Postcards from Santiago — Chile’s great city of upheaval and nostalgia

The neighbourhood of Lastarria reflects the city’s undeterred spirit of revolution. Photo: Janet Heard

By Janet Heard

20 Aug 2024

Worth a visit for its food, wine, art and history, the capital city has been host to writers of great power. It is an imaginative place, which still mourns its lost socialist leader 50 years after a coup.

Santiago has its fair share of turbulence, just like the flight to the Chilean capital where you need to fasten your seat belt as you fly – bumpety bump – over the formidable Andes Mountains.

Upon the LATAM flight from São Paulo landing, I discovered a spirited, uneven edge to the South American city.

Thanks to our beleaguered airline, SAA, which has opened a direct route from Joburg or Cape Town to São Paulo, South Africans can travel to Santiago within about 12 flying hours (excluding layover time). Another plus is that we do not require a visa for Chile.

Walk the city, take a funicular

Santiago is the capital of a country that has fascinated me since varsity days, and of course, writer Isabel Allende’s imaginative, visceral storytelling popped up in my mind during many a conversation and around many a street corner on my short trip.

Staying at the Mercure Hotel along Avenida Libertador General Bernardo O’Higgins, I laced up my takkies and walked the city for a day. Vendors line pavements selling knick-knacks, and there is street food aplenty, from empanadas (puffed pastries) and completo (Chilean-style hot dogs) to alfajores (caramel cookies).

Santiago Barrio Bellavista is a hub of arty shops and cafés. (Photo: Janet Heard)

The viewpoint of Santa Lucia Hill is situated along O’Higgins, as is the Gabriela Mistral Cultural Centre (GAM) and other landmarks. I veer north and upwards through the arty Barrio Bellavista area to La Chascona, the eclectic home of the poet Pablo Neruda and his wife Matilde.

An audio-guided tour provides a narrative of the destructive force of the 1973 coup by dictator Augusto Pinochet, who overthrew the short-lived socialist government of Salvador Allende. The terminally ill Neruda was an Allende ally and his home was thus targeted.

Nearby, a funicular takes visitors up the San Cristobal Hill for 360-degree views. Atop, I am confronted by the imposing force of Catholicism – the Virgin Mary statue towering down on the city.

A statue of the Virgin Mary overlooks the city. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

San Cristobal Hill offers scenic views of the city. (Photo: Janet Heard)

Santiago La Chascona Museum House was the home of poet Pablo Neruda. (Photo: Janet Heard)

Santiago prides itself on cuisine and viticulture.

At Bocanariz in the cobble-stoned, graffiti- and mural-rich neighbourhood of Lastarria, I sample ceviche (fish pickled in lime juice for my starter) and crab linguine (for my main). The wine menu takes up an entire wall, including a varietal only available in Chile, the bold, dark, peppery Carmenère – the “lost grape of Bordeaux” originally native to France.

The next day, to sample local vines, I travel by car to a rural boutique estate, Vina TerraMater, at Isla de Maipo, a grape-growing area about an hour away.

Back on the city streets, remnants of the spirit of the revolution are ever-present on walls, quilts, tattoos and statues. Salvador Allende’s face is memorialised, a nostalgic symbol of hope for a new order that Pinochet exterminated. The scars of his brutal 17-year reign are etched in public displays.

On exhibition walls at the grand National Library across the road from my hotel, newspaper replicas of the first drafts of history depict the upheaval that followed the coup. I am particularly struck by a giant, grainy image of the bespectacled Allende waving from the balcony on the morning of 11 September 1973 when Pinochet charged in – a moment in history that changed everything.

Hoping to fill in historic gaps and compare notes with South Africa, including socio-economic inequities that remain the cause of social tension and upheaval in both countries, I wanted to visit the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, but it was closed on Monday, my only available tour day.

A touch of magical realism

I compensated with a light touch of magical realism by attending a political theatre-of-the-absurd play, El Asilo Contra La Opresion (Asylum Against Oppression), written by my friend, Chilean investigative journalist Alejandra Matus.

Although in Spanish, of which I understand barely a few words, Matus prepped me. It draws on the importance of memory by depicting two Chilean obsessions – Pinochet and Salvador Allende, who have a fictitious friendship in a Miami old-age home, along with Pinochet’s wife, Lucia Hiriart. Matus throws in the late Mexican pop singer Juan Gabriel, who cavorts with kitsch pink-clad dancers in the style of “bim bam bum”, CIA and other agents.

A poster for the Chilean play Asylum Against Oppression. (Photo: Janet Heard)

The neighbourhood of Lastarria reflects the city’s undeterred spirit of revolution. (Photo: Janet Heard)

The full house guffaws at the fable, aimed at getting us to laugh so we don’t forget, so we don’t sweep things under the carpet. The cast performed at the Teatro Nescafe De Las Artes, surrounded by pavement restaurants, bars and bumper-to-bumper traffic.

While watching, a Chilean trait hit me. Pain, loss and displacement are never far off, but Chileans know how to imagine a better life and also how to laugh – a familiar ring back home, and a theme in Isabel Allende’s storytelling, where adversity and resilience conduct a never-ending dance.

Locating a tangible root to the writer’s inventive literature eluded me in Santiago. Matus explained. In essence, Allende (now 82), whose father was Salvador Allende's cousin, was a wanderer living in Peru, Bolivia and Beirut in her infancy.

“She returned to Chile when she was ready to work as a journalist. She moved to Venezuela right after the coup, so she really lived in Santiago for a short period of time, and there is not such a thing like her house here.”

Matus then put into words the figurative connection that rang true. “But the topics Allende touches on, especially in The House of the Spirits, are related to the political events we suffered, so then you can say that anything related to that might connect with her writing.”

The reflective journey home with SAA (a thumbs-up service) entailed first enduring the turbulence of the LATAM flight across the snow-capped Andes to São Paulo. My eyes fastened closed as we were shaken around soon after take-off. My mind wandered to images of the Uruguayan Flight 571 that crashed in the Andes in 1972, forcing rugby players into extreme survival measures until being rescued 72 days later.

A well-travelled Brazilian passenger sensed my anxiety and offered her hand in support. I gripped it tightly until the seat belt light went off, tray tables were lowered and, to much relief, drinks were served. DM

Hosted by the Centre For Investigative Journalism, Janet Heard visited Santiago for the UN World Press Freedom Day conference.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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Walk the city, take a funicular

A touch of magical realism