Eric Lindblom

Slaughterhouse

Chile

Preface: The Moment

I couldn’t fall: the bullets slammed into my chest. Everything was in slow motion. There was no pain, no awareness. What was happening? I felt as if in a dream, then I was falling.

White light came toward me. I fell into the light. “What was this? Was I dead?”

Only moments prior, I had been joking with six, big guards. Trying to defuse the situation, I had them laughing. Then they fired. Maybe a sweaty finger slipped on a trigger; I don’t know.

The guards had taken me downstairs toward a truck, which would transport us to Estádio Nacionál (from Estádio Chile). We were waiting for orders from a man known only as “the Leopard” I think his name was Manrique but I don’t know for sure. He never came.

I figured I’d never make it alive. I was past caring for myself. I worried for my students. When I was arrested, I thought some of them had been taken. I don’t know.

Something had slipped. Like a broken tooth on a small gear of a very large machine, the military had attempted a coup and was caught in their own violence. They went insane. I was not that surprised. Not long ago, I was in that military. I served with distinction. How easy could it have been me on the other end of those automatic weapons.

How do I know I’d remain sane if forced into the situation where we’d start arresting everyone? How long would it take for someone to have a nervous trigger finger? Then, when one person shoots, everyone shoots. Human beings are like that: no one is to blame. I do not blame them.

The problem is not in the individual but in the society. It is not just Chile but everywhere. Chile is not to blame.

We were trying to change the society. We were almost ready. It takes time for a people to change. It takes more time than I had.

Others will finish it. The change will arise again and again. Sometime nothing will slip. Then will be the moment.

Lindblom
 

“What I have felt and what I feel will give birth to the moment.”

Victor Jara

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