In the summers of his adolescence, after the cold muck of winter had passed, Neftalí would often wander Temuco’s dirt streets alone, lost in thought. He was often oblivious to the sources of inspiration around him: the stunning snowcapped Llaima volcano off in the distance or the stimulating wild blue Cautín River running through town. His gaze was turned inward and only occasionally would something strike his eye, like the life-sized brown wooden horse in the saddlery shop. He’d stop and look at it through the window: it was precious, he’d write later, stoic in its stillness, seemingly “proud of its shiny skin and first-rate tack.” When he grew bold enough, Neftalí would even go inside, stretch out his little hand, and touch its soft snout.
This timid boy’s bond with this wooden horse was quite remarkable, as his detour to touch it on his way to school became an almost daily ritual. His innocent imagination drew him to this horse, which, unlike strong, fast, flesh-and-blood horses—working or wild—was “too precious to be exposed to the winds and rains of the world’s southern reaches.” This sheltered horse was always there for him, always quiet and still just like him, but also “proud” in its wooden stature.
One of Neftalí’s favorite places in Temuco was Orlando Mason’s rickety wooden office. Neftalí thought of Orlando as un tío, an uncle, though they were in fact stepbrothers (as Orlando was Trinidad’s son, adopted by the Masons). Orlando was now in his early twenties. A noted poet and journalist, he spent his days running a radically progressive newspaper in Temuco. Orlando was a boisterous anarchist, which was a relatively common ideology then in Chile. His small paper, La Mañana (The Morning), lashed out against injustices, such as the plight of the middle class, the continued oppression of the indigenous Mapuche (in particular the plunder of their land by crooked lawyers), and the abusive power of the police.
Orlando was young and unruly, but he had enormous talent, drive, and intellect. Beyond the newspaper, he was gaining prestige as an orator and poet, being invited to social events and even Temuco’s theater to speak with his dramatic flair. Neftalí would watch, mesmerized. Orlando’s passionate idealism struck a chord in Neftalí. He was more than just an uncle: he was a hero and a romantic, revolutionary inspiration. As Neruda wrote later in life, “Orlando Mason protested against everything. It was beautiful to see that paper, among such brutal and violent people, defending the just against the cruel, the weak against the arrogant, the overbearing.”
What Orlando was protesting, defending, and reacting to on and off the pages of his newspaper—and in turn inspiring Neftalí to recognize—were issues that many Chileans were concerned about at the time. In Temuco, specifically, Orlando and others were disturbed by the horrific treatment of coal miners, many of them Mapuche, toiling in the small town of Lota, in tunnels that extended under the Pacific Ocean. Their workday extended from six A.M. to six P.M., with a twenty-four-hour shift on the weekends. Workers were often paid in tokens that could be used only in the company store.
The barbaric conditions seemed even more outrageous in contrast to the immense wealth flaunted by the owners of the mine, the Cousiño family, one of the country’s richest. Matías Cousiño, the patriarch, had started his enterprise with silver mines in the north, and now he was making a fortune off of the Lota mines and other exploitations he extended through the region. The great steamships that came across the Strait of Magellan would stop off in Lota to refill their coal. Cousiño’s family designed an elaborate, refined French-style park, more than thirty acres, filled with Greek statues and flora from all over the world.
In contrast to the park was the tragedy of child labor: pale kids between eight and sixteen years old, with emaciated faces and bodies, worked for twelve hours a day. The smallest were put to work in the mines as lamp holders and porters, often huddled in a corner in the darkness, inhaling poisonous fumes.
The groundbreaking social activist writer Baldomero Lillo, whose father was a coal miner in Lota, wrote stunningly stark firsthand accounts of these conditions. His classic short-story collection Sub-Terra shows the social condition in stirring prose:
With a glance, the penetrating eyes of the foreman judged the feeble body of the boy. His slender appendages and his childlike lack of awareness . . . gave him an unfavorable impression . . . He didn’t consider him apt to work in the mine. His father begged, arguing that among six people in his family, only one was working. Finally, the foreman placed him at a sluice gate, replacing the cart driver, squeezed in a tunnel . . . The mine never let go of those who chose it, and like new chain links that replaced the old and withered ones in a never-ending chain, there below, children replaced their parents.
The book was published in 1904, the year Neftalí was born. Years later, little progress had been made, and Orlando worked tirelessly to spread the same message. He wrote in defense of those beaten down by the wrenching poverty of Temuco and the surrounding area. Poverty beat those souls down just as the rain beat down as they walked through muddy streets, holes in their shoes.
Influenced by Orlando and others, Neftalí’s social conscience grew apace. Tío Orlando was showing him how to express
