MY EARLY WRITING

I began my career straight out of journalism school at the Catholic University in Chile, as a writer and editor with several major magazines in Santiago, the capital city.

My first writing job was at a magazine called Revista Hoy in my native Chile. It was modeled after Time Magazine in the U.S.  As a rookie writer, I was sent out to cover crime scenes, and a lot of stories the more experienced writers didn't want to cover. 

My first day on the job I was told to write a story about the visit of an animal rights activist who had come to Chile to check out the country's slaughter houses.  I had peacefully eaten steak for years without realizing what went on at one of those places of horror.  When I handed in my story, my boss really liked it. I didn't tell him how many re-writes I'd had to do because I could´t stop crying from remembering the cows' sad brown eyes and loud bellows as they were pushed  towards the killing hammer, nor the overwhelming stench of death.

I was soon assigned the science section and told I could cover feature stories if the subject was of interest to the publication.  I was told to come up with some ideas of my own.

THE ALACALUFES OF PATAGONIA

I chose to write about the ALACALUFE TRIBE, a Patagonian indigenous group whose full-blooded members were fast disappearing. They had been decimated by diseases against which they had no immunity, and then by alcohol and an unhealthy diet.  At the time, there were only 59 tribal members left in the world. They were on the way to extinction. 

It wasn't an easy task to travel to the area where the Alacalufe survivors lived, almost on the edge of the southern continent, on an islet called Puerto Eden (Port Eden).

I wangled free travel on a Chilean navy boat for my doctor husband and I, and he negotiated a deal in which he would provide free medical care to the locals during our two-week visit in exchange for free lodging at the tiny clinic. 

There we slept on hospital beds bundled up in our sleeping bags. We bathed in the icy water that trickled out of the clinic bathroom faucet. It was January, the middle of Chilean summer. But we shivered in the damp, freezing air of our unheated hospital room.

Every morning we set off in a small rowboat across the strait to spend the day with the surviving 59 Alacalufes, all members of the same family.   They lived much the same way their hunting ancestors had for thousands of years.  The Chilean government had recently provided them with wooden houses, but they preferred living in their tepees, flimsy structures built out of sea wolf skins. They ignored their indoor kitchens, and instead cooked fish and seafood at small bonfires within their encampment. 

In the following weeks I interviewed everyone in the group, from the elders to the two or three children.  We got to hear their guttural songs, which only the oldest people could recall.  My husband took great photographs and rolled some film of the people and their environment.

BACK IN SANTIAGO

When I returned to Santiago and handed in my Alacalufe story, my boss was delighted. After reading it, he rounded up the editorial staff and they decided to make it the cover for that week.  The story got a lot of attention.  People knew very little about the surviving band of Alacalufes of Puerto Eden. I was interviewed by several newspapers, and was asked to produce a short feature using the film we had shot for local television.  

PAULA MAGAZINE

Then, the editor of another magazine called me. She wanted to know if I would write for them. The magazine, called REVISTA PAULA, was an avant guard woman's magazine.  Its four writers covered cutting edge topics for Chilean society of that time. Before Paula hardly anyone in Chile talked or much less wrote openly about abortion, divorce, depression, extramarital sex, and infidelity.  We wrote about all of it in a simple, direct way. People gobbled up the stories.

I was the youngest writer.  But working at Paula I grew up fast. My colleagues were at the pinnacle of their careers.  All have since published successful books.  Isabel Allende, a colleague and fellow writer at Paula, has written a series of world famous novels, including The House of the Spirits.

My colleagues were strong, passionate women, who taught me a lot about women's rights and empowerment.

Working there was fun because I was given wide leeway about what to write about. So I chose things I liked.  I soon gravitated toward personal interviews ofartists, writers, musicians, and others making the news.  In the process I learned what made people tick, how to ask good questions, how to get my subjects to open up their hearts to me. And of course, how to write stories that were entertaining and appealing to our audience, men and women, young and not so young.  

TV SHOW

I had been at the magazine a couple of years when we were asked to produce a program for Chilean national television.  Four of us writers at Paula would interview one male guest in the studio.  Our program was called SIEGE.  Males lined up to be on our show.  Our audience loved the idea of a vulnerable man being plied with questions by four prying women journalists.

OFF TO THE U.S.

Then, my husband got an offer. He had applied for a medical fellowship in Washington, D.C. and had been accepted.  It was a great opportunity. We were excited about having a new experience overseas.

So we packed up, grabbed our two toddlers, and flew to Washington. 

I had no idea how hard the transition would be.