It was 1960 and the political scene in Chile was unstable, after the biggest earthquake ever recorded, hit the city of Valdivia, in the south of Chile, on May 22.

The earthquake reached 9.5 in magnitude. The tsunami that accompanied the main tremor and the aftershocks left more than 5,000 dead and millions without homes.

The earthquake also affected Hawaii, the Philippines, and Japan. The aftershocks continued 30 days after the actual earthquake continuing to destroy entire neighborhoods and lives.

The economy dropped beyond imagination. People took to the streets without hope and beggars were on every corner of Santiago. More and more shanty towns grew like mushrooms at the outskirts of the capital (Santiago).

In 1959, the year I started my studies at the University, Chile was suffering a recession.

After the earthquake the economy grew at a rate at 2% from 1961-1963. Then another recession from 1964-1965.

International aid from US came to Chile and several other countries.

People will come to my house asking if we will exchange the plastic milk and huge round cans of plastic meat, they say, for real food. The plastic milk were the bags of powdered milk and the round tall cans of plastic meat were cans of Spam donated by US. Nobody bothered to explain to the recipients of goods how to prepare the milk to drink it or the Spam to eat it.

The earthquake was also felt in Santiago which is more than 8 hours by car from Valdivia, the epicenter.

I was preparing for lunch after waking up late that Sunday. I was in the bathroom in front of the mirror using an eyeliner that left a long brown line in my yellow dress when the tremor started. Without letting go of the eyeliner, I ran downstairs, while the books on the bookshelves on the stairs, fell over me.

I was looking for my mother. She was known for panicking when any tremor took place. Tremors in Chile are so often that my father’s and my mission was always to search for my mother before she would run for several blocks not knowing what she was doing. Once, while visiting friends in a southernmost city, an earthquake took place by night. My mother disappeared. We found her in the middle of a square, in her nightgown, at least a block away from the house where we were staying.

This time, at the bottom of the stairs, I found my father holding my mother under the doorway of the living room. On the other side of the hallway, through the glass French doors, I could see the glasses on the table rolling against each other.

It was Sunday lunch time for us, around 3:00 pm.