Chile's Government Wages War on Historical Memory and Truth

My article about the controversial decision to replace 'military dictatorship with 'military regime' in Chilean primary school textbooks published in Upside Down World. http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3423-chiles-government-wages-war-on-historical-memory-and-truth

The Scent of Nostalgia (17)

Our voices created a society within and apart from the select rulers and their followers who had rendered the existence and definition of society debatable. A multitude of narrators clamoured in my mind, begging me to unravel their voices to the wind. I had brought a harvest of injustice on board our vessel, which I meant to avenge. The voices were in imminent peril. If despair is all a person can cling to, memory becomes bathed in self-spilled blood and the violence of justice guards its triumph over the vanquished with perfunctory statements whislt wallowing in a macabre celebration behind the mahogany doors.

The Scent of Nostalgia (16)

At times, narrations seep from solitude to the pen of the anonymous artist. The memory was drenched in grey hues, sepia stretching from the edges to the centre, where a massive torch blazed, illuminating the architect of the revolution on the fictitious island. Decades ago, the island revelled in its layers of rock formation. its inhabitants came closer to defining citizenship than their forthcoming generations. There was a time for a flag, a time for grand rhetoric ...

The narration started with a conflagration that drenched the island in red.

I realise I might have distorted the torch and the rain, as my eyes had distorted the mushroom cloud engulfing the television screens in my childhood. In a similar manner to which the workers generated into middle class morals and a flaming torch melted into a parody of the abstract.

Dictatorship relics in Chile: Paying Homage to Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko

An article I had published in Upside Down World, discussing the homage to Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko and subsequent outrage by human rights and activist groups in Chile. http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3356-dictatorship-relics-in-chile-paying-homage-to-miguel-krassnoff-martchenko

The Scent of Nostalgia (15)

In a collection of portraits, revolution celebrates its existence. Within the realm of history, I behold a mosaic of clandestine newspapers, flags, brigades and the architect flanked by a man whose testimony reaches me through his daughter. From the shrines of the hidden biography I learned the inscription of the workers – an ideology sustaining itself through a combination of perseverance and patience. My mind is wrought with vengeance ... the necessity to sustain myself with the destruction of the oppressor.

The mosaics surround me – a torrent each claiming a fragment of truth. My fists are still clenched over the petals, reluctant to part with the primordial veneer. A smile, an expression of triumph, an act of insurrection against an oppressive censorship, and suddenly the gentle grey hues dissolve into a cacophony of colour. It was a transition into generations which constructed a memory from the periphery.

'A Poetic Concept of Identity': An Interview with Mapuche Poet David Aninir Guilitraro

A link to my interview with urban Mapuche poet, David Aninir Guilitraro published by Upside Down World.
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3260-a-poetic-concept-of-identity-an-interview-with-mapuche-poet-david-aninir-guilitraro-

The Anonymous Artist (10)

Beyond the walls laden with the inscription of torture, the anonymous artist beheld a poem from the narrow land. Language assumed a disparate dimension, mingling with the marginalised to create a metaphor which floated amongst bright colours to the berated shades of brown striving to survive of the fictitious island. A nation was guilty of treason and society embraced an ephemeral purity. The poem imprisoned treason's voice within its own monotony. As colours from the narrow land descended upon the unwanted nationalities, the sanctimonious society was engulfed in pungent shadows, a nationality persecuted with a reverberation of their own malignant constitution.