Filming Chacabuco: Part II

Death is everywhere in Chacabuco. But it's a moving, strange and creepy crawly kind of death.

The barracks. The smokestack. Train tracks. And these hollowed out lamp posts shaped like stick figures ambling about the town, tilting and wobbling precariously, smiling absurdly and sometimes just spilt face-first upon the street...all these objects take on an unsettling aspect, as if they're doing something, or saying something. As if they've got this strange intention behind them, like they're theatrically acting out a twisted human thought.

Chacabuco is both hideous and holy. Its a human artifact gone errant like a Frankenstein that's been forgotten, with no hope for a mate. Nobody's given it a plot or a script. It's just there, and it's doing things.

Strange things. But it's impossible to say what, exactly.

Chacabuco, a ruins to the order of Rome, Petra or Machu Picchu, is neglected. It's dying and falling apart, but it's not rolling over. It's changing into something else, and as it does so, I get the feeling it doesn't put people high up on the list. It moves without us, and seems to despise us. But at the same time, it's intrinsically a product of the human mind.

It was the brainchild of production-oriented city planning. Chacabuco witnessed 12 years as a horrendous nitrate mining town from 1924 to 1938. Then, in 1973-1974 it was a Pinochet prison camp.

Could it just be my imagination? It's easy to imagine things here. But it seems like Chacabuco exudes a sad and smirking disdain for humanity and it's impossible for us humans to get the joke. The cracked adobe walls and the electric wires -- they're talking about us, bantering with the wobbly smokestacks and the broken windows, saying withering things in a whisper we can't hear.

Yes, this place is dead as dead can be. That's why the beautiful orange butterlies flittering about everywhere felt so out of place.