Twenty years ago this month, I boarded a plane for South America and an experience that would change my life.

It was the summer after my junior year at Earlham College, a Quaker school that prides itself on teaching students to engage the world. In the classroom, I learned about issues of war and peace, nonviolence, the arms race, global hunger and human rights. These experiences prepared me for — but paled in comparison to — the three months I would spend in Chile.

Hugging South America's Pacific Coast, Chile is a sliver of land that stretches 3,000 miles from Peru to Antarctica. Never more than 150 miles across, the nation is tucked between the Andes and the ocean. Its dramatic geography matches its dramatic history.

Once hailed as South America's most enduring and stable democracy, Chile suffered a bloody coup d'etat on Sept. 11, 1973. During its rule, the military was responsible for more than 3,000 Chileans deaths, plus many more who suffered torture or exile. Fear of repression influenced nearly every aspect of Chileans' lives: what they read, who they associated with, what they said in public. At the time of our visit in 1988, the nation had endured 15 years of military dictatorship and the military's presence was palpable.

This history was backdrop to the project that our college group traveled to Chile to study — a "popular education" program that served married couples in the slums of Santiago. The program used games and other simple activities to facilitate conversation among the couples. The goal was to improve communication in the family by helping women assert themselves and men to be less macho. At the same time, it built community and trust among the participants. On both counts, it was remarkably successful.

The groups met in a classroom at a local Catholic church. The sessions were facilitated by a couple who had "graduated" from the program the year before. We used "participant-observation" techniques to learn about the program — we pretended to be couples to participate in the activities in the hope that our presence as "outsiders" would not inhibit the group's discussion.

In these conversations, we heard stories of people's struggles with unemployment and underemployment. We learned of their move from the countryside to the city. They talked about living in shacks that offered little protection from the cold or the rain. We heard about the harassment they suffered when the police raided their neighborhoods.

We also met three Franciscan priests who served this community. They, too, lived in a simple wooden shack with a corrugated tin room. They slept on hard cots and ate little more than bread, butter and scrambled eggs. But their home was built around a small chapel that filled with sunlight as it passed through a roof tile made of translucent corrugated plastic. The simple altar, benches made from tree trunks, religious art and plants made it one of the most beautiful sacred spaces that I've ever seen.

During our time in Chile, we met also people who had been victims of the military regime. A neighbor had been forced into exile after the coup and still struggled to reestablish her life after she was allowed to return. We visited the "VicarA a de la Solidaridad," the church's human rights office that offered legal, medical, and financial assistance to those who had been arrested, tortured or "disappeared." The practice of "disappearing" its opponents was one of the regime's most heinous human rights violations — it meant that family members never knew the fate of their loved ones. Their wounds were never allowed to heal.

And we met courageous people who were willing to speak up against the government's abuses. I was particularly moved by a group that used nonviolent direct action in the style of Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to protest torture. Organized by a Jesuit priest, Father Jose Aldunate, the members of the Sebastian Acevedo Movement Against Torture put their bodies on the line to say that torture is wrong. They carried out a series of actions — often at the site of clandestine jails and frequently in the face of police billy clubs, water canons and tear gas. But they did not strike back and they did not give up. They inspired me to return to Chile a few years later to write my seminary thesis about their work.
We were also witnesses to an historic event.

On Oct. 5, 1988, the people of Chile voted in a national plebiscite on military rule. It was a simple vote: Yes to support eight more years of military rule or No to call for competitive elections within a year.

There had been other plebiscites. Marked by fraud and intimidation, they were little more than a show to legitimize Chile's military government in the eyes of the world. No one expected the plebiscite of 1988 to be any different.

But a group of political leaders — many of whom had been deeply distrustful of one another — worked together to seize this opportunity. For 30 days before the vote, each side was allocated 15 minutes each night to broadcast their views on national television. It was the most significant media access that the opposition had in 15 years.

The pro-government side used their time to continue the scare tactics of the past. The opposition broadcast a message of hope: Chile, la alegria ya viene. Chile: joy is coming. The opposition also organized marches and rallies and gave workshops on civic participation. For many Chileans, this was their first experience of democracy.

On the morning of Oct. 5, the lines were long at every polling station in the country, but voting proceeded without incident. As night fell, the military government remained silent and fear increased that they would engage in fraud. A momentary black out in the nation's capital increased this concern. But late that evening, the head of Chile's national police broke ranks with the other members of the junta and announced to the press that the No vote had won.

Chile had overcome military rule — not by revolution, but by the ballot box.
I learned many things during that trip, but two enduring lessons remain with me:
Ordinary people, working together, can overcome extraordinary circumstances to change their lives and the lives of their community. People need not be victims of forces beyond their control — even when those forces have guns and bayonets, and tanks — but they can write their own history.

Equally important, I learned that the church can be more than an impersonal and distant institution or a social club enjoyed by a few lucky insiders. It can change people's lives with a message of hope and joy, even in the midst of great suffering. And it can contribute to alleviating that suffering by speaking and acting on the most critical issues of the day.

Twenty years later, these memories still bring tears to my eyes — and these lessons still guide my life.

— Christopher Ney ’89

The Rev. Christopher Ney ’89 is pastor of the West Gloucester Trinitarian Congregational Church. This article was originally published in the Gloucester (Mass.) Daily Times.