A Tortured Past
We were admitted entrance to Parque de la Paz Villa Grimaldi, neé Centro de Detención Villa Grimaldi through the side entrance. No one comes through the front doors anymore, which stand big, black and permanently locked, radiating an imposing history. From 1973 until 1978 the entryway used to receive military vehicles carrying blindfolded, militant leftists and other enemies of the military junta. Suffice it to say, these guests found their new lodgings to be less than hospitable. One such detainee, Don Hernan Lampara, served as our guide of his former place of residence where he spent the worst month of his life. Here he was tortured within an inch of his life and was locked in a 3 foot by 3 foot cell with three other men. Some nights he slept standing up, some sitting down with his knees pushed tight up against his chest. neither position is very conducive to winding down after having electrodes strapped to one's genitals for hours.
As Don Hernan, who not surprisingly looks far older that his age, tells our group of 16 Californians about his firsthand experiences in the most notorious and viscious detention center during Chile's 17 year flirtation with authoritarian rule, his hands shake. They tremble as they lift his water bottle to his pursed lips, possessed by a melancholy and unreconciled mixture of rage, guilt, and abject horror. Tightly coiled into fists, they rage against the injustice that the state-employed torturers who sucked the life from him still walk freely, protrected by the Amnesty Law of 1978. They recoil with guilt into his pockets at the lingering and thoroughly unanswerable question of why he lived to tell his tale when 80% of his companions locked up in "the tower" (aka: the waiting room of los desaparecidos) were not so fortunate. And they tremble at his sides, sad and weak with horror that his tormentors would go home, exhausted, after a hard day's work to read the paper, kiss their kids goodnight and make love to their wives. Man's capacity for heart-breaking evil is staggeringly apparent to me as I listen to this lithe, fragile and permanently scarred Chilean rehash his darkest days. When Don Hernan goes into vivid detail about the specific mehtods of torture employed on the grounds where we now stand, one girl in our group nearly faints as empathetic tears pour unabated down her grief-stricken face.
Our guide does not share his chilling and dificult history for masochistic reasons, but instead, in order to reconcile the horrors of his country's recent past. Parque de la Paz is one of the relatively few success stories in Chile's stunted reconciliation process. The country's present-day constitution was written by the military junta, former members of the secret police who tortured and "disappeared" thousands walk freely, and half the Chilean populous still thinks that Pinochet, the former dictator, is a savior for having eradicated the Marxist cancer that plagued their great homeland. But here at this detention center turned public park, visitors may gaze freely onto the grounds and into the uncensored past, in between tall red poles that mark where a giant red wall once stood that kept a terrible national secret. Now, the wall has been ripped away and brave survivors like Don Hernan are exorcising the demons of their country's collective history. Here at Villa Grimaldi a symbolic, mosaic flame constructed from the rubble and debris of the demolished torture facilities purges the permanently locked doors of their intimidating legacy, while simultaneously declaring, "nunca más en Chile."
As Don Hernan, who not surprisingly looks far older that his age, tells our group of 16 Californians about his firsthand experiences in the most notorious and viscious detention center during Chile's 17 year flirtation with authoritarian rule, his hands shake. They tremble as they lift his water bottle to his pursed lips, possessed by a melancholy and unreconciled mixture of rage, guilt, and abject horror. Tightly coiled into fists, they rage against the injustice that the state-employed torturers who sucked the life from him still walk freely, protrected by the Amnesty Law of 1978. They recoil with guilt into his pockets at the lingering and thoroughly unanswerable question of why he lived to tell his tale when 80% of his companions locked up in "the tower" (aka: the waiting room of los desaparecidos) were not so fortunate. And they tremble at his sides, sad and weak with horror that his tormentors would go home, exhausted, after a hard day's work to read the paper, kiss their kids goodnight and make love to their wives. Man's capacity for heart-breaking evil is staggeringly apparent to me as I listen to this lithe, fragile and permanently scarred Chilean rehash his darkest days. When Don Hernan goes into vivid detail about the specific mehtods of torture employed on the grounds where we now stand, one girl in our group nearly faints as empathetic tears pour unabated down her grief-stricken face.
Our guide does not share his chilling and dificult history for masochistic reasons, but instead, in order to reconcile the horrors of his country's recent past. Parque de la Paz is one of the relatively few success stories in Chile's stunted reconciliation process. The country's present-day constitution was written by the military junta, former members of the secret police who tortured and "disappeared" thousands walk freely, and half the Chilean populous still thinks that Pinochet, the former dictator, is a savior for having eradicated the Marxist cancer that plagued their great homeland. But here at this detention center turned public park, visitors may gaze freely onto the grounds and into the uncensored past, in between tall red poles that mark where a giant red wall once stood that kept a terrible national secret. Now, the wall has been ripped away and brave survivors like Don Hernan are exorcising the demons of their country's collective history. Here at Villa Grimaldi a symbolic, mosaic flame constructed from the rubble and debris of the demolished torture facilities purges the permanently locked doors of their intimidating legacy, while simultaneously declaring, "nunca más en Chile."