Alex Oyanedel Alex is a psychologist in Santiago de Chile and supporter of the World March. He shared his testimonio during the concert at the Parque por la Paz Villa Grimaldi (English translation below):
Hello. My name is Alex, Alex Oyanedel. I am a psychologist and I am 49 years old. I don't know if I fortune, when I was 11 or 12 to live the begging of the dictatorship period in Chile. I am the child of right wing parents. However, the values they themselves transmitted onto me did not allow me to follow their same paths and the same outlook they had. maybe I took a part of their values and with that I built my own life. And for a long time my eyes where shut [pauses, chokes up] until arriving at places like these that I didn't not know existed. One of the things that touches me the most is knowing how there can be people that can make others suffer so much. I work, tot he extent possible, to accompany others. And this is a place that is beautiful but where is palpable that many people suffered here, and that, in truth, there must be be many others going through the same. I want to share my testimony because I approached the humanist movement due to personal reasons, due to health reasons. And I found a group of people that would give an unconditional amount of love and care that I have never seen before in other places. and it was strange. It was around 2001 when I came to it and at that moment I discovered that there was so much to learn and so much to tell, and so much that people don't know. I discovered that it was possible to give unconditional love and that I could also contribute to this. Of course it is a cause of sadness and one feels great pain, but it is the moment to rebuild life and rebuild the outlook towards the world and forward. Laura Rodriguez, who is who I follow from the humanist movement, is a woman who was an example of, of wholesomeness, of perseverance, of strength in the face of adversity, and she sowed a seed. That seed also forms part of this park, in its idea, in this participation in the project. I will speak maybe about my testimony, how I receive this. I believe the World march is a way to warn, to tell, and to say that violence in the world can be stopped but this must be built from within, stopping one's own violence. The contributions [of the March] will be significant for a very long time. I believe it will be one moment, and then another, and then has to come another one until people can come to awareness of what it means to no face reality through violence working on one's own violence. Um, I believe if this how we can live in peace with one self and with the world.