"Memories and Memorials" Commemorating September 11, 1973-2001

An art/photo exhibit in New York, with photos by WRI programme worker Roberta Bacic. Below is a talk given by her at the opening of the exhibition.

Intimate glimpses into a nation's history

Time and distance from the events of September 11th 1973 in Chile, allow me now to share with you this story with special affection. The essentials not only come to the surface but also become clear, and the superfluous fades away, carried by time and the flow of the rivers so that what is preserved is that which makes us people with a history and a memory. Memories and emotions bring me incredibly near to the town of Osorno, at the confluence of the rivers Rahue and Damas, 910 km to the south of Santiago, the capital of my country. And not only Osorno comes back to me, but also its small nearby villages such as Entre Lagos, Río Negro, San Pablo, Puerto Octay, el Encanto, Puyehue and so many others that appear amidst rivers, lakes, country roads, clouds, hills, valleys, walkers, birds, ox-driven carts, tractors, cars, rickety country buses. In each one I see the faces of the women and their families with whom at the beginning of the 1980s, we looked for their missing relatives and for a better quality of life and coexistence. They had already started this; and so had I in other parts of the country. By then we were already carrying the heavy load of nearly 10 years of a cruel military dictatorship.

So it is, that wherever we are, memories are mixed with songs, poems and tears, and become real. With deep feeling the Peruvian José María Arguedas wrote his book Los Ríos Profundos (Deep Rivers), wherein his strength lies in being Indian, being of mixed race, from the very earth. In this intense and endless search for meaning he lived and died. His Chilean wife Sibila, was arrested in Lima more than ten years ago while gathering his writings for new editions. She might well finish out her life as a political prisoner in the cells of a jail in Lima. She cannot imagine me thinking about her, but she identifies our search also as hers and that of so many others.

January 1999 took me to my homeland, to my people, looking for fragments of identity. I arrived at "La Chacona", the Santiago house of our poet Pablo Neruda and then went to the port of Valparaíso. I climbed its hills and visited another Neruda house, "La Sebastiana". From there I communicated with the missing, always present, and, under the sun, the slow and profound voice of Neruda reminded me of the pertinence of our search, reflected in his masterly work Alturas de Machu Picchu (Heights of Machu Picchu):

"... I come to talk through your dead mouths
across the Earth gather all
the silent spilled lips
and from the end talk to me through all this long night
as if I were anchored with you..."

Isabel, Juanita, Sara, Uberlinda, Gloria, Zulema, Blanca, Marianela, Elvecia, Carmen, Sabina, Maria, Rosa, Dina, Lastenia, Jovita, Margarita, Genoveva, Angélica, Angela and all those whose names my memory does not retain. I return to them through their words. What right do I have to share their very own words with you? How do I decide if I am betraying their most intimate feelings by giving you their words? And here comes to my mind Dr. Fernando Oyarzún, a psychiatrist and who was my companion of ethical reflections, walks and interdisciplinary academic discussions on these questions. I shared many hours with him during 1975, in the middle of an agitated university life at Universidad Austral in Valdivia and afterwards continued until I left the country in 1998. As testimony of our friendship, I have received by post his latest book, published in June 2000: The normal and abnormal persona and the anthropology of coexistence. In it he expresses the idea that the individual's grief and loss is not compartmentalised but is integrated into the person's whole being. In turn, this makes that the individual's suffering is humanity's suffering. They become as one. I took from Dr. Oyarzún's approach the right to share stories of my companions' suffering and which is also mine.

These words remind me that in their stories the women described to us that which is singular, unique, which takes experience to the limit of the understandable, trespasses the limits of reason, overflows feelings and in turn characterises the special relationship one had with the missing person.

Therefore I want to take you to a dark cellar on Bilbao street in Osorno, where these women and I gathered and shared the search, the experiences, the stories, the facts and feelings. Also the rage, the plans and the way to confront injustice, impunity and ultimately confront dictatorship.

Juanita used to tell us: "I cannot accept the fact that I told my son off on the same morning they took him away. I told him they were looking for him because he got too involved in politics and that would bring problems to us all. And he didn't even have breakfast before they came to get him. And I will remain forever with that bitterness, that he left sad, with his mother's angry words, without her support and consolation. I don't want to imagine what his last moments would have been like". And Juanita, always sweet and tender, looking for consolation in the Protestant Church, wandering with the rest of the women of the Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos (Association of Detained Disappeared), looking for her son and for justice, supporting her needier neighbours, cooking for her husband, her children and grandchildren. Juanita left with a smile, in spite of her infinite sorrow, with her new black shoes we had just given her to cover her feet, tired and cold during her endless walking. When she died in poverty in her poor house in a back street of Osorno, not even then could she find complete peace: men in uniform occupied part of the street, they came to where she was lying, interfering with the process of mourning that she deserved and her relatives had a right to; a right that they have been completely denied regarding her son.

Carmen, a short, stout and kind country woman who lived in a tiny house in one of Osorno's poor neighbourhoods, always arrived at the meetings with a small basket and home made bread or biscuits. She prepared them with special affection, to share generously her scant resources. At the time of her son's detention, which she witnessed because they went to get him at his own house, she lived in the country with her son and small granddaughter. Her son Carlos drove the farm tractor in those days. She could remember they told her: "We are taking him to ask him questions and he will be back soon". She waited for him with an unlocked door for 20 years, his clothes always clean and ironed, leaving food ready for him in case he came by night dodging police vigilance and the first year of the State of Siege. Five days after his detention the farm owners evicted her from her small house and that is how she ended up in Osorno. She lovingly brought up her granddaughter, who eventually became a University student and secretary to the Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos. In 1992 she approached me at a group meeting and offered a home baked roll, as usual. When I thanked her she said: "I have been a very bad mother". This categorical statement surprised me and I told her the reasons why I thought she was a very good mother. She let me take her to a corner where she told me the reason for her words. A few days before the meeting, shortly after the institution of the first democratically elected government after the dictatorship, the National Television channel had presented a programme about torture. It was in reference to this that she said: "I have been very selfish. I always wished for myself that my son was alive somewhere and that he would come back any moment. Seeing and listening to those testimonies about torture I wished instead that my son had died immediately, without having to suffer so much". Since then she did not wait for him any longer, but she demanded that his remains be found to be able to give him a "Christian burial" next to her husband. This could not happen, as she died very recently. So, it is she who lies next to her husband.

The Leveque family, an old family of workers from Osorno of Mapuche origins, was very involved with Salvador Allende's Government of Popular Unity. Don Pedro had practically founded the Communist Party, in which he always participated publicly and actively. He had many sons and the eldest, Rodolfo, was 21 years old at the time of the military coup. He was married, with a son, today about to finish his studies of Anthropology. The police took them away together with another son, Wladimir, disabled and younger than Rodolfo. Don Pedro survived three hard months of detention and torture but his sons are still missing. Uberlinda, Pedro's wife and mother of the two disappeared, was for years President of the Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos. She made countless trips to Santiago representing her Osorno group, looking for her sons and requesting medical help, because the search was "upsetting her" as she put it. In our meetings she always repeated: "It hurts so much that they took my sons away. Rodolfo knew very well why they were looking for him, but Wladi could not have done any wrong, he was paralysed, they did not let me give him his crutches and I despair to think how he could have managed to go to the lavatory because he could not move without them". Doña Ube, as we call her with affection, lived with Don Pedro until his death a couple of years ago. She delegated the presidency of the association to her daughter in law Angélica and has not given up looking for her sons, concentrating on her disabled son because: "He needs it more, he only has me, Rodolfo has his wife and his son, who is now a man".

In that same context I met Zulema, already elderly at the beginning of the 1980's. She always said that in the Association she was representing José, a disappeared nephew. She did it with great fervour when his own parents, two elderly Mapuche farmers, could not come. She always had had the gift of leadership in spite of being illiterate, and she described herself as having a memory envied by social workers and the ability to know when to speak and when to be silent according to the circumstances. Several years later, the group was discussing a book by Patricia Politzer entitled Fear in Chile, which told the story of 10 people filled with fear, some of whom had feared the impact of the Popular Unity government or had survived repression under extreme circumstances, and she said nothing but asked me to come over to her house.

There, after her children were asleep, she told me: "I want nothing to do with that journalist (the author of the book), she takes advantage of people, she tells my daughter's story and gets rich at our expense without knowing she puts us at risk and does not even give us a copy of the book". I could not believe what I was hearing. I now realised that her daughter was Blanca the mayor or Alcadesa of Entre Lagos in 1973 who had been brought before a firing squad with her husband and who survived the shooting by falling into the Pilmaiquén river and swimming out. She asked local farmers to help her by telling them she was escaping a husband who was after her with a knife. She managed to live clandestinely for years, protected by the Catholic church so no one would ever look for her again. Her children gave her up for dead. Zulema kept her secret tightly and was her link to everything, bringing her bits of news. A few days later I photocopied the chapter from the book that told the story of Blanca and brought it to Zulema's house. We sat next to the fire drinking mate, I read her the story and left her the photocopy. We did not make any comments but we gave each other a hug and a kiss. I only saw her one more time before her death, two years later.

In 1992 I went to live in Temuco. Blanca lives there. We grew very close, shared happy moments in her home. I have helped her to claim her rights as the wife of a missing person. I have learned about her pride about being made Alcaldesa by Salvador Allende as a local leader. I have also heard some of her misadventures, her lack of confidence in human justice, the fear she still feels, the impotence and anger that still envelops her after testifying against those responsible for shooting her in Chilean and international courts and knowing they are still free to walk the streets of our country as ordinary civilians. After being active for years in the Communist Party, she is now an active member of a Christian Church.

In the poor neighbourhoods of the small town of Entre Lagos live Jovita and her family, and also Lastenia. María also lived there. Doña Blanca knew them all during her time as Alcaldesa. Jovita was a young girl, the sister of a missing person who had been with Blanca's husband. María also lost her husband. Four summers ago I helped Blanca to go to the place where it all happened. She shared moments with her friends, was moved by the memories and was indignant at their poverty, even worse than when she was in charge. She visited the new Pilmaiquén bridge, walked along the old suspension bridge where she was shot with other peasants, all of them disappeared, visited the monument we erected in 1990 in memory of the group and, in the words of Cuban singer Pablo Milanés: "She walked again the bloodied streets".

Lastenia is Mapuche, campesina, a born social struggler, mother of four children. I met her in Osorno, generous with a sad smile, warm in her embrace, direct in her look and cutting in the truth. She always repeated the same story: "It is not right that the guilty are free and no competent court gets them to say where they are". She grew angrier every time; she was incapable of talking of anything else. Her comrades, in spite of their respect, began to be impatient. One day we asked her why she repeated so many times a story we knew very well and she replied that she knew who had shot the people of Entre Lagos. She was meant to be one of them but there was no room for her in the vehicle and when the carabineros came back, drunk, one of them told her: "See if your Alcadesa can save you now when the fish have eaten her". There were no new executions and Lastenia's life was saved. Because she was so poor she thought nobody would believe her. We organised a role play of the events and insisted her truth was the important thing, that this would be the competent court she expected. She was very relieved and later testified at one of the Osorno courts. She feels she has done her duty with the missing but she feels bitter seeing the murderers walking freely in the streets of her town, knowing that her truth, no matter how true, has not affected them in the least and they have total impunity.

Going South from Osorno we find the small town of Río Negro. Here lives Isabel, wife of Mario, noted sportsman of the area who was Regidor of the Communist Party representing his town. He was detained a few days after the military coup. Unlike many other disappeared detainees, he was seen by his wife on several occasions while he was detained at the Estadio Español. She could see how his health declined and the last time she saw him, he asked her not to hug him because several of his ribs were broken. Next time she went to see him she was told he had been freed and that he would surely return home shortly. This was not the case. She waited and searched, with her two children. She made several trips following trails she was given. She even went to Santiago and every time she saw a homeless person she thought it might be Mario, in poor health as a result of the torture, disoriented and trying to get home. In this context she brought up her children and participated in the Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos.

When the dictatorship ended, her children started to get involved in politics. Nevertheless the eldest, today an outstanding professional in Puerto Montt, distanced himself from all public activities, disappointed to see the neoliberal model being perpetuated and the links to the military regime still intact. The youngest son still participates. With a spirit of solidarity and an understanding of social abandonment, Isabel adopted a little girl that could not be brought up by her mother. Viviana is today 13 years old and is very close to her adopted mother. In this process of getting close to those families and my commitment to their circumstances, they asked me to be the girl's godmother. It has been a beautiful experience maintaining this close link that commits me for life not only to the human rights cause, but to stay permanently near to them. Some years ago Isabel started receiving the Pensión de Reparación (compensation) from the State. As with all those receiving this benefit, it has improved her quality of life, but she has declared: "They are only giving me what is my due. With Mario we never lacked anything and after the events we lived in utter poverty, despised by everybody. There has been no justice. They have not even given us the bones. If they gave us even a few bones we would feel calmer, we would recover our dignity. As it is we live in constant uncertainty".

A bit further inland in Río Negro; following a narrow path through a beautiful landscape is Riachuelo, a small village of agriculture and forest workers. There lived the Barria-Bassay family until three years ago, when for health reasons and to be closer to their surviving children they moved to Osorno. A few days after the military coup in September 1973, two of the sons were taken prisoner. They were 19 and 21, active participants in the Socialist Party. They have been missing since then. The family took charge of two children of the missing. A maternal grandmother cared after another of the children left behind. They had very difficult times. Fear and social stigma were greater in small villages. In spite of everything she has been through, Elvecia Bassay is affectionate and warm. I remember travelling with two large jars of home made jam she was sending an exiled brother in Holland. I was surprised by her capacity to share in spite of poverty and was delighted to see the happiness with which this present was received. For many years she has participated in the search for her sons, offering information and supporting every legal action. I was impressed by her declarations on the death of another son in a motoring accident: "This is terrible, to lose a child is the worst thing that can happen to a mother. It is against nature, one is here to bring them up and turn them into men or women. But to have a missing son is the worst. And we lost two. There is no understanding for it, no peace. I shall never rest, sometimes I think even after my death."

I hope these small stories connect you sitting in New York with these women of Osorno who are already connected to the USA by your government's involvement in the sufferings that they experience. They don't pretend to be the pieces that make a complete jigsaw puzzle. I simply share them with the hope of subtly drawing open the curtains of windows to worlds, experiences and their protagonists. If the gift of their confidence and friendship, together with my writing, achieve part of this aim, I feel we would have shortened distances and approached understanding.

September, 2002