"In this case, or in general?" pipes The Boss. "Usually it is my fault. Or at least my bosses tell me so." Laughter reanimates the group.
"The Millenium Dome in London was a ... white elephant. Do you know what this is, white elephant?" The Boss explains. "We say it in Chile. It is when a thing that was thought to be great has turned out to be one big failure." He's a history buff, a pleasant guy with deep red cheeks and bright white hair.
"We call it a "folly" in English," I dictate slowly, lingering on the sounds as I scribble the letters onto the whiteboard. "Whose fault was the folly, the white elephant, in London?" I ask.
"The designers," chimes Saleswoman One.
"The event planners," from Saleswoman Two.
"Mine," from The Boss.
"Yours?" My eyebrow arches and I smile. I picture him as a mischevious grandpa. I like the way his cheeks get redder when he tells jokes. "Have there been other follies, white elephants, in Chile?" I probe.
"The Congress building. It is in Valparaiso. It wasn't before." The Boss has changed his tone. He looks like he wants to say something more, but either has decided not to or doesn't know how.
"Why did the building move location?" I want to get him to explain something (I think) I already know. I've been told previously that a lot of the government buildings were moved from the center of Santiago to other neighboring towns, so that if there ever were an attack on the Capitol, it would not wipe out all government branches at once.
What I didn't know, and what I was about to find out, was that was a very small part of the story, and a very polite way to tell it.
September 11th, 2001. Americans know this as the day America paid for all its great white elephants in foreign relations. Two big symbols of capitalism came falling down neat as dominoes. We plummeted with the mistakes we had made up to that morning, and we've plummeted with potential follies since: expensive war and risky dealings have contiributed to costly recession. Tea Party rhetoric has stripped constitutional rights in several states. Fear politics are in session in the States.
"Why did the building move location?" The Boss needs time to formulate a response. "I think it was a political move," he begins, slowly. "He wanted to destroy the symbol of a centralized government. Moving Congress was his way of doing so. But there was no Congress."
"He?" I ask. I know where this conversation is now going. I am scared to go there.
Scared or not, The Boss does. "Pinochet," he whispers.
September 11th, 1973. Chile is deep into its second year with the world's first peacefully installed Socialist Head of State, Salvador Allende. Economic problems have arisen in the Socialist turnover. Politics become tense with poverty.
"There was no bread," Saleswoman Two whispers. She, like her voice, seems very far away. "I can remember that there was no bread. I was so hungry." I can't tell if she means before or after the coup. She doesn't elaborate.
Salvador Allende makes desperate attempts over the radio to assure the Chilean people that Pinochet's military group will not take power. The last transmission, shortly after 8:00 A.M., contains strong political pleas to the proletariat. Refusing to surrender his government, Allende shoots himself in La Moneda.
"I was in The Army. Very young. I want to see both sides...I can see both sides to what happened," The Boss takes control of the conversation again.
I had hit upon one hell of an elephant in the room. Stupidly, stubbornly, I keep on trampling through fields of questions. "What do you remember? About that day?"
Gemeinshaft, a sociological term and German word meaning "community", would explain my deep-seated desire to make comparisons between Chile and the United States. The shared tragedies of September 11th always stand out most in my mind. I remember the silence that day in school as we watched the news. As we watched people choose to jump to their deaths instead of burn in a building. So terrifying, there was nothing to be said. Islamic fundamentalists had called us out on our mistakes, or what they saw as our mistakes. That day, we couldn't defend ourselves. We couldn't explain how we screwed up bad enough to deserve something so horrifying.
I imagine that silence spreading over Chile thirty years ago - a silence so thick that even today, even in this conference room, our voices haven't risen beyond hushes.
"My friend was shot. His name was David." On the other end of the classroom sits the Financier. He keeps mostly to himself. "It happened during a protest on a bridge. All of us were shocked."
"I was detained," he continues. "For expressing my ideas. It was horrible. Horrible."
"I know a man in the Army, my friend. He had to shoot another man. He received orders." The Boss offers this as an irrefutable excuse to murder. The Financier's lips snarl as he sits quiet in the corner.
I think about what I would have done. And really, the more I think about it, the more I understand how this man shot the other man, and how my student could excuse it by pointing out that his friend was just following orders. My brain becomes a question motonoton. Whose fault is it? America? Pinochet? Chileans? Conservatives? Socialists? When did it start? Why didn't it stop? How could you not follow orders? Wasn't a gun at your head, too? At least proverbially? Is it your life or theirs? But, how could you not rise up? How could you not stop the violence? How could you not?
Very suddenly, I am turned upon. "This was America's fault. You committed a great folly providing aid to Pinochet," The Boss deadpans. "America's problem is that it always needs to interfere.
"America holds a very high double standard with human rights," jackals the Financier. "And no one ever suffers. Your wealth protects you."
"Even now, what is Obama doing for us?" The Saleswomen's eyes gleam. They circle in on me. "What does America ever do for South America except start wars?"
The community and connection I want - the trust I thought my students had given me in agreeing to discuss such a sensitive issue - turns out to be completely false. They don't want to try and figure things out with me. They don't want a conversation about change and hope. They want blood.
I have lots I can say in response - I wasn't even born yet when the military coup took place; I don't vote; it's not "Americans" who are at fault, but rather our government, and as much as we are a democratic nation, we don't really get a say. But all I feel like saying is "sorry." So I do. I apologize. I take on the folly.
And that's all they want, it seems, is admittance and a person to blame. Something that will exhonerate them. Something they can look at and say, "I didn't do this. It was you."
I look at The Boss, at the Saleswomen, at the Financier. Eyes have glossed over. Mine included.
The Boss, red cheeked, drops a tear.
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