Juan Bustamante Interview
Listen to Audio on the Butler Center catalog
2006 interview of Juan Bustamante, Chilean immigrant to the U.S., by his daughter Dafne.
Listen to clip from 5:15-10:20
Transcript Excerpt
My country is – it was really hard for us – we had so many problems in that year, 1973. I remember when the military takes power. They take it for almost seventeen years. We fight very hard to take it – democracy, freedom again. It’s very important. People, they don’t realize how freedom is important. You make your own decision about your family, your education, job, life.
Q: Was there a specific moment that you remember, that kind of changed your life during that military government time?
Yeah, I think it was a very important part. The situation..because I always remember, Tuesday morning, September 11, 1973, when I woke up in the morning… a very cloudy day… they say on the radio that all the schools are closed, everybody stay home, have curfew, nobody move from houses and no transportation, no airplanes, no cab, nothing, everybody stay home. And I saw through the windows the troops around the city everywhere and shots fired…The government palace in Santiago is under attack…I think it’s a sad, sad moment…
My school is closed because the use it for prisoner camp, they use another school for a base…
September is supposed to be the best month in Chile, because of independence, it’s like Christmas…But that month of that year was bad. Curfew..12pm to 6pm I think was the only time you could get out, to the market, to buy things. My father lost his job because he had a relation with the old government [President Allende], so they fired him. Our situation was really bad.
Questions
What was Juan Bustamante’s experience of the 1973 military coup in Chile?
Citations
Bustamante, Juan. Oral History Interview. 10/15/2006. StoryCorps Central Arkansas Interviews, Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. https://arstudies.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p1532coll1/id/8690/rec/31