Historias de 1929 a 1939 | Nuestro siglo - T1E3

Welcome! I want to invite you to the adventure that is to travel the life of the Chileans in this so agitated 20th century.

This casino was inaugurated on December 30, 1930, when our country still lived the party of the crazy 1920s. President Carlos Ibáñez del Campo is eager to realize his dream of building a new Chile.

Chileans are amazed daily with the opening of a new large building and the arrival of technological advances. There are more than 33,000 phones in the country and 12,000 vehicles are imported a year. In Santiago, the Metropolitan Zoological Center is inaugurated and the government even studies the possible construction of a underground metro to solve traffic problems.

In those years of great economic prosperity, we had our first international boxing champions. The national team was preparing to participate in the first World Cup of football, while people were excited about the movies, at the arrival of the first sound movies. At that time it seemed that we were about to touch the sky, but, like in a roller coaster, we were also about to fall.

Chile lives its dream with enthusiasm.

Would this proud new Chile be able to resist the greatest and deepest economic depression of the 20th century?

Thanks to the million-dollar investments of the government of Ibañez, the railway is rapidly developing, uniting the territory between Iquique and Puerto Montt. It is the summer of 1930 and the high society of Santiago takes the train to Cartagena or Viña del Mar, the most important balneary in the country.

Having fun on the beach is a new but contagious habit. In the warm sand people play cards, read Alberto Romero's "The Widow of the Conventillo" or simply cultivate the tasty sport of fur. I remember the saline, which is the only

In 1930, very few women know how to swim, and tanning is something unthinkable for the time.

Installed in La Moneda, General Carlos Ibáñez has celebrated his second marriage with Graciela Letelier, of whom four children are born. I was born in La Moneda, in Santiago. I was born on August 22, 1930 and I was also born in Santiago, in La Moneda.

He was a man of great distinction, a great gentleman, very delicate with people, very concerned about people. The name of the horse, Ibañe, was more to say that it was an offender, that it did not leave anything to be done. So I think it was more of a descriptive term than a term that exalted it.

General Ibañez has been Minister of War with Arturo Alessandri, Minister of the Interior with Emiliano Figueroa and with a overwhelming majority has been elected president in 1927. They call him "Horse Ibañez" and governs with a iron fist. Clearly he is not willing to tolerate any opposition to his dream of a new Chile.

Meanwhile, depression leaves 40 million unemployed workers all over the world. Are they hungry?

and despair. Charles Chaplin, a brilliant witness of the time, reflects in his films the misery and the helplessness. Hollywood is already the capital of the world film industry. Carlitos is at that moment the most famous movie star in the world.

My father, who loved cinema, was very traditionalist. He was of opinion like Chaplin, who said: "Cinema must be silent."

Cinema must not be spoken of. Cinema was very funny at that time, because there was a bell in the cinemas

When the lights went out, a fat lady would come in to play the piano. And she would accompany all the movements of the movies. She would give the movies sound. If there was a horse race, she would play quickly. So it was a kind of falsification of the sound movies that came later.

In 1927, the revolutionary sound cinema was inaugurated in the United States with the premiere of "The Jazz Singer".

The sound films arrive in Chile just three years later, in the summer of 1930, when the musical comedy Melodías de Broadway is projected. I think it was called Luces de Broadway, I don't remember well. The voice doesn't hear it well, but rather the sounds.

So I said, "How atrocious, for God's sake!" When I was so used to the piano playing, sleeping, beautiful things, and we with the silent film, we were fascinated. The controversy overlapped the first number of the Chilean film and television magazine "Ecrán". Furious detractors and supporters of sound face off without a barracks. My father loved it, he loved the first spoken film. Yes, he said, when we left, he said, "Yes."

The Chilean cinema integrates itself quickly to the new technique. The director, cartoonist, painter and hypnotist Jorge Delano Coque, enthusiastic about the sound, manages that Ibañez himself sends him to study in Hollywood.

After a year, Coquie returns. The result is the first soundtrack shot in Chile, Norte Sur. - Let's not continue. - Why? Are you afraid? An exciting drama that makes our grandmothers cry. - Come, Carmen, come. - No, please, Alejandro. - Carmen. - No, let me, let me, Alejandro. - Don't lie to yourself, don't lie to yourself.

- If you love me, Carmen. - No, it can't be, Alejandro. - If you love me, I said. - No, no, let me. Let me.

70 years later, cinema in Chile has become a massive show attended by 8 million spectators each year. In 1990 there were 45 cinemas, today there are 140 and it is expected that next year there will be 300. However, the real show of the 20th century for the Chileans is not produced in the darkness of a cinema room, but outdoors,

full lung and eating potato sandwiches. Transformed into a great mass phenomenon, football has become for millions of people around the world in something like a religion in which we follow the team of our loves, although never or few times touch heaven.

This multitudinous enthusiasm for the sport is a phenomenon typical of this century and had its initial kick in 1930 when the first World Cup was played in Uruguay. In that opportunity the Chilean team not only used the feet but also the fists.

In Montevideo, the Chilean team won their first two games, and then faced the always feared Argentine national team. Our great hope is the Colo-Colino Guillermo "Chato" Zubiabre, an undisputed figure of the team and hero in previous victories. There was the Chilean center forward, "Chato" Zubiabre,

They called him "El Chato" because his height was not as outstanding as mine. And "Monte", the Argentine center, to whom they called "Double Width" for its impressive physical texture.

He was a man of great talent, a man of great talent. Subiabre fell, he got up, went straight to Monti, he punched him, as we do in Chile, and Monti collapsed.

...immense and long, was on the field of the Centenario Montedio stadium. And it absolutely did not fit.

But the punches of his viabre are not enough. Chile loses 3 to 1 and the team is for the first time eliminated from a World Cup. The Argentines come to the final and lose to the Uruguayan champions. The return of the Chilean team is apotheosic. The crowd receives our footballers as heroes of war.

To promote nationalism, General Ibáñez has promoted the sport since his most tender childhood. Once again, the future is in the children. In those years, boxing was a very popular sport and several Chileans went down in history thanks to their fists.

At the end of the 20's, we don't have one, but two world famous boxing stars. One is Luis Vicentini, who, by his great right hand, is called "the Minton sculptor". And the other, Stanislao Loaiza, nicknamed "El Tani". El Tani Loaiza, a man of spectacular action, who fought almost the Chilean,

with a great strength not only physical but mental and spiritual. Stanley Loaiza disputed the world title until the referee, when separating him, he was a heavyweight that was refereeing, he dislocated his ankle and had to leave. Vicentín was an elegant, stylish man but who did not keep a good life. Great boxer.

At the feet of the Virgin of San Cristobal, Tania trains like a champion.

preceded by his international fame vicentini and the tani face off in one of the most memorable fights of the Chilean boxing 12,000 people fill the sports fields of yunyo and scream at every blow

The rivals do not give up until in the tenth assault, the TANI with a fulminating blow leaves the Byzantine eximio knocked out. As if depression were a distant threat, on the hot January 1, 1931, the Chileans hear on the radio the New Year's message from President Ibañez. It is a message loaded with optimism.

It is very praiseworthy for me that the occasional circumstances that the whole world has gone through have been attenuated in Chile, in the face of a severe economy policy. Thus, encouraged by the president, in Villa del Mar people turn to the inauguration of the presidential palace of Cerro Castillo and the municipal theater.

With bombs and plates, the elegant Viña casino is premiered during the great New Year party.

During the brindis, everyone wishes the best for that 1931 that begins. No one can guess it, but that year will be one of the worst in our history.

During that year, depression will finally reach Chile and our country will end up being the most hit by the largest economic crisis in the world of the 20th century.

The port and the city of Iquique have had an important rise over the last few years due mainly to the Franca area, tourism and fishing activity. By the way, Iquique is today the largest exporter of fish and fish and a major economic development center in the region. 70 years ago, this place lived an activity as intense as these days.

Through these springs, the "caliche" that was extracted from the Pampa was embarked. Attracted by the enormous wealth and economic activity, immigrants from all over the world arrived at this port, but mainly English, German and Oriental. They were good times, but they were not going to be eternal.

In Asia, Japan invades Manchuria, starting a bloody war with China. There lived the young Hong Fong Lee, one of the numerous Chinese immigrants who, at the end of the 1920s, arrived at the Chilean highland. When I arrived, I was touched.

-

Fon's life is an exciting story. She crossed the world after the splendor of the saltwater and when everything was over, she stayed forever. In the middle of the Apogío, the saltwater are true cities of legend and here rise from Europe the most famous singers of opera, operetta and zarzuela.

Encandilado por la prosperidad, Fon installa una tienda de abarrotes, progresa y se enamora. Pero las fiestas esas del club eran muy bonitas porque en la noche se seguían con grandes bailes, a dos orquestas. Ella me enseñó. Antes no pensaba en nada.

But abruptly the Pampa festival ends. The recession forces all countries to reduce their expenses. Many nations prefer the synthetic salt, considerably cheaper. The time of synthetic salt, then forced to paralyze all that. So there is nothing else to do, then the neighbors are all in trouble.

The ghost of the crisis runs through the Atacama desert. Of 38 office buildings, only six remain functioning. They closed all together. Little by little, the camps, that this camp does not run anymore, this other camp neither, this office will not run either, so they started. People suffered a lot when they stopped the offices, they suffered a lot because they left everything behind.

The last ones that came out were us, but it was a desolation, something that scared me. The people who worked had to leave to return to La Serena, to the Cotimbo, so the Pampa was empty. Thousands of sailboats leave everything behind and travel with their families on old cargo ships. Everything is given to them on the ship where we came from.

We all slept there. Some of us had wags, they would take them to the bedside. Those who didn't have wags on the floor, they only had beds. Covered or down. The height of Coquimbo, there it is tremendous. The ship comes to crash there. There they cry, the loudest screams. All my mother's families died there. They all died, no one was saved.

When the alitreras closed, 45,000 Pampinos sought refuge in the rest of the country. Most arrived by train to Santiago to start a new life.

This city, which at that time had a little more than 800,000 inhabitants, simply did not give up and an incredible event occurred. The city was filled with piojos, which caused a great epidemic of ex-antimatic typhus that caused the death of 6,000 people in just two years.

Today we are 5.4 million people who live in this metropolis. Seven times the amount that lived here in those years of poverty and poverty. In 1930 the massive transfer of the miners and their families marked what would be the first great migration of the century. The economic depression finally hits Chile. The streets of Santiago are filled with beggars who wander asking for lemon.

The League of Nations, predecessor of the current UN, points out that Chile is the country most affected by the crisis in the world. So all those people who were in the occupation, who were left thousands and thousands, all of them were not distributed to the country, here in Santiago they arrived a lot, to the fields, out there. Then the common pot began to come out, the pot of the poor, as they called it.

In the church of the Franciscan Recoleta, which was a block from my father's business, a food bank was built and people turned around for Andrés Bello, Avenida La Paz, Dávila, Lastra, Recoleta, with their little tray. Once I went, I was ashamed to walk with the pot, I put it in a basket and I fixed it, I fixed it, I went and they ran away, because I didn't need it and I was more hungry.

Contrary to Ibañez´s dreams, the dramatic situation in the country simply can´t be simulated anymore.

But we still laugh. In the midst of a crisis, the satirical magazine Topace appears, directed by Coqui. Topace, the barometer of Chilean politics, is quickly exhausted as soon as it goes out into circulation. The crisis is vox populi. There are protests in the streets. The young medical student Jaime Pinto dies at the hands of the police.

After his funeral, protesters and police officers shoot each other. A history teacher of the application school receives a lost bullet and dies in the street. Santiago looks like a city at war.

At a few hours, the doctors, the lawyers, the engineers, they vote in strike. Immediately, the pharmacists, the dentists and the professors join. They all join to overthrow Ibañez. In La Moneda, a fallen General Ibañez is in a strong flu. His collaborators hear him say, Every day a funeral. What did I do to deserve this?

Unable to control the chaos, the president leaves the government. The latest news releases a special edition that will later become the second in the Vespertino. Ibañez and his family take the trans-Andean train to Mendoza. This time it is his turn to leave. Opponents of the government go out to celebrate.

In the midst of the hustle and bustle, it seems that the economic and political order is finally returning to the country. The order will arrive, but before that, a period of anarchy and conspiracies will come.

In two years, economic depression has expanded like a cancer. And those who promise to kill capitalism and destroy economic liberalism, gain followers all over the world. In Germany, in 1933, Adolf Hitler comes to power, who assumes as Chancellor. In Italy, the fascism of Benito Mussolini is strengthened day by day.

While in the Soviet Union, the dictator Jose Stalin, in the name of the proletariat, exerts total power. In Chile, under the government of Juan Esteban Montero, the navy is subliving. The rise is controlled by the air force and the army. It was so much misery, so much despair, that groups were starting to appear,

to overthrow the Montero government, to compirate. President Montero lasts only 8 months. On June 4, 1932, he is overthrown by the air commando Marmaduke Grobe. The president gives up power and, without shooting a shot, a socialist republic is proclaimed in Chile.

The meeting lasted only 12 days. In those 12 days there were many changes. The admistia of the sailors was produced, the return of many things, the sewing machines were produced, some economic norms were dictated. Many of those norms remained in force and were later applied in practice by other governments.

It was a spark of hope. These are frenetic days. The enthusiastic rebels form revolutionary committees to turn them into the Chilean Soviets. But their time is up.

The governments were falling apart. The marines were coming to the military, the aviators were falling apart. The governments were changing and the Junta was becoming more and more Junta. After the first Junta, three more happen. Carlos Dávila, president of the third and fourth Junta, proclaims himself as provisional president. Finally, in September, he is also dismissed. It is anarchy.

The chaos ends with the elections of 1932 and returns to the coin Arturo Alessandri Palma. He is no longer the same as in 1920, he triumphed with the renovating zones of the beautiful little sky. He has even changed his little fox terrier for the intimidating old man Hulk. I was always with my grandpa, Chao.

But one day the Hungarian ambassador came to present his credentials and he was wearing a hat with a feather, a tric... a bicorn, I think it was, with a feather. And the dog, well, started looking at these big things with feathers that were coming. And at the moment he raised the credentials to be handed over to the president, the dog threw himself on top of him and threw him from behind. That's true. That happened.

Very admired.

by women, very admired by men, surrounded by people who praised him. He was a wimp, bad-spoken, very frank, very direct and a seducer.

In the presidential elections of 1932, which gave the victory to Arturo Alessandri Palma, only 8% of Chileans voted. Young people, illiterate people and women could not do it, for example. Today the situation is completely different. These Lolas, like any young Chilean, at the age of 18, will be able to vote and elect their governors perfectly.

Half a century ago, this situation was absolutely unimaginable. To get to what seems so common today, such as women being able to vote in the elections or working outside their homes, the grandmothers and great-grandmothers of these girls had to go through a long and difficult path.

Around the 1930s, the Chilean woman grew up inside the family and mostly her only world is home.

To be considered a lady of respect, you must look for a good husband and follow very precise rules. The women's magazine describes the ideal of every woman: "Always kind, beautiful as possible, charitable with everyone, good-natured at home, intelligent without pedantry." At that time there was no other destination for a woman

However, already from the crazy 20s, young people were rebelling against the customs of their parents.

They had started to use makeup, to smoke tobacco and to show their legs with the spirit of seducing or simply scandalize. Sophisticated cosmetics such as nail varnish emerge and the revolutionary female tampons appear. In Santiago, the first beauty salon of the time is inaugurated. It is called Rosmarie.

The doll type was in fashion. Doll face. Blonde type. In the most natural way, face, Greta Garbo. That was the ideal. Under the batuta of Delia Amate, the club had given a long fight for more participation.

In 1935, Chilean women receive good news. They will exercise for the first time the right to vote, although only in municipal elections.

I was very elegant, with a very pretty hat, and I went to vote for a governor of the Radical Party. I would say happy. Happy. The woman became very happy with the vote. With a lot of conscience we started working that day. And I voted for the first governor, Juan Pablo Moisés Ríos. As if I had achieved the most beautiful thing of my life.

Of the 95 candidates for the leadership, 25 are elected.

The next day the results are known and appears in the Mercurio and the illustrated diary a note signed by the National Action of Women of Chile entitled: "It's over" After this election, the woman can feel calm to return to the area that is most appropriate to her: the home.

where he finds his maximum plenitude as a tender mother and loving wife. Soon bad news will come. In a surprising and dramatic accident, the Creole sorcerer will die and later more than 60 young people will be massacred during a rally in the labor insurance.

In 1935 in Moscow, the 7th Congress of the Communist International approved the so-called "popular fronts" to stop the advance of fascism. In Spain, the newly launched Popular Front triumphed in the general elections of 1936. Five years before, the monarchy had been replaced by a republic.

are times of great instability with strikes, murders, uprisings and persecution of the Catholic Church. In school it would be four in the afternoon, possibly, when a classmate said: "They say Gardel has died."

and a rumbling began. They say Gardel died, they say Gardel died, they say Gardel died in an accident. And when I got home, my mother told me: "Your favorite artist died, Carlos Gardel." Gardel was a local hero because we gathered money.

to go to the "Tiago Sado" even if it was to the "Bermuda" to go to see the last movie of Gardel that had been released that week. The film costs low and it was such success that people were angry until the operator of the shift had to go back to the roll again, to ask the public.

Gardel's death is a hard blow. Raised in the neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, he had started to sing for a few pesos when a sad and danceable rhythm called tango began to become fashionable. Quickly Gardel reaches the top and transforms into the model of the manhood and sensitivity of the Latin male.

He dressed like Carlos Gardel, spoke like Carlos Gardel, wore a scarf like Carlos Gardel, a hat like Carlos Gardel. He sang like Carlos Gardel. He was never a good singer. Imitating Gardel, Chilean males conquer with Argentine accent. They wear black tern or polainas stripes, scarf to the neck, and under the jockey or the hat, the hair well combed with brancato gum or pepal jalea of membrillo.

Suddenly, the streets of Santiago were filled with marches, with young people wearing green, gray and black shirts and pants, many of them willing to fight, blow by blow, against their opponents.

In 1933 the foundation of the Socialist Party regroups anarchists, unionists and intellectuals, who emerged in the convulsed beginning of the decade. Years later, a large contingent of young Catholics leaves the conservative party and forms the national phalanx. The Alexandrists also organize themselves, they create the Republican Militias.

I was walking with a gun, with a belt, with a gun in my hand and with a Chantilly boot hitting my boot. When did a bull like that come to me? And I was walking with seven girls in the block.

Of course, there were many people of order, people of the right, rich people, who were involved in the Republican Party, they were the financiers. So they wanted democracy, but a more orderly democracy. The militias add up to 50,000 civilians in all of Chile, including a son and a nephew of President Alessandri. An shocking police news throws the militia.

The young aristocrat Rebeca La Reina Echeverria dies of a shot made by her husband, Roberto Barceló. Well, my grandfather's statement is that he was going to a Republican militia meeting at that time. So he had a gun and wanted to keep it in his suitcase, but he had it in his pocket at that time. And when he said goodbye to his wife, he took out the gun and hugged her with it.

which is also quite strange. He shoots her because she approaches to say goodbye and he shoots her. But then it was proven that the shot could not have entered in that way if he had hugged her, you know? And that he had entered in another way. So he said he had simply punched her with the gun. But he does not confess the crime, only the misuse of the gun. The connoisseur shakes the Chilean society.

The majority of the press condemns Barceló and the court's sentence is also definitive: death penalty. Only the presidential indictment could prevent Barceló from facing the firing squad. I think there were eight previous shootings of the working class or middle class and the parricide case of the person who was an aristocrat, why would she be indicted?

It is said that the rich were never punished. They had committed many crimes and never, never even suffered a day of prison. Alessandri has a divided heart. He is a friend of the father of the condemned, but also very friendly to the mother of the victim. Finally, Alessandri decrees. The indictment does not take place.

The next Monday, early in the morning, the young Jesuit Alberto Gustado gives him communion and waits, praying with him, for the sentence to be fulfilled. At the appointed time, Barceló is shot in the penitentiary of Santiago. "I swear by God that I am innocent" are his last words.

We are in 1936 in Germany Hitler heads the Olympic Games of Berlin is the opportunity to demonstrate the great paradigm of the third ray the superiority of the Aryan race concept that remains in doubt when the North American athlete Jesse Owens, grandson of a slave, defeats all his competitors winning four gold medals

At the same time, in Chile, the National Socialist Movement wins more and more followers day by day. Its leader is the deputy Jorge González Fonmaré, known for his strong and violent character. We believed in the unity of Chilean people without classes. We were not supporters of the struggle for classes.

We don't believe in the power of money, against the hierarchy of money. 1938 is the year of presidential elections and the country is polarized. Some fear fascism, others communism. The candidate for Alessandri is his former minister of the hacienda Gustavo Ross Santamaria.

The Popular Front postulates Pedro Aguirre Cerda. Representing various sectors, among them the Nazis, once again Carlos Ibáñez del Campo emerges. On September 4, 1938, the Nazis carry out what they call the March of Victory, in support of the candidacy of General Ibáñez. There had never been

a large crowd, a large concentration, we who are organizing a rally, decided that same day to make the rally the next day, on September 5.

That Monday, September 5th, with the aim of voting for Alessandri, 63 Nazi youths took the central house of the University of Chile and the building of the Labor Security, today the Ministry of Justice. For us it was just another fight. Of course we never thought how that fight would end.

Alessandri, meters away, in La Moneda, does not take long to hear the rumbling and orders to repress the take. Then the call was made by Alessandri of the military and he asked to cannon the university. Then the boys made us leave the university, arms up,

From the university, the young people are taken to the building of the labor insurance. The police officers occupy the building and they beat the subletters without resistance. There a officer came up and said: "Now, children, let's finish this, let's finish this." And he felt only one bullet, detonations.

I fell alone because I thought I was injured. I had three bodies in my legs. One of them, Pedro, was dying and the other's head was in my head. So the cops looked at me, they looked at me full of blood, and said, "This is already liquidated." The young man on the right of the screen is Carlos Pizarro, who, like the other three young men, manages to survive being given up.

As a cruel irony, he will work much of his life in the building of the labor insurance. He died in 1998 at the age of 82 years. These images of the first anniversary of the massacre of September 5 were filmed by a fan in 1939 and remained unheard during all these years.

President Alessandri does not recognize his responsibility in the facts. In a radio speech, he assures that the Nazi youth were among them. On December 3, 1938, the National Stadium is inaugurated.

is a symbol of economic recovery and one of the last official acts of President Alessandri before leaving his term. A closed Silvatina receives him. He is no longer the idol he was. The political cost of the massacre has made sense.

Pedro Aguirre Cerda is elected president supported by radicals, communists and socialists grouped in the emerging popular front. With his triumph, a period begins that opens for some great fears and for others new hopes.

"Pan, techo y abrigo" was the slogan that led to power Pedro Aguirre Serna. This primary school teacher wanted for the country a good education, a strong national industry and also a great protective state. However, shortly after taking power, he would face unexpected difficulties, which could be very difficult.

At the beginning of 1939, terror took over the city of Chillán during one of the most devastating earthquakes in our history. That same year, World War II will explode. How will the Chileans live this period that will forever change the history of humanity?

♪♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪