channel manager wanted her to record images over tours de Allende, Neruda Nobel delivery and Fidel Castro's visit to the Popular Unity government. "How can I delete that part of the story?" She thought, and decided to hide the records of those recordings, which only came together again No.'s campaign
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| Amira Arratia was only 20 when, after the military coup, began to keep tapes and videos of the day. |
In 1973, its 20 years and while studying Library Science at the University of Chile, Amira Arratia began work as archivist in TVN. "I came when the documentation center was a fledgling winery. I think I had like 100 or 110 tapes and a few books. He was just putting together," he says before humbly adding: "I served the story together from scratch we have TVN today. This has been very rewarding. "
For the coup took half a year working on the canal. Unskilled but smell began to save the images that the military wanted to disappear and finally saw the light in the series" 40 years TVN . Your story is my story ", where the channel of all Chileans have assumed that distorted news and straight, created assemblies.
Amira, who soon became head of the Documentation Department, a position he held until today, is in his office when the military stormed and took a number of films telecine format press that were not even listed. "Much of this material was lost because they entered, he was placed in sacks and burned it right here, "he recalls.
- What was the situation?
-Shocking and disturbing because the coup had been very recently, so I had a look astonished disbelief.
- How entered the military? "I'd
quotes that came very slowly. They asked me where was the telecine and (...) removed that material. As the channel was taken by They became regulars: sleeping here, there was a regiment in here and even made changing of the guard. One lunch with them at the casino. So it was not a thing arrived on patrol.
- Have you tried to defend the material?
-No. One asked what is going to do with that?. "We have to go," but I said, chicken, I was 20, I would not face if they did not know what really happened (...) but I knew what to do next, when the manager called me and told me he wanted all records where material appeared Salvador Allende and Pablo Neruda, when he received the Nobel Prize. I wanted to remove any material that had to do with the Unidad Popular and the visit of Fidel Castro.
- What did you do?
"In that time we had a manual card catalog (...) then asked me to take him. He affixed his signature, and that meant that this material had to delete (...) What I did was to return to his office and thinking about the momentous decision that weighed on my shoulders. I do not know how, when, had that sense of preservation, (but I said) how can I delete that part of the story?, That moment when TVN broadcast live, via satellite, the Nobel Prize to Pablo Neruda and Allende pictures, tours ... They were unique images of the Chilean heritage, even the channel. Channel is property, the master tape, transmission, but the fact is something for everyone. As the only way to get the materials was through those records, I put them in my desk.
- And the tapes remained stored here?
"Of course, the only way you had to identify these films was through a catalog.
- Nobody ever found the cards on your desk?
-No.
- Does anyone know you kept them?
"Yes, two people who worked me. Two other store with that after all material of foreign correspondents.
- How was work there being anti-dictatorship?
"There were moments of great distress, sadness, especially when you saw how they manipulated information (...) but we were in this beyond what happened to the dictatorship, thinking we had a future liability. We could have thrown at any minute and spent a lot of people, but we knew it would not last a lifetime. There is a phrase that says a lot and we also repeated it: "These images have to keep for ever more." One day they went to open the floodgates and we were able to say, through the file, the younger generation, those born during dictatorship or those who lived for 17 years seeing one side of the coin: "No sir, here also ran another story, there was another society, people suffering, detained, disappeared."
- How could keep copies of what foreign journalists dispatched?
-Pinochet protests began in the years 82-83 and of course that created a lot of global expectations. They came mainly European correspondents. One of these two people who worked with me went and looked at what they were dispatching correspondents to their countries, he tells me to me and I told him to go up a tape and make a copy and again and continue copying ... the final copy it all, but what I did was not to detail the content because I thought that if someone was coming, because normally the military came to review the materials to find people who had been protesting, they could lose all those pictures.
-assemblies also retained, how do they do?
-journalists often get hold of the original, which had actually filmed. What was the air after the issue was decided by the editor. It was normal to keep the original, what happens is that after they had a historical significance. But at that minute, for example, the journalist who covered Neltume case-in 1980 for the return of the MIR operation at that location, included to simulate the sounds of shooting a gun battle. He told me he was going to edit and save these tapes and I kept. Amira says
arm "TVN 40. Your story is my story" involved many hours of work, but that product was obtained "tremendously goal ... I think right now we are where we are because we are transparent in spite of what we have to live. " Your satisfaction is to "have done a good job, where people are being portrayed, is thrilled. The files are for that, to keep the story."
