Another Fire Strikes Yungay Neighborhood, Evoking Deep Emotional Impact

Original article: Otro incendio en el barrio Yungay

By Mauricio Redolés

I was born in the Yungay neighborhood in 1953, on Maturana Street between San Pablo and Rosas, just over a kilometer from where the fire occurred yesterday, June 9, 2026.

From there, my parents moved to Lo Calvo, near Los Andes. We returned to the Yungay neighborhood five years later. I attended the Miguel Luis Amunátegui High School from seventh grade to twelfth grade, just a block away from the site of the fire. Starting in 1972, I studied in Valparaíso until I was arrested for opposing the dictatorship, after which I was expelled from Chile and spent nearly ten years in Great Britain. Upon returning to Chile, I wandered through other neighborhoods for a year, and in 1986, I returned to Yungay, where I have since remained.

Adding up the years I’ve lived in this neighborhood, it’s approximately 54 years—most of my life, which has lasted 73 years (I celebrated my birthday last Saturday). Therefore, when my friend «Punta» Amunátegui calls to ask if the fire affected me, I reply that it indeed has. While I was not materially affected, it has impacted me emotionally, in my love for the neighborhood, and for the light that bathed those walls in the afternoon. When a historic home like that burns down, a part of us dies too.

I remember that same old house that burned today witnessed me leave from a home just across the street, filled with great sorrow one day in September 1990. I emerged defeated from a meeting, struck by the impudence of the «legal faction,» who, seizing control of my party’s internal bureaucracy, belittled me with unjust accusations and denied me the opportunity to defend myself. I felt violated and sullied. I had not sacrificed my youth to torture, imprisonment, and fascist scorn just to be treated this way by those who were supposed to be my comrades. Bitterly lucid, I thought, «If things continue this way, we will end up electing another Pinochet as President in a country filled with impoverished residents.»

That house saw me chew on my defeat, but it could not withstand the defeat imposed by the overload from the electrical extensions of its impoverished residents.

Mauricio Redolés