Book Review: Remembering Pinochet's Chile. On the eve of London, 1998

Remembering Pinochet's Chile. On the eve of London, 1998
Steve J Stern
Duke University Press, 2006

As Pinochet's tangible presence receded from the Chilean political structure, a vibrant memory legacy erupted, challenging dictatorial impositions and awakening the struggle for historical memory. The volatile political environment following the disintegration of the dictatorship created a complex memory framework fighting not only the imposed oblivion, but also an ingrained process through which memory became an essential part of the collective experience on both sides of the political spectrum. In 'Remembering Pinochet's Chile. On the eve of London, 1988', Steve J Stern explores the national experience of the dictatorship, fragmented into several memory camps beyond the usual distinction of memory versus oblivion, depicting the diverse ramifications of collective memory and the induced oblivion in return for complacency and indifference, thus extracting the fight for remembrance promulgated by the marginalised opposition to the dictatorship.

Right wing rhetoric frames political violence as a necessity, with remembrance based on recollection which do not necessarily represent personal experience. Memory as salvation - the expression of a collective national sentiment as purported by Pinochet's adherents is detached from historical reality and fails to question the dynamics of Chile's left, such as whether violent revolution was favoured by Salvador Allende. The remembrance associated with the experiences of other harbouring similar sentiment indulges in a convenient dismissal of torture and disappearances. The fear of violence becomes displaced, projected onto the resistance incorporated by the militant left, in order to justify the violations committed by DINA.

Dissident memory, incorporating memory as rupture, persecution and awakening, involves a transformation of various struggles of the collective. An embodiment of contradictions between life and memory, existence is organised around memory, with different forms of expression contributing to the collective. While memory as rupture manifests itself as an expression of anguish, particularly in honouring the disappeared and executed, memory as persecution is characterised by an inevitable division of society owing to contrasting memory camps, in turn validating social commitment and values to promote solidarity through activism.

Stern also acknowledges a process through which a form of passive oblivion is inadvertently practiced. Using the metaphor of memory as a closed box, Stern describes a process of silence through which atrocities remain unchallenged. A lack of validation of a collective expression in the public sphere becomes prone to a form of idolisation of victims which shifts the focus from the actual issue of dictatorship atrocities and the quest for justice.

Despite the encompassing collective experience, other forms of memory remain obscured due to guilt and unintended complicity. Various leftist supports willingly presented themselves for questioning, others urged to comply by family members. The ensuing permanent disappearance rendered a guarded expression of memory, with remorse being less explicit due to the burden of guilt. Enlisted conscripts, among them former leftists, were also coerced to participate in arrests and torture - an experience which failed to safeguard against DINA retribution, such as in the case of Carlos Alberto Carrasco Matus who, upon confiding in his friend about the horrors perpetrated by the dictatorship, was forced to take part in arresting his friend. Both ended up prisoners in Villa Grimaldi - Carrasco was beaten with chains and murdered by DINA in Villa Grimaldi, while his friend was exiled and in 1990 testified before the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Besides Pinochet's insistence upon oblivion, Stern discerns another memory framework which negates atrocities through an intentional misinterpretation of history. Memory as indifference is established by recalling the alleged reasons as to why the coup was a necessity, while undeservedly attributing altruistic adjectives to a military which constantly proved its macabre character. According to an interviewee in the book identified as Colonel Juan F, the Chilean military possessed a 'socialist character' and was the salvation to Chile's future through its solutions of problems posed by a welfare system. Any failure was blamed upon the Allende era having produced 'mentally sick people', depicting a complete irrelevance to the deterioration of progress which rendered society irrelevant in order to justify political violence.

Measures were also taken to enable the military to distance themselves from the atrocities committed. A particular instance refers to the Calama massacres, where Colonel Eugenio Rivera sought to protect himself and his soldiers by placing the blame solely upon General Sergio Arellano Stark, in charge  of the 'Caravan of Death'.

The various memory frameworks have created a volatile coexistence shaped by elements in a constant struggle. Different experiences of life under Pinochet's dictatorship have provided the framework for the ensuing cultural silence battled by a quest for justice, memory and recognition of committed atrocities. Considering the split within Chilean society, the major obstacle to emblematic memory is its displacement due to persistent right-wing hegemonic narratives. Hence the projection of emblematic memory into the public sphere in order for the collective experience to escape fragmentation and isolation, which in turn strengthens the case for historical legitimacy. Chilean society is imbued with ambiguities - certainties mingle with doubt, the struggle for memory resisting certain narrations which, despite the relevance to the struggle, are perhaps perceived as blurring the divide between various forms of rupture, as in the case of conscripts who resisted implementing torture and suffered the same fate as left wing supporters. Stern's book serves as a compelling reminder of an incomplete sequence in the Chilean struggle, one that is partially dependent upon a dissolution of impunity in order to eliminate the process of selectivity and the peril of descending into various forms of oblivion.





 

El Doble Asesinato de Neruda

In light of the recent news regarding the investigations into Pablo Neruda’s death, the much maligned testimony of Neruda’s personal assistant and chauffeur Manuel Araya, is of significant importance. Denounced by the Chilean right as a leftist conspiracy, Araya’s declaration in the Mexican publication Proceso accusing the dictatorship of having assassinated Neruda by a lethal substance injected into his stomach created a furore and Chilean courts opened investigations into Neruda’s death, following a petition filed by Partido Comunista.  

El Doble Asesinato de Neruda (Ocho Libros, 2012) presents a compelling case based upon Araya’s testimony and the Fundación Neruda’s insistence upon adhering to the official version, which related the cause of death as happening from advanced and metastatic prostate cancer. The recent forensic investigations, partially completed since laboratories still have to test for toxic substances, have determined that Neruda was indeed suffering from advanced and metastatic prostate cancer, yet the authors Francisco Marín and Mario Casasús insist that medical records were void of such grim diagnosis and radiology reports did not specify the presence of metastatic cancer.

The book is described as 'a reference to a biological and ideological crime' - befitting the irregularities and contradictions which evolved through the years, as well as a possible manipulation of Chilean history. Prior to Neruda's exhumation, the Foundation expressed its objection to the investigation, endorsing the dictatorship's official statement and reiterating that there was no doubt that Neruda's death had occurred due to natural causes. Despite the ambiguous statement indicating a lack of interest in constructing a vital segment of chile's recent history, Marín and Casasús discover a more sinister network of contacts which may shed light upon why Neruda's wish to bequeath La Isla Negra as a retreat for artists and intellectuals was disregarded. A betrayal of ideals ensued with the foundation became economically aligned with Cristalerías Chile - an enterprise owned by Ricardo Lagos, a torture coordinator as well as a financial supporter of Pinochet's dicatatorship.

Prior to Neruda’s return to Chile from France where he was serving as ambassador, Araya was summoned to Santiago by leaders of the Communist Party and asked by Victor Díaz and Luis Corvalan whether he would accept the role of personal assistant and chauffeur to Pablo Neruda – a job which entailed a magnitude of commitment and responsibility. Araya describes Neruda as brimming with plans to strengthen the Communist Party in Chile, seeking ways to mobilise further support for Salvador Allende and concerned with establishing a cultural foundation for writers and intellectuals. Far from retiring to his home at La Isla Negra due to consuming illness, Neruda maintained an active political stance and frequently denounced US imperialism and interference in Chile, considering his role ‘a poetic, political and patriotic duty’ to prevent a right wing insurgency in the country. Among the frequent visitors to La Isla Negra were Salvador Allende, Voloida Teitelboim and Cardinal Raul Sílva Henríquez. The latter would attract the ire of the dictatorship and Vatican officials, who instructed the clergy to maintain a perfunctory role restricted to religious duties instead of campaigning against human rights violations and clamouring for investigations into the cases of Chile’s desaparecidos.

Pablo Neruda

Considering Pinochet's fear of leftist intellectuals destabilising the dictatorship from exile, the assassination scenario fits in perfectly with the later powers allocated to DINA and the deadly targeting of militants. In the aftermath of the coup, Neruda expressed the conviction that Allende had been murdered, despite the dictatorship's proclamation of alleged suicide. The Tejas Verdes contingent paid their first visit to La Isla Negra on September 12, 1973, while Neruda fretted incessantly about the fate of his compañeros, sentiments fluctuating between the despair of abandonment and futility of defence. Knowing that the military would detain and torture Neruda for his involvement in the Allende government, discussions about the possibility of exile heightened, which would safeguard Neruda's life and also provide him with the opportunity to initiate a formidable resistance.

Meanwhile La Tercera, a newspaper which was closely affiliated to the dictatorship, had started spreading rumours about Neruda’s allegedly debilitating illness. In an attempt to quell opposition suspicions of assassination, Pinochet issued a statement through Radio Luxemburgo. “Neruda is not dead. He is alive and free to travel wherever he likes, as befits other people of old age and struck with infirmity. We do not kill anyone and, if Neruda dies, it will be of natural causes.” The book translates this ubiquitous statement as proof of constructing Neruda’s imminent annihilation.

Having left La Isla Negra to avoid the possibility of torture, Neruda, accompanied by his wife Matilde, and Araya, sought refuge at the Clínica Santa María. The exile offer by the Mexican government was at first repudiated, with Neruda vehemently declaring he would not assume a traitorous stance and betray his compañeros. After being briefed about the atrocities committed by the military, Neruda assumed a resilient stance, stating that he would lead the struggle against the dictatorship from exile in Mexico. On September 23, the newspaper El Mercurio contributed to the rumours by stating that Neruda had experienced a deterioration of health, coinciding with the injection administered by a doctor at the clinic at a time when the poet was alone, having sent Araya and Matilde on some errands prior to exile. Upon their return to the clinic, having been alerted of the suspicious circumstances by an employee, Araya was sent to buy medicine which, according to the doctor, was not available at the clinic. Upon his departure, Araya was ambushed and detained in Estadio Nacional. “I lost all contact with Neruda forever, I never saw him again. I believe it was a plot to detain me.”

Araya’s version of Neruda’s final hours has been discredited by the Fundación Neruda, despite the fact that all ‘official’ testimonies which have been endorsed by the foundation come from sources who had no access to the poet during his final days. Araya was beaten, subjected to electric shocks and asked to reveal the identities of Communist Party Leaders. He was released 45 days later following intervention by Raul Sílva Henríquez.

Matilde’s reluctance to denounce the alleged assassination was reciprocated by the foundation in later years. A solitary figure searching for ways to open an investigation, Araya’s efforts were shunned and the official version assumed the emblem of truth. The existence of the lethal injection would have been eliminated from collective memory, had it not been for Araya’s determination in maintaining his testimony. The official medical and death certificates obliterated its existence, citing cardiac arrest as the cause of death. Only when El Mercurio reported Neruda having been given ‘a tranquiliser’, did the injection suddenly spring into existence.

The possibility of Araya having invented his testimony in order to create a controversy fades when faced with the various contradictions and reluctance to properly investigate the cause of Neruda’s death. The authors hold Matilde responsible for the ensuing silence – it is reported that she had even tried to reach a compromise with Araya in return for relinquishing the quest for justice. She is also deemed responsible for the foundation’s betrayal of Neruda’s wishes, having entrusted the administration to individuals responsible for maintaining the dictatorship’s atrocities.

As we await the final results regarding the presence of toxic substances in Neruda’s remains, it is evident that, whatever the forensic verdict decrees, Neruda’s death will continue to hover within the confines of Chilean memory. The measures of impunity imposed by Pinochet to protect the network of torturers and murderers has rendered investigation a source of controversy and a means through which truth will remain eternally shrouded with a pervading negotiation of privilege over human rights violations.

 

Book Review. His Hands Were Gentle: Selected Lyrics of Victor Jara

This book review was first published in Irish Left Review here.

His Hands Were Gentle: Selected Lyrics of Victor Jara
Smokestack Books, 2012
http://www.smokestack-books.co.uk

His Hands Were Gentle: Selected Lyrics of Victor Jara (2012) captures a spectrum of lyrics which explicitly portrays social upheaval and the struggle against injustices. Victor Jara’s poetry resonates with memory and history woven into relics of resistance and triumph, culminating into an unfinished poem narrating the decadence of the dictatorship and initiated annihilation of socialism.

Thirty nine years after his death, Victor Jara remains a symbol for the Chilean left. Joan Jara’s foreword to the book shifts between memory and exile, explaining the commitment towards imparting Victor’s legacy in the aftermath of his murder. Living a constant battle against the right wing’s coveted practice of oblivion when confronted with dictatorship atrocities, Joan reiterates that Chilean justice is hampered by secrecy and impunity.

A founding member of the nueva canción movement together with Isabel Parra, Angel Parra, Rolando Alarcon and Patricio Manns, Victor gave constant support for Salvador Allende’s Unidad Popular political campaign. Epitomised by songs such as El Pueblo Unido Jamas Sera Vencido and the ubiquitous hymn of Venceremos, Allende’s campaign amalgamated social struggle and culture into a popular movement. Nueva canción served as a medium of expression for the left wing and, following Allende’s electoral triumph, many musicians travelled abroad as ambassadors for Unidad Popular.

This collection portrays Victor’s tenacity to challenge inequalities which, at times, manifested themselves into atrocities. Born in Lonquen, Victor witnessed and experienced the ramifications of poverty, finding solace in music and later conducting extensive research in folk music. Songs such as Canción del minero (Miner’s Song) and Plegaría a un labrador (Prayer to a Labourer) assert the indignity of exploitation with regard to human labour and natural resources. The helplessness exhibited in Cancion del Minero is transformed into a yearning to defeat the oppressor in Plegaría a un Labrador – unity embracing revolution and hope. Acknowledging armed struggle as a possible means to achieve dignity is implied in the last verse – evolving from solitary lament into social consciousness.

Victor pays homage to Miguel Angel Aguilera in El alma llena de banderas (Our Hearts are Full of Banners). A communist and member of Brigada Ramona Parra, Aguilera was killed during a street demonstration in Santiago in 1970. Victor contrasts the inspiration of Aguilera with the traitorous attitude of his murderers, stating “In the hiding place of rich murderers/ your name will stand for many names/ The one who burnt your wings as you flew/ cannot put out the fire of the poor.”
Preguntas por Puerto Montt (Questions about the massacre of Puerto Montt) earned Victor the rancour of right wing sentiment after singing the song at a boys’ secondary school in 1969. The song is addressed to Mr Perez Zujovic, the Minister of Interior who ordered a massacre upon a peasant community occupying a stretch of wasteland in Puerto Montt. Ninety one peasant families were attacked by 250 armed police, leaving 11 dead and many injured. The youngest victim was a nine month old child.

A particularly poignant song, Manifiesto (Manifesto) articulates Victor’s testimony as a singer, reaffirming his dedication to alleviate and revolt against violations. “My guitar is not for killers/ greedy for money and power,/ but for the people who labour/ so that the future may flower.” Victor’s declaration of “… a man who will die singing/ truthfully singing his song” was no vague metaphor but an assertion of his loyalty towards the people and a premonition of his own fate. The song is reminiscent of El Aparecido (The Apparition), dedicated to Che Guevara a short while before he was ambushed and murdered by CIA trained troops in Bolivia.

On the day of the military coup, Victor Jara was taken prisoner along with other workers and students barricaded inside the Technical University. Estadio Chile, Victor’s last poem, was written during his brief imprisonment at the stadium, which was transformed into the first detention and torture centre during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Written on scraps of paper and smuggled out of the stadium by a detainee who was later released, Victor inscribed what would be one of the initial endeavours in memory narrative, describing the brutality of the dictatorship. The incomplete poem describes the terror inflicted upon the 5,000 detainees in the stadium, documenting the soldiers’ beatings and psychological torture inflicted upon the prisoners. “One dead, another beaten as I could have never believed/a human being could be beaten/ … one jumping into nothingness,/ another beating his head against a wall,/ but all with the fixed look of death.”

Despite efforts to reveal the identities of officers responsible for Victor’s murder, most details are shrouded in secrecy and strengthened by oblivion and impunity. The Armed Forces of Chile refuse to reveal information which would further investigations into Victor Jara’s murder. In May, a documentary entitled Quien Mato a Victor Jara? (Who Killed Victor Jara?) revealed the name of Pedro Pablo Barrientos Nuñez as the lieutenant who allegedly pulled the trigger on Victor. Barrientos has been living in Florida since Jose Paredes, an ex-conscript, was indicted for his role in Victor’s murder and refuses to return to Chile. Other officers refuse to collaborate, since the impunity laws of the dictatorship still govern Chilean society.

This poetry collection furthers Victor’s testimony of political turmoil in Chile, the years of Salvador Allende’s Unidad Popular when metaphors transcended the realm of illusion, and the initiation of the subsequent US aided military coup. The figure of Victor Jara has, throughout the years, become synonymous with the fight for justice despite the repression of dictatorship relics still governing Chilean society. An endeavour which strikes against impunity and oblivion, His Hands Were Gentle imparts a revolutionary consciousness, ensuring that the cry of “ni perdon, ni olvido” (neither forgiveness, nor oblivion) enters the realm of internationalism.

Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile

This review was first published in Upside Down World here.
Ariel Dorfman was thirty-one years old and working as a cultural advisor to President Salvador Allende when Augusto Pinochet's military coup abruptly destroyed the socialist revolution. The actions of the dictatorship created a reign of macabre realities which would split Chilean narratives into opposing memory camps. Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile (HMH Books, 2011) is an eloquent memoir which fluctuates between reflections on death and exile - the meaning of not having died next to Allende in the presidential palace La Moneda, and Dorfman's own exile, a decision enforced by Allende’s advisors and which very possibly saved his life, yet which has assailed Dorfman with a tenacious need to question his own role and actions within that particular era of Chilean history.

The book moves rapidly from one event to another, disrupting chronology whilst creating an intense discussion of contrasts – death and exile, the revolutionary and the exile, the desaparecidos and the exile, language and exile. Exile becomes a single constant which, as time passes, exudes a certain inevitable detachment from the reality that is Chile. There is no reconciliation with the revolutionary past in exile – an issue which Dorfman struggled against for many years in various countries as he futilely sought to aid the Chilean resistance from abroad during the first years of exile in Paris and Amsterdam.

El pueblo unido – the people united in a socialist revolution under the banner of the Unidad Popular disintegrated in exile. A hierarchy developed within the exiled community, leading to strife within the movement struggling to develop a resistance movement against Pinochet. Dorfman recounts how his family had been promised an apartment in Paris by Carlos Iturra, author of the famous hymn Venceremos, at “solidarity rental rates.” The family moved their belongings to the apartment, only to discover a few days later that Iturra had received threatening phone calls from dictatorship sympathisers. The location was presumably unsafe. However, upon collecting their luggage from the apartment, it became evident to the family that the hierarchy of the Communist Party had negotiated with Iturra to reside in the apartment. Iturra was, at that moment, organising a vacation in the Alps for children of Chilean exiles. The sense of a community united in a revolutionary stance had deteriorated.

“Exile destroys children along with the parents.” Dorfman recounts how his children, Rodrigo and Joaquin struggle with identity and history in exile. Whilst the eldest, Rodrigo, gradually eliminates traces of Chile in his art, Joaquin seemingly fails to absorb the Chilean identity. Dorfman describes how the Andes Mountains feature prominently in Chilean children’s artwork – a characteristic which holds no fascination for Joaquin, born in exile. However, both sons are affected by the consequences of dictatorship and exile. Rodrigo has imbibed a rebellious streak which leads him to a return to Chile and subsequent filming of protests. Joaquin is haunted by the stories of the desaparecidos and the terror inflicted upon Chileans, such as the story of Rodrigo Rojas – a young man who, along with his girlfriend Carmen Gloria Quintana, had been doused with paraffin and torched. Their bodies were dumped in a ditch – at the exact location where three dissidents were discovered with slit throats only a year earlier. Dorfman admits an inconsistency between the lies designed to protect children from the horrors of the dictatorship and the children’s absorption of the truth.

The ramifications of exile flow into metaphorical prose. Dorfman distinguishes between various facets of exile – the actual departure from Chile, and the indefinite aspect – which lead the author to hold on to a library inside their house in Chile which was being used as a safe house for the MAPU, instead of acquiring new books. Exile created contradictions, ambiguity and barriers, as Dorfman realises that the revolutionary who joined the struggle for a socialist revolution, who was present when Allende saluted the people a week prior to the military coup, had distanced himself from his compañeros in Chile. After a long process in which he persisted in identifying with the resistance in exile and aiding the movement, Dorfman’s evolution veers towards the intellectual writer whose memories and stories are festering within an increasingly permanent exile and the still imagery of the revolutionary past.

Dorfman struggles with the truth as the exile commences in Buenos Aires. Narrating the case of Victor Jara, he tells of how a writer described Victor having his hands cut off by the lieutenants – an erroneous statement which portrayed how legends mingled with truth to construct a false reality. Another experience of false memory is Dorfman’s recollection of a photograph of him taken a week before the coup in front of La Moneda. His memory is of him in revolutionary stance, fists in the air. When the photo resurfaces, Dorfman discovers a pensive version of himself next to writer Antonio Skarmeta. The illusion of el pueblo unido had vanquished the actual memory – exile implants images in the mind of the exile and constructs an alternative reality.

It is not only actual memories that abscond from the exile. Pinochet’s reign contaminated language and society by referring to torture as ‘excesses,’ whilst the dictatorship was described as a ‘regime.’ The euphemisms contributed toward the cycle of impunity and infiltrated social circles where new alliances were being forged, with some former socialists seeking to gain elite status by liaising with the right wing – a phenomenon which Dorfman states was blatantly portrayed in the social pages of newspaper El Mercurio.

The book is also replete with stories of people from Chile. Carlos - the carpenter who hid Allende’s poster behind the boards in his workshop until Pinochet was arrested in London. Patricia, the wife of a right wing thug who used her husband’s status as a cover to transport Allende supporters to safety in a car gifted to her husband by DINA. Susana Weiner, who worked as a courier for MAPU, played a role in saving the lives of dissidents, including Dorfman, and was entrusted with transcribing notes describing torture in detention centres and smuggling them out of Chile. Their experiences, combined with the stories of the detenidos desaparecidos and President Patricio Aylwin’s initiative during the transition to establish the Truth and Reconciliation Commission urged Dorfman to contribute towards furthering the struggle, resulting in two particular publications written in exile.

Widows (1978) is a novel which deals with a group of women who refuse to hand over a body which washed ashore. As the novel was published, the first desaparecidos were being discovered in Chile. In the memoirs, Dorfman describes the act of disappearing people as an aberration on existence. “Disappearance was an outrage against the chemistry and structure of life itself. The bodies of the missing were wrenched out of the normal progression of existence ...” The outrage of the discovery contrasts sharply with another discovery of bodies in 1990, where younger Chileans born after the coup were less interested in the process. According to Dorfman, this discovery was a disruption in their lives which necessitated excavation and destruction of a football pitch.

However, in his renowned play entitled Death and the Maiden, Dorfman shows how torture survivors were side-lined by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Paulina – a torture survivor whose husband is a lawyer working on behalf of the Commission, kidnaps the man she believes to be her torturer and subjects him to a trial, appointing her husband as her oppressor’s defence lawyer. Paulina insists she wants the truth – a truth which till now wallows in impunity as torturers and victims walk side by side on Chilean streets, depriving torture survivors of their right to justice and the opportunity to inscribe their testimonies.

Dorfman describes how torture tarnishes universal expression such as music. The last scene features Paulina listening to Schubert in a concert – the music played during her torture session. The reconciliation with her favourite music was brought about after the confession was extracted from her torturer – the right to truth as opposed to sacrificing one’s self for the better of the democratic transition.

In the fragments of Dorfman’s diary of his return to Chile in 1990, the author grapples with the realisation that his experiences and that of the Chilean nation have diverged so greatly, it is impossible to nurture the dream of returning to live in Chile. The fragile transition, which sought to reconcile, rather than call for justice in order to avoid disruptions in the process, differed greatly from Dorfman’s vision of returning to the people united in a collective struggle. Exile further split the left wing memory camp, as those who remained in Chile looked upon exiles with certain resentment, contrasting the suffering they had endured with the relative comfort of escaping the horrors of the dictatorship.

Dorfman, unable to harmonize the experience of different memory camps on the left, decided to seek refuge in the US and later become a citizen of the same country which had conspired with Pinochet to overthrow Allende. He states that the desire to return was vanquished by the necessity to adjust, bringing to an end a previous personal conflict concerning language. Renouncing imperialism during the years of Allende’s presidency and the first years of exile also meant renouncing the English language, which Dorfman was familiar with since childhood, having lived in the US when his father and the family fled from Argentina. Throughout the course of exile and the subsequent return to Chile, Dorfman realises that language as a universal medium holds the power to navigate political borders and memory. Also, in Dorfman’s own words, acquiring US citizenship meant “I will never again go into exile.”

Personified by writers  such as Milan Kundera, who Dorfman describes as “the saddest man I have ever seen,” and Antonio Skarmeta, author of Il Postino, who predicted Dorfman would never return to live in Chile, exile became the ultimate choice of survival, creating a refuge within another complex realm of loyalties.

Whilst the book might have benefited from a more chronological order, and the metaphorical prose might seem daunting for some readers, Dorfman has masterfully created a narrative so intricate and yet simple in its message. He lays bare the complexities of memory, made easier to follow once the reader acknowledges that memory knows no chronology but is rather a series of events that profoundly impacted the rememberer’s life, and the act of remembering is a process of cunningly implanting additional images and obliterating others. Most importantly, Dorfman furthers the split memory narrative by adding the memory of the exile, the desaparecidos and the torture survivors to the usual general divide between the supporters of Allende and those of Pinochet. As compromising as it may seem, Dorfman acknowledges the importance of embracing ambivalence in order to construct a narrative which berates, glorifies and wallows in despondency. The book emanates the turmoil of Dorfman’s complicated yearning to regain Allende’s years, and his unrepentant decision to seek shelter in a nation known for its oppression, in order to avoid repeating his own history.

Betraying Memory in Chile: Documental Pinochet's Manipulation of History

This article was first published in Upside Down World here.

Impunity and split memory in Chile were highlighted on June 10, 2012 with the screening of Documental Pinochet at Teatro Caupolican. Describing the event as an aberration, human rights groups in Chile launched a campaign which culminated in protests outside Teatro Caupolican, emphasizing the contradiction of honoring the dictator responsible for the torture and murder of thousands of Chileans within the parameters of democracy.

Documental Pinochet gives a glorifying account of the military coup and the dictatorship years up to Augusto Pinochet’s funeral. Focusing on the Pinochet rather than the nation, the documentary manipulates history in a manner which all but obliterates Salvador Allende and Unidad Popular. Branding socialists and members of MIR (Movimiento Izquierda Revolucionario) as terrorists, the documentary embraces impunity from the beginning, imparting a distorted justification of the coup while deftly eliminating all historical footage of repression.

Agrupacion Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos (AFDD), together with relatives of people who were tortured, murdered or disappeared during the dictatorship, filed an appeal for suspension of the documentary, reiterating that such a tribute could cause psychological harm to relatives who, after decades of repression, are still struggling to discover the fate of their relatives. Lorena Pizarro, speaking on behalf of AFDD stated that such a tribute will demean any declaration of “never again” with regard to genocide, [1] however, the Court ruled against the appeal, also accusing AFDD of issuing threats. AFDD’s initiative also garnered support from human rights lawyer Hugo Gutierrez, who denounced the tribute as a means to undermine the rights of the victims of state terrorism in order to pay homage to a criminal. Deputy Enrique Accorsi from Partido por la Democracia (PPD) stated the tribute was a direct attack on democracy and announced that a draft agreement would be presented to avoid such events in the future.[2]

The homage to Pinochet delves deeper than differences of opinion. By allowing the event to take place, the right wing’s approach to Chilean history has been to seek a manner in which the dictatorship’s crimes of torture and murder are legitimized within a distorted historical context. Senator Carlos Kuschel from Renovacion Nacional voiced the opinion that “President Pinochet deserves more tributes than the majority of leaders.”[3]

Pinochet’s grandson, Augusto Pinochet Molina evoked democracy to justify the tribute, stating that “people shouldn’t be afraid to express themselves ...We live in a democratic society with the rule of law and everyone can raise their points of view and act as necessary within that framework.” [4]

Lieutenant Juan Gonzalez, a retired army officer leading the Pinochetista movement and also an organizer of the tribute declared the documentary to be the means of setting the record straight on Chile. During an interview on CNN, Gonzalez described the coup as the saving of Chile, denying the widespread torture, murders and disappearances. Gonzalez’s own sister, Francisca denied these statements the very next day during an interview with the same news channel, declaring she was imprisoned and tortured in Punta Arenas during the dictatorship. [5]

Social networking, in particular Facebook and Twitter, provided a strong means of dissemination of information. A petition hosted at El Quinto Poder entitled Impidamos esta aberración[6], was widely circulated on Twitter. While the petition failed to garner the desired number of signatures within five days, it provided a vital focal point for those opposing the tribute. A steady stream of tweets paid homage to various desaparecidos, the 119 victims of Operacion Colombo and other victims of the dictatorship. The first photos published on Facebook pertained to demonstrations held in France and Brussels against the tribute to Pinochet.

The area surrounding Teatro Caupolican was characterized by a significant police presence. Human rights groups who sought to break through the police barrier to get closer to Teatro Caupolican were forced back with water cannons and tear gas. Opposition to the tribute was particularly assertive – besides families of the desaparecidos wearing photos of their disappeared relatives around their necks and holding placards as protest against the tribute, a re-enactment of torture was exhibited in the streets, with people blindfolded and tied to a replica of the parilla – a common torture device during the dictatorship which administered electric shocks to detainees.

As in a December 2011 protest against Chilean intelligence officer Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko’s homage, protestors were targeted and subjected to police violence. AFDD stated it held Minister of Interior Rodrigo Hinzpinter responsible for the violence and the manner in which police provided protection for the Pinochetistas. Protestors have also alleged that police dressed in civilian clothes infiltrated the crowd and made arbitrary arrests. [7]

Whilst Sebastian Piñera’s government kept its distance from the tribute, statements from the government’s general secretary bordered on the contradictory, stating “The government respects the activity because it is organized within legal parameters, but we won’t be participating.”[8]

Historian Alberto Harambour makes an important observation regarding the contradictions of the Chilean state. He says the tribute is indecent in its glorification of torture and destruction of freedom.[9] The incoherence of applying dictatorship laws of impunity to defend a dictatorship and manipulate history bears a resemblance to the earlier controversy of eliminating any mention of the dictatorship in primary school textbooks. Showing leniency to torture and torturers allows a widespread indulgence of human rights violations.
While the documentary has been pronounced as the product of over twenty years of silence and a means to disseminate the truth about the military coup, its manipulative stance reinforces the split memory of Chilean society. The right wing in Chile adhered to Pinochet’s strategy beyond his death by reiterating that torture, disappearances and murders never happened. However, propagating such distorted views in a documentary exceeds any possible rational acceptance of various truths and memories.

Documental Pinochet further annihilates the memory of the dictatorship victims by refusing to even acknowledge the widespread horror inflicted upon left wing Chileans by DINA and CNI. The refusal to acknowledge Chile’s era of repression is a manifestation of impunity.
Adolfo Pérez, 1980 Nobel Peace Prize winner, criticized the tribute, calling it an aberration.[10] Citing a broader perspective than a manipulation of history, Pérez raises the significance and impact of the tribute upon Chile, which is still shackled by laws dating back to Pinochet’s era. The documentary glorifies interventionism in Latin America and upholds the enforcement of anti-terror laws upon the Mapuche population and social movements. In the end, Documental Pinochet has caused uproar within the Chilean left largely because it betrays the nation’s struggle for justice and its own collective memory.

Ramona Wadi is a freelance writer living in Malta. Visit her blog here.
Photo source: http://yfrog.com/6hgzj

Source:

---

[1] http://www.eldinamo.cl/2012/06/06/familiares-de-detenidos-desaparecidos-presentan-recurso-contra-homenaje-a-pinochet/
[2] http://www.biobiochile.cl/2012/06/03/familias-de-victimas-acuden-a-la-justicia-para-evitar-homenaje-a-pinochet.shtml
[3] http://www.biobiochile.cl/2012/06/06/senador-kuschel-el-presidente-pinochet-merece-mas-homenajes-que-la-mayoria-de-los-mandatarios.shtml
[4] http://www.biobiochile.cl/2012/06/10/nieto-de-pinochet-defiende-derecho-a-manifestarse-de-partidarios-al-regimen-militar.shtml
[5] http://www.diarioreddigital.cl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7786%3Ala-catadura-moral-de-los-organizadores-del-qhomenajeq-a-pinochet&catid=74%3Avideos-derechos-humanos&Itemid=92
[6] http://www.elquintopoder.cl/acciones/impidamos-esta-aberracion-noalhomenajeapinochet/
[7] http://radio.uchile.cl/noticias/156601/
Also see http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3356-dictatorship-relics-in-chile-paying-homage-to-miguel-krassnoff-martchenko
[8] http://radio.uchile.cl/noticias/155343/
[9] http://www.elquintopoder.cl/sociedad/para-la-libertad-homenaje-a-pinochet/
[10] http://www.lanacion.cl/adolfo-perez-esquivel-homenaje-a-pinochet-es-una-aberracion/noticias/2012-06-05/132002.html

Dictatorship Relics in Chile: Paying homage to Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko

This article was first published in Upside Down World here.
In another event which exposes the reality of Chilean society’s split memory, an homage to former Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) officer Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko was described as an exercise in freedom of expression by mayor  of Providencia Christian Labbé, in turn prompting outrage and protests from human rights and activist groups in Chile since its announcement.

On November 21, Labbé organised a book launch for the 4th edition of right wing historian Gisela Silva Encina’s Miguel Krassnoff: Prisoniero Por Servir a Chile (Miguel Krassnoff: A Prisoner for Serving Chile). A letter from Krassnoff[1] was read during the event, in which he described his incarceration as ‘illegal, illegitimate and unconstitutional’. Hundreds of activists and relatives of tortured victims gathered to protest the event, some holding placards stating “I don’t forget, nor forgive”. Others turned up with photographs of tortured, assassinated or missing relatives. Protestors hurled eggs and stones in the direction of Club Providencia, resulting in clashes between opposing groups and the use of force and tear gas against protestors by the Chilean police. Earlier that day another indictment was issued against Krassnoff, charging him and three other DINA officers with the kidnapping of Newton Morales Saavedra in 1974.[2]

A message relayed by one of President Sebastian Piñera’s assistants stated that while the President was unable to attend, he wished the event success, bearing in mind that “Krassnoff is a representative symbol of the 1973 – 1978 era.”[3] Following the protests, Piñera issued a retraction, saying the initial message was not his and there was no way his government would have participated in such an event.

Krassnoff was sentenced to 144 years in prison in 2006 for over 20 counts of crimes against humanity. A graduate of the School of the Americas (SOA) and renowned for anti-Marxist sentiment, Krassnoff took part in the September 11, 1973 military coup d’état which ousted President Salvador Allende. Having been in charge of DINA’s Brigada Halcon, Krassnoff was at the helm of Pinochet’s secret service which kidnapped, tortured and assassinated members of Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria de Chile (MIR) – who had formed a paramilitary resistance against Pinochet’s dictatorship. Those arrested were taken to Villa Grimaldi and Londres 38, torture complexes which operated from 1974 to 1978.

According to Stern (Reckoning with Pinochet: The Memory Question in Democratic Chile 1989 – 2006) 4,500 prisoners were tortured from 1974 – 1976; including 205 disappearances. Survivors of torture recount extreme atrocities committed against prisoners. Sheila Cassidy, a British doctor living in Chile at the time of the coup, was arrested and tortured with electric shocks on the accusation of medically treating a Pinochet opponent. Paul Hammer[4], a law student arrested on suspicion of membership in a left-wing paramilitary group states he was beaten, shocked and brought to the verge of suffocation. Another torture survivor of Villa Grimaldi, Pedro Matta[5] was arrested in 1975 and taken to Villa Grimaldi. His extensive research sheds light on the methods and manner of torture.

Prisoners who refused to become collaborators for DINA were kept standing for long hours in tiny cells, torturers submerged the prisoners’ heads in putrid water, others were subjected to the shattering of limbs, performed by a guard who would drive a vehicle over the victim’s legs. Sexual abuse and torture against women was particularly sadistic, which included rape, using animals to sexually abuse women and the burning of genitals. Influential prisoners who refused to succumb to the interrogator’s demands were usually anesthetised, taken on board a helicopter and thrown into the ocean. This elimination of opponents was also affirmed by Cassidy.

Labbé, a personal friend of Krassnoff since their time at the (SOA)[6], so far remains unscathed by the law. A former body guard of Krassnoff, he later formed part of Brigada Halcon, given the duty of instructing guards in torture methods. Reiterating that he allowed the use of Club Providencia each time there was a commemoration pertaining to the Pinochet era, Labbé considers the event as honouring part of Chile’s history. Notwithstanding his role in Villa Grimaldi, Labbé continues to enjoy the authorities’ support and has contested council elections, retaining his place as Mayor since his first campaign.

Despite the testimonies from survivors and reports drawn up by the Valech and Rettig commissions; Chilean society remains split over the dictatorship era. According to Krassnoff’s declaration in the letter read during the book launch, “the military coup didn’t happen. It was a legitimate military intervention.” Once again, memory and blame are displaced. Pinochet’s initial declaration to allegations of human rights abuses, “Sometimes democracy must be bathed in blood” was mellowed through the years into a mission of refuting evidence of torture and murder through the discrepancy oblivion, as he stated in 1995, “The only solution to the issue of human rights is oblivion.”

As evidenced from Gisela Silva Encina’s blog[7] about Krassnoff, Pinochet supporters are in denial of the history of human rights abuses, assassinations and disappearances. Echoing a quote from Krassnoff, “I am a soldier who has been transformed into a persecuted politician.” Encina states that Krassnoff was the victim of lies and that no evidence incriminating Krassnoff was brought forward. Indeed, Dr Patricio Bustos, Head of Servicio Medico Legal, testified that he was tortured by Miguel Krassnoff[8], and that Krassnoff never used a pseudonym to conceal his identity[9]. The testimonies of victims were dismissed as memory manipulation. Encina’s blog also portrays the protestors as criminals attacking Pinochet supporters, thus necessitating the use of force on behalf of the police. Chile’s laws do not deem the celebration of genocide as a crime; therefore once again, victims and their relatives have been subjected to a travesty of justice.

However, the memory of the oppressed refuses to relinquish its stand. Lorena Pizarro, president of Agrupacion de Familiares de Detenidos Desparecidos (AFDD), condemned the homage[10], stating it portrayed Chile as a state which sanctions terrorism, as well as opening an avenue for a repetition of state terror. Alicia Lira, president of the Agrupacion de Familiares de Ejecution Politicos (AFEP) denounced the homage as an affront to memory and an example of the impunity which Piñera’s government is unwilling to counter, since many officers from the Pinochet era remain in authoritative positions.[11] On behalf of the AFDD, Pizarro is suing Labbé[12], demanding to know whether public funds were used to finance the event.

At a time when Chile is experiencing a surge in protests, notably the students’ protests demanding quality and free education, the event elicited responses from political figures. Head of Senate Guido Girardi denounced the homage[13], calling it “a tribute to torture, assassination and rape” and challenged Piñera to take measures against allowing Labbé to run for council elections in 2012. [14] “It is not possible that public authorities honor torturers and murderers … It is not democratic that your party supports a militant who has incurred faults that go against the constitution and the law … Labbé should be prevented from reapplying for office as he clearly has not responded as democracy demands.”

Notes:

[1] http://miguelkrassnoff.blogspot.com/2011/11/carta-del-brigadier-krassnoff-leida-en.html

[2] http://www.lab.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1154:homage-to-a-criminal-in-chile&catid=65:news&Itemid=39

[3] http://www.biobiochile.cl/2011/11/17/gobierno-califica-de-lamentable-error-apoyo-inicial-al-homenaje-a-ex-agente-dina-miguel-krassnoff.shtml

[4] http://peoplesworld.org/villa-grimaldi-chile-s-memorial-to-victims-of-torture/%20Paul%20Hammer

[5] http://thelegacyproject.com/acmatta.html

[6] http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=140065

[7] http://miguelkrassnoff.blogspot.com

[8] http://www.elmostrador.cl/noticias/pais/2011/11/22/%E2%80%9Cnos-tiraron-desnudos-amarrados-a-un-somier-metalico-con-aplicaciones-de-electricidad%E2%80%9D/

[9] http://www.elmostrador.cl/opinion/2011/11/25/yo-estuve-alli-no-hubo-empate/

[10] http://www.londres38.cl/1937/w3-article-92796.html

[11] http://afepchile.cl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=363:afep-frente-a-homenaje-al-criminal-krassnoff-qno-permitiremos-que-se-pretenda-borrar-de-la-memoria-colectiva-el-horror-y-la-traicionq&catid=1:ultimas&Itemid=71

[12] http://www.londres38.cl/1937/w3-article-92800.html

[13] https://nacla.org/news/2011/12/1/homage-criminal-chile

[14] http://ilovechile.cl/2011/11/25/evening-news-6/40508

 

Victor - An Unfinished Song

by Joan Jara

Bloomsbury, 1998

Review by Ramona Wadi

"I need the wood and strings of my guitar to give vent to sadness or happiness, some verse which opens up the heart like a wound, some line which helps us all to turn from inside ourselves to look out and see the world with new eyes." Victor Jara

In the preface, Joan Jara expresses relief at the opportunity to relate such an integral part of Chilean history. Indeed, this memoir soothes, enraptures and enrages the reader, with the knowledge that each page brings one closer to an atrocious epilogue - a reminder of the horrors unleashed by the military coup of Augusto Pinochet.

Joan Jara's narration is provocative and poignant. From the first pages one senses the fervour of socialism, coupled with the experience of a British woman in Chile. Arriving in Chile as a ballet dancer who later took up teaching, the initial experience as a foreigner quickly dissolves as her life with Victor becomes the immediate reality. Their lives together soon become overshadowed by a short lived socialist triumph with the election of Salvador Allende which descended into tyranny with the emergence of right wing violence and the US supported military coup which degenerated into a bloodbath.

The Nueva Cancion Chilena was part of the left's struggle against imperialism, integrating itself with the people and becoming a voice for the laments of the poblacion. Like other nueva cancion singers and groups, such as Inti Illimani and Quilapayun, Victor Jara supported Allende's presidential campaign wholeheartedly. Allende's Unidad Popular gave Chileans the hope for freedom and the song Venceremos quickly became the official hymn of the Unidad Popular.

The opposition to Allende's government was fuelled by US foreign policy, which seems to have deemed it ethical to eliminate any traces of communism in Latin America. Allende's final broadcast, in which he pledged his life to the people, was the initiation of a bloody trail that haunted Allende's supporters. In snippets of telephone conversation with Joan Jara, Victor managed to illustrate a cautious overview of events from his workplace at the Technical University. A few days later, she was informed of her husband's death by a companero. 

Victor's murder at the Estadio Chile was pieced together later by witnesses. Victor was singled out especially for torture and mockery by a soldier nicknamed 'The Prince' who, by all accounts is reputed to have been extremely sadistic in his treatment of the prisoners. Recognised as a nueva cancion singer, Victor's defiance and pledge to remain close to the people never wavered. In a poem written hours before his death, Victor Jara bequeathed the world with a testimony that paid homage to the thousands of people murdered by the military.

In the aftermath of Victor's murder, Pinochet embarked on a destructive mission against the nueva cancion. Victor Jara's song records were destroyed and the purge extended to instruments normally associated with the nueva cancion. His musical legacy still exists due to the efforts of Chileans hiding record copies and eventually smuggling them out of Chile.

Victor - An Unfinished Song is a testimony which mingles horror, exile, nostalgia and the repercussions of right wing politics. An essential read for anyone with an interest in the nueva cancion, the book is rendered intimate by the lyrics to Manifiesto and Vientos del Pueblo, as well as Victor's last poem from the Estadio Chile. It is a sphere of Chilean history yet, the universal philosophy of the nueva cancion makes this book an integral part of any person's history, whether beyond immediate recollection or a reflection of contemporary oppression.

My review of Reckoning with Pinochet, published in Upside Down World at http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3053-book-review-memory-and-justice-in-democratic-chile “My father had breakfast every day with General Pinochet during four years...I cannot understand that General Pinochet could say today ‘I have no idea’,” stated Manuel Contreras Valdebenito in 1999, whose father was head of DINA, Chile’s intelligence services during Pinochet’s dictatorship. By then, a division in loyalty had started to occur between Pinochet and his secret police DINA (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional).During Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship, violence was implemented as a means of annihilating all socialist and Marxist support in the country. Death and disappearances, torture and exile were common occurrences. A vital factor aiding the regime’s tenacity was the population’s subsequent silence. Fear and terror had created a long, temporary absence of vociferous socialist support, and the definition of justice had been mangled and manipulated by the absence of a memory made public.Two particular memory frameworks prevail through the book Reckoning with Pinochet – The Memory Question in Democratic Chile, 1989 – 2006 (Duke University Press, 2010), described by author Steve J. Stern as emblematic memory and loose memory – the social memory and the personal memory. Although they stand in contrast, it is by blending both concepts that the memory becomes national; the memory of Chile. Personal accounts of torture, disappearances, murder and exile sustain the social experience, which in turn creates a framework that is capable of combating the memory oblivion of the right.Reckoning with Pinochet delves into the memory question and the process through which memory became an essential part of Chilean culture. Drawing on the obvious split of loyalties within Chilean society, Stern vividly portrays the memory of both sides, bringing to light a conclusion which, despite the obvious, has the tendency to remain cloistered in a realm of its own. Despite the propaganda of democracy, Pinochet’s rule was a brutal dictatorship which resorted to extremes to annihilate any evidence of socialist or communist support. Yet, due to the flaws inherent in the subsequent transition to democracy, there still remains a segment of the population which perceives Pinochet as a saviour, and therefore defines atrocities as a method of preserving Chile from ruin. While the socialists perceived the pre-1973 years as the prologue to adversity, supporters of Pinochet drew upon Allende’s presidential term as the disaster prior to deliverance. What the right eliminates from memory is obviously the reality of Pinochet’s brutal massacre of Chileans and other atrocities that render an individual split from his humanity.In its essence, memory can be elusive – a series of certainties that differs according to the recollections of people. At a distance, the repression of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile may be perceived solely as a fragment of the country’s history, not having been burdened with a legacy of death, torture, disappearances and exile. As the book draws on the memory of people, grassroots organisations, elites, truth commissions and judges, it becomes evident that the memory of Chile is strong enough to be sustained beyond its borders. With the rupture of silence, the atrocities committed during the dictatorship became translated into an experience of that particular era in Chilean history, documented both for Chile and for the rest of the world.Throughout the years of transition, Pinochet argued in favour of memory oblivion, describing the concept as “mindful silence as a positive good.” Memory had created a conflict on both sides out of the quest for truth and justice. Patricio Aylwin’s Convivencia law was aimed at shattering the silence that shrouded the era of torture and oppression, thus giving an outlet to narrations of brutality. In the wake of evidence starting to seep out, the military and the Right had “adjusted to the documented factual truth of memory as rupture.” By displacing responsibility for the committed atrocities, Pinochet and the right wing had justified their detachment from the process, and even from culpability. The memory transition at best seemed fragmented. Pinochet sought honour and amnesty. Aylwin was pressing for political stability and ethics, while victim survivors were clamouring for justice. The transition satisfied nobody, yet it was through this period that grassroots activists ascertained the legacy of terror would not be ignored. As testimonies started to emerge from the truth commission’s investigations, the memory oblivion encouraged by Pinochet was relegated to its own irrelevance within the context of the oppressed people’s quest for memory truth. Stern also presents memory as an experience. Whilst the culture of oblivion shelters the middle class from the moral obligation of affirming state violence, thus clashing with the concept of human rights, the memory framework of the socialists is dependent upon exposing atrocities in order to reach a semblance of salvation. The rupture of silence was essential in order to create a framework that portrays the injustice inflicted on Chilean supporters of Salvador Allende, activists within the Unidad Popular and other people who had a socialist background to bring about a relative consciousness that sustains itself from within the confines of history. In due course, other media and creativity sources sprang up, conveying the social memory of the oppressed to the Chileans as a nation. The memory quest for justice remained replete with obstacles from the past, as Pinochet’s legacy loomed over any shattered frontier. In a letter addressed to Chileans in 1998, Pinochet stresses that he never sought power and was trapped by a communist conspiracy. The actions of embedding past realities in the present was unacceptable to the right wing which, in its futile efforts to preserve the culture of oblivion, persevered in a wave of disassociation negation, fabricating a reality that diminished the essence of justice.As the truth emerged, Allende was once again reaffirmed as the leader of marginalised people. A sentiment which had to be sheltered during Pinochet’s reign had once again manifested itself in the loyalty of the people. This was a memory totally independent of justice and its manipulations.Pinochet was finally deemed unfit to stand trial due to dementia, a relic of another fallacy of justice. Responsibility was never legally acknowledged or declared through a trial. Findings state that the scale of torture during Pinochet’s dictatorship was massive and it was also a ‘policy of the state’. Thus, Chile’s memory remained an inconclusive metaphor, blemished by tragedy and the ambiguous process that was supposed to pave the way through democracy.

My review of Reckoning with Pinochet, published in Upside Down World at http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3053-book-review-memory-and-justice-in-democratic-chile

“My father had breakfast every day with General Pinochet during four years...I cannot understand that General Pinochet could say today ‘I have no idea’,” stated Manuel Contreras Valdebenito in 1999, whose father was head of DINA, Chile’s intelligence services during Pinochet’s dictatorship. By then, a division in loyalty had started to occur between Pinochet and his secret police DINA (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional).

During Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship, violence was implemented as a means of annihilating all socialist and Marxist support in the country. Death and disappearances, torture and exile were common occurrences. A vital factor aiding the regime’s tenacity was the population’s subsequent silence. Fear and terror had created a long, temporary absence of vociferous socialist support, and the definition of justice had been mangled and manipulated by the absence of a memory made public.

Two particular memory frameworks prevail through the book Reckoning with Pinochet – The Memory Question in Democratic Chile, 1989 – 2006 (Duke University Press, 2010), described by author Steve J. Stern as emblematic memory and loose memory – the social memory and the personal memory. Although they stand in contrast, it is by blending both concepts that the memory becomes national; the memory of Chile. Personal accounts of torture, disappearances, murder and exile sustain the social experience, which in turn creates a framework that is capable of combating the memory oblivion of the right.

Reckoning with Pinochet delves into the memory question and the process through which memory became an essential part of Chilean culture. Drawing on the obvious split of loyalties within Chilean society, Stern vividly portrays the memory of both sides, bringing to light a conclusion which, despite the obvious, has the tendency to remain cloistered in a realm of its own. Despite the propaganda of democracy, Pinochet’s rule was a brutal dictatorship which resorted to extremes to annihilate any evidence of socialist or communist support. Yet, due to the flaws inherent in the subsequent transition to democracy, there still remains a segment of the population which perceives Pinochet as a saviour, and therefore defines atrocities as a method of preserving Chile from ruin. While the socialists perceived the pre-1973 years as the prologue to adversity, supporters of Pinochet drew upon Allende’s presidential term as the disaster prior to deliverance. What the right eliminates from memory is obviously the reality of Pinochet’s brutal massacre of Chileans and other atrocities that render an individual split from his humanity.

In its essence, memory can be elusive – a series of certainties that differs according to the recollections of people. At a distance, the repression of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile may be perceived solely as a fragment of the country’s history, not having been burdened with a legacy of death, torture, disappearances and exile. As the book draws on the memory of people, grassroots organisations, elites, truth commissions and judges, it becomes evident that the memory of Chile is strong enough to be sustained beyond its borders. With the rupture of silence, the atrocities committed during the dictatorship became translated into an experience of that particular era in Chilean history, documented both for Chile and for the rest of the world.

Throughout the years of transition, Pinochet argued in favour of memory oblivion, describing the concept as “mindful silence as a positive good.” Memory had created a conflict on both sides out of the quest for truth and justice. Patricio Aylwin’s Convivencia law was aimed at shattering the silence that shrouded the era of torture and oppression, thus giving an outlet to narrations of brutality. In the wake of evidence starting to seep out, the military and the Right had “adjusted to the documented factual truth of memory as rupture.” By displacing responsibility for the committed atrocities, Pinochet and the right wing had justified their detachment from the process, and even from culpability.

The memory transition at best seemed fragmented. Pinochet sought honour and amnesty. Aylwin was pressing for political stability and ethics, while victim survivors were clamouring for justice. The transition satisfied nobody, yet it was through this period that grassroots activists ascertained the legacy of terror would not be ignored. As testimonies started to emerge from the truth commission’s investigations, the memory oblivion encouraged by Pinochet was relegated to its own irrelevance within the context of the oppressed people’s quest for memory truth.

Stern also presents memory as an experience. Whilst the culture of oblivion shelters the middle class from the moral obligation of affirming state violence, thus clashing with the concept of human rights, the memory framework of the socialists is dependent upon exposing atrocities in order to reach a semblance of salvation. The rupture of silence was essential in order to create a framework that portrays the injustice inflicted on Chilean supporters of Salvador Allende, activists within the Unidad Popular and other people who had a socialist background to bring about a relative consciousness that sustains itself from within the confines of history. In due course, other media and creativity sources sprang up, conveying the social memory of the oppressed to the Chileans as a nation.

The memory quest for justice remained replete with obstacles from the past, as Pinochet’s legacy loomed over any shattered frontier. In a letter addressed to Chileans in 1998, Pinochet stresses that he never sought power and was trapped by a communist conspiracy. The actions of embedding past realities in the present was unacceptable to the right wing which, in its futile efforts to preserve the culture of oblivion, persevered in a wave of disassociation negation, fabricating a reality that diminished the essence of justice.

As the truth emerged, Allende was once again reaffirmed as the leader of marginalised people. A sentiment which had to be sheltered during Pinochet’s reign had once again manifested itself in the loyalty of the people. This was a memory totally independent of justice and its manipulations.

Pinochet was finally deemed unfit to stand trial due to dementia, a relic of another fallacy of justice. Responsibility was never legally acknowledged or declared through a trial. Findings state that the scale of torture during Pinochet’s dictatorship was massive and it was also a ‘policy of the state’. Thus, Chile’s memory remained an inconclusive metaphor, blemished by tragedy and the ambiguous process that was supposed to pave the way through democracy.