Crossing the Street in Chile Ariel Dorfman the dawn of March 22, 1980, in a plane somewhere over the Paci?c Ocean, General Augusto Pinochet, the de facto ruler of Chile, felt for a moment that his worst nightmare had come true; for the ?rst time in the seven-and-a-half years since his orchestration of the bloody coup and overthrow of socialist Salvador Allende?s constitutional government, Pinochet was convinced that he had lost power. That 1980 trip, to the Philippines, of all places, had been planned to prove triumphantly to a skeptical world that the General was not an international pariah. Perhaps as important, it was to be an occasion when his wife Lucia could ?nally display a series of lavish robes that had, alas, gone unworn in previous forays abroad. She had been unable to dress up on Pinochet's visit to Spain for the exequies of Francisco Franco in 1976 because, as soon as the funeral was over, the emissaries of the soon-to-be King Juan Carlos discreetly informed the Chilean dicrator that they would rather he n0t linger on for the coronation. Uninvited abroad except by fellow strongmen in Paraguay and Uruguay. and undecorated except by South Africa and Haiti, in 1979 the General had hastily flown to Washington to participate in the signing of the Panama Canal treaties. There he found every other Latin American president scrambling away from him, anxious to avoid a handshake that some embarrassing camera might immortalize. The of?cial visit to Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos was to prove even less fortunate. It was cancelled in mid-flight?due to pressure, it turned out, from Jimmy Carter. But General Pinochet, who did not know this, jumped to the conclusion that the Chilean army had t0ppled him in his absence. During the long minutes before Pinochet was able to reassure himself by talking to his loyal generals back home, he experienced what I conjecture must have been a bitter sense of defeat and exile, homeless on an airplane in the middle of the widest ocean in the world. It is safe to assume that he never forgot that chilling hour?not only because he has never since strayed from Chile, but because, more signi?cantly, a few months after his return he rammed Arie! divider his time between his native Chile and Duke University, where he is Research Professor of Literature and Latin American Studies. My House Is on Fire, a collection of his stories, been released by Viking Press. down the throats of the citizens a constitution that guaranteed (or so he presumed] that he would continue to rule his country in perpetuity. In the original draft of that constitution, Pinochet had bestowed upon himself sixteen consecutive years as ruler of Chile. His advisers suggested, however, that in order to give the appearance of democratic intent, he divide the period in half after his ?rst eight years of unconteSIed preeminence, he would easily win an additional eight years as consritutional president in a plebiscite in which he?d be the sole candidate. Even if the enduring terror did not cow the citizens, even if the monopoly over television and other major media did not brainwash them, the government would still have complete control. Pinochet maintained power over the armed forces, the state apparatus, and each phase of the electoral process itself, from the enrollment of the citizens and the political parties to the counting of the ballots. There is some ironic satisfaction in the facr that Pinochet, like many an autocrat blinded by the thrall of absolute power, was unable to conceive that the everyday men and women of Chile might gather the courage to vote against him; but he also could not imagine?if the people dared vote so?that the hitherto freedom and squabbling opposition might be strong and united enough to thwart his attempts at stealing the election through fraud, or at invalidating the results through a coup. And yet, on October 5, 1988, almost 55 percent of Chile?s electorate voted not to prolong Pinochet?s rule? opening the way for the General to watch a remarkable version of his Paci?c Ocean nightmare inexorably creep up on him: he had become the ?rst lame-duck dictator in history. Despite desperate efforts to avoid such a moment, on March 11, 1990, exactly sixteen-and?a-half years after he overthrew Allende, Pinochet will have to give up the presidency to the man who will win the free elections being held this December, in all probability the opposition candidate, Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin. The General did not resign and has continued to make life miserable for most Chileans, but the mere perception that he is on his way out erodes his power daily. It has also changed the climate of the country from the pervasive depression one habitually found in Chile to a quiet, vigilant euphoria. Worse still for Pinochet, the left-wingers whom he had vowed to purge from the soil?and indeed the 13 memory?of the country are ?ourishing. Although un- doubtedly weakened by the repression and defeat of these years [no one believes that they can collect, now or in the near future, 45 percent of the popular vote, as they did in the last parliamentary elections in 1973], vast sectors of the Allende coalition are readying them- selves to govern again with Aylwin?who was one of Allendc?s main opponents and who originally promoted and welcomed the coup. It is this bringing together of old antagonists in the Concertacion Democratica, a coalition of center parties allied to the socialists, which symbolizes Pinochet?s failure. It heralds an eventual deep realignment in Chilean politics, an end to the disastrous split between the Christian Democrats and the Left which had made the military takeover possible in the ?rst place. Even though it remains to be seen if the tensions in this coalition will not tear Aylwin?s govern- ment apart?and what role the powerful Communist party, excluded from the Concertaci?n but working and voting for Aylwin, will play?there can be no doubt that Chile has, for the ?rst time in many decades, a chance to establish a permanent and stable governing majority for the country. lfozmd 072 6626/? ma: :0 my country a bizarre source of/aope in this Consider, for example, how the Concertacion has negotiated essential modi?cations in the 1980 consti- tution. The original constitution was designed to allow Pinochet, even if he were eventually to be rejected in the plebiscite, to keep a stranglehold over Chile?s fu- ture. In spite of the General?s oath that not a word of that text ?would ever be changed," the armed forces demanded that Pinochet call another plebiscite. Held last July 30, this second plebiscite approved substantial changes, among them the legalization of Marxist parties and the removal of obstacles to further alterations in the constitution. The Concertaci?n?s fundamental part- ner in this negotiation was the main right-wing party, Renovacion Nacional, which is preparing for the day when the dictator will no longer be around. Pinochet has responded to this distancing by forcing Renova- cion Nacional?basically through humiliating financial pressure?to accept his candidate for president, the charismatic and young former ?nance minister Hernan Biichi; but it is expected that when the new Congress consents, Aylwin will enjoy the backing of those who once supported the General but are now eager to show independence. Aylwin has also stated that his ?rst act in of?ce will be to ask Pinochet, who has announced that 14 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 6 he will stay on for another eight years as commander-in- chief of the army, to resign. 5 this the end of our dictator? Will he be able to cling onto this last military bastion, and fr0m there effectively curtail the country?s democratization? Will he threaten a new coup if the Concertacion people get out of hand as they try to meet the demands of a long-thwarted populace? What if the people dare judge the military for human rights violations? What if they try to redistribute too drastically some of the colossal wealth accumulated by Chile?s ruling class in these un- bridled years? In order to understand what chances democracy has, and with what resources it might be established, one must first ask how it was that the unarmed people of Chile were able?almost miraculously-to get rid of an omnipotent tyrant who had his country?s entire military force at his disposal all these years. How did they do it? The answer may be in the streets of Chile?or, to be more precise, in the peculiar way in which we Chileans, with or without Pinochet, with or without democracy, continue to cross the streets of our cities. i i- Chile has always been a nation of incorrigible jay- walkers. Oblivious to approaching cars, Chileans of all sizes, sorts, and classes will perpetually dart across the street from the middle of the block??ve-year-old mendicant urchins, well-dressed grandmothers pushing baby carriages, even blind men with white canes tapping, apparently confident of their own immortality?all ob- livious to the avalanche of cars roaring toward them. Returning to Chile in 1983 after ten years of banish- ment, 1 was gladdened by this exasperating custom?? even comforted by it. One of my most deep-seated fears?like that of so many exiles?had been that the torture and despair of that decade would have altered my country beyond recognition, that Pinochet would have contaminated even the songs of the birds, the taste of the bread, the way people told jokes. Like so many other exiles, I was worried that there would be no home to return to. Among the many signs of continuity, the one I had least expected was revealed to me in the streets of Santiago. While for years I had stood patiently at foreign intersections waiting for a red light to change to a distant green, back here the people of my country kept stubbornly ignoring the traf?c signals and regula- tions as if time?and exile?-?had not passed. During the years of protests and endless repression that followed, years of murdered friends and an adamant Pinochet, I found on each visit to my country a bizarre source of hope in this persistent jaywalking. If we had involuntarily adhered to that habit in the midst of such a ferocious dictatorship, why couldn?t we draw upon the deeper habits of liberty, tolerance, and participatory politics that had characterized our nation for most of its history and had made us a democratic exception in Latin America? And weren?t those very traits the ones people were expressing when they strode abruptly into the middle of the street, sure that the drivers, insread of running them over, would bralte, weave around them, maneuver so as nor to hurt them, eventually stop without so much as an insult before proceeding on their way? (Try that in Rio or New York or Amsterdam!) Could it not be that the pCOple of Chile were reminding them- selves of the sort of country they had once inhabited, the sort of country Chile still might become?a country where you talk to, rather than demolish, the person in your path; a country where public space is defined more by a sense of shared community than by aggressiveness? This does nor mean that pre-Pinochet Chile was paradise. Throughout our history, we have been poor, exploited, and dependent. Millions of Chileans have been ill-fed, unhoused, and undereducated. And we have had our sad share of massacres when groups of the dispossessed took over land or went out on a strike. Bur the general trend of our nation was toward increased participation, greater consensus, and the dream of a more perfect future. We had a parliament where all political movements were represented, the freest press in the hemisphere, a belief in the sovereignty of the people, and?supposedly?an army that was subordinated to a government freely elected by the people. It was not surprising, therefore, that in 1970 we became the ?rst nation in the world to attempt a democratic revolution. That this experiment known as the Chilean road to socialism lasted only from 1970 to 19?3 and ended violently might suggest that there were limits to what those at the wheel of the larger world economy were prepared to tolerate from the people in the streets, even if we were going about our radical economic and social reform in a peaceful and democratic way. Never- theless, it would seem that the everyday customs of a people die hard: when a soldier like Pinochet took over the wheel of the country and began not only running over pedestrians but ravishing them, the victims? caiirpmieros did not automatically decide to blow up his vehicle. Thirteen years were to go by, in fact, before there was an attempt on the dictator?s life by an armed wing of the Communist party. And even the Communists? com- mitment to armed struggle, ?rst stated in 1980 and implemented from 1985 onward, was half-hearted. That commitment isolated them from the rest of the opposi- tion and has gradually been repudiated by most of the party. 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Dept. 1005 Asp AveJ' Norman, OK 73019-0445 I with.er of Oklahoma Press age: it Add $1.50 postage/handling. - We accept: Visa/MC/Checks CROSSING THE STREET IN CHILE I5 violent: the goal was to take over the public thoroughfare inch by inch, in the expectation that?defying the mur? derous traf?c and paying a high cost in broken lives and limbs?Chileans would be able to grind the of- fending vehicle to a halt and force the hijacker of the car to hand over the ignition key. ike all nonviolent resistance, the Chilean version had to meet two interrelated conditions in order to succeed. First, dissident agitation had to be massive. Only if vasr groups of peOple were willing to risk their own lives (and what is often more dif?cult, risk the petty persecution with which a dictatorship makes everyday life into hell?the loss of employment, the children harassed in school, the obscene phone calls at two in the morning, the swastika cut into the breasts of a maiden aunt} would such a social movement stand a chance. To build a second country in the shadow of the dictatorship, or next to it, thousands of men and women had to expose themselves daily. The Chilean opposition took over the surface of the country; they unspectacularly took it back from Pinochet. They went up to the line of what was permissible, moved that line forward, and then stood their ground. When they were mowed down, they found others to take up the cause and keep inching onward. This meant, in less metaphoric terms, developing innumerable trade unions, student associations, athletic clubs, cultural clubs, pub- lications, women?s groups, self-help groups, soup kitch- ens, and parallel universities. These groups were barely tolerated and often ruthlessly suppressed. They flickered in and out of the public glare, but eventually established their tentative right to exist through sheer pushiness, pluck, and craftiness. The creation of an alternative press in Chile is a case in point. All our major current dissident publications originated under strange circumstances. magazine began in 1976 as a bulletin sold by subscription only. It had permission to circulate restrictedly as long as it informed solely on foreign issues. Year by year, the editors expanded the scope of their publication: they unobtrusively transferred the magazine to newsstands; they began to talk?at ?rst timidly?about national affairs; they developed a publishing house and a satirical supplement. But there was a price to pay for this en- croachment. The publisher and the editor-in-chief have been in and out of jail for years. The photographers and journalists have been beaten up repeatedly and have had their homes raided. The weekly has been shut down on ?ve occasions, once for as long as six months. magazineH?which started more or less at the same time under the auspices of an educational institute of the Catholic church, and then became autonomous? has experienced similar hardship. It has also seen one 16 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 6 of its top journalists, Jose Carrasco, murdered. Both of the major dissident newspapers have had to use circuitous routes to reach the public. When, in one of its decrees, the government forbade new publications, one opposition group sought out a local open-air market?s news bulletin and bought its right to publish, eventually turning that into a daily national paper, Portia r'l/lapoc/Jo; and another group sued the government and, in a three-year lawsuit, won the right to publish La Epoca. But the Story of these publications is not merely one of courage and cunning. Not one of these ploys would have worked had there not been, simultaneously, the sense that something was staying the government?s hand, that there were forces keeping repression, no matter how brutal, within boundaries. Some of these forces were, undoubtedly, external: Hitler and Mussolini did not have to be as wary of their image as does a dependent Third World dictatorship that needs foreign aid to stay afloat. But the internal pressures on the government were far more signi?cant. As in Gandhi's India and Martin Luther King?s America, the possibility of a deep crisis in the ruling coalition constitutes the second con- dition for successful nonviolent resistance. In Chile, enough supporters of the dictatorship believed that the country should be one where cars do not run over cripples and students in the streets?at leasr, not rou- tinely. They thought it necessary as a shock measure to put down what they believed was a Marxist insurrection, but such permanent violence did nothing to ensure the country?s long-term stability. hus, each time Pinochet savaged those who were rebelling against his rule, he lost support. The opposition bet that a large segment of Chile?s ruling class, including its politicians and many of its military, would at some point agree that it was time to map out a future based on consensus rather than con- frontation or the whims of a single man. The oppositions gamble proved correct when the results of the October 5th plebiscite rolled in: a coup that Pinochet had already set in motion for that very night was called off when Pinochet heard that both Onofre Jarpa (leader of the aforementioned Renovaci?n Nacional and Pinochet?s former minister of internal security) and General Fer- nando Matthei [the head of the air force) had acknowl- edged the opposition?s victory. The general in charge of the Santiago garrison (now vice commander-in?chief of the army) refused to permit Pinochet ?5 special forces to take over the city. It didn?t hurt that the US. govern- ment, which, after all, had ?nanced and sponsored the coup against Allende, this time warned Pinochet against disrupting the electoral process. The triumph of this jaywallting tactic of the Chilean people should not, however, blind us. The opposition may have won the plebiscite, but it will enter the govern- ment from a relatively weak position. To begin with, during these months of surrealistic cohabitation with a dictator who can no longer claim to represent the majority but who rules nonetheless, Pinochet has had the chance to leave the country are: amarmdo?well tied up. He has gerrymandered the electoral districting so that ultraconservatives are guaranteed a dispropor- tionate number of congressmen; he has stacked the Supreme Court with his own men; he has set up a Central Bank (somewhat on the model of the Federal Reserve Bank) to keep economic policy beyond the next government?s control; he has sold a series of pro?t- able publicly owned companies for a pittance, strength- ening Chile?s right-wing entrepreneurs; he is preparing a law that extends further amnesty to the military for human rights abuses; he has renegoriated Chile?s stag- gering $18 billion foreign debt (the highest per capita in Latin America) so that the next adminisrration will be left to pay some $2 billion per annum rather than $800 million; and he has made sure that television, which he kept under stricr surveillance during his reign, will henceforth be exempt from public-interest control. Can we get the military to [001% as the eyes anal accept that the coaatry 21?5er is a: danger of dying of hanger and immorality? This constant intervention of Pinochet and his med- dling with the future?not to mention his threat to imitate Cincinnatus, the Roman emperor who came out of retirement to save the land?was hardly what the resistance had planned for democratic Chile. Indeed, the main dissident strategy for most of these years had not been geared to a plebiscite at all; the idea was to organize large-scale disruption of public life that would force the military to get rid of their commander-in-chief and negotiate free elections. These efforts, however, which stretched from May 1983 until the end of 1987, did not have the desired effect. If the millions of people watching those battles for the streets had stepped off the sidewalks, if they could have been convinced to place their bodies in front of the oncoming tanks as many (albeit insuf?cient) thousands were doing, then Pinochet would undoubtedly have fallen sooner and more pre- cipitously. The democratic movement then would have been able to take over the government from a position of increased strength, making it easier to repair the ter- rible damage the dictator has in?icted upon the country. After all, the streets of Chile are not only filled with cheerful jaywalkers and benevolent drivers. They are also brimming with impoverished men, women, and children looking for work, hawking wares nobody wants, offering to wash windows, to walk the dog, to pull weeds out of the garden, to perform sex. The New York banks, the State Department, the international aid and loan agencies, the fruit importers of the universe are each ecstatic about the Chilean economic miracle. If it is true that Chile has kept in?ation down (as Argentina has not) and managed to service its foreign debt (as Brazil has not), what the statistics do not show is that such policies are made possible only by the sort of ex- treme repression and widespread fear that keep workers reined in and citizens scared of protesting the drastic cuts in basic services (education, health, transportation, housing). Neither do they show that 48.6 percent of Chileans live well below the poverty line; that the Official minimum salary has decreased three times more than in any other Latin American nation; that child prostitu~ tion, delinquency, and drug abuse in the slum areas have doubled in recent years; that our children are being born more stunted; that hospitals do not have bandages and schools do not have lavatories; that shanty- towns with 150,000 people have only seven telephones available; and that millions of households are made up of several families squalidly bunched together in two rooms under makeshift roofs. The Concertacion has come up with an emergency plan to help the neediest sectors of Chile, the 27 percent that takes in only 3.3 percent of the country?s total in- come. The only way to finance this solidarity fund is to tax the extremely rich (20 percent of the country takes in 61 percent of the country?s total income) and to cut back the overblown military budget. It remains to be seen if these two groups that bene?ted most in the last sixteen years are ready to set aside some of their privileges for the good of the country or if they will feel so threatened that they will sabotage the transition to democracy itself. Nevertheless, the plan itself merely signals a shift from the Friedmanesque policies of Pinochet. It is a stopgap measure and not a radical departure. All ideological ten. dencies in the Concertacion agree to it because nobody at this point wants to attack the relatively dynamic private sector that is needed to pull Chile out of its morass. he democratic forces, therefore, have left for tomorrow?perhaps a faraway tomorrow?the task of grappling with the unjust social and economic structure which is at the root of all the turmoil of the last decades. Even though the need for radical reform of the system continues to be as urgent as ever, the top priority for the resistance inevitably and correctly has been the struggle to restore a State where one is not killed or persecuted for publicly addressing the need (Continued on. p. 83) CROSSING THE STREET IN CHILE 17 CROSSING THE STREET IN CHILE (Continued from p. 17) for those fundamental changes. Bur this choice also means that the next government is, as it plans ahead, simultaneously undermining its own future power base. \When the ultra-Right regroups and leads yet another assault on democracy, how many poor, excluded Chile- ans, told that democracy would solve all their problems, will march into the streets and defend leaders?and a system?that did little to alleviate their suffering? These may be essential long-term dilemmas, but my friends in Chile have been reluctant of late to discuss them with me. Who can blame them? After so many years of struggle, militants?no matter how jubilant? are wary of over-accelerating, willing to compromise for a bit of peace, desperate for a night when they will not fear a car braking in front of their door, anxious for a morning when they will not have to hide their thoughts from their boss or their neighbors or even their children. Dare I say that they, that we, have learned our lesson? Dare I add my suspicion that this is why, ultimately, Pinochet can be neutralized?because he has already accomplished his goal of pacifying and domesticating the unruly country and its dreams of a total transformation? The Chilean method of easing a dictator out of of?ce gradually, relentlessly, without recourse to armed violence, has several advantages. It both avoids the ravages of an overt civil war and strengthens the civilian world through a vast network of participatory instances and institutions. There has also been time for the antag- onists of a fractured society to hammer out their differ- ences and explore ?exible, reasonable solutions. But the jaywalkng strategy poses one overriding problem: it inevitably leaves the military in control. It is supposed that, if push comes to shove (and hungry, hurt people 'will inevitably, as the recent riots in Venezuela and Argentina show, begin to shove), the military will answer with violence and, I believe, will veto any attempt at deep change. The military. Most of the endless conversations that Chileans so love meander on until they inevitably end up with the same question: Finally, what is it that the military will do? (Like other people, what we Chileans cannot correct in reality we correct through language.) I may know something about Chilean streets, but let me confess right away that I haven?t an inkling?like most of my compatriots?about what makes our glorious army tick. In democratic times, when I might have approached any number of soldiers without trepidation, I was decidedly indifferent to them. I even turned down, - toward the end of the Allende presidency, an offer to do a ?ction workshop with some of?cers. How was I to know that those men, whose literary talents were irrele- vant to me, would spend the rest of this century deter- mining my fate?and the fate of my literature? A few months later I was asking myself compulsiver what so many Chileans have been asking themselves since the coup: How is it that these soldiers, purportedly the most democratic in Latin America, could have turned into torturers? Moreover, how can we reach them, how can we draw them into a dialogue in which, rather than our receiving their bullets, they would receive our words? All but one of my encounters with the Chilean military have been violent. There were the blackened faces of the soldiers I saw patrolling Santiago?s streets on so many of my visits?anonymous faces that struck fear into the population. There was the young recruit who shouted at me that I should not come near as I limped toward him one night after having been beaten up, along with a group of protesters, by troops. He had his ?nger on the trigger of his submachine gun, but I knew that he was the frightened one, that some superior had drummed into him that I was the enemy. ?Keep two meters away from me,? he screamed again, his hand trembling, his eyes feverish, as if the mere possibility of my talking to him or touching him threatened his stability. Then there were the troops that guarded the airport the day I was arrested and then deported from Chile: they would not even acknowledge a question I put to them. Over and over it has been impossible to get near enough even to hope for a normal exchange of views. Except once. And that occasion, of course, entailed streets, cars, and a pedestrian. that hot February day a few years ago, it was I who was driving my car down an avenue in a well-to-do Santiago neighborhood. The pe- destrian was a destitute old woman who happened to be crossing my path with a small boy in tow. Suddenly she collapsed?almost in front of my advancing car. As I am not Pinochet, I swerved the vehicle, brought it to a stOp a few yards down the street, and rushed back. Another automobile was idling, its motor on, right next to the woman?s body. A wiry, wispy-haired lady with glasses and a pointed nose was sitting behind the wheel, showing not even the slightest inclination to get out of her car. The boy had just answered a question she had asked. She turned her glasses in my direction. ?It?s nothing,? she informed me. ?Look. She?s breath- ing. This child says it?s just fatigue.? I suggested that we should call an ambulance, and then I began looking around for a phone. The lady shook TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 6 83 ?1?l .. {jinn-IL: to. ?nun-t.- M: Li cl clL} 1.1? t. .. .iv LJLher head. ?Let the military take care of it,? she said. At ?rst I thought it was some sort of sick joke, until I noticed a camou?aged army pickup truck descending the avenue in our direction. It braked next to the still- unconscious woman and an of?cer in battle dress jumped out. I couldn?t guess his rank, but he was rather young, with an extremely pleasant, open face, a trimmed but soft mustache, and sparkling dark eyes. Two soldiers were in back crouching behind a machine gun as if expecting an ambush, but the of?cer seemed quite at ease and spoke softly to them. Then he stooped down next to the woman and took her pulse. Her eyes ?uttered open. ?It?s just fatigue, mz'tenz'ente,? she said, addressing him with the familiarity of the possessive mi?my lieuten- ant. He would take care of her; he was hers. It turned out she had been walking since six that morning: her shantytown was some eight miles away, in the poorest suburb of the city. Her energy had simply given out. Now she needed some money to get home. I helped the of?cer carry her to the sidewalk. She had stagnated in that inde?nite agelessness of poverty, where what we perceive and measure is the suffering rather than the years. She had just one tooth in her mouth and it was ugly and gray. But like so many Chileans who have survived Pinochet?s economic miracle, she possessed a dignity that was poignant, a sense of shame at seeing herself so helpless and exposed. This was not the way life was supposed to have been. Streets were not for fainting or begging, but for crossing with fearless pride. ?I?m asking because I?m in need, sir,? she said to me, quickly assessing that I might be the one who could help her out. don?t like to ask, but there?s no work. We?re ten at home.? I offered her some coins and pointed at a small bag she was still clutching. Some old crusts of bread had spilled out. ?Just be sure,? I admonished her, ?to eat something or you?ll faint again.? As soon as the words came out I felt the bite of paternalism in them. She was older than I was and yet I could act as a father, a protective ?gure, and tell her what to do, merely because I happened to be lucky enough not to have collapsed from hunger in the middle of a street. Her answer taught me that she, like most poor people, was in no need of advice from the well-to-do. ?I?ve already eaten bread. We eat so much bread that we get hiccups, sir. And then people won?t give us a thing because they think we?re drunk.? Meanwhile, the lady in the car had not moved, drink- ing in the scene with faint curiosity. Only when we packed the woman and the child aboard a bus, when the excitement was over, did the lady driver depart. If I mention her distant presence at all, it is because it elucidates, I believe, what followed. Chile is full of 84 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 6 people like her?people unwilling to register the horror right before their eyes because to do so would force them to act. In a dictatorship, such action can be perilous. Fear corrupts the morality of a nation because it makes everyone an accomplice. This collective apathy is the exact opposite, perhaps the secret Siamese twin, of the enthusiastic dissidents who have put their lives on the line all these years for freedom. In Chile, you either stand back or you care. And then you pay the consequences. That lady?s indifference, her accepting that nothing could be done to help the less fortunate, nurtured in me the dangerous illusion that the of?cer and I were part of a magic circle, set apart from the degradation of everyday Chile. Both of us tried to alleviate the suffering of another human being?while someone in a car comfortably looked on. This feeling that somehow we were not like that lady, that we were partners for a few minutes, may explain the absolutely irrational, stupid way in which I acted, for there was nothing heroic in my stepping up to the of?cer?who was already at the wheel of his vehicle, getting ready to leave?and asking: ?Haste: cu?ndo? Until when do you think we can tolerate this sort of situation?? He could have had me arrested on the spot, but there was no hostility in his look. A gleam of insecurity glazed his eyes, then vanished. Perhaps he still shared with me that island outside time we had inhabited together for a short while, as if we did not live in a country which allowed us only mistrust and hatred. ?Do you think our people deserve to suffer in this way? To suffer like this woman? Do you think we can go on and on like this forever? Without you people doing anything about it?? He did not react immediately. Then he said: ?That?s why I stopped.? We looked at each other for a few seconds. He didn?t avoid my eyes. ?That?s all I can do,? he added, and gently pressed his foot to the accelerator. The truck disappeared around a corner. What will that man and his colleagues do as Chile moves toward democracy and the inevitable disorder that democratic adjustments and real participation will mean? I could not imagine him then, and I cannot imagine him now, painting his face with the dark colors of the warrior and going out to suppress the dissidents because they publicly object to the fact that so many Chileans cannot cross the street without fainting from hunger; and yet I do not doubt that he had followed orders then and will follow orders tomorrow. What else had that Of?cer been ordered to do in the past, in spite of his sparkling eyes and engaging smile? Did he raid shantytowns, shoot at priests, burn the drawings of children in cultural centers? Did he torture? Will I see his photograph someday in a newspaper and learn that he had murdered one of my friends? humbly [0 v-i to 3 . 3? roux; 0'1 And yet, I cannot help asking myself? now that history is making it possible for the civilians and the military to meet?if there is a chance that the brief interlude during which he and I managed to establish a different sort of link may be a pale anticipation of how things will soon be in Chile. Can we get the military to look us in the eyes and accept that the country itself is in danger of dying of hunger and immorality?that the enemy is not the woman who has hiccups from eating nothing but bread, and certainly not those who want to end the injustice? Or is this impossible? Is this hope that we will be able to resolve our dilemmas peacefully and harmoniously just one more illusion of a people who continue to cross the streets as they did decades ago, before Pinochet became part of our vocabulary and our heritage? Are we really special and different? We will know soon enough. We will know not only what the military decided to do, but how the millions of jaywalking Chileans found?or did not ?nd?a way to speak to the troops, a way to get them off their trucks and into the streets that belong to all of us. El DIVINE CONVERSATIONS (Continued from p. 20) at the Red Sea. This is the God the people stood before at Sinai, coming to their identity as a people, responding with the myriad laws, institutions, and customs that gave form and substance to their communal life. This is the God of the covenant, a reciprocal compact which I the people entered willingly, a compact which bound God and people through good times and bad. This is the God who is friend, holy terror, and persistent goad. ON SEXUALITY or liberal Jews who take their Judaism seriously, there is no area in which modern practice and traditional values are further apart than that of sexuality. Traditional Judaism insists that legitimate sexual expression be limited to marriage, and indeed only to certain periods of a marriage. Traditional Judaism insists upon approaching sexuality by the means of boundaries and control. These strictures are thoroughly out of tune with both the modern temper and the lived decisions of most contemporary Jews. Troublesome as inherited sexual values are for Jews of both sexes, however, they are especially troubling for women, for these values are central to Judaism?s patriarchal system. The stigma and burden of sexuality fall differently on women than on men. Traditional Judaism posits men?s sexual impulses as powerful??evil?--inclinations in need of ?rm con- trol. But women?s very bodily functions are devalued AGAM TALIS Agam?s new art creation, the Jacob Ladder Talis, is a unique and impressive expression of Judaism. The rainbow colored talis is issued in a limited edition. Each talis is Kosher, numbered and carries Agam?s signature. There are three limited editions of this talis: a Bar Mitzvah Size for $750 a Full Size for $1000 a Birkat Cohanim Size for $1500 To order your talis or for more information call or write to: BLUE WHITE JUDAICA PO. Box 2619 Quincy, Massachusetts 02269 Tel: (617) 471-4842 and made the center of a complex of taboos: women?s gait, their voices, and their natural beauty are all regarded as snares or temptations and are subjected to elaborate precautions. Because as women we are the focus of am- bivalence about sexuality in Judaism, we are enormously important to the transformation of Jewish attitudes to- ward sexuality. In naming and reclaiming their own sexuality, women challenge the patriarchal order which is based on the control of women?s sexuality. In the voluminous feminist scholarship on sexuality, only a minority strand tries to bring together sexuality and the sacred. This strand, however, has considerable power not only to challenge traditional dualisms but also to generate alternatives to the energy/control para- digm of sexuality, which assumes that sexuality is an alien energy that takes control over the self. A number of feminists concerned with the connections between sexuality and spirit have suggested a new model that sees sexuality as part of a continuum of embodied self-expression. As ethicist Beverly Harrison argues in setting out a feminist moral theology, our whole relation- ship to the world is body mediated. ?All knowledge is rooted in our sensuality. We know and value the world, If we know and value it, through our ability to touch, to hear, to see.? Sexuality is one dimension of our body-mediated power, of the body space that is ?literally the ground of our personhood.? This understanding of sexuality as one dimension of bodily feeling ?nds its most powerful formulation in Audre Lorde?s brilliant essay, ?Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.? Lorde de?nes sexuality as one expres- sion of a spectrum of erotic energy that ideally suffuses all the activities in our lives. The erotic is the life-force, the capacity for feeling, the capacity for joy, a power we are taught to fear and ignore by a society that ?de?nes the good in terms of pro?t rather than in terms of human TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 6 85