Free Writing – The Day Santiago died by falling on the snow, by Olavo Caiuby Bernardes

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.