One guy when he was interviewed kept saying how they beat him but didn't ask him any questions, he kept saying they asked the man in the bunk underneath me, but not me, not me.
They are not afraid to show things, diagrams of the types of torture, direct full text of the commission on truth and reconciliation report. I guess all the silence makes them not want to leave anything out.
The handicrafts people made, doves breaking out of bars, hands holding the barbed wire which opens a gap to look out, embroidery by one prisoner of another prisoner carving things from bone. They are all so gentle.
The families of the disappeared did this dance called the lonely coalco (sp?). It's a traditional dance in chile, but you see it's performed by a couple. So these women, they would do it alone because their husband, brother, son, had vanished.
Apparently sting was also affected by this because there was a song.
In unlimited badass news, everyone really should look up Chilean two time president Michelle Bachelet, who was herself detained and interrogated by Pinochet's regime along with her mother, and whose father was disappeared and killed by the regime. She founded this museum, and donated a copper plate carved by her father in detention.
The pope visits, and so people assemble, and this becomes this tremendous protest, or riot. The tremendous power of the Catholic Church sometimes, as a rallying point for revolution and hope.
And then just people came out and voted and it was all over. History is hard to believe.
I find it tough to get into the heads of people living through this because so many just didn't capitulate. Some schoolteacher who tried to intervene in a kidnapping, like years in. I think I would just look down. You could be next. I mean when you know how many of the relatives of the disappeared were themselves disappeared, yet still the group persists, people join.
I guess to quote my audio guide "this is not a history of which we are ashamed because of the horrors committed by the dictatorship, it is a history of which we are proud because of the infinite ability of men and women to overcome adversity, horror and oblivion and continue fighting to build a country at peace in which human rights are respected. "
So I'm on my way from the museum to the detention centre memorial, and Google lets me down, the address is way wrong. I don't know this so I'm asking a random local for directions. He walks me around the block to his friend who has great English. On the way he tells me Pinochet was the best president ever, developed the country more than any other. His friend says the memorial is "a small memory" "the memory of the left", but then his friend shows up and says that it has some memories that need remembering significantly, and they mutter to each other for a while, and then do dualing directions for me, helping a damsel in distress seeming to cut right across the political aisle. Left friend says it divides the country, but he hopes less and less. I wonder what these old men think of the disappeared. Trumped up? Overblown? False? Worth it? I don't ask though, they're at work and I want to listen to what they do say. Especially since it's so far outside of my understanding or experience. How do you like a guy who demonstrably tortured a bunch of people to death?
And then I went to the real 38 Londres, an unremarkable house on the nice side of the city centre, three stories, a balcony onto the street. Which was one of the number of torture and detention centers scattered around Santiago, like seven in santiago and 400 in the country. An empty house, abandoned feeling, with some quotes or lines stenciled on the walls.
The most confronting thing was that if just watched at the human rights museum a video of a guy being interviewed walking through this house and explaining how he was tortured and where.
But went through it quickly because there wasn't much and then home to jes and a giant Mexican dinner (skipped lunch) and thinkings.
I fly to the USA tomorrow. God help me. Trump is inaugurated while I'm in the air.
No comments:
Post a Comment