Free Writing – One Thousand Words
The Day Santiago died by falling on the snow, by Olavo Caiuby Bernardes
The day that Santiago died, there was snow outside. The snow touched his face
when it touched the ground, after a fall. Some people presumed it was a heart attack,
but others thought it was something else. It was a suspicious death. One that
authorities were never able to explain.
Santiago was in perfect health, of good age, and
recently married to Carla, his on-and-off long-term girlfriend. At the time,
although Chilean, he was living in the US while researching for a Ph.D. at
Boston College, in Massachusetts.
Friends and family were baffled by the lack of
explanation for his death. His body had to be immediately transported back to
Santiago de Chile, for proper burial. Santiago, named after the city his
parents were from, was born and died in the same town, Boston (actually
Cambridge, since his parents were studying at Harvard at the time).
His parents, both academics, moved to Cambridge,
MA, in the early 70s, on a research grant granted as an emergency by the Harvard
Faculty, who was concerned about the worsening situation of the Pinochet
Regime. Both his parents were targets of that dictatorship, for their writing
on Political Science and Literature (his father was a Sociologist and Professor
who had worked with Salvador Allende’s government, and his mother was a
Literature and Theater critic, writing for some of the top Chilean newspapers at
the time). They were humanists, friends of all Chilean intellectuals, with his
mother, in particular, being a good friend of Pablo Neruda’s wife, Matilde, the
well-known Nobel Prize poet.
Santiago, born in early 1974, had an older
sister, Carmen, who was three years older and born in their native country.
After the September 11, 1973, Military Coup, his pregnant mother and Santiago's
father were forced to leave the country to the US, where he was invited to do
research at the John F. Kennedy School of Government in Harvard.
They were so homesick most of the time, that
named their son, Santiago, the name of their native city. His father, Jaime,
died as Santiago, in exile, some years later, at not so well-explained
circumstances either, some say out of sadness, some say by assassination from
the Pinochet Regime. He was 48, the same age as Santiago died. Also, after
falling suddenly in the snow in Massachusetts. No autopsy came with a
conclusive result.
Their mother, Carmen Lucia, was devasted, even
though it was still under Pinochet Regime, mid-eighties, she decided to move
back to Chile, to be closer to her family, a year later. She died in the early
2000s, of breast cancer, never remarrying, never getting again involved in
politics, always keeping herself only to close friends and family, and always
with a bit of sadness in her eyes.
Therefore, Santiago from age 11, along with his
sister, lived in Santiago del Chile. They were involved with student politics,
after the re-democratization, in 1990. Santiago as his father graduated in
Social Science, and Carmen, as her mother in Literature, particularly
Comparative Literature, given her time in the U.S.
Santiago had some tough times adjusting back to
Chile, he felt a wave of internal anger about what happened to his father,
showed signs of rebellion, and thought about ending his life, as he wrote in
his diaries. He was able to channel his anger by fighting boxing, which he
learned from a local gym coach.
After graduating from high school, he
backpacked through Latin America and ended up living for a couple of years in
Argentina, where he had some family, and worked with his uncle, Ignacio, at his
local shop. While walking one day from work, he found his father's book at a
look shop, his Ph.D. thesis for the University of Chile had been transformed in
a book, “Estructuras de Poder en los Sindicatos de Chile” (Power Structure in
the Chilean Unions).
He immediately read it and decided to dedicate himself
to his father’s profession, enrolling in the University of Buenos Aires,
already in his early 20s. He moved back to Chile for a Master’s Degree and to
be close to his mother and sister. After getting a Master’s Degree from the
Catholic University in Chile, he dedicated himself to teaching and writing for
local newspapers, also working as a consultant for the Socialist Government of
Michelle Bachelet, in the same fashion his father had done in the 70s.
After
the Conservative government of Sebastián Piñera went to power in 2018, he
decided to go on a sabbatical in the US, where he was awarded a scholarship by
Boston College and was there when the Covid-19 Pandemic hit, not being able to
move back to Chile and delaying his research.
As previously mentioned, in 2022, Santiago died
in Massachusetts, after waking up one day and falling into the snow. Although
never married, he had lived many years with Carla, a Brazilian Academic, who
was studying at the Catholic University in Chile. Back then he was lecturing
part-time as an Assistant Professor in Political Science.
Nobody
understood well. He seemed perfectly healthy, apart from some smoking in the
past (and occasional drugs in his youth). He was never hit with Covid and had
no medical preconditions. Like his father, he had no heart condition (in fact,
both his paternal grandfather and maternal grandfather lived until their 90s).
It is inexplicable what happened to Santiago and his father.
