Creature time

Art blog / fandom blog (countryhumans, Misplaced IF, latin american + canadian history)

Call me benja :)) I'm 18 and I'm from CHILE !!!! 🇨🇱🇨🇱🇨🇱 I speak spanish, english, catalan and I'm learning mapuzungun. Any pronouns (go crazy!!!). I'm a punk marxist birdwatcher and I'm also sex-repulsed. AI users fuck off

Tags: #benjascreatures for CH hcs and lore, #benjasillies for fun doodles and #epic benja moment as a personal tag

comic link because i can't post media as an anon

https://www.reddit.com/r/polandball/comments/64fjoq/why_yuo_do_it/?ref=readnext

i am torn between "yes absolutely" and "not really".... Link does whatever he wants with no consequences but also he doesn't present that way! I'm taking this as an opportunity to talk about it

Lincoln "Link" Heyer, the USA personification, represents who the U.S. is internationally, especially towards Latin America. And the USA won't admit to being evil. They always wear a thin veil of progress and kindness and generosity, it's a "we're doing this to help you" or "we didn't actually do that at all". Link's entire purpose is to promote an idealised view of the USA, he's very charming, he's a great listener, he's lovable. He SEEMS trustworthy until you actually give him your trust and he makes sure you know that he can take away everything he gave you if you don't do as he says. He's the type of person you can't speak out about because everyone seems to think "he would NEVER do" what he just did to you. He has power. Some CHs have known him for long enough to be aware that he's being disingenuous and they hate him for it. The rest, well... they have their own ways of dealing with it. Chile, for example, finds that living in denial keeps her sane.

GREAT QUESTION THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

First of all, yes! Chile still existed under Pinochet. In fact, Chile's existence has been completely uninterrupted since its independence in 1818. I very briefly mention why dictatorships can harm a CH in a previous post.. a short summary is that post-colonial countries in América (continent) often represent more than just a unifying culture, as in, they also personify specific values and principles that were declared upon independence. In Chile's case, she represents Chilean sovereignity, she spawned as the ideal of a country that could decide for itself and be taken seriously as its own nation. The 1973-1990 dictatorship of Pinochet went against all that Chile represents as a CH.

(CW: dicussion of torture, illness, death, human rights violations, political persecution and police brutality)

Pinochet's dictatorship wasn't like previous Chilean dictatorships. Despite how ruthless they could be, they were organic, they responded to real political and economic crises that Chile was going through. They threatened many things but they didn't make Chile less Chilean. Pinochet's dictatorship wasn't organic, the USA created the economic and political crises that happened before it, by spending thousands and thousands of dollars. The USA planned the coup and wrote the constitution. The USA ended it when it was no longer useful. The CIA invented all the torture methods and distributed through the School of the Americas and the interrogation manuals. The entire dictatorship was a U.S. imperialist intervention, "modern" colonialism. It did take away sovereignity. It threatened Chile's life.

Awka (my Chile CH's name) was forcefully taken from her home shortly after the coup happened. She represented a Chile that the USA couldn't allow. She was taken to several detainment centres where she was kept in many rooms. In crowded spaces, fifty people in the same cell crushing each other, alone in dungeons where nobody could see her, where they'd show up every day and take her to the interrogation room, in a public stadium where people could watch their representative be humilliated, blindfolded and tied to a chair in a dark room with a loud radio in it. The food storage was full of rats. Can't know what day it is or when was the last time you slept. Awka experienced what many innocent Chileans did in the name of a foreign power.

It was 22 months. It was supposed to be a lot less, Awka was supposed to die. But you can't kill a CH that still represents something. She just wouldn't die.

That's when they realised they didn't need to kill her. Awka was getting weaker as the population lost hope and learned to conform to the dictatorship as a way to stay safe. It was making her ill. Awka was exiled and sent to London, where she was instructed to live as a regular human or they'd find out. The news claimed she was found dead.

Awka spent the following years getting worse. First it was the sore throat, the pain in the joints, the fatigue, then it was the blurry vision, the hearing loss, the fact that her voice wouldn't come out anymore. She passed out in the middle of the street in 1980 and taken by an ambulance. They found out she wasn't human.

Awka was taken to México, where Icniuhtli (México CH) took care of her for as long as he could. Her health didn't get better or worse in a linear way, it was good days and bad days, she could clean the house one day then not be able to get up the next. Chilean resistance was fluctuating. Many countries had found out Awka was alive but the news in CIA dictatorships were heavily censored. Very few Chileans knew.

As soon as she felt stable enough, Awka began to travel. The thought of staying in one place terrified her, she could be found at any moment. She would go to countries with large Chilean exiled populations and find community with those people. Think Cuba, Canada, Sweden, México, etc. This continued until 1989, where she returned to Chile to support the Chilean vote against the dictator, the "NO" movement (yes it's called NO). The movement was a success. And Awka became her country's official CH again. The dictator never went to prison, never paid for his actions, he continued to be general, then he retired and died at home. The USA pretended nothing ever happened and tried to hide their involvement for as long as possible before the Chile Declassification Project released 23000 CIA files about Chile to the public.

How'd Awka blend in as a human in London?

My CH are able to hide their flags by adopting a human skin tone, think chameleon. They can only do this while awake and it's uncomfortable, like wearing heavy makeup.

Who represented Chile while Awka was gone?

A CH that looked identical to her, like a twin brother. He never spoke and was rarely ever seen in public but there are several pictures of him. Nobody ever saw him again after the dictatorship, it's assumed that he died somewhere quiet. Awka and him never met.

What did Awka even do in London?

Manual labour, low paying jobs. Never made any close friends. Hung out quite a bit around the punk subculture which was developing at the time. Punk music was a big influence in anti-Pinochet resistance music, and music was a huge part of the movement in general.

Did the USA CH have anything to do with this directly?

I'd like to preface this by admitting that european history was shoved down my throat throughout my entire school life.. which means it's deeply boring to me now. The only way I can stomach learning about it is when a friend has a fixation because I like learning through conversation. I won't go out of my way to learn about Europe unless it affects my country directly. So I'm not gonna pretend to be an expert in the subject.

The USSR did play a role in anti USA resistance during the cold war, at least from what I've heard. The USA owned everything and separating from it meant losing stability so the USSR could offer support to countries that did so. Chile tried to form a closer bond with the USSR for this reason but Chile was still very much viewed as U.S. property and it was seen as a risky move so that never truly worked. That's about all the knowledge I have about it in LatAm.

I mean. I don't like Stalin, if that's what the question is ?? Lmao ?? I'm a marxist in the sense that Latin American interpretations of marxism have adapted it to our needs very well and I think it's the way to go. But the USSR made some really bad decisions man.