A Museum Morning

After suffering a violent allergic reaction to Hari Krishna, traveling, berries picked off a bush, and the McDonald’s restrooms, my body was quite defeated. Puffy eyed and sore all over, I was the epitome of both beauty and grace. Kate took the morning to go for a run, and in sweaty glory, got whistled at countless times on her route around the block. I stayed in, curled in bed in fetal position, attempting to gain enough strength to make toast and get on with life. 

As usual, we had a lot to accomplish: places to go, people to see. By 12:30 p.m., we had made cupcakes and were relatively ready to rock. I whimpered my way to the bus, metro, transferred metros, and hobbled across the street at Quinto Normal to the impressive Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos. 

This museomonument to the pain caused by the relatively-recent Chilean dictatorship will stun and silence all who enter. On September 11, 1973, Chile fell to a military dictatorship. Our parents were alive. This wasn’t so long ago. It lasted until 1990. The two-story museum take you through the torture of ‘forced disappearances’ with video testimonies and encased blindfolds that bound the thousands of prisoners in hundreds of secret camps across the country for 17 years. I wrote two papers on artistic resistance and coping among women under Pinochet’s brutal regime, but the museum made me feel like I never knew anything at all. 

It’s shocking and harrowing – and worst of all, you can be assured the U.S. sponsored some of this. In our government 1970s meddling, terroristic dictatorships were better than communism. I’d beg to differ, but I’m not a McCarthy-era congressman. 

The front of the museum has a photo display of close-pinned pictures in the shape of a world map. Underneath, information about truth commissions around the world is displayed. It’s both disheartening and enlightening to see all of these councils trying to shed light upon or reconcile mass killings and random torturings over decades, all over the world. Usually, their reports result in no actions – how do you explain to a child that the government made his mother ‘disappear’? How do you apologize to a mother for torturing her son with electric voltages that kill? In our world, you can’t, so you don’t. A monument here and a research report there doesn’t ‘fix’ these massive and wide-spread crimes against humanity, perpetrated by humans.

We have to evolve as a world and a species, Kate and I decided on the way to the metro.

It seems awkward to now discuss fish markets and empanadas, so I’ll start a new post.