After I left the Parochial School, my parents were concerned that I was not learning more about the Catholic faith so they asked me to enroll in the Catholic Religion class that was starting in my school. It was around 1955 or so. This class was offered at “La Maisonnette”, my school from 1948 to […]

The first experience I remember with the Pacific Ocean was incredible. I was 4 years old, and my parents took me to play with the sand, and I learned how to wade in the waves. My parents enjoyed remembering the first time I went by myself to the border of the ocean and a big […]

Chilean history of powerful women started with Janequeo. She was a Mapuche warrior, and tribal chief, who fought against the Spanish in 1587. Legend says that she directed an army to attack the Fortress of Puchunqui in the South of Chile. She won! Another powerful Chilean woman was Eloisa Diaz Insunza Eloisa was born on […]

My mother had natural, spontaneous abortions twice before I was conceived. It had been a period of 11 years since they were married in 1931, and they still could not have a baby. So, my parents prayed to the Virgin of Lourdes about having a child. I was born on February 11, 1942 the same […]

(Award-winning work at the Literary Academy, about two modern characters that represent the tendencies of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Written when I was 15 years old when I was in the equivalent to 11th grade of high school.) (“The golden dawn is mine” sentence comes form a poem from Ruben Dario, famous poet from […]

General De Gaulle, then President of France, visited Chile between September 29 and October 2nd of 1964. He was the first French President to visit Chile. De Gaulle and his wife traveled by sea on the Colbert cruiser. The Croiseur Colbert C611, an anti air cruiser, was the official sea transport of General Charles de […]

I remember that my first argument did not end well. I was still at the parochial school when a girl called Pura, who we all knew was very rich, said something about my father. The strange thing is that I do not remember what she exactly said about my father but, for an instant I […]

As a child, I had all kinds of nose and throat related illnesses, as almost every child in Chile does, due to the climate. When I was 9 years old, I was diagnosed with tonsillitis. So the doctor said that tonsils had to come out. I was taken to a hospital and prepared for the […]

At our house in Santiago, we had a mailman who would ring the bell and deliver letters and receipts for packages. The man always looked tired and smelled like alcohol. In fact, some neighbors referred to him as “the pickle” meaning that he kept himself submerged in alcohol. But packages were not delivered. The mailman […]

One day, while still working at the Public Relations office at the University of Chile, I was assigned to go interview a scientist that had just retuned from the US. He had obtained a scholarship at Stanford University because of his work in Chile on DNA. When I met him, he had a white coat […]