From the shore

I write from Lake Ranco. This is a small, winding ocean. Nobody knows what happens on the other shore. I am right in front of where the helicopter piloted by Sebastián Piñera fell, which cost him his life. I found out the news like everyone else, through social networks. Many couldn't believe it: I did.

For years, it has been common to see his ship passing at low altitude along the lake shore. We all knew that the former president of Chile was going up. But today was not just any day. Rain had been announced, after several days of heat. It was forecast for four in the afternoon, but it started earlier, like two thirty. It was a barrage. The lake was erased behind a wall of water. Therefore, when they told me that a helicopter had gone down, I immediately believed it; and when they added to me that Piñera was supposed to manage it, even more so. He was never averse to risks: rather he sought them out to face them and master them. He calculated that the weather offered him a brief window, a faint chance, and he took off. He did the same thing throughout his life, in all fields, and he always came out on top. Not this time.

In 2011 I published a small book that tried to find the explanatory thread of Sebastián Piñera's behavior as a public figure and as president. There he gave an account of his prodigious intelligence, his inexhaustible curiosity, his stubborn tenacity, his unthinkable aptitude for forging complicities and creating teams. But it underlined that competitive desire that tortured him when he felt that he had missed an opportunity, or when he saw that someone else had taken advantage of it before him. He despised hesitation, caution, speculation, and inconclusive reasoning. Instead, he loved action, danger, gambling, transgression, vertigo, cunning. Also loyalty, in its deepest sense. He took care of his parents and siblings. He never abandoned his friends. And above all, with Cecilia they created a family made up of very diverse and autonomous individuals, in which energy was able to make up for the deficit of empathy.

I was not a fan of Sebastián Piñera. Neither professionally nor politically. Nor on a personal level: I am very far from the character described. However, on my part at least, I felt towards him a thread of familiarity and sympathy that linked me to his destiny in a mysterious way. I didn't enjoy his failures: they hurt me. I didn't laugh at his excesses: I felt them as my own. I wasn't irritated by his competitive spirit: he justified it. In all this I seemed to see that child that I at least was, who was striving to gain the recognition and affection of the elders by surpassing the goals they had set for him.

I remember one time, having lunch with Patricio Aylwin and his wife Leonor, just the three of us, when the subject of Piñera's behavior came up, some of which had earned him the distrust of his old friends in the DC. Aylwin listened, leaning back in his seat. Laughing slyly, he told anecdotes about José, the Piñeras' father. And as if his actions were simple pranks, he claimed that he continued to love Sebastian, and that he would do so forever. I understood it perfectly.

Despite being politically on the other side, I always maintained a bond with Piñera. As president, every time we met in front of other people I remembered when he invited me along with a group of advisors – it must have been in the late nineties – and I showed up with a presentation in power point in which he assured that, due to his status as a businessman, he would never be elected president. “And here I am,” he added, laughing and proudly showing the rooms of La Moneda, which he felt was his home. In those meetings, he would say that he wanted to know my vision, for which he would take his Bic pencil and prepare to take notes on his pad. This lasted a few minutes, as he quickly contradicted me and expressed his own opinion. Since he already knew the mechanism, he prepared and told me, in less than five minutes, everything I wanted to say to him, without anesthesia. It came naturally to me to behave more like a consultant, someone who offers paths, than like an analyst who offers a diagnosis.

The meeting that I have most recorded was days after the social outbreak of October 2019. The center of Santiago was empty, as if emerging from a war. Entering La Moneda was an odyssey. Very few officials were seen in the Government Palace. Those who were there wandered like sleepwalkers in the courtyards, protecting themselves from the smoke of the tear gas. President Piñera received us in his personal office, but not before going through the usual gesticulations, which did not fit the drama of the situation. He looked bewildered, like an actor without a script, but not dejected. He quickly told what he had prepared, which included a very bleak view of his personal authority behind General Iturriaga's statements. I was very precise in the recommendations. I had previously checked them with Ricardo Lagos, who urged me to go to La Moneda and indicated very specific measures that in his opinion the president should adopt. I passed them on to him, and he knew immediately where they came from. He didn't react: he was too hurt in his self-love for not having seen the wave coming that had exploded in his face. Given his character, it was something that blinded him.

When I left La Moneda I was scolded by some protesters, who accused me of being “30 years old,” but it didn't go any further. It was the last time I was private with President Piñera, to whose courage and vision in those days we owe the salvation of democracy.

His departure “moves and mourns us as a country,” said President Gabriel Boric, who highlighted his contribution “to building great agreements for the good of the country.”

On my shore of Lake Ranco it's already dark. A few hours ago, when his body reached the ground, the locals present spontaneously sang the national anthem. This is what Sebastián Piñera deserves, who put all the strength of his character, with his lights and shadows, at the service of Chile. We mourn him from all sides.

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