Afternoon we learned of the death of Gottfried von Bennewitz Renan Valdés, which occurred on July 9 ... Too late I know, when its fragility and depletion of 86 calendar life and resting in a modest grave, on land that now houses his eternal rest in a humble courtyard of the General Cemetery. The iron laws of biological life don Renan forced to abandon in this sailing adventure through the world created and uncreated, what we call existence .
We extinguished it, therefore, a brilliant generation of the twentieth century, and suddenly cut a golden thread that has linked yours to ours. From now on, we marched with their own memories and rendered somewhat adrift, without the convenience of having a guide time.
Renan was a tremendous journalist, columnist opinion and a reporter who spent 70 years of longevity in this career information in the media. Still in his later years was pituto and assuming small odd jobs in between. Writer, journalist and political leader who ran, in fact, be a deputy in 1967 by the first district of Santiago, with the slogan "A candidate for the people" , after being proclaimed in the popular Princess Theatre Recoleta, the same home of the famous spectacle of "Picaresque" and other magazines.
early in nationalism, passed through a synthesis of all the political movements of his century: Creole National Socialism, the popular avant-garde Socialist Labour agro-Guillermo Izquierdo Araya, IBAN (I hate writing with the "s" because the name was Ibañez), the National Democratic Party and the Christian Democrats. "I have come to the conclusion that politics is the only way to live without working" , sentenced often half-jokingly and half seriously, she remembered the adventures and experiences in the arenas of deliberation.
was a man who hobnobbed with juces, ministers and great goberantes, which the President Eduardo Frei he wrote "Dear friend" in his letters ... He saw their comrades die in the attempt of September 5, 1938, where they were massacred.
Man who confronted from his column in the newspaper's own President González Videla, earning a holiday in prison for his audacity to rebuke the president's betrayal to the same communist forces that had led to his vote into power; and even when Valdes was then an avowed Marxist. And then write a social novel entitled "Jail", inspired by their experience inside the prison where he paid his daring political ...
The same man who, despite their proximity to the old Ibanez did not hesitate in pointing to the military illustrious Carlos Ibáñez del Campo marking it as one of the default responsible for the slaughter of 1938, earning the scorn of many of his coreligionists by the grace ...
Or the man who later also faced General Augusto Pinochet himself in the Diego Portales building, in the military regime, criticizing the raids popular neighborhoods considered "exaggerated" , and getting with it now, a dismissal from their place of work, however, that would give the same agent, then the board of grace that allowed Mr. Renan live with minimal dignity in their later years, or sometimes even without them.
Knowing your file, in August 2009.
presentation of his column in the sixties.
Valdés The young and old was, well, a total man of principle, an individual right, honorable, unobjectionable, dominated by a sense of what is ethically correct ... Or rather betrayed by the instinct of morality and propriety. And as every man of strong principles, unable to adapt to the moral relativism of our society, ended up being also a man of problems: gaps, voids, even the victim of slander or heinous betrayals.
This fidelity to ethics would be one of their sentences, precisely, making it worthy of ninguneo, disdain and anonymity, despite the enormous work that supports their name. Poorly chosen, perhaps, to look at electoral politics vile, filthy and pimp vernacular, any discharge their straightness and ideals honest.
This lucid witness to a century was born in 1923 as the illegitimate son of a temporary connection between a largely absent father and a distant mother, who did not know himself until his youth. He was the brother of a famous national singer, also died. After the death of his grandmother, who actually grew up with an aunt, went into life as a writer and journalist, reaping the first successes early on, when barely out of high school.
Living in boarding houses and hotels with low reputation, Renan was allowed full-time writing amounts of leaves on the old typewriter he held until his last days as a symbol of his career. Graphomania suffered from incredible, but for some reason insisted on only some of his works to be published in newspapers or end up in printers. Often worked for free, in fact, motivated only by their ideals and the sense of responsibility exercised by the office in the tabloids. Its huge archive met only some parts of this true individual writing industry, much of which (perhaps most) and is irretrievably lost.
Renan had a special attraction Mapocho neighborhoods and La Chimba, especially from the time it was established in the River North district. Although not drink, maintained some relationship with the social life of those places, so far as walking with his felt hat and mustache Characteristically, he used a lifetime.
was over there he established his home in Olive Street. I used to go for a walk from there throughout the neighborhood, sometimes Mapocho Station, Central Market or the other way, at the General Cemetery and the Plaza de Avenida La Paz. Walks, on other occasions, passed by the former Labor Insurance Tower, where he would stop to watch silently the list of his young comrades killed there, for which extended many honors and awards in the press. Even in Marcoleta ever find him, always offering lively and entertaining conversations based primarily on his inexhaustible Battery memories. Renan
Valdes wrote for "The Mercury", "The Illustrated Journal" and the Journal of the PDI, had a column under his name in the newspaper "The Torch" from San Felipe and, of course, he also served as young woman in "The Work", official journal of the National Socialist movement that had belonged at the time of momentum and force.
And those who believe that these links so politically incorrect he took their part, do not err, but had direct access to La Moneda and photographed with presidents, the lone Renan was the subject of hateful accusations on the one hand, some downright evil; and the disdain of some fellow in his own trenches, on the other, not forgiven him for having denied the inspiration European Nazi-fascist National Socialist movement native.
But he had an explanation for everything: everything is the result of another, and always for the better ... Even when trying to remember their comrades killed in the Tower Blood:
"Chile and his men have performed well in these last twenty five years " he wrote in his column, on the anniversary of 1963 - , and the institutional, progress has been made possible without resorting to violence. Moreover, the terrible outcome of the revolution now, obligate us, to be more cautious and aware and quietly ponder the pros and cons of each political act. "
In the same philosophy of spiritual evolution asserted, for example, that life away from the vices he had secured it so long it had been. The cost of this was painful to see the death of his wife and daughter. There was a time when smoking, including pipes, but had a laughing explanation for this habit:
- "my doctor said it was for something aesthetic, against ugliness ... As the smoke I can not see his face. "
also wrote books, almost unknown at this time, so we have no assurance of how many were exactly. Not even he was sure, sometimes. One of them met two of his stories with three other well-known authors, among which is an important judge of our days. And for those same years when I was expelled from the Diego Portales Building Pinochet for having faced the horror of everyone else present, Valdés prefaced the work of his good friend Juan Pérez Berrocal "My life and the theater: 1912-1981" who had been one of the precursors national cinema. There are other works of yours coming out of printing and binding, but are now almost disappeared, which lost scrolls of Qumran in the valley of the Mapocho.
His talent for getting into trouble was the long and loyal life partner, was about 75 when he worked as a correspondent for half, at the height of Pinochet's captivity in London, and had the terrible idea to get amid a crowd of protesters with their body physically very weak and fragile, trying to get statements. In shock, the mob came upon him on the floor ended with a broken hip in 1999 that kept him mired in interventions treatments and condemned the use of the cane which reduced his walks, but not their desires. He barely and grudgingly ignored the instructions of rest. But somehow managed to overcome and not only to recover his walks through the neighborhoods of Santiago classical and popular, but could also break away from challenging the medical staff.
"Dear friend", says the President Frei.
In general cemetery with the writer, in March 2009.
was returning, so the cemetery. Walking on the graves of their loved ones, or the monolith in homage to their comrades killed this afternoon in the tragic building Workers' Compensation. There he met by chance one day last year, near the mausoleum of the English Benevolent Society, after visiting the grave of his beloved wife
- "I go walking in here to start getting used to this neighborhood, the I'll have to change course as friend always said to laughter taking his own misfortunes, and their vulnerabilities. Never ceased to be so happy.
Renan lived in absolute austerity. Their economic, his modesty and his shortcomings contrasted with the warmth with which we received at home to show us a cup of coffee with his wonderful archive, such as large and full of photographs, newspaper clippings, articles, letters and memos, that the life of portrayed itself turns out to be also a reflection of the era to which he belonged; of age from the loss.
But the octogenarian journalist accepted no help, no one seemed interested in him out of this sad decline. Did not even seem comfortable with the photographs or tape recorders. Instead, turn on immediately with the talks, with the interest in listening, to hear his jokes, cleverly tucked between the stories of their endless memories, memories of an entire century.
convince wanted to spread his books, to republish, to sell their goods and transcribe them. But Renan did not want recognition. Somehow, without telling us, perhaps expected to understand that their time had passed, and that anonymity, passing unnoticed as a stranger walks into the river or to the necropolis treading the rubble of his own personal history, were what accommodated him. There was no way out of this darkness, accordingly. On the contrary, the writer usually end up being who gave us one of his innumerable contacts and access to certain circles to help accelerate or comply with formalities. It was his way of being useful in the sad anonymity, to revive the importance of the past, when perhaps it was praised and recognized. Almost prayed that someone should ask these kinds of favors, as if he needed to prove he could still be useful, as set in motion the gears of a run and dusting mechanism, which has remained in the oblivion of the cobwebs, but he feels in his chest you can still go again. Renan
always seemed in good health and, as we said, even bragged about his fitness at age 86. But the final appointment with death caught him inevitably the morning of July 9, when a light beam thrown from somewhere in across from the threshold reached his heart, glaring while combing the hair of his head low in the mirror. Renan
Valdés von Bennewitz, thus, left the world and forgotten by the national newspaper, with his books almost unknown and his name ignored by most media. No mention in any newspaper ... Nothing, not a line, as if Valdes were already dead before he died. We saw was not even published an obituary. It was the state that he already knew its existence, perhaps, and therefore never was enthusiastic about our desire to return to light.
In the era of digital communication and instant transmission, all those who were his disciples and friends, we learned of his surprise death almost by chance, by the sheer speed of gossip, and after attempting the fortuitous event visit to complete an interview with him will remain pending forever as open circle for all rounds of eternity and recurrence, we now know.
But Renan is comfort in knowing that their friends and comrades of his youth. If it is in Heaven or a symbol, it does not matter. There it is: the same things again ones who had lost in the bloody event 72 years ago, and where there was also a part of him died. Returns with his own family, that it was gone.
There, in memory of those who were and those that follow, the book you will remember Don Renan his own consecration as timeless and luminous than a difficult life and sacrificed for the ideals denied.
