Following the macabre narration ‘La Danza de los Cuervos: el
destino final de los detenidos desaparecidos’, which describes the torture and
extermination of dictatorship opponents carried out in Cuartel Simon Bolivar,
Javier Rebolledo’s latest book, ‘El despertar de los Cuervos. Tejas Verdes, el
origen del exterminio en Chile’ (Ceibo Ediciones, 2013) provides a detailed
account of DINA’s formation in Tejas Verdes – the location where
experimentation with torture was carried out in the early days of the dictatorship.
The prologue to the book describes perversity as an
inadequate term in relation to dictatorship atrocities committed in Chile. With
the full truth of horrors still concealed from the nation, the subject of
torture, extermination and disappearance is shrouded within various levels of
anonymity – the anonymity enforced by DINA upon the disappeared, torturers
whose identity is still undisclosed, and tortured victims who are reluctant to
disclose their accounts and add to the Chilean collective memory framework.
Alternating between testimonies from torture survivors,
information from official investigation documents and critical commentary,
Rebolledo’s account of Tejas Verdes validates his earlier statement dwelling on
the difference between conventional reporting about atrocities and survivor
testimony. The dehumanisation of detainees through various forms of torture,
degradation, manipulation of culture and a refusal to acknowledge individual
identity of detainees created harrowing narratives vacillating between the need
for recognition and the experiences which DINA attempted to mire within a
widespread imposition of oblivion in order to consolidate impunity.
The importance of Tejas Verdes has been overshadowed by
other infamous torture centres such as Londres 38 and Villa Grimaldi, as well
as by operations carried out by DINA involving the extermination of MIR and
Communist Party militants such as the Caravan of Death and Operacion Colombo.
However, prior to the formal establishment of DINA, political opponents of
Augusto Pinochet were already being tortured and disappeared from Tejas Verdes
– the primary torture and extermination centre in Chilean dictatorship history.
Tejas Verdes served as the initiation into torture and a
focal point for other torture and extermination centres in Chile. The majority
of torturers received their instruction at Tejas Verdes – names such as Marcelo
Moren Brito, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, Ricardo Lawrence and Cristian Labbé
featuring prominently in dictatorship history. Operating under various
brigades, DINA agents were tasked with intelligence operations, specific
targeting of MIR and Communist Party militants, security and clandestine
operations involving extermination of dictatorship opponents. Of particular
mention are Brito’s role in the Caravan of Death and Krassnoff’s torture
practices in Londres 38. Brigada Halcón, which operated in Londres 38, was also
involved in the kidnapping, torture and murder of Víctor Díaz which occurred at
Cuartel Simon Bolivar. The refinement of torture practiced in other torture
centres such as Clínica Santa Lucia – an issue discussed by Patricio Bustos
Streeter indicates a continuous attempt to obliterate any previous errors and
cultivate an elaborate impunity. Rebolledo also discusses the existence of
Brigada Mulchén under the command of Cristian Labbé – a relatively unknown
brigade involved in clandestine operations but whose complicity has been
difficult to prove, apart from the murder of Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria in
1976.
Rebolledo shows how, despite judicial investigations
initiated by Judge Alejandro Solis, it has been impossible to determine the
number of detainees held in Tejas Verdes. What emerged, however, were the
details of an appalling torture network headed by Manuel Contreras Sepulveda –
a testimony of sadism in the name of eradicating Marxism from Chile. Torturers
indicted by Judge Solis portrayed themselves as patriots unjustly accused, who
had allegedly saved Chile from the grips of a communist dictatorship. Through
the exhibited vestiges of dictatorial power during the trials of former DINA
agents, such as Contreras’ threats to Judge Solis, it is possible to discern
the traits of an organisation which operated with impunity.
The testimonies of Anatolio Zarate, Ana Becerra, Olga
Letelier and Feliciano Cerda, supplemented by other narrations garnered from
official investigation documents, portray the extent of human rights violations
which DINA agents indulged in. The torture sessions were designed to create a
barrier of immense magnitude between torturer and detainee, between detainee
and humanity. Torture survivors describe electric shocks through use of the
parilla, sexual violence and coercion, severe beatings, mock executions, the
insertion of mice and spiders in the vagina, genital mutilation, use of dogs in
sexual torture, mutilation, amputations and crude cauterisation, violation in
the presence of family members, degrading language, as well as forced ingestion
of urine and faeces. Pleas for death on behalf of detainees were met with
additional bouts of torment.
Former soldiers who testified against Contreras claimed that
detainees were lured to Tejas Verdes upon the premise of ‘discussing’ points of
contention, which was imparted in an official letter. Prospective detainees
usually complied and exhibited no resistance, discovering upon arrival the
nature of DINA’s alleged discussion. Some were assassinated upon the fabricated
pretext of attempting escape, others who voiced their fears of being murdered,
such as detainee Lucho Normabuena, were systematically disappeared. Medical
professionals who attempted to inscribe the truth about the cause of death were
detained in Tejas Verdes. Detainees were forced to listen or witness their
friends being tortured, while DINA embarked upon plans in the hope of
extracting information from detainees upon other detained militants. Olga
Letelier describes how torture sessions were usually attended by a group of
DINA officers, alternating between watching and participating in torture.
The book also expounds upon the network of health care
professionals recruited to supervise torture and instruct DINA torturers in
recognising individual thresholds to reduce the possibility of murder during a
torture session. With most medical torturers still benefiting from impunity,
Chilean society has to contend with yet another contradiction – that of
entrusting their health to doctors whose complicity in torture and murder is
still concealed. A list of former medical torturers still practicing their profession
has been circulating on the internet, in a bid to expose further DINA
atrocities. The literature dealing with medical torturers in the book
explicitly portrays how the dictatorship disfigured the profession. Among
others, Rebolledo’s book refers to Vittorio Orvieto Tiplisky, who commenced his
career with DINA at Tejas Verdes and later participated in the extermination of
militants at Cuartel Simon Bolivar; nurse Gladys Calerdon who administered
lethal injections to tortured detainees prior to their disappearance and
Roberto Lailhacar, who recently admitted to the disposal of six disappeared
dictatorship opponents in wells on his property at Curacaví.
Rebolledo has bequeathed another significant treatise to Chile’s
recent history. It affirms a previous statement by Chilean author and survivor
of Tejas Verdes, Hernan Valdes, who summarised Tejas Verdes thus: “All I knew
about evil until then was only caricature, only literature. Now evil has lost
all moral reference.” Pinochet’s plea for oblivion decades later served as a
reminder of what leftist opposition had struggled against. Oblivion had already
been implemented by the dictatorship prior to any public call, as evidenced
from the early disappearances from Tejas Verdes, the certainty of impunity
which was flaunted time and again at tortured detainees, the illegal adoptions
of babies born to detainees in order to eliminate traces of rape in detention
centres, the medical practitioners who worked under assumed names, thus
separating their roles as torturers from the role assumed within the wider
berths of society. The detailed testimony and commentary in this book prove
that Tejas Verdes should be at the helm of any detailed research regarding
Pinochet’s dictatorship – it is through an understanding of Tejas Verdes as the
primary reference to human rights violation that one can comprehend the
extended torture network and state complicity during the Chilean dictatorship.
