By María M. Mur |
Santiago de Chile (EFE).- Their lives took a 180 degree turn during the outbreak that caused the 2019 protests, when they lost their eyes due to police repression. Four years later, eight ocular mutilated people have found a way to “heal” in music and play and sing about those revolts that changed Chile.
“He fought for his own, he longed for dignity / He used only stones, they were real weapons,” recites the band “Towards Victory” on the song “It’s a terrible story.”
In another part of the song, the group – which this Thursday presents its first recorded session online – appeals directly to former president Sebastián Piñera, who was widely criticized for his management of the marches:
“Sir, give me back my son, you are the criminal with a tie and freedom / Today your hands have blood from the eyes of your people,” says the tune.
“Understanding what happened” in the Chilean outbreak
They say they make music “as a protest song” and that they compose to “better understand what happened to them.” They define their style as “Latin American experimental punk rock” and many didn’t even play music before the outbreak.
This is the case of Gustavo Gatica, the best-known member and who became the first protester to go completely blind after receiving several pellets in November 2019 near Plaza Italia, the epicenter of the protests.
“The first few times we performed it was very exciting. I was like, ‘Wow! At what point did I come to be sitting on this battery? How crazy, how much my life has changed!’”, the young man, to whom his brother gave a battery as a gift when he came home after being hospitalized for three weeks, recalled to EFE.
“I feel very proud to belong to an artistic project that is capable of producing so much emotion in people: tears, anger, nostalgia…”, he adds.
Gatica, who was finishing Psychology when he was blinded and today works in a studio in Santiago, not only had to learn to play the cymbals, but also to do seemingly simple things like “taking food to the mouth without it falling out.”
At only 25 years old, he is one of the symbols of the largest wave of protests since the dictatorship (1973-1990) and has found in the band a tool to express his innate optimism, although he acknowledges that he will “turn the page” completely when the trial against Claudio Crespo, the agent who shot him: “Being optimistic is a defense mechanism.”
What began as a school demand against the increase in the price of the subway ticket led to a massive clamor for greater social rights, which left some thirty dead and thousands injured, including many with eye trauma, in addition to episodes of violence. extreme, with looting, barricades and destruction of street furniture.
“Empathize with the lack of vision”
Vicente Muñoz, the youngest of the gang, considers himself a “survivor” of the explosion because he “only” lost his left eye a few days after the attack on Gatica.
After exhaustive psychological therapy, he has managed to gain more self-confidence and return to studying dramatic art, something to which the band has also contributed, which this weekend performed at the Gabriela Mistral Center (GAM) in Santiago.
“It was very complex to think about how I was going to show my face, which is no longer the same. I no longer have the same gestures and my soul has changed ”, he tells EFE.
With music he has also learned to channel anger. In fact, her favorite song is “Litio”, the most “positive” of all and the one that appeals the least to hate.
“What we seek to do with this music is to bring you closer to our vision or rather, to our lack of vision. It is an exercise in empathy both for us and for the rest ”, she underlines.
What does continue to sadden him is the result of the plebiscite last September, when more than 62% of Chileans rejected the proposal for a new Constitution.
“It was super painful because (the dream of a new Chile) in a way was the price of our eyes and our dead,” he admits.
The constituent process in which Chile is immersed emerged as the political way to calm the protests and, after the vote in September, the country has begun a second attempt to draft a Magna Carta to replace the current one, inherited from the dictatorship.
Although he has little hope in this process, Múñoz is aware that “you cannot heal from anger” and defends that “good things are always taken from the collective.”