Voyager: Constellations of Memory

In this imaginative, poetic work—part memoir, part novella—Fernández braids the mysteries of the cosmos, the neural map of the human brain, and the traumas of contemporary Chilean history. Intertwining the personal and the historic, Fernández recalls her mother’s agitation at watching Jaime Guzmán, a prominent supporter of the 17-year military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, on television—and her quiet glee when Guzmán was assassinated in 1991. Fernández recounts her own participation in a poignant memorial ceremony for 26 victims of a military death squad in Chile’s Atacama Desert, one of the world’s best spots for astronomical observations. Fernández is critical of her son’s high school for preventing him from suggesting publicly that Pinochet’s many political supporters should not have the right to participate in a democracy. But in her telling of Chile’s past, Fernández omits the cataclysmic disruptions that rocked the country under the ill-fated socialist coalition of Pinochet’s predecessor, President Salvador Allende. Chile’s current left-leaning government often makes the same cognitive error and thus has failed, so far, to construct a historical narrative that rings true to most Chileans, regardless of their political inclinations.