Kerala - Thrissur   

Reliving the horrors of Chilean coup

Scenic designer Eduardo Jimenez (right) with actor Rosabel Huguet.

THRISSUR: Eduardo Jimenez's eyes suddenly flashed with anger and pain when he recalled the 1973 Chilean coup d'état.

He was 17 years when armed forces led by General Augusto Pinochet ousted the democratically elected Salvador Allende government. Later, Allende was found dead in the presidential palace. Witness accounts claim that he committed suicide.

Mr. Jimenez, an internationally-renowned theatre scenic designer from Chile, who is here to take part in the Third International Theatre Festival of Kerala (December 22 to 31), recalled the horrors of the coup and the severe human rights violations that marked the military dictatorship that ran his country till 1990.

Mr. Jimenez's family was close to Salvador Allende's sister and was involved in the activities of socialist groups.

On September 8, 1973, two days before the coup, Mr. Jimenez's father fled to Czechoslovakia. Towards the end of 1973, Mr. Jimenez left Chile and lived in exile in Argentina for the next 12 years.

“I am an Argentinean in spirit. I learnt arts and developed a career as a designer while living in Argentina,” he said.

He was a scenic designer for films directed by Mario David and Pedro Sabastaki before he turned to theatre.

He describes himself as a radical Communist and believes that theatre has a social role.

“Capitalism is spreading its tentacles over Latin America. In Chile, schools are devoting less time to teaching humanities. I see this as a capitalist strategy, a move to create people who do not think. A society that forgets its history and erases its memories cannot progress,” he stated.

‘Las Indias', a six-hour stage production that he would design under the direction of Elias Cohen and enact at the International Theatre Festival of Kerala, would touch on the experiences of the common man, the raw energy that dictates life in the street.

The production refers to some of the milestones in Latin American history: voyages of Christopher Columbus; Cuban revolution; paintings of Frida Kahli and Diego Rivera; metaphors of Neruda and Eduardo Galeano; the charms of tango and capoeira; the breathtaking music of Bossa Nova, Bolero and Cumbias; and the spirit of the Theatre of the Oppressed that Augusto Boal first elaborated in the 1960s.

Mr. Jimenez's experiences are similar to those of Chilean filmmaker Miguel Littin, as recorded in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's ‘Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littin'.

Littin clandestinely visited his country after 12 years in exile and shot a documentary about Chilean life under the dictatorship.

“Those were heady times. Disguised as a Uruguayan businessman, I interviewed ordinary folks. Blindfolded, I was led to a hospital for an interview with a resistance leader. A few hours before I met him, he had survived an attempt by Pinochet's secret police to assassinate him,” Mr. Littin told this reporter in an interview during the 28th International Film Festival of India conducted in Thiruvananthapuram in 1997.

Like Littin, Mr. Jimenez too changed his looks and photographed life in Chile under Pinochet.

Back in Chile, with cropped hair and different costumes, he went to meet his relatives. They told him with a smile, “ No podemos reconocer (We cannot recognise you).”

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