Frontiers. Boundaries. Borders. Borderline. Ninety four percent of people who have suffered trauma shows behavior that is often misread by untrained psychologists as borderline. Borderline is a personality disorder characterized by a disrupted sense of identity, difficulty to control impulses, self-destructive behavior, and chronic feelings of emptiness. The fact is, not every traumatized person turns into a borderline, however these two have one thing in common: The shocking experience of splitting of one’s identity.
When a person suffers trauma, he or she experiences a crush of their sense of being. Something has been broken inside; one feels as if one has died although one’s still alive. And that is one of the most disturbing things of all: working hard to continue living while you know, deep inside, that you are actually dead. In other words, trauma is a disruptive event that crushes one’s identity, and the cure looks pretty much like reconstructing the pieces that make up the narrative of who we are.
Now let me pose this question: Can trauma be experienced collectively? What happens when the trauma happened to a whole generation of people? Is there such a thing as a collective self that can be traumatized? Can a collective act-out?
My belief is that it is possible.
I grew up in Chile during the ’80s on the Pinochet’s era. On September 11 of 1973, the military took over the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. Innocent people were taken to prison, tortured, raped, killed, and their bodies were hidden. The military never acknowledged the slaughter or even apologized to the people who lost their family members. Pinochet died comfortably on his bed on December of 2006. After this conflict, Chile is divided in two: Those who deny the killings and are grateful that Pinochet saved our economy, and those who had to swallow the pain and never got a sense of justice or even acknowledgment for the injustices made. Reconciliation hasn’t truly taken place and until today, even when I am not a communist, my father and uncle would call me one just for showing compassion towards the mothers of the disappeared. There is not acknowledgment or enough humbleness on either side, and reconciliation will be even harder to accomplish because, against what many people in Chile believe, this was not an internal conflict –the CIA crafted this disaster behind closed doors and intentionally (and cowardly -as it is the costume for CIA’s operations) sabotaged Allende’s government, creating psychological and economic chaos, and made people in my country believe that a military intervention was the only way out of the crisis.
It is not surprising that I grew up listening to people on the street and the media complaining that “Chileans have no identity.” This was a generalized feeling. We know that Argentinians dance tango, that Brazilians are just God when it comes to futbol, that Germans make great beer and that French kiss like heaven… but what do we, Chileans, do?
I am trying to answer that question myself, and I am grateful to authors like Isabel Allende and others who have given us back a sense of national identity, but I must confess that it is not easy to put one’s finger on what being Chilean entitles.
I believe in the existence of a collective self, of a national identity if you wish, that is interwoven with the core of who we are individually. I believe in collective trauma and I continue witnessing this crying country of Chile; trying to figure out who we are without referents, without a collective memory. The boomers are way too busy making money (or getting indebted), buying the goods that the military and the “Chicago boys” made sure we could acquire. But it is like in the days of September 11 of 2001 when George W. Bush called his people to show America’s strength by going out shopping.
If we can buy two cars per household, iPhones, and pull off thousands of wi-fi spots around Santiago, and look cool while we “ponceamos,” we have nothing if we have no idea who we are, if we are not putting ourselves on the line for anybody. As Pedro de Valdivia, founder of Santiago said, we will not be remebered for what we acquired, but for what we gave away.
The only way of giving something of yourself is by having something to give– by knowing who you are.
In 2007 Newsweek and the New York Times wrote about the “pokemones” ponceando (making out with everyone) in Santiago. The pokemones are an urban tribe that doesn’t necesarilly stand for anything, but dress super cool and gather in parks to make out with as many people they can (With all due respect to Newsweek, BJ’s are not part of the package — that would take way too much spirit and bravery from my youngster country fellows). New York Times have called it a “sexual liberation” from the conservative Catholic Church during the Pinochet days. It doesn’t look to me like a bunch of people with a great sense of identity, freely deciding to “share themselves” with the collective; Instead, It seems to me more like a crass and evident acting out. Having no resources to elaborate verbally on our collective pain, some of us decide to purge themselves out on makeshift orgies (as the pokemon call them).
This is a painful thing to watch as a Chilean and I know many people in Santiago are upset about the pokemones’ public demonstrations, however, I just wanted to say this: We are all as much part of it as the “Emos” and “Pokemones.” Let’s not point our fingers at them but wonder for a second, if this is not an acting out crying out for help, crying out for us to work on providing some sense of identity to this generation. we are all in pain, and it is time to acknowledge it and rebuild the narratives of our identities together.