Account of an evening of Memories, Pictures and Closeness

Photo-Show by Roberta Bacic
Peace Park at Villa Grimaldi
Santiago de Chile

The 13th December 1978 is a date to remember at Villa Grimaldi, Santiago. On that date, the first three people arrested by the dictatorship arrived in the Villa. Two of them were murdered; the third one survived but died of cancer after years of suffering. Before he died he managed to speak to the mother of one of the missing and give her a full account of everything he had been through.

That's the origin of the Human Rights celebration at the Villa on that day.

This last 13th December was commemorated with the opening of a public theatre, financed through a project of the Arts Fund of the Education Ministry, with the goal that this Peace Park, the first Museum for Memory in Latin America, serves as a space for culture and art, and it's available at no cost to all those who feel that memory is fundamental to the building of the country and to their own development. The opening was celebrated with music and theatre performances.

On the 14th December, a day filled with sunshine, the Villa trees were presented with a poem by a Mapuche poet, who, as a child, used to pick up ceibo seeds, the same trees that were burned down by the military, together with the whole Villa after closing up the torture centre. This day saw the opening of a very special photo-show, with pictures that couldn't go unnoticed. What was so special about it?

What was special about this show was the depth captured in every facial gesture of those who had been portrayed. It was like being right there with them, with their grief, their feelings, their memories. It was like sharing their mourning and their images of those who had left and who lived on in their eyes. Such are the pictures collected by Roberta Bacic over 12 years of hard work with the bereaved, the left behind, the thousand-times humiliated ones… the relatives of the people murdered and gone missing during Pinochet's military dictatorship. But there was something even more special about those portraits - many of the faces belonged to Mapuche people, those who are discriminated against time after time, those who have been dispossessed of everything except their dignity.

I had the honour of being asked to make a presentation of the exhibition, at around 9 o'clock in the evening, in front of 150 people. It was after three women had read their stories to us, stories about those who aren't there anymore. My heart was filled with pictures of my youth - I had met one of the people mentioned, Luis Valenzuela, a leader of the National Institute. I couldn't keep my tears from streaming down my face, I couldn't keep my head from evoking smells, colours, sounds of almost 30 years before. And then came the music, a couple of singer-songwriters, fascinating, totally in tune with the mood, with those of us there, the living and the dead, because we were all one.

And then it was my turn to go on stage. I had to introduce Roberta, not an easy task - how would I describe her? Should I talk of her fine and fragile-looking appearance that conceals her strength, her dedication and her commitment? Should I refer to her as my sister, with whom I have shared memorable times working for political prisoners, fighting for human rights, challenging ourselves to always give a little more? Or as that woman whose sense of dignity wouldn't allow for any more impunity and decided to leave the country and keep on her struggle for the rights of others, in other countries?

I introduced her and felt good about it. The audience listened with respectful attention in the dusk, the evening twilight warmly surrounding us. I read the letter that Roberta had sent, each word with its full meaning, with all the feeling that I imagined she would have given it, and which I could experience then.

When I finished, there was a silent pause and then applause, an applause that made it plain that the room was filled with the compañeros and compañeras of all times, the ones who don't forget.

Keeping this photo-show will be a challenge for the Villa, because the pictures give an account of the families of those who were taken and kept there, that great family of Chileans who fight for their dignity and who believe that memory, history, is the necessary foundation for any kind of future. Without one there cannot be the other.

Francis Valverde
17th December 2002

Link to a description of the exhibit (with photos)