peak
of unease came when, still without cable, I had to suck a combo made up of morning television, Ying, Platoon, Focus and other nonsense like that, which is usually the staple diet of most mortals only have at their disposal the option of network TV.
cloistered in that terrible purgatory, so adjacent to hell, what came to my rescue were two things: one, the new feature of civilization, we felt on the streets of Santiago, he disputed bicycle spaces in the file, either in the bikeways or the law of the jungle rules on trails and sidewalks. And two, some chapters of "80", possibly paving the way for the release of the third season, which ended on Sunday, which showed that television could be more than the idiot box designed to numb and stupefied at masses.
Right. "The 80" and the "Cleto" reconciled me to that paradise lost and regained that was returning to Chile after two years. I felt that all was not lost. There was a reason to stay and fight for this little utopia that is the homeland. And so I went again established in the region until new doors opened to welcome me.
First, the old friends. The before and now. Those with whom I share the idea of \u200b\u200bloyalty to a nation of brothers and equal.
And then, by extension, due to technological advances, I was interning and engaging in networks like Twitter, where I discovered that there was space for citizens to exercise a new sociability, to the extent that there was still people who do not buy the boxes which means we sell gift-wrapped. And with a bow of ribbon.
found on Twitter, for example, under the magic of a world that you build to suit, a country as a portable iPhone-which was not I the only idiot he was "with a tear in the throat", as would the illustrious Zalo Reyes, seeing Gabriel and Claudia on the verge of falling into the clutches of the CNI, while enjoying a clandestine love parejero hotel.
In Twitter knew it was not the only moron who had moved to the core when Juan Herrera said goodbye to her father distant and semi-alcoholic, before "the Bald" the recruit to their ranks. And that certainly was not the only fool that he choked on dinner at the time that John gives a last farewell to his old, surrounded by Anita, "the boss", and a cohort of prostitutes provincial, while cuequeros a drum to accompany the deceased's journey across the Styx.
was a rare moment of communion.
The rating, they now say, rose to the clouds. And in many homes Chilean parents, children and grandchildren were met head on with a piece of its history, our history, which until now was not visible, since the TV insists, generally, to be an opaque space which imposes content apricots and banal, rather than being a mirror that returns the image of who we are. With defects and virtues, and without makeup tend to exploit ideological forgetfulness.
After the tears and the lump in the throat, the past was reverberating in the minds of many. Ideas and emotions crowded. Need for recognition and affirmation. A nostalgia that grips the soul when we discover that perhaps we were never better nor worse than in those terrible years in which others lived bubble protected by the old tale of "
never-knew-what-you-going-to-my-around . "
many Gabrieles and Claudia met. And many who do not know any happy ending ... I think my friend X, which lifted him to torment the paste in the dungeons of Burgundy, because his picture appeared in the belongings of a former girlfriend of hers who was the Front. Or think of R., who I met as a tender side, with baby-faced and look happy, and died in a clash in Tobalaba airfield when his life had been a complete somersault.
In the Chile of 80, one thing was clear: there was no innocent. There were those who chose the institutionalized violence and state run to finish the work of a country rebuilt to fit his will refounded. And there were those who, tired of turning the other cheek and being the eternal "wedding ducks," called to rebel, which would hand against the order imposed by force.
In between these two fields, a few politicians, who at times seemed to preach in the desert, convened to build bridges between these two irreconcilable worlds that masqueraded as an inevitable disaster that would end up not drag us all.
Who was right? Who performed better? If the answer to these questions, does not take into account the context of the hard times we are living, there is a risk that, in addition to making unhistorical judgments, we are unfair to our past and our consciousness. A past that has become flesh in our lives and which are an inseparable part.
But, of course, that's the beauty of "80." That forces us to reflect on what we are. Mediatintas without anesthesia of any kind. Probably the mirror is cruel. And the portrait out a bit blurred.
Some see it as Gabriel, the militant, determined and fearless, and committed to the ultimate consequences. Others, like Claudia, the girl "wool" and somewhat naive protests jumps and rocks, to face major tests, almost involuntarily. They will not be
few don Genaro, who must admit, with no little shame, they were accomplices, by omission or commission, of a dictatorship, which ended up creating a rarefied atmosphere and oppressive.
Among the perpetrators and heroes, will, of course, ample space to locate those who, like Juan Herrera, retreated to the domestic environment of their homes when the terror and the curfew began to dominate the streets.
Of these fragments, no doubt, is made Chile. A country that today must settle accounts with its history and respond as best as possible the question that this miniseries, which came in its third year, left open to each and every one of us: What did you do in 80, Dad?
