Evandro Teixeira, Santiago, Chile, military coup of 1973/Courtesy Evandro Teixeira/IMS Collection
A must-see, the solo exhibition “Evandro Teixeira. Chile 1973,” in São Paulo’s Instituto Moreira Salles, curated by IMS coordinator Sergio Burgi, focuses on Chile’s coup d’état, but not just that. The show also discloses his unique series of photographs of Chilean grand poet Pablo Neruda’s suspicious death in the same period, while also exploring the extraordinary legacy of impactful black-and-white images by this remarkable photographer and photojournalist.
Simply put, Evandro, as we Brazilians affectionately call him, is among the world’s most acclaimed photojournalists. Covering local and international news for five decades, mostly for the Jornal do Brasil newspaper, this professional with a great personality and quick on the shutter of his Leica was interviewed for Newcity Brazil in 2018 (Love and Light: How the Seminal Photography of Evandro Teixeira Captured a Bleak Political Moment) when he revealed how he began in photography in his native state of Bahia and his passion for photojournalism.
Photographer Evandro Teixeira. Photo by André Arruda, Rio de Janeiro, 2013/Courtesy Evandro Teixeira/IMS Collection
This time the eighty-seven-year-old professional reveals the real story behind Neruda’s death and how he was destined to be the only photographer to capture the poet’s final moments.
Evandro, tell us about the atmosphere in Santiago, in September 1973, when you arrived there.
Tense, very tense. From the terrace of the Hotel Carrera, I could see the La Moneda government palace with its iron gates shattered after the siege and its bombardments. Because of the toque de queda (curfew), not a soul in the deserted streets, only military and police vehicles speeding about. Gun shots were heard followed by a sepulchral silence. People were imprisoned during the night to never return home.
Evandro Teixeira, Santiago, Chile, military coup of 1973/Courtesy Evandro Teixeira/IMS Collection
Evandro Teixeira, Santiago, Chile, military coup of 1973/Courtesy Evandro Teixeira/IMS Collection
How did you find out where Pablo Neruda was?
In the days following the military coup there were rumors Neruda had been jailed with other political prisoners aboard the navy training ship Esmeralda anchored in Valparaiso bay. At the hotel’s restaurant I met a Brazilian woman who whispered secretively that Neruda was not arrested, but instead had been taken to Santa Maria hospital near the Mapocho river. The river was a “cemetery” of floating corpses, the clandestine executions perpetrated by the junta, who simply threw the bodies there. People from all over the world sent messages condemning the junta, pleading for the poet’s life.
Evandro Teixeira, Santiago, Chile, military coup of 1973/Courtesy Evandro Teixeira/IMS Collection
What else did you witness in the military siege of Santiago?
I had already been to the Estadio Nacional (National Stadium) during FIFA’s football World Cup in 1962 as a professional photographer, so fortunately I knew the stadium well. Now, eleven years later, it was a whole different scenario. Instead of football stars my camera captured an anonymous group of campesino (peasant) prisoners, most of them poor native Indians, most of them to be soon executed in cold blood. With my experience as an “invisible” photographer making my way in risky situations to capture the best shots, my instinct told me to head for the locker room, with my Leica hidden under my shirt, always. I saw students lined up, static, facing the wall. The air was still, heavy, there was no doubt they knew they would soon be killed. Not far from there were the torture rooms under the supervision of the American “advisers” and the Brazilian “adviser” chief police officer, delegado Sergio Paranhos Fleury from São Paulo. They were preparing for what would come after: Operation Condor, a U.S.–backed campaign of political repression and state terrorism by right-wing dictatorships in South America.
Evandro Teixeira, Santiago, Chile, military coup of 1973/Courtesy Evandro Teixeira/IMS Collection
Weren’t you detained?
I was detained twice. One night they asked me why I was photographing a meat truck unloading in a military fort. There was a meat shortage in Chile, except for them. The other time they stopped me in the morgue and I had a fake ID with me with the false pretense of looking for a missing family member. I went into a room and felt terrorized, there were two lines of bodies on their last breath lying side-by-side with corpses like bleeding cattle. Suddenly I felt a hard blow at the back of my neck and a guard screaming at me: “Hijo de puta! Qué estás hacienda acá? Es del outro lado!” (Son of a bitch! What are you doing here? It’s the other way!). Luckily he didn’t ask me anything because he would have found out by my strong accent, I was lying. Unfortunately, my camera didn’t capture that tragic image, but it’s stamped in my mind forever.
Pablo Neruda by Evandro Teixeira/Courtesy Evandro Teixeira/IMS Collection
Evandro Teixeira, Pablo Neruda and his wife Matilde, Rio de Janeiro, 1968/Courtesy Evandro Teixeira/IMS Collection
Evandro Teixeira, death of poet Pablo Neruda, Santiago, Chile, September 1973/Courtesy Evandro Teixeira/IMS Collection
So what next?
The next day, in the wee hours, as soon as the curfew lifted, I left the hotel with my colleague Paulo Cesar to the hospital to look for Neruda. To our surprise, Neruda’s body was lying on a stretcher in a corridor. With him, only his wife Matilde and her brother. As soon as I saw this, without asking for permission, I grabbed my Leica and took a picture of the tragic scene. In my experience a good photojournalist first takes a shot then asks if he can shoot some more to guarantee at least one image. I introduced myself, told her I was the photographer from the Jornal do Brasil newspaper who had photographed her and her now-dead husband in Bahia at (writer) Jorge Amado’s house some years before. She immediately gave me permission to capture everything and told me to follow her. Matilde was aware of what it meant to show the world what was going on in Chile and what the military junta had done to her beloved Neruda. I was the only photographer there. I followed her throughout all the bureaucratic procedure and the preparation for the funeral. The photos I took are, undoubtedly, very crude but they witness the unjustified and brutal death of thousands of Chileans and of poet Neruda, a crime against humanity and beauty.
Evandro Teixeira, death of poet Pablo Neruda, Santiago, Chile, September 1973/Courtesy Evandro Teixeira/IMS Collection
Evandro Teixeira, death of poet Pablo Neruda, Santiago, Chile, September 1973/Courtesy Evandro Teixeira/IMS Collection
What was going in your mind?
Inside the hospital, photographing Neruda’s body in a stretcher, I was terrified and horrified at the same time. I would look around the place and think, “why on earth with that bunch of photographers in Santiago, am I the only one here?”
Evandro Teixeira, death of poet Pablo Neruda, Santiago, Chile, September 1973/Courtesy Evandro Teixeira/IMS Collection
Evandro Teixeira, death of poet Pablo Neruda, Santiago, Chile, September 1973/Courtesy Evandro Teixeira/IMS Collection
Evandro Teixeira, death of poet Pablo Neruda, Santiago, Chile, September 1973/Courtesy Evandro Teixeira/IMS Collection
Evandro Teixeira, death of poet Pablo Neruda, Santiago, Chile, September 1973/Courtesy Evandro Teixeira/IMS Collection
And what about Neruda’s burial?
Neruda’s casket was taken to their home, La Chascona, a house painted bright blue, in a leafy neighborhood of Santiago. La Chascona, where the wake took place, was also the name the poet affectionately called his wife Matilde. The place was in very bad shape, the military police had looted it, windows broken, everything scattered, a mess, all his books taken. Through the property garden ran a small stream, but we found the land all flooded because they had expressly broken the barrier of the watercourse to swamp the place and make things even more difficult. So, we had to improvise by taking down some doors to pave our way into the house for the wake to happen. Considering Neruda’s importance, there were few people at the wake except for a few friends and some ambassadors. On the way to the burial crowds started to gather silently on both sides of the streets, when we arrived at the cemetery there was a huge crowd waiting. A part of the crowd cried: “Pablo Neruda!,” the other answered: “Presente” (Present). And together they all chanted: “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!” The people united will never be defeated!
“Evandro Teixeira. Chile 1973” Through July 30, 2023 Curated by Sergio Burgi IMS Paulista (Instituto Moreira Salles), São Paulo
Rio-born Cynthia Garcia is a respected art historian, art critic and journalist fluent in five languages stationed in São Paulo. Cynthia is a recipient of the 2023 APCA (Paulista Association of Art Critics) award as a contributing editor of Newcity Brazil since its founding in 2015. Her daughter America Cavaliere works in the contemporary art market and her son Pedro Cavaliere, based in LA, is in the international DJ scene.
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