… vračam se
v svoj dom in v svoje sanje,
vračam se v Patagonijo,
kjer veter stresa staje
in ocean škropi ledenike.
Pablo Neruda

Je Čile za nas res dežela “oddaljena in tuja”? Je, a tudi ni, če pomislimo, da se je na desettisoče naših Primorcev in Dalmatincev izseljevalo prav v Čile. Prvi so se tam naselili okoli leta 1850, in sicer v mestu Antofagasti, kjer so se ukvarjali z ribolovom in pomorstvom kot v domačih krajih. Čile pa je tudi dežela pesnika in nobelovca Pavla Neruda, čigar pesniške zbirke Veliki spev, Španija v srcu ali Bivališče na zemlji so bile na Hrvaškem še kako vplivne in brane. Tudi Neruda, družbenopolitično angažirani politik, prijatelj socialističnega predsednika Allendeja, je umrl leta 1973, v letu zgodovinske drame Čila.
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… I’m returning
home, in my dreams,
I’m returning to Patagonia where wind pounds the stables and the Ocean spatters ice…
Pablo Neruda

Is Chile really a “faraway and foreign” country to us? It is and it isn’t, when we think about the tens of thousands of our people from the Croatian littoral and Dalmatia who immigrated to Chile. The first of them settled around 1850 in the town of Antofagasta and there they made their living from fishing and seamanship, just like in the old country. Chile is also Pablo Neruda’s country, a Nobel prize-winning poet whose books of poetry Canto General, Spain in Our Hearts or Residence on Earth were particularly influential and gladly read in Croatia. Neruda, a politically and socially committed artist and a friend of socialist president Allende, died in 1973, the year of historical drama in Chile.
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