Disappearing from history (crimes, house, high school)

[RonPrice]

Part 1:

In the last months of my career as a full-time teacher in 1998/99 in Western Australia and the first months of my sea-change and retirement in Tasmania at the age of 55, Augusto Pinochet was back in the news. I had first come across his name and his activity in Chile while teaching high school in Whyalla South Australia in September 1973, the very month I was hired for a position as senior tutor in human relations at the then Tasmanian College of Advanced Education, now the university of Tasmania.

On both these occasions, in the 1970s and at the turn of the millennium, I was so occupied with my 60 hours a week job as a high school teacher and senior tutor, and then 25 years later as a post-secondary teacher as well as my role in the Baha’i community--another people-centred activity--that I did not really appreciate the details of the story connected with this Chilean dictator’s role in politics and contemporary history.

Part 2:

I won’t go into the details of Pinochet’s political role and his personal, military and notorious history in this prose-poem. Readers can easily find that out on the internet or in books should they be interested in the topic. But on watching the doco-drama, telemovie, Pinochet in Suburbia1 last night and on reading some background on his life and on the history of Chile, I came to form a considered opinion—not so much about Pinochet the man as about the importance of international law in the modern world.-Ron Price with thanks to 1SBS TV, “Pinochet in Suburbia,” 11:55-1:30 p.m. 6 June to 7 June 2010.

My world was a hot, intense landscape
in a dry-dog-biscuit of a town far down
at the bottom-end of the world where I
had come as a young man so long ago--
when I heard the name Pinochet---“was
he an Indian?” I thought to myself trying
as I was to survive after falling in holes in
my young adult-life…..I fell in a few more
before I heard that name in the closing years
of that mirabile dictu incredible century.

He’d been a busy man as I had been a busy
man in those years from 1973 to 1999 and
he was a busy man again in suburbia in the
UK1 before he disappeared from history bit
by bit2 while I, too, was disappearing from
history taking up a life in cyberspace much
safer and protected from the slings & arrows
of Shakespeare's words: 'outrageous fortune'.

Part 3:

1 Pinochet was placed under house arrest in Britain and was at the centre of a judicial and public relations battle, the latter run by Thatcherite political operative Patrick Robertson. He was eventually released in March 2000 on medical grounds by the Home Secretary Jack Straw without facing trial. Pinochet returned to Chile on 3 March 2000. The TV program, the telemovie, I watched tonight was centred on this house arrest.

2 On 25 November 2006, after I had given away all PT and casual-volunteer teaching and installed myself as a FT writer, editor and publisher with no name, no fame and no pay-cheque, Pinochet marked his 91st birthday by having his wife read a statement written by him. Read to his admirers it stated in part: "I assume the political responsibility of all that has been done." Two days later, he was again placed under house arrest for the kidnapping and murder of two bodyguards of the then President Salvador Allende who were arrested the day of the 1973 coup d’etat and executed by a firing squad during what was called the Caravan of Death episode. Pinochet died a few days later on 10 December 2006 without having been convicted of any of the many serious crimes of which he was accused.

Note: This is draft #3 and, perhaps, the final edition of this prose-poem.

Ron Price
7/6/'10 to 4/6/'15.

[silent hypnotist]

I am not sure what to think of your post Ron. Were some of your students in some way harmed by Pinochet and needed catharsis?

[RonPrice]

I was just writing, silent hypnotist, about where I was in life when Pinochet came into the news. He had no direct relation to my students, only an indirect relationship with my life, as is the case with most of the news.-Ron Price, Australia

[silent hypnotist]

Well, I guess that in terms of news from overseas I would say that Chernobyl in 1986 was news that had an indirect influence on my life.