Introduction by Antonio Skármeta

It seems hard to believe, but it is true: 2003 marked the 30th anniversary of the military coup in Chile, and for anyone who suffered its consequences, it will be a time of reflection and sadness. When one lives for decades with the effects of this event that devastated lives and dreams, one feels that time does not pass. Even though the wound is not there, one still sees the scar. When there is a deep cut, it hurts! Pain is not measured with a calendar.

Between 1970 and 1973, Chile lived through a unique period in its history. For the first time a president, a professed Marxist, supported basically by the parties from the Left, won the September 1970 presidential elections. The name of the winning candidate was Salvador Allende and he promised to travel a peaceful path towards Democratic Socialism. His message captivated the crowds. It is a common mistake, not contradicted often enough, to say that Allende's government was communist. Any European democrat would understand that this is a narrow reading. The men and women who supported the new president were communists, socialists, centrists, Christians, hippies, independents, and youths who had no other political affiliation than dreams of justice.

This introduction to a book of photographs is not the place to analyze the reasons why the government failed. The faults of the governing coalition, and the powerful foreign faults documented in the hearings of the United States Senate, have been revealed in many books and documents. Nevertheless, to this day, no one has been able to explain clearly why this process, which lasted a mere thousand days in a remote country, has attracted and captured the attention of the Western World and, to a lesser degree, the attention of other continents.

The allure of Allende's promise and efforts was that the changes were going to take place freely and within a democratically created constitution. In Chile the majority of Allende's supporters had no sympathy for the authoritarian regimes of real socialism, and if they had been offered this, Allende would not have received enough votes to be elected.

Allende did some things well and some things badly. But he never failed to defend freedom for all, supporters and opponents alike, even to the point that foreign observers confessed that liberty occasionally became libertinism. But the road they took was peaceful. Violence came from the other side. In fact, it started days before Allende assumed power, when ultra-right-wing terrorist groups assassinated the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Rene Schneider, in the hope of creating enough chaos to prevent the winning candidate from arriving at the Presidential palace.

During the thirty and some months while the government of Popular Unity lasted, the people felt they were the masters of the streets and of a hope. The people expressed themselves without a framework of revolutionary ideas or philosophies. It was a simple and natural expression of their joy for change combined with a yearning to share these moments with hundreds of thousands of others. The masses who supported Allende were composed of people who knew and suffered real problems, but they were not indoctrinated fanatics and the only thing they knew of Marxism-Leninism were a few slogans they chanted playfully at all hours of the day. This feeling overwhelmed both the ringleaders as well as the political leaders, and at times they were surprised by this.

The street was the natural stage for this massive demonstration of life. Every time there was a real problem caused by the Right,--when the business owners or the shopkeepers threatened or went on strike or ran black markets to protect their interests-- the people went out in the street to do a "demonstration". They prepared for this with the enthusiasm of children participating in a birthday party. And in reality, everything looked like an innocent game until the time when terror showed its real face.

John Hall's photos find the people in a state of quiet trance, of frivolous optimism, of lyrical and poetic outbursts, with walls painted in the whole spectrum of watercolors, with happy and mocking songs, with militant theater and film making, with flags waving over the popular marches like childrens' kites in the parks in September. It was not a revolution, it was a noisy, colorful fiesta and those who participated may have wondered upon returning to the silence of their homes, if this human wave could keep afloat the half-sunken boat of the constitutional president. The songs reflected the spirit of those times. The people could feel that they had grown. The Uruguayan poet, Mario Benedetti, saw in this a form of love: "and in the street, elbow to elbow, we are much more than two" or "the people, united, will never be defeated." More than directives, these were expressions of what they desired.

To my mind, John Hall manages to do something truly extraordinary, very rarely seen in a photographer. In his crowd pictures he achieves a perfect equilibrium between the mass and the individuals, between intimacy and expressiveness, between a collective current and a private hope. It is astonishing to see how the intense strength of the groups acquires poetical value, thanks to the refinement of detail. If I wanted to show a foreigner or a member of the younger generation interested in the politics and the history of this new century who was Chile between 1970 and 1973, I would ask`them to study John Hall's photos. Through the individual looks, in the smiles or the meditative gestures, in a certain aftertaste of sadness, in the shout that tries to give itself courage, there are clear signs of the heat that animated these people who mobilized for a destiny and who found an anonymous tomb on the 11th of September1973. Or the only "happiness" of a tombstone for those family members who were "lucky" enough to find the body of their murdered ones.

The people, through these images, participate almost as co-authors of the artist who expresses them. If one goes into detail in each one of these photographs, one will observe a moment of action so intense that it seems that the model is aware of the pose. The faces look as if they were moved by a dramatic impulse. Usually a photographer can only achieve such effects in his own studio where he can control all the elements of his work. But to attain perfection in the confusion of the streets is a feat that few have mastered.

I salute John Hall's work with enthusiasm. In a complicated time during the history of Latin America, he knew how to live in Chile and the grateful people showed him their truth. It is a very good thing that thirty years after the coup of 1973, this fresh flood of life resurges to commemorate a tragic date, and to give clear signs of hope in the gazes of these antiheroes of the street.

Antonio Skármeta, Writer and
until recently, Chilean Ambassador to Germany