CHEE! CHEE! CHEE!

Say along with me....

CHEE! CHEE! CHEE!

LEY! LEY! LEY!

¡¡¡ VI-VA CHI-LE !!!

now multiply by 70,000 voices, 140,000 stomping feet and Bono.


I saw U2 tonight and it was incredible. I didn’t think that it would really be that cool at all ... of course, I expected an entertaining experience but not much more. I was offered a ticket when a friend's girlfriend got sick and I accepted yesterday, thinking a concert with 70,000 people might be pretty lame but at the very least the people watching would be good. And it seems like a handful of U2 songs have been playing in the background during many of my most salient memories, usually from portable radios in random but special places.

The concert had been sold out since the second day tickets were on sale at the beginning of January, and Chileans are absolute fanaticos about U2. Like beatles-mania style. For the last month there have been signs plastered on every concrete wall announcing the arrival of the "most important band in the world", the music TV station has been running "Yo Amo U2" documentaries and looping music videos from the beloved 80's. Radio DJs have been playing "with or without you" non-stop and counting down the days, then hours and then minutes until the event at Estadio Nacional, one of the country's most sacred landmarks.

The performance was great and the music was orchestrated with an unbelievable and nearly heart-stopping light show. Chile's loud and proud national chant shook the entire stadium, Presidenta Bachelet made an appearance and got almost as big of a cheer as Bono himself, and the little old lady in front of me shouted "¡otra! ¡otra!" and shook her little fist in the air demanding an encore. And, I saw the greatest human wave I have ever seen in my entire life.

At one point, the Spanish translation of the Declaration of Human Rights was scrolled on the largest center screen. I felt myself suck in a breath when the crowd erupted into the loudest shouts of the night when Article 5 appeared: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

The shouts were a welcome acknowledgement of an ever-present part of national history. The Estadio Nacional where we were singing, shouting and stomping was used as a concentration camp during Chile's military coup in 1973. Nearly 40,000 political prisoners were held in the field and galleria and many of them tortured and murdered in the corridors and locker rooms in the stadium at the hand of the military government. A sharp reminder of how much further we have to go to just secure basic human rights (I wont even attempt to talk about my own country here) but also a reminder of how resilient people can be. It’s horrifying to imagine the acts that transformed the city's center of community, pride and identity, into a source of pain, torture and fear.

Fast forward to now. February 2006 and one of the "worlds most important bands” is playing on the same field - the band itself in many ways a product of a society living in violent conflict. The stadium is filled with a new generation of music lovers and hope for a different direction for Chile. If I were as idealistic as I used to be I might even say a different direction for the world. I think I may be getting too old for that though.

It was a very moving evening, I had to swallow hard and wipe tears away more than once. And the little old lady did get the encore after all, a beautiful acoustic version of Mothers of the Disappeared, played on a traditional chilean Charango guitar.