* * *
Chile’s nightmare finally ended in 1988. At the beginning of that decade, Pinochet and the regime felt invincible, strong enough to legitimize their rule and regularize their reforms in a new “constitution of liberty.” They put it to a national plebiscite, which may have seemed bold, but with no safeguards for the opposition and balloting, and with human rights violations still occurring, no one pretended it would be a clean election. The government claimed it received 67 percent of the vote, and, with it, Pinochet was granted an eight-year term as president. Another plebiscite would be held at the end of that term. If the people voted in his favor, then he’d have an additional eight years in office. If not, democracy would return. Pinochet always believed he would rule for life.
But the tide began to turn against the dictatorship. The strong economy, a source of great pride and a bulwark of Pinochet’s power, collapsed in 1982. The recession allowed widespread protests to break out, protests that opened up space for a broader section of the population to voice their opposition. Meanwhile, by 1987, Pinochet was the only dictator left standing in the region: Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay had returned to democracy after suffering through their own military dictatorships. Mikhail Gorbachev was introducing democratic reforms in the Soviet Union. Western Europe and even the United States pressured Pinochet to restrain himself.*
Pope John Paul II’s 1987 visit to Chile was a tipping point. He said the Catholic Church must work to bring democracy back to the Chilean people and accused the “dictatorial” government of trampling on human rights and using torture against its opponents. This pronouncement electrified the opposition, as it stripped away the false Chile that the regime tried to present. On one day of his visit, students chanted, “John Paul, brother, take the tyrant with you!” outside a cathedral where he was delivering a homily, until the police’s tear gas, batons, and dogs forced them to run.
The pope reportedly advised Pinochet to resign when they met privately.
The 1988 plebiscite was a yes-or-no vote for one single candidate, General Augusto Pinochet. Under his dictatorship, the Chilean military had been responsible for the murder, disappearance, and death by torture of some 3,197 citizens, with thousands upon thousands more brutally tortured, arbitrarily imprisoned, forced into exile, or subjugated to other forms of state-sponsored terror. Beginning in 1980, seventeen different political parties had revived and formed a rather unified opposition. Ruptures that had once helped open the doors for Pinochet, namely between the Socialists and Christian Democrats, now healed. Their vast grassroots voter registration drive, starting several years before, was vital. Despite worries of violence or fraud, more than 7.5 million Chileans registered to vote. The “NO” campaign was based around their “Happiness Is Coming” slogan—broadcast during slotted TV times in the two weeks leading up to the vote, in ads, in posters and flyers hung up and down the country—accompanied by a graphic of a rainbow.
On October 5, 1988, 97 percent of registered voters participated in the election, a rate that ensured the historic validity of this democratic choice by the Chilean people. It was a relatively orderly process, with few disturbances or complaints. In the end, 54.7 percent voted “no” to Pinochet staying in power, 43 percent “yes.” Spontaneous rallies and celebrations broke out the length of that long, thin petal of a country.
When they realized what had just happened, “there was a sense that a great weight had been taken off our shoulders. I guess it was fear,” explains the poet Rodrigo Rojas, who was seventeen at the time. “We had grown so accustomed to fear without even knowing that it was there. Since the campaign for the ‘no’ was based on the phrase ‘Happiness Is Coming,’ in a way we truly believed in the phrase. Suddenly with this vote we all felt a little bit lighter, much lighter.”*
With the return of democracy came the return of Neruda. The doors of Isla Negra opened again, now to the public, to the world. The Pablo Neruda Foundation took charge of his estate. It was the legal entity Matilde had put in place to protect and organize everything, from their property to his copyrights, as there were no specific heirs to their estate, and she was growing sick. In the years after Neruda’s death, Matilde had championed the preservation of her husband’s legacy as the regime tried to diminish it. Matilde was boldly outspoken against the regime. She died of cancer in 1985 at the age of seventy. Bedridden in La Chascona during her final days, Matilde told her friends that she was happy, eager to return to her Pablo. She was buried next to him in the Santiago cemetery.
Isla Negra had suffered some damage from a small earthquake, flooding, and years of neglect during the dictatorship. By April 1990, all the repairs and transformations had been made for it to be opened to the public as a museum, a casa-museo, as all three of his houses would be. Gabriel García Márquez was one of the many major cultural and political figures who came to the event. Swiss and German diplomats were praised for their countries’ financial contributions to the restoration. The opening of Isla Negra was seen by many as one of the most important, iconic milestones in the transition back to a free Chile.
Today, Isla Negra is treated by many as holy ground. Some visitors experience all his collections as kitsch. But in these spaces, just like in Neruda’s poems, there is room for everyone, from literary pilgrims to those who come as part of a package tour to nearby wineries. As for La Chascona, the house is now one of Santiago’s most popular tourist attractions.
Compañeros, bury me at Isla Negra,
in front of the sea I know, to each wrinkled area of stones
and to the waves
