After the coup, “we were never the same again”

A provincial boy arrives in the capital to enter university… The story has been repeated – and told – countless times over nearly two centuries, and would be of no interest if it weren’t for the fact that it occurred in the very year that dramatically changed the course of the country: the year 1973.

Ricardo Laval – alter ego of Fernando Letelier Baltierra (Talca, 1955)scriptwriter of the comic “Santiago 1973”, which has illustrations by Gianfranco Fortunatti – comes from Curicó full of dreams, at just seventeen years old, to study a Bachelor’s Degree in History at the Catholic University, staying at the century-old Cardenal Caro University Residenceon Dieciocho Street, just five blocks from La Moneda.

At the same time as it is immersed in the bustling university world at Campus Orientemarvels at the beauty of the city and experiences love for the first time, and will also be a privileged witness to what small and large actors have to say about the events, as intense as they are turbulent, that disturb the city’s atmosphere.

Their adventure will be seen, however, Painfully cut short: the coup against the constitutional government of President Salvador Allende (who lives in first person), the disappearance of his best friend and the abrupt end of his illusions will make him question his place in the world, taking a turn that will only make sense several decades later.

In this adventure, Letelier worked alongside Gianfranco Fortunatti (Santiago, 1985)who was inspired by the realist style with poetic overtones of the French bande dessinée, and shows in great detail the street atmosphere of the city at that time, the result of meticulous iconographic research. The vignettes reproduce the rich architecture of the historic center of Santiago, including several buildings and iconic places that have already disappeared (such as the Il Bosco café or the Diana Games at the Alameda), and the beautiful surroundings of Campus Oriente, the scene of heated ideological debates.

Through its pages parade events of great significance – such as the “tank coup” of June 29 and the destruction of the currency – and others almost unknown, such as the first homosexual protest held on April 22 in the Plaza de Armas, ridiculed and repudiated by the press of all sides. Those were different times… Also historical protagonists, such as the general Gustavo Leighthe Christian Democrat senator Bernardo Leighton (a staunch opponent of the coup) and the president himself Allende.

Both will be present with their work at the Spring Book Festival, which will take place from October 4 to 6 in Bustamante Park in Providencia.

“I thought it would be interesting to tell part of My own experiences as a provincial boy who arrives in the capital at just 17 years old to begin his university life at that crucial moment in our history, fascinating and terrible at the same time,” explains the author.

And he adds that he wanted to show the tragedy of 1973, that “death foretold” of the popular government, from the perspective of a simple “pedestrian” observer (symbolically, the protagonist also appears almost always walking), who although He is not a member of any of the competing parties He has clear sympathies and a clear vision of the process. For this reason, he resorts a lot to the press (real headlines of the time) and to the public discourse of the “big” figures in conflict.

The illustrator adds that starting in 2023 he was working with Letelier on another comic – a project that they applied for this year for an artistic fund -, “and in mid-April he tells me ‘I have an idea that I need to get out, I want to take advantage of the 50 years to tell my story‘”.

Fortunatti is a designer and illustrator with almost two decades of professional experience. Since 2020 he has been self-publishing and sharing his work for free: the unofficial adaptation of the film “Mirageman” (2008-2022, with permission of Ernesto Diaz Espinoza), “1973” y “The assignment” (2021, with stories of Kobal), “e-mail” (2006, with the screenwriter Ricardo Altmann), “In the beginning” (2022, together with Axel Melendez), as well as his own ideas such as “Diary of an unemployed person” (2020, with art by Coyote), “tZunami – Zombies in Pichilemu” (2022) and the anthology “Terrorist” (2022, based on stories rescued from Twitter). Since 2017 he has published his most ambitious work: the series “Compulsory Military Waste””, based on the novel of the same name by Guillermo Reyes Rammsey (www.afortunados.cl/comics).

“I love true storiesabout mundane things, ordinary citizens and especially those that tell you something unknown and that everyone should know. This story was that, an opportunity to tell a little of the history of Chile from a point of view that no one ever takes,” says the illustrator.

Fortunatti also feels that his connection with that time is “in the darkness that surrounds it to this day.”

“I was born in 1985 in an information bubble that burst 25 years later, when I arrived at a friend’s house and they were watching a French documentary about the UP and the agrarian reform that took place months before the coup. I had never seen Chile from a foreign perspective. It awakened in me to see what other things no one had ever shown me.”

“Someone has to show the stories that no one tells, sometimes it can be me.”

“Involuntary extras”

“Santiago 1973” is a “bildungsroman”, a small “coming-of-age novel” which – under the protection of the date – opens a space for nostalgia and reflection. Although without pamphletary messages, it makes clear that “No one in their right mind would want to repeat history.”, and resorts to the sharp words of the “Declaration of the Thirteen”: “The violent overthrow of a constitutional government cannot be legitimized”.

“In my personal career There is a before and after the events – both our own and our collective – of that fateful year: a forced and painful maturation, an inevitable loss of innocence and of many illusions,” adds the author.

“For better or worse, We were never the same again. The raw, senseless violence of the raids and arrests, the malicious omnipresence of espionage and denunciation, made us fearful and distrustful.”

Likewise, the half-century since the events “represent an important milestone, a sufficient distance to look back calmly and reflect on what we experienced.”

“Fernando and I met in Facebook groups for comics and illustration lovers.“We once exchanged a few words,” says the illustrator when describing how they met.

“During the pandemic he was publishing pages from a couple of comics he worked on with other illustrators and I noticed that he was very busy. In March 2023 I was already at a good pace with my self-publishing, but I needed to take it a step further and I said, ‘this old man is active, I’m going to tell him to do something together’, thinking of a short story of 8 or 10 pages to diversify my readership. Of course he was enthusiastic and showed up with an 80-page pre-script full of myths, legends and horror in full color. I gave it a chance and when we had two pages and a couple of weeks of work… ‘Santiago 1973’ appeared.”

“Fernando is very methodical and has very clear ideas. He loves comics. He has specialized in comic scripts, and as a good professional, he makes his own layouts, which are the sketches for the distribution of panels on the pages. Working on these guides and the hundreds of references he looks for make my work much more fluid.”

Published by Cafuné Editorialthis black and white graphic novel is structured in a prologue and four chapters – “April”, “June”, “September” y “October. Epilogue” –, which in seventy-two tight pages unites the evolution of these two parallel worlds: the personal world of the adolescent Ricardo and the national world, with the historical changes hampered by violence, the conspiracies in the shadows and the hateful polarization that contaminates all spheres. Both processes begin with great hopes and end in painful crises, the consequences of which will continue to manifest themselves for many years.

How did the illustrator graphically recreate the era?

“Fernando is an excellent researcher and as a good chronicler, he is super organized with his references. So He filled me with folders of references for each page and each vignette. From the backgrounds to selecting clothes from fashion magazines of the time,” she answers.

“Of course, not everything was as easy as it sounds. The route through Santiago is very well thought out. Half of the places shown do not exist todayand of that non-existent half there are very few photos. We had to improvise. We found very old illustrations of some of the buildings and inserted them into the scenes. I used 3D models for the different vehicles shown and for some of the interior sets.”

For the scenes where the “metro hole” appears – Line 1 was being built under the Alameda at that time – he had to use the few photos that exist and adapt other photos of similar works in London or New York.

Furthermore, one of the stories he self-published (“Mandatory Military Waste”) is set in the same timeline, so the illustrator already had experience looking for references for the streets of Santiago in ’73, which often belong to other latitudes (for example Dublin) and/or to movies.

Meaning

Letelier explains the meaning of the work in a few heartfelt words “Previous Words”:

“Does it matter to rescue these small memories from oblivion? I want to believe so. Because the trajectory of the great actors of this saga has already been shown countless times. The main heroes and villains – it all depends on the bias of the chronicler – are well known and their names, loved or vilified, will remain printed in school texts. But, Who will talk about those of us who were nothing more than involuntary extras, who never intended to be on the front line of any side, who in the midst of the whirlwind tried to continue with our daily lives, meet our modest goals, be happy…?“.

A The Counterexplains that throughout his life he has tried, with varying degrees of success, to keep himself away from activism, something that has obviously brought him some advantages and quite a few disadvantages.

“Of course I come from a left-wing family – my father was a communist ‘with a red card’ – and my political ideas have never been a mystery. We had more than one problem after the coup. In the following decades I have taken to the streets to march at various important moments, but without pigeonholing myself under partisan banners,” he reveals.

For him, the fact that he was a rootless boy who didn’t know anyone when he arrived in the capital and who didn’t manage to entrench himself served to show the reality of 1973 in an almost neutral way, recalling with period documents that, despite those who have tried to deny it, a memorable process was experienced here, drowned by powerful enemies on both sides.

“The steamroller of time is relentless and it makes the facts dilute, the details become imprecise and finally they disappear almost without us noticing, as furtively as those of us who lived through them are leaving and despite everything we come out ahead. Others were not so lucky. Victims of a feverish hatred, they were torn away never to return by the exclusive bad fortune of being in the wrong time and place. Will anyone be able to make sense of the absurd deaths, the unresolved disappearances of so many innocent people? Will it be enough for the mourners to talk about regrettable errors, collateral damage…?” the author asks in the introduction.

Challenges

Letelier has been a professor at various schools and universities in the country, along with many other activities: radio scriptwriter and producer, cultural manager, workshop facilitator, advertising copywriter, editor, composer of popular music. As a fiction author, after several failed projects, he has only begun to publish in the present decade: he is responsible for the scripts of the webcomics “Closed!!” (The Disconcert2020, with art by Rodrigo Mundaca) y “Huitranalhue” (published between 2021 and 2023, with art by Huicha, Jose Huichaman Estay). In 2022, his story “Wake up” received an honorable mention in the XXIII Vitamayor International Literary Contest, of the Cultural Corporation of Vitacura (@fernando letelierb).

When asked about the challenges of creating the work, he answers that in his case it was “being able to link the personal with the collective, establishing a parallel that I hope will be evident to whoever reads the novel.”

“That relationship happened in real lifealthough it was also challenging to organize the facts into a coherent and hopefully engaging dramatic narrative. That is why, as I point out at the beginning of the book, there are ‘details that have been fictionalized for the benefit of the story, anecdotes that perhaps happened in a different way or at different times’. Hence the resource of the “alter ego”.

“It’s me, but not completely… It is about connecting with many others who lived through similar circumstances. On the other hand, this work was initially conceived as a graphic novel, since we wanted to revive the capital with the atmosphere of that time, hence the title ‘Santiago 1973’, because the real protagonist is the city, its people, and this visual rescue – which meant exhausting documentation work due to the little time we had – is by far the main challenge we faced.”

For Fortunatti, the main challenge when working on comics is always time, “and here what Fernando was asking me was really crazy, since the book had to be published in September to work.” A 60-page graphic novel and no more than three months to work. “But this opportunity seemed so important to me that I said ‘come on, let’s do it.’”

Illustration

Why do the authors believe that The events of the UP and the coup are still so “alive”?

“Hay too much impunity“Too much denialism and too much ignorance,” Fortunatti responds.

For Letelier, meanwhile, it is because “social conditions, despite the undeniable advances of the last 34 years, remain essentially the same as then: there is a stubborn, very obstinate oligarchy, which refuses to give up its alleged ‘privileges’and a majority of ‘unconscious rabble’ who suffer below, fighting every day just to be able to make ends meet.”

“This discouragement, coupled with the crafty distortion of information by those who control most of the media, leads to people being confused in their electoral decisions and injustice being perpetuated. The events of the last few days demonstrate once again that That minority that controls us is capable of resorting to anything – corruption, intimidation, manipulation – to continue ruling from the shadows,” he laments.

That’s why, like most Chileans, Letelier lived through the social upheaval of 2019 with great hopes for changeOn the last page of “Santiago 1973” he allowed himself to appear walking with his wife outside the GAM, admiring the graffiti of the Outbreak.

“Everything after that saddens me.“And it stupidly confirms what I already said: there is a sector that will never abandon its pretensions of controlling the country as if it were a fiefdom, and they will use all resources, even the most crooked, to maintain their control. They did it in 1973, throughout the years of dictatorship, and they repeated it during the citizen revolt and afterwards…”, he says.

Fortunatti, for his part, He lived the revolt on the streetand for months he went out to document with camera in hand.

“No one was going to take advantage of my ignorance to invent a truth if it was up to me. I have an extensive gallery that shows all the nuances of the protest that lasted for months. It was a very personal mission and dangerous for my physical integrity, motivated precisely by documentary journalism that had opened my eyes.”

And concludes:

“There are still bastions of the dictatorship that must be erased and that led us to the outbreak.”