Chile

From the Culture of Confrontation

In 1969, two soft drinks sparked an episode worthy of the Cold War in Chile. The protagonists of this new clash were products from the same company, the essence of the image of imperialism, The Coca-Cola Company. That year, the company was introducing Sprite to Chile and the distributors decided to launch the soda with an aggressive television campaign incorporating music and appealing to popular mass culture. They decided to sponsor a primetime series that was the product of the Cold War: Misión imposible. With dramatic and superlative "special effects" in an era in which these still produced amazement, the television series presented a world clearly divided between the good guys and the bad guys. Advertising for the new soft drink played with rapid images of lights and shadows accompanied by music to evoke a tropical dance floor.

During the same months, an important songwriter-singer of the Nueva Canción Chilena, the important folk and protest song movement, was also evoking the world of the Caribbean and dedicated Son a Cuba to the tropical island. Victor Jara paid homage to Cuba, its people, culture and its revolution, expressing admiration and sympathies for its achievements. In his verses, he referred to soft drinks and to the most emblematic, Coca Cola. He sang, " To drink pure rum, but without Coca-Cola, to Cuba, to Cuba, to Cuba, I'll go." To remove oneself from the sphere of Coca-Cola appeared virtually a gesture of liberation. The anti-Coca-Cola song was typical of the native criolla counterculture, with other examples such as Quilapauyún's record Por Vietnam. In Son a Cuba, Víctor Jara said to the Cubans "our Sierra(Maestra) is the elections," demonstrating in this manner the intentions of the Chilean left to gain power through elections in 1970. It was the option of the Chilean themselves who believed in the political system. As we know, Salvador Allende won the elections and managed to take office as president in spite of the operations mounted against him, including the assassination of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army. Thus began a process that despite its brevity and tragic end was nevertheless unique and extraordinary.

I've recalled the advertising, a television series, soft drinks and music because they are expressions of a modern popular mass culture promoted through the media in Chile and the world of the 20th and 21st centuries. This popular culture that Allende's government of Popular Unity interpreted in festive code in many cases and with which it encountered an extremely violent end of the fiesta that morning on Tuesday, September 11, 1973. In the years between the "popular triumph" and the final crisis in Chile, a process of valorization of popular expression took place, as never seen previously in national history. It was most certainly the culmination of a large process of a lively popular imaginary, far from the stereotypes that showed an idyllic rural world with willow trees and happy peasants. On the contrary, it made evident that the rural area of Arauco was passing through hard times -Arauco tiene una pena, that Santiago was not immune to them- Santiago penando está-and that Chile borders on the center of injustice al centro de la injusticia, to use just a few titles from the songs of Violeta Parra, one of the protagonists of this process. During the almost three years of the Popular Unity government, popular culture experienced a unique moment. There was a certain sense of fiesta, of more or less continuous celebration, joined with a certain sense of volunteerism and a clear utopian tendency. In the Chile of 1973, there was not only conflict, rupture and violence. There was also happiness, fiestas and hopes. It was doubtlessly a polarized field, but in the same fashion, it must be recognized that it was an impassioned and sincere one in its interpretations. The idea of a Chilean path to socialism or the opposing slogan, "Chile is and will be a country in liberty" - ¡Chile es y será un país en libertad! -coincide in their appreciation of what is Chilean, the idea that the country has a democratic culture that, probably, everyone idealized. Above all, there existed the possibility of dissent and to express freely this dissidence: To denounce the newspaper El Mercurio without fear of reprisal. To be able to present divergent visions of the world and to trust that we can think of our own solutions The military dictatorship, whether for its unprecedented violence unleashed to combat dissidence or whether for the sheer length of its tenecious hold, managed to produce a profound and lasting change in Chile. If the democratic memory was indeed capable of resisting and giving life to a daily diet of protest and resistance in the 1980s, the inclusion of the country in the scenario marked by unbridled neoliberalism affected our way of seeing the world in a decisive manner. Chilean popular culture today must forcefully resist the laws of the market and indifference towards national traditions. Chile "bought" the complete package of U.S. culture from the onslaught of the malls to urban segmentation. What is worse is that it lost the clarity and the authenticity of the popular culture in the 60s and 70s because since the time of the dictatorship and even more with the restoration of democracy, Chile has become a country of facades.

The soft drink that sponsored Misión imposible is still being sold. Its intelligent and attractive publicity campaigns have as a slogan, "Image isn't anything; thirst is everything," concluding with an emphatic, "Obey your thirst; drink Sprite!" Chile, however, has turned into an "anti Sprite" country in the sense that it is the negation of the above-mentioned ad campaign. Today, the slogan in Chile appears to be "Image is everything; thirst-for justice, for truth, for equity, for respect-is nothing." Instead of "obey your thirst," we are invited to be essentially functional and to buy everything. Popular culture, in its essence vibrant and capable of adapting to change, has tried to recuperate spaces of genuine expression. However, and as a projection of the dicatorship with its triumphalist line, in Chile, the popular values live under the regime of TSV-todo se vende-everything's up for sale, the strict complement of TLC-todo lo compro)-everything can be bought. The voice of Victor Jara and the frankness of Violeta Parra are lacking; the honeyed discourse of development with equity is heard all too often, and the need for respect for our people is urgent.

Claudio Rolle, a Chilean historian, teaches at the Instituto de Historia at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He is the editor of Historia del Siglo XX chileno, Editorial Sudamericana, 2001.

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