SANDRA NEGRAES BRISOLLA

Cas we no longer fit into the Panamanian embassy in Santiago de Chile - we were more than 300 people in an apartment of 60 or 80 square meters - and there was no concrete prospect of when they would take us to Panama, it was necessary to take an unusual step in these situations: they decided to transport us to a larger location, more suitable to accommodate this entire population of asylum seekers, including so that daily tasks could be organized for the survival of the group. Until then we were fed with sandwiches and pizzas brought to us from outside, but this was very expensive and required a lot of work. On the other hand, the embassy's two bathrooms had a growing line at the door. The air in the outdoor area was insufficient, even though smokers no longer smoked. The presence of several children and pregnant women made the situation even more dramatic.

It was a happy idea to rent the house of Theotônio dos Santos, a sociologist from Minas Gerais who had been on the list of those who should present themselves to the military in the first few days, and who was in asylum with his wife and children, as the new headquarters of the embassy. from Panama. Theotônio had just built a house on a large plot of land, and the place was ideal to accommodate all these people.

When transporting the staff to the new headquarters of the embassy - a Panamanian flag had been placed in a very visible place - there was a lot of nervousness, as the soldiers who took us to the buses were quite hostile to us and provided a crowd of people who cursed us as we passed by. Especially when the buses headed to the Vila Olímpia neighborhood, where the National Stadium was located, several people on the buses were convinced that we were going to jail from there. What a coincidence that Theotônio's house was in the same neighborhood as the stadium, which was serving as an improvised prison, where the greatest atrocities were committed!

It was a relief when the buses stopped and we saw that the destination was indeed a large house with plenty of land. We were able to occupy all the available space in the house, everyone could have their own place to sleep, blankets were distributed to everyone - which ended up causing an epidemic of conjunctivitis, as they were redistributed to different people each night. And we also managed to have contact with the outside world for the first time, as we could receive visitors at the front door, even though the new embassy was surrounded by the Chilean army. That was when I managed to send news home through a Brazilian friend who came to see me and was leaving for Argentina. As soon as she arrived in Buenos Aires, she took the time to call my parents and reassure them about my situation.

In Brazil, the parents who knew each other were somehow related to each other and my mother communicated daily with the mother of the girl who lived with me and who was one of the pregnant women at the embassy. She lived in Brasília and, since the moment of the coup, she hadn't heard from her daughters - my friend's sister also lived in Chile with her husband - and she had gone into crisis, she didn't want to go to work. My mother insisted that by working, time passed faster and they would soon know where and how we were.

When they heard about my whereabouts, I did not anticipate that there would be such communication and I did not inform her that both she and her sister, as well as her husband and brother-in-law, were with me at the embassy, ​​safe and sound. My mother asked my messenger about my friend, but she didn't know anything - in fact they didn't know each other. These moments of external contact were so quick and furtive - there was fear for the integrity of those outside the embassy - that we didn't think very carefully. There were so many friends and acquaintances who were with us that we would have to draw up a list of them to notify relatives and friends, and none of this had been thought of when they suddenly informed me that there was a visitor for me. But, mainly, it didn't occur to me that they were in contact, my mother in São Paulo and my friend's mother in Brasília!

A few days passed before my friends were able to get a messenger and finally her mother was informed and was reassured.

At home, in Brazil, the atmosphere was very tense: the long time without news, when my parents thought about going to Chile several times, but they knew that would be crazy, as they didn't even suspect where they could find us. Furthermore, my mother's aunt, over 90 years old but completely lucid, lived with my parents and was elated by Pinochet's coup. Extremely religious, Aunt Guió had interesting theories about social injustice. He said, for example, that the poor suffer much less, as their children work and are able to earn an income that is greater than that of the middle class, whose members, in addition, have to dress well and, therefore, have greater expenses and suffer a lot more! There was no point arguing, as my mother did, that the poor house must be very different from everyone else's house, where children are born and take 14 years before they are old enough to work!

When my brother said to him:

- "But, Aunt Guió, Christ shared bread with the poor!" - she immediately replied:

- Not divided, multiplied! - within its irrefutable logic.

Because this aunt spent her days in front of the television, exulting about the coup that "was going to end communism in Chile", without being aware of the drama that afflicted my family, without news of my whereabouts!

A friend even suggested to my mother: - Kick that old woman out!

But my mother immediately responded: - Do you think I'm going to send my aunt, a 90-year-old woman, out of my house?

But, luckily, when the rumor spread that I was dead, it had already been several months since the coup, and I was living in Argentina and had spoken to my parents that same week, so they were able to immediately deny the truth of this fact! If it had been back then, I don't know what uproar the rumor could have caused!

---------------------------
Sandra Negraes Brisolla, retired professor and volunteer at the Department of Scientific and Technological Policy at Unicamp, lived in Chile from 1969 to 1973.

Top