In 1975, Pedro Matta was 22 when he was detained by General Pinochet’s secret police DINA for being an active member of the Chilean Socialist Party. He was tortured in DINA’s main center of interrogations Villa Grimaldi, a former colonial hacienda turned detention camp in the cordillera foothills south of Santiago. He was given daily electrocutions, forced to spend days on end in a tiny 2 foot by 2 foot windowless shack, strung up by his arms (that would permanently damage the ligaments in his left shoulder), and made to endure countless other more innovative and increasingly disturbing forms of torture. In the confines of Villa Grimaldi’s wall he heard the screams of his companions, as agents of Chile’s armed forces brought their bodies to the edge of mortality, only to let them recuperate to endure more torture. He heard the hopeless sobs of women prisoners after suffering through painful and dehumanizing sessions of rape and sexual abuse. From his cell he could smell the roses of the former colonial garden, maintained daily by a DINA gardener, mingle with scents of the urine, feces, and blood of his fellow prisoners. He was made to confront the horrible and gruesome face of man’s worst machinations.
After being transferred to another detention camp for political dissidents, Pedro found out that by some bureaucratic miracle he had qualified for a program that relocates Chilean political prisoners to the United States. He was one of 200 such prisoners, among the thousands that had been detained and tortured. After three months in the camp, he found himself in New York City, demoralized from the countless physical and psychological abuses and on the brink of death. In time, he gained back weight, learned English, and established a life of exile for himself in San Francisco. Throughout the 80s, Pedro found solace in work as an advocate for global human rights. In 1989 after the plebiscite voting Pinochet out of power, Pedro returned to Chile to find that even in the rebirth of democracy torture was still a dirty word unspoken at social gatherings, that dictatorship was called “military government” and disappeared people were still “presumed missing.” So today, as well as being the director of Trinity College’s Santiago study abroad program, Pedro Matta gives free tours of Villa Grimaldi, a former colonial hacienda turned DINA torture camp turned memorial peace park, the same place where thirty years before he experienced the very worst of what authoritarian rule can yield.
This past Friday morning, a small group of Stanford students and I arranged a tour of Villa Grimaldi, having no idea of the personal story and character of our tour guide. Nor did we know that he would guide us around the park, sharing the account of his experience and later academic research, for three hours, that he would go into graphic detail about the daily practices of Villa Grimaldi, that he would break down and weep several times sharing personal moments from his life. With tears he explained that he has no trouble falling asleep at night, because while at the camp he taught himself this skill, because it was the best possible gift he could give himself. He told us of the crushing weight of the past rushing back to him as he watched the pillars of smoke rising above Manhattan on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Suddenly, Tuesday, September 11, 1973 (the day of the military coup in Chile) didn’t seem that distant. He told us standing in the shadow of the tower of Villa Grimaldi, known for having the most gruesome forms of torture and fewest survivors, that from the over 800 known torture camps only about 400 people have gone to court for human rights violations, he smirked darkly and said something to the effect of: “Those numbers don’t quite balance out.”
The Chilean government has protected Villa Grimaldi as site of national patrimony. Pedro explained that there have been weddings at Villa Grimaldi, the children of the disappeared seeking to connect with missing parents. Where there was once a colonial mansion, now sits a large pavilion for performances and concerts dedicated to promoting human rights. When we asked Pedro how is it that he can come to Villa Grimaldi and give tours like the one he gave us, he smiled slightly and took a moment to respond, and said with his eyes wet, “Coming back here is like being with my friends.” When we asked him if there’s anything we can give him to pay him back for his time and his efforts, he looked like he was about to cry once more and said proudly, “You can be here, you can learn, you can share this with others. You can remember.”
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So today, I share this with you; this day that is the one year anniversary of Pinochet’s death, in which his family, newly out of court with charges of stealing over 20 million dollars from the Chilean people completely dropped, and Pinochet’s many persistent supporters gathered for a memorial service with Chilean flag waving, patriotic music playing, and speech giving by active members of Chile’s current armed forced; this day in which the Peruvian government begins its investigation into the gross human rights violations of former president Alberto Fujimori; on this day in which prisoners of America’s war on terror wait indefinitely in the small confines of their cells at Gauntanamo Bay for a trial that may never come; on this day, in which in some unknown basement someone is likely using horrible and dehumanizing tactics to extract an iota of testimony from some diminished and injured soul. On our tour of Chile’s former toture camp, Pedro asked us, and most likely himself as well, “How many Villa Grimaldis are there around the world today?” So today, I ask that question to you as well.
Dan Hirsch
Santiago, Chile
December 10, 2007
