da: A smiling human with short hair, head tilted a bit to the right. It's black and white with a neutral background. You can't tell if the white in the hair is due to lighting, or maybe it's white hair! (Default)
da ([personal profile] da) wrote2009-01-20 08:44 am

Ni Pena Ni Miedo

In Pinochet's Chile, a poet held and tortured in the dictator's jails named Raúl Zurita imagined "writing poems in the sky, on the faces of cliffs, in the desert."

In 1993, this poem was etched into a mountain-base: Ni Pena Ni Miedo.

No shame nor fear.

It is three kilometers long. If you zoom in on the google map in that link, you can the attention to detail. The desert has been reclaiming the field, just as the thousands of victims of Pinochet were disappeared.

But it is said that every Sunday the children of the nearest village go out with shovels and turn the dirt inside the letters to refresh them. My mind is boggled at the scale of this.

(I originally saw this on Google Sightseeing; there was more info in their links, and more also in the translation translation of his wp page here.)

Happy Inauguration Day, everyone.

[identity profile] mynatt.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 04:18 pm (UTC)(link)
That's a beautiful thought. Thanks for sharing.

[identity profile] melted-snowball.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 05:55 pm (UTC)(link)
Wow.