The powerful root of these convictions can be traced in part to the fact that Neftalí’s political and philosophical thought as an adolescent emerged during an especially vital, transformational period in the history of Chilean thought in the 1910s. It was a time that incubated a new generation of philosophical and political ideas (including anarchism, socialism, and, slowly, Marxism). This important segment of Chilean history was sparked by Chile’s 1910 centennial as an independent republic. The event led to a significant amount of soul-searching—the country was not in a celebratory mood. Chileans had achieved a hundred years of independence, but the economy was in a dismal state, and society was rife with disease, poverty, crime, and squalor, leading to mushrooming tenements in Santiago and labor unrest from pent-up demands not being met by a rather aristocratic-led government. These were the years of the “social question,” the pre-paralysis of the political system, with many Chileans asking, “Who are we?”
Alejandro Venegas, a thirty-nine-year-old schoolteacher who traveled the length of Chile in search of an answer to this question, perhaps put it the most passionately in his book, Sinceridad: Chile íntimo en 1910 (Sincerity: Intimate Chile in 1910):
A deplorable neglect continues toward the people: we have armies, warships, fortresses, cities and ports, theaters and racetracks, clubs, hotels, buildings and public promenades, monuments and (we’ve got the most vain of them all) opulent magnates, lords of true dominions, who live in stately, sumptuous palaces . . . but not far from the theaters, gardens, and lordly residences live the people, that is to say nine-tenths of the population of Chile, plunged in the most atrocious economic, physiological, and moral poverty, and degenerating rapidly through excessive work, poor diet, lack of hygiene, extreme ignorance, and the most vulgar vices.
There had been a remarkable rise of liberalism in Chile during the previous century, its strength and breadth relatively unique to Chile among its neighbors. It resulted in a deepening debate regarding the role of church and state, within politics and society in general and within the educational system most acutely. Such was the stage on which positivism appeared, a philosophy that aimed to secularize society. It was a primarily anticlerical philosophy that emphasized human thought instead of religious thought; the word “positive” denoted knowledge obtained from the observable world. Championed by intellectuals such as José Victorino Lastarria, positivism espoused that man should seek happiness within the finite boundaries of the known world.
The first fusion of Neftalí’s literary ability with sociopolitical thinking notably tapped directly into this special, fluid period of new thought in Chile. On the very day he turned thirteen, perhaps on the back patio of their adjoining houses before his fiesta de cumpleaños, an excited Neftalí, with faint mustache hair barely starting to appear on his skinny face, handed Orlando an op-ed piece he had just written.
Orlando, dark skinned and short, read it over quickly, then more slowly. With a brimming smile, he told his nephew that, yes, he would publish it in La Mañana. It was the best possible gift for Neftalí, dispelling at least for a moment the habitual unhappiness that haunted him.
The work impressed Orlando with its idealistic and stylistic merits, and also because the thoughts came from someone so young. Entitled “Entusiasmo y perseverancia” (“Enthusiasm and Perseverance”), it began:
These two are the factors that contribute principally to the rising and enhancement of the people.
How many times do beneficial ideas and work fall to the ground, victims of little enthusiasm and perseverance, which put into practice would bring forward an abundance of goods for the countries that would adopt them!
He goes on to write:
There are philosophies in this present century that just try to spread enthusiasm and perseverance, and their books are true, sincere, and eloquent, which if read by all, especially by the working class, would bring great benefits to humanity.
Neftalí was reflecting on the realities he saw around him, from the railroad workers to those struggling in the shanties on the outskirts of town, from the mistreatment of the Mapuche he witnessed every day to the injustices he’d heard about in Lota. Furthermore, despite his youth, some aspects of Neftalí’s piece relate directly to the crisis of conscience sparked by the centennial, vocalizing in his personal manner the fact that there was something seriously wrong with the country and that the new philosophies were more humane. In broad, abstract terms, he was laying down a solid foundation, both for the reader and for himself as a writer and thinker.
Neftalí was directly in tune with this vanguard liberal vision that would continue to develop intellectually and politically in a manner unique to Chile. Despite periods of harsh repression of those who subscribed to it, this tendency would continue to flourish, taking on different forms at different stages, until it crested with the democratic election of the Marxist-Socialist president Salvador Allende in 1970, a victory in which the poet from Temuco played a public part.
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In his early teenage years, there was another social struggle that captured Neftalí’s attention: girls.
Upon first sight, Amelia Alviso provoked an acute anxiety within Neftalí that would not ameliorate. The two met when he was about thirteen. A friend who knew her later in life described her as “a very beautiful woman, dark skinned, with . . . black eyes . . . a charming personality. Sexy. She played the piano very well, and she was very artistic.” In Temuco, her parents owned an electric plant that lit up the city.
Amelia’s parents were in fact one of the wealthiest couples in town, and they forbade their daughter to spend time alone with Neftalí because his father was a lowly conductor on the state railroad. Crushed,
