Zorro

I have no memory of having been traumatized in any way in Chile. I do remember spending some interesting and pleasant time in that lovely country in the 1960s.

However, since my time there I have noted in myself a repeating and seemly unwarranted 'anger' related to my notion of Chile. This month, 40 years after my time in Chile, I was at my local library and asked the librarian to recommend an audio book to listen to. She recommended the novel Zorro by Allende. My prompt and unthinking response was that I wasn't interested in anything written by her, that I wasn't interesting in her father, or in any of the rest of her family. I judged that response to be a bit beyond what the situation called for. I librarian's job can be tough. I imagine that serving a neurotic old man is one of her lesser pleasures.

My education in foreign affairs had begun before my arrival in Chile, however it was there that I came to believe that the CIA was real.

What I remember includes is that Eduardo Frei was running for president of the Republic. He was a Conservative running against another Conservative. As I remember the traditional Conservative party's focus of control was with the great land owners. Frei's wing of the Conservative party's focus of control was with the 'young' industrialists of the country. Powerful people in the U.S., as represented by the CIA in Chile, found rightest Frei to be too far to the left for them. So the CIA began acting to destroy him, or perhaps just his chances to be president.

It was my perception that the great bulk of the Chilean people at the time were moderately liberal. Usually they would be attracted to vote for a candidate like Allende. However, many people in large population centers population centers like Santiago, were beginning to note that on the most local level Allende's campaign was using strong-arm and fear tactics. They distrusted and disliked that sort of tactics and so were trending to support Frei.

As I remember it was at about this stage of affairs that I decided that I wanted to return to the U.S. It seems to have been a very quick decision. I told myself that it was prompted by 'homesickness.' I arranged to take a  nitrate ship of the Wilson Line from Antofagasta to Charleston. It was on that ship, just off the coast of Charleston, President Kennedy had just been the subject of a political murder.

It was only later that I learned: that Frei had met Carlos Lleras Restrepo, that we had murdered Frei and so by paved Allende's way into office. It was later yet that I found that activities of the CIA and of Allende lead to the take over of Chile by Pinochet.

My traumatization seems in some way to relate to these happenings, but I have had similar learning experiences over much of the globe without the strong long lasting feelings.

The word 'torture' seems to be somehow to be associated with similar feelings I associate with Chile.

Please use 'comments' to correct history or data errors I may have made here.

Some short years ago I was reminded of some of these things on a flight from Montevideo to Los Angeles. The flight was on LAN via Santiago  Just as I was enjoying a marvelous view of the Andean peaks, the air-conditioning gave a kind of hiccup over my seat and several near-by seats. We all experienced a fit of coughing. Since that time I have experienced constant lung irritation and have been diagnosed as having emphysema. A reinforcing coincident.

So, I experienced a a coincident that seemed to somehow have reminded of , if not reinforced, some long held feelings of unknown origin. I'm not going to pay for psychological help, but I might accept some donated 'talk therapy.'

Gerard of Cremona

Cremona was, and is, a commune by the Po river in the middle of the Po plain in northern Italy. I believe that its capital has been called Crema, but what do I know. Cremona has seen many invaders. Among them were Romans, Byzantines, and Lombards. A strong written record of 'invaders' goes back to about 400 BC, when a Celtic people moved into the plain of Po. However, the name Cremona probably dates back to curious settlers of much earlier times. I've heard of Ligures, or Ligurians, who once held that plain of the river Po. I've heard that they were such great seamen that the Mediterranean, or a large part of it, was once called my their name.

Cremona was Rome's first military outpost and later was a Byzantine stronghold. It became a free-state in 1039. By the mid-1100s I believe that there was a sort of civil war between Crema and Cremona. Sounds a bit like the early U.S.

Cremona has been a center of musical culture for the last 500 years. The many notables who have called it home include theologians  philosophers, mathematicians, composers, painters, and architects.

Among those notables was the pop singer known as Mina. She was popular throughout the 1960s and well into the '70s. She was admired for her three-octave range and her powerful voice.

Another notable of Cremona is Gerard (1117 - 1187). He was a scholar. He read and wrote Latin and Greek and probably Hebrew from an early age. Later he became expert at reading and translating Arabic.

Gerard traveled to Spain. He wanted to explore and research Arabic libraries there, especially that of Toledo. He was particularly interested in Ptolemy's Almagest, which Arabic scholars had studied, translated, and preserved from about 200 AD. In the great library of Toledo he found much more than a fine translation of the Almagest, he found his life's work. For hundreds of years the Arab scholars had been adding their own knowledge, wisdom, and science to that which they had learned from the Greeks, Jews, Persians, Egyptians, etc. Much of the best of astronomy, medicine, history, and the wisdom of the ancients was there.

Translation of those works into Latin and the vernacular by Gerard and others began the illumination of Europeans which brought them out of the Dark Ages.