J-Term Practica, 2016Transitional (In) Justice

February 29, 2016

It’s a funny feeling I get when I travel. Something like days or weeks seem to pass when I wake up in one place and go to sleep in another one miles and miles away. In some ways, international travel feels like years to me. There’s a strange sense of separation that comes from looking back across oceans and time zones and borders; it makes me wonder… was I even there? So I’m sitting here now, more than a month on from those apparent days I spent in transit from Chile back to Monterey. I’m searching for words that are only almost there like they’re locked away in some dream. Did I travel? Did I eat those empanadas? What am I talking about anyway?

I have now spent one week more of 2016 in California than I did in Chile. I was there for a short 20 days, bought no souvenirs, and took very few pictures. Still, I feel like I’ve carried a lot back with me, and not all of it is pleasant. You see, there was one thing clinging to me in Chile, that clings to me now, that clung before I left, that keeps gripping me by the shoulders and giving me anxiety attacks. No matter where I am in the world I can’t seem to escape the doom and gloom of American politics. Is that globalization talking?

Or is it Donald Trump?

I’ll get back to that. Let me explain.

You see, Latin America is well known in circles of apparent “cultural competence” for indirect speaking. If you’re a MIIS student, and you’ve taken an ICC, you know what I’m talking about. Those graphs, those spectrums… those generalizations. But, here’s the thing. In my experience, speaking in Chile was almost always indirect. Almost. They wrapped around issues and topics like roller coasters in a helix. With my, *ahem*, rather, broken Spanish it was often quite difficult for me to keep up. Except on two occasions. On these particular occasions, the man and woman speaking came right out and said it to us: America is guilty. Has been guilty. Will. Be. Guilty.

Unless we learn something.

Occasion number one was in a museum: El Museo de la Memoria. While the name “Pinochet” may sound only half familiar to many Americans (if not altogether unheard of), in Chile, it represents something very real; something, unfortunately, not at all locked away in the past. Pinochet’s dictatorship, infamous for its brutal disregard for human rights and dignity, came to Chile on the back of American finances and the philosophy of the Marshall Plan. The United States led at the time by another Man-Who-Should-Never-Become-President named Richard Nixon, chose to protect democracy from communism by overthrowing a democratically elected head of state and replacing him with a fascist, military dictator. Irony hurts. It hurts worse when your tour guide is reminding you that the museum you’re in wouldn’t exist if not for your government. There would be no memorials for the dead and missing because there would never have been a tragedy, to begin with. There was nothing indirect in her speaking. The message was clear: “You are, in your history and your culture, responsible.” But hey, it’s 2016, not the 1970s. “Never again” right? Right?

The second time was a bit more current. And, I’ve got to admit, it hurt worse for being so. He said it right out of the gate when we met with his community. Something to the effect of “I don’t know if I can trust you because you’re Americans and Donald Trump is very popular in your country,”. This was a Mapuche man in South Central Chile, half a hemisphere away, but he knew what is happening in our country. I came to Chile to learn about Chile. He learned about us on his own. And, yet again, the directness of what he was saying cut through me. The message was clear: “You are letting this happen and it hurts me. It frightens me. How could you?”.

I don’t know.

You see Donald Trump is more than just an arrogant reality star with a bad haircut and an obnoxiously big mouth. He’s a thought leader now. He’s changing things; or at the very least, things have changed and we’ve awoken him, given him a platform, egged him on, cheered and jeered as he bad-mouthed half the planet and made it clear Americans have not progressed half so much as we pretend to have done. And this man in Chile knows it. They all did. It sometimes seems like only us who haven’t woken up to it yet.

The effect that this election cycle will have on us cannot be understated; and, when I say “us” I mean the global “us”, not the “us” implied in the new American nationalism. I mean the planet. I mean its people, its plants, its animals, its climate.

The tragedy of America’s immense influence on the world is that only citizens of the US get to vote on it. I suppose this makes sense in a world with borders and political sovereignty but let’s not pretend we’re the only stakeholders here. Chile holds a stake too. So does all of Latin America. But again, we can’t limit ourselves. This is global, this is trans-hemispheric. Every man, woman, and child could be hinging on this. When the history books write about 2016, I hope they don’t say it was when the world’s most powerful country elected a megalomaniac.

I hope this for myself. But I also hope for Chile.

I want the world to trust us again. I want to trust us again.

Back to Chile Page