Miss Death of Pinochet

Feature | brendan, December 14th, 2006

Well, nobody expected him actually to die.

Ismael Celis, in a conversation with Open Source, December 13, 2006

The journalist Pamela Giles, with glitter, some dude and a flag [Ismael Celis / Flickr]

Augusto Pinochet seemed to get newly sick with every new indictment, so Ismael Celis — like much of Chile — did not expect the news this Sunday of Pinochet’s death. We called Celis yesterday after he posted to Open Source a set of photos he’d shot of Santiago in celebration. Celis, born in 1977, is too young to remember the coup, though he does remember that in the early 80s his mother took part in officially-tolerated protests in their middle-class neighborhood: families stood outside their homes and banged pots.

Sunday, after the BBC told him that Pinochet had, in fact, died, Celis walked to the Santiago Military Hospital.

All of the Pinochet supporters in front of the hospital — and this is strange, but anyone in Chile can tell you — they were all the same, they were all middle-aged women. They were all wearing jewelry. Pinochet, people would call him ‘Tata,’ it means something like ‘Grandpa.’ There was something paternal about it.

Ismael Celis, in a conversation with Open Source, December 13, 2006

After the hospital, Celis knew to go to the Plaza Italia, where Chile celebrates after international soccer wins. You can see what he found in the photo set he posted to Flickr: Chilean flags, people crying, photocopied sheets with faces of the disappeared.

And then a jeep parted the crowd.

There was this woman standing in the back, she was wearing a red dress, it was Pamela Giles — she is a famous journalist, a leftist, a communist — and people started cheering, boys were trying to climb on the jeep. It was very funny; it was like a parade.

Ismael Celis, in a conversation with Open Source, December 13, 2006

Those are photos of the disappeared, by the way, to the right of Pamela Giles.