My name is Alejandro Raul Mujica-Olea. I was born in Santiago, Chile, the capital, a big metropolis. I grew up there with my mother, father, uncle and grandmother. I grew up in a lonely life. I didn’t play like most children, a kind of military life, a monk’s life. I had to study and work in the church and had extra education Saturday and Sunday in another school. I grew up with lots of discipline and not much fun. My duty was to ring the bell. Why me? Because I had muscles and because I had a watch! In those days, not many people had watches. That was my mission, to ring the bell and call people to Church.
I had all the responsibility because I was number 1 in the family. I saw clouds in the sky and that was the television of my childhood. The chickens, the cat, the bird were really my company. I was ringing the bell with two other children. Two of us had shoes and the other had none. My father was very proud that we always had shoes. And I had good socks. The other poor boy had nothing.
I noticed two different churches. The 8:00 mass had people who walked, poor people; not much money there but we collected lots of flowers. There were choirs for the 10:00 and 12:00 masses. During the 12:00 mass, there was no room for parking cars. Everyone came in cars: councilors, captain of police, the priest director of the church said the mass. People who control the business, people baking bread, the owner of the factory of shoes were there. I wrote that the problem was that the people of the 12:00 mass were the ones who made the people poor. It was the wrong thing to say.
The monk called my father and it was first time I heard the word communist. He told my father a communist wrote the paper for Alejandro. They said it was “too early for him to write about these things. He should be writing poetry.” I knew nothing about poetry until a lady started to teach me then I said almost anything in poetry. The poetry became my tool to say things.
I pursued a degree as an electromechanico. As electromechanico, life was completely different. I lost contact with those I grew up with. One side was factory, other side was farms. Farmers were poor, factory workers middle class.
From the church, I got a view of the social class. Nobody could convince me that there should be three social classes. It was not what God said. The bible said things should be different and this led me to political activities. I was interested to know how to solve the problem. I listened to lots of things. The Socialist party worked perfectly for me. It had the same philosophy as communists but you owned your own things. Nobody was hungry. I became very strong in this idea.
Then Salvador Allende ran for president. Everything was in transition. I worked as a volunteer for Allende’s campaign. We asked people, “What do you want?” Their answer was really simple: “I would like better pay, education for my children, a house, medicine, a better life”
The election of Allende made big changes and the right wing never accepted Allende. The government of US and the army of Chile overthrew us, killed 3,000 people and put the rest of the people in jail. I ended up in torture. The Army Military Tribunal and condemned me to 8 years in high security prison. I spent first two years of those years with support of Amnesty International, Red Cross, Government of Canada, the Churches and many other people. I had visa for many countries but the only country really I could go to was Canada. I discovered that Canada and Chile had an agreement that we would go no where for 2 years. So jail now for me was a jail of ice and, of course, the language.
I left Chile Aug 14, 1975 on Canadian Airlines. I was hugging my wife and my son was sleeping, an angel of innocence. The plane started moving out, took velocity and we held hands with my little black lady. The plane took off and the higher we went, further down was my country without freedom. There among the stars was my freedom. From the inside of my soul, a spring flowed out and two rivers of salty tears. I was in complete silence but we were free and we were going to Canada, the land that will give us what I did not have in Chile.
So I ended up in Canada. Because I was a poet, I thought I was important. I thought I was a man who sacrificed everything for my country that another nation will recognize that. I expected to see flags welcoming me; but that was the dream of a poet, of a political prisoner. I was nobody.
Life in Canada was completely different and difficult. Edmonton was a small town with lots of discrimination and we were treated very badly. The newspapers wrote that a bunch of communists arrived. There was panic about Communists. We were political prisoners who came and could not leave the country for two years. It was a very difficult life for me. Keeping me up, maybe, was my faith. I lost my wife, who was the women that I loved the most. I worked in the sanitary sewer.
I moved to “paradise” – Vancouver Island. I found a job and worked for the school board as a fixer, not in a sewer. I learned to paint, fix things. It was okay, I could make a living. Edmonton was snowing, here it was sunny. My wife did not believe it and asked for divorce. I suffered mental depression. I recovered but then I got cancer. Doctor said “son you have cancer. I recommend you reunite with your family and say goodbye.”
Through the help of my family doctor who used an unconventional cure, I managed to recover then worked with citizens and challenged people. Then got I bored and studied mental illness. After that, I moved to Vancouver and studied in Douglas College and became a mental care worker. I got cancern again and I had more stress.
During that time, I re-discovered the handkerchief which is poetry for me, having lived as a closet poet for a long time until moving to Vancouver. With my partner Adriadne Sawyer, we decided to read poetry in public. We tried to but found out nobody wanted us and that was a terrible thing. The organization that received a grant would not allow us to read. You had to be white and it had to all be in English. This made me angry - another fight, another struggle. Finally, we decided to create the World Poetry Reading Series which started in ten years ago. It was successful as we had 400 writers. Now we have membership and 25 writers who have committed to us 25 books that will become Canadian literature. Many think we don’t create Canadian literature because we are immigrants. They are wrong. They don’t accept that a person who chose to live here legally and who writes for this nation and represents this nation all over the world is doing Canadian literature. I say we are writing Canadian literature and I am doing Canadian literature. The books I created here reflect Canadian literature, I wrote here by this sky, full of water, sometimes blue, I wrote this poetry here and it belongs to this country. It is Canadian literature.
That is why we created the World Poetry Reading Series and World Poetry Café, which is on Coop radio 102.7 and why we created our own publishing company. We publish in two languages and we have published 25 books that belong to Canadian literature.
So that is my life, a sad life, very difficult but I have been fighting. I am old and have cancer but I have applied for Poet Laureate of New Westminster, the Royal City. I think if I gain that it will be a good thing for the history of one political refugee in this country. I don’t expect that will be easy but that is my hope.