We were all waiting for somebody to pick us up after school. It was kind of a rainy day and this guy on a bike came right in front of the gate of the school carrying a sack. The sack was suspiciously moving and all the girls start shouting. “Its an animal.” The small door […]

It is hard to remember exactly why my parents took me on a train to go to San Fernando from Santiago but I think it was on the occasion of my baptism. I was only a few months old. It was also my first trip on a train. My parents carried my stroller, my playpen […]

When Filomena learned about the arrest of Antonio in Paris she immediately went to his room and found the smallest piece of clothes that belonged to him. It happened to be an old pair of brief underpants. It was used to cover his sinful parts that got him in trouble, she thought, so it was […]

When Antonio grew up and finished high school, the only thing he wanted to do was to travel. He had developed a big interest in art, particularly sculptures. He use to spend hours just studying the statues at the Palace of Bellas Artes at the Forestal Park. He insisted so much in doing a trip […]

One of my favorite toys was a Meccano (erector set). I guess building machines, cars, cranes was my favorite pastime. I also had a doll that was a rabbit made out of fabric. It was light blue and had a square body with arms and legs attached to it and long ears. His name was […]

When Louis Armstrong came to Santiago Chile, he wanted to walk in downtown. It was summer 1957. In fact, he adventured out of the hotel with other members of his “All Stars” band. I was still a high school student and I had gone to downtown with my mother. We were near the main square […]

As soon as I was sent to the French School for girls I learned that I was “different”. The girls in my classroom obviously had a problem accepting me. I felt like a new hen brought to the corral where the other chickens pick on her. At first I did not realize what it was […]

There I was, holding my paternal grandmother’s left hand and on my way to the stable. In my left hand, very tightly by the neck, a bottle of pisco, which was getting heavier and heavier. The road seemed so long to me and my grandmother so tall. In her right hand my grandmother carried a […]

Once I finished my internship in the south, I came back to Santiago. As a graduate I started to work in a radio station. I was assigned to a desk with a very noisy typewriter. I was supposed to write in no more than 200 words each item of news that the radio reporters in […]

After I did the journalism internship in Santiago, I went to a town in the south of Chile to be an apprentice at the town’s newspaper, El Austral de Temuco. I learned a lot about our native Mapuches in that town, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. However, I realized how unjustly they had been treated […]