Lev Lafayette's journal

Kate R and I have boarded the big silver bird to travel to South America and Antarctica, the first stop being Santiago de Chile. The flight was twelve hours, and due to the peculiarities of time zones, we arrived two hours before we left. Our stay was in the CBD, NH Collection Plaza, quite upmarket with nice features and next to the World Trade Centre. The afternoon arrival provided the opportunity for a walk through the local "Parque de las Esculturas", then a hike up the famous Cerro San Cristóbal parkland to catch the sunset and return - a round trip of about five hours. It was sufficiently impressive that we returned the following day and took the ascent via teleferico (with the oversized statue of Mary that looks over the city) and descended by funicular to viist the nearby "Casa Museo La Chascona", home of the Nobel Prize winning poet, politician, and diplomat, Pablo Neruda, a person who was certainly not without significant flaws as well as greateness.

This would be the start of en epic walking trip through Santiago that would be measured at 45km for the day (yes really), which would include a visit to the beautiful Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, the Catedral Metropolitana with it's overwhelming baroque features, past the ridiculous over-sized flag at the Palacio de La Moneda, then to the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende and, on return, to the remarkable collection in the El Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino and the "Horizonte Antártico" exhibit at La Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional. El Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, which was high on the agenda, was unfortunately closed for renovations.

Whilst far from the most visually spectacular part of the trip, the Salvador Allende museum was definitely the most emotionally significant location for me. The Allende events were utterly critical in the formation of my own political opinions when I became aware of them in my early teens. Helped by the film, "Missing", I became a voracious reader of the history. For those who don't know, the summary is that a socialist president was elected supported by a left-wing alliance and implemented a programme of nationalisation of resource industries, land redistribution, significant health and education welfare improvements, and the remarkable economic and logistics computer system, Project Cybersyn. Allende was dedicated to the idea that socialism could be achieved through parliamentary democracy; but ultimately the military disagreed (unsurprisingly supported by the United States) disagreed. A coup and the installation of the Pinochet regime resulted in years of torture and deaths of thousands of democratic activists. The Allende events is tragic and utopian, providing insights on the nature of the capitalist State, and has a lasting impact on history.