1989

This photographic shows two woman of fourteen and sixteen years old walking with a Chilean flag, the younger is Claudia, at the left, and her friend, Varinia, at the right. This shoot was taken by a journalist of a clandestine newspaper in March of 1989, in the annually protest march to commemorate the Women’s Day. The picture was used to write a report of the role of the women on the back to democracy and the fight for the freedom on Pinochet’s dictatorship.

My grandfather holds with him this paper since that year, because the smiling little girl who is helping to carry the flag is her first daughter, my mother.

Just a few years ago he shows me the paper, and I feel really happy by many reasons. In first time, she looked like me, and that produce me a very comfortable feel that I don’t know how to exactly explain, was a surprise that only come to me. But the gist of my happiness was the pride of knowing that my mother was a woman of convictions who fight against a dictatorship. She always has been a role model to me and this picture reminds me of all that she means.

¿Public administration character?

Public Administration it’s not a very exciting career with interesting characters, and I don’t feel it like my “career” yet. Maybe Maquiavelo it’s a polemic historic character, but he isn’t a real administrator and I don’t admire him neither. Also, the people who finally graduate of PA, had a pretty big field to play as administrator, but those spheres aren’t mine. So, I’d like to write about a poet, because when I was a child, I really enjoy writing poetry and I published my work in an infantile magazine named Icarito.

When I was a child, I really looked up to Gabriela Mistral. She is a Chilean poetess named Lucila Godoy Alcayaga who born in the Elqui Valley in 1889. She wrote a huge work of poetry, highlighting her love for children and her melancholy and sadness poetry, stressing in suffering and intense feelings. Mistral won the Nobel Prize of literature in 1945. I always admire the sensitivity to write that Gabriela had, the way to sense and describe those feels. Her poetry really broke my hearth. One of my favourite poems is “Caperucita roja”, a crude version of the popular infantile tale “Little red ridding hood”. I take the liberty to quote a fragment of this poem:

"Caperucita ha entrado, olorosa de bayas. 
Le tiemblan en la mano gajos de salvia en flor. 
«Deja los pastelitos; ven a entibiarme el lecho». 
Caperucita cede al reclamo de amor. 

De entre la cofia salen las orejas monstruosas. 
«¿Por qué tan largas?», dice la niña con candor. 
Y el velludo engañoso, abrazado a la niña: 
«¿Para qué son tan largas? Para oírte mejor». 

El cuerpecito tierno le dilata los ojos. 
El terror en la niña los dilata también. 
«Abuelita, decidme: ¿por qué esos grandes ojos?» 
«Corazoncito mío, para mirarte bien...» 

Y el viejo Lobo ríe, y entre la boca negra 
tienen los dientes blancos un terrible fulgor. 
«Abuelita, decidme: ¿por qué esos grandes dientes?» 
«Corazoncito, para devorarte mejor...» 

Ha arrollado la bestia, bajo sus pelos ásperos, 
el cuerpecito trémulo, suave como un vellón; 
y ha molido las carnes, y ha molido los huesos, 
y ha exprimido como una cereza el corazón..."

Violeta

I don’t really like to speak about music, maybe because I think that I know so little about it, that if I try to say something about the topic, I could be embarrassed. However, I don’t use to go to concerts, so I going to write a little of a singer that I like.

My favorite singer is Violeta Parra. She was a folklore singer from a small village next to the city of Chillán. In her life, Violeta gave to born four children. She spent her whole life crossing all the country to recover popular songs and the old tradition of the country people. Her work was a huge contribution to the Chilean music and culture. I like her a lot, because I think she is a very strong woman who never stopped even when she was practically alone and everybody say to her to stop, and what I like about her music is the social content of the letters that she wrote. She has hundred of songs, and its difficult chose one, but it could be “Yo canto a la diferencia”, because it shows the
political thought of Violeta with her singular style of saying things.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afzP8J3eP6M

Hi, my name is Isidora,

And I’m going to introduce you, my viewer, to my biographic blog talking about my born and my childhood. To start, I was born in March 19^th, 1993. My mother gave birth to me at the 5 am o’clock in Puente Alto, a location in the metropolis of Chile, Santiago. The hospital was “Sótero del Río”. My mother was 19 years old.

I don’t remember which house was my first home, cause’ I lived in a lot of places, but I’m going to talk about all of them. Maybe this is not usual, but I can’t locate my first memories in a temporal sequence, that’s the reason because I couldn’t tell you where my first home is. So, I’m gonna use another direction to relate my history, an attachment direction.

The place that I remember with more love, is the house of my grandparents, a little apartment in La Granja where the walls was of bricks and the living, kitchen and dining room where in the same space. The floor was very little, but this doesn’t interest to me at my young age. I was living with my grandparents, Lucy and Angel. I remember how my grandfather roast almonds in a paraffin stove and this is the most pleasurable smell that I save in my memorie.