PART FOUR

Impact of the Most Serious Human Rights Violations on Families and Social Relations

1. LOSS AND GRIEF: "Human beings sometimes kill human beings."
   
   The loss of a loved one is always painful-especially when that loss was deliberately inflicted and is perceived as a punishment meted out to adversaries, an irrational violence inflicted as a punishment. Families are at a loss to explain it. They were unable to experience the grief that goes along with death, because the fate of their loved ones who disappear after arrest remains unclear.
   
   
   1. DEATH AS PUNISHMENT: "My husband was..."
      
      Most of those killed were officials in the previous government, leaders in organizations, or people identified with an overall political program as leaders, activists, or supporters. Their death amounts to a punishment for their involvement in that political program. The family members experience that punishment, and they impotently communicated it to us when they were telling us about the victims. The relatives of the members of the armed forces and security forces who were killed by political groups have the same feeling of being punished.
      
      
      • "My father was a specialist in agriculture and regional secretary of the Socialist party. He was not a criminal or a subversive-he was a professional person, and was highly respected around the world. My father was a simple man who devoted his whole life to his ideals, to what he believed, and to his hopes for all Chileans."
        
        
      • "My husband was a worker; he was president of the Rayonil labor union and active in MIR."
        
        
      • "My son was a young doctor, 28 years old. He was married and had two children. He was smart, and people liked him because he was easygoing and unassuming. He was an active Communist. From the time he was little he was concerned about justice for humankind."
        
        
      • "My husband was 35. He was a second corporal in the police. He had been in the police for twelve years and had never done anything else."
        
        
      • "My son loved being part of the whole military way of life; he felt proud to be serving his country."
        
        
      • "He was the youngest one killed in the attack. He was only 26. He served in the infantry."
        
        
      • "All the bodyguards killed in the ambush had children, and their lives in the armed forces had been exemplary."
        
        
      In other cases the relatives feel that they have been punished and are the victims of a senseless or indiscriminate violence. Such is the feeling of the relatives of many workers, peasants, or students who were killed or disappeared in 1973, of those killed during demonstrations, and of those who were killed by bombs or attacks carried out in public places.
      
      
      • "He was the only male child. He was 26 years old and worked at the Compañía de Aceros del Pacífico [Pacific Steel Company]. The social worker told me it was a case of mistaken identity."
        
        
      • "He was 18 and was studying at the Liceo Industrial. He was on an outing when they arrested and killed him."
        
        
      • "He was thirteen and had gone with a friend to watch TV at the friend's sister's house in the same neighborhood."
        
        
      • "My daughter was 19 and had gone to set up an appointment to get married at the Civil Registry when the bomb went off at the municipal building."
        
        
   2. DEATH THAT REMAINS UNEXPLAINED: "How can you believe someone would die this way?"
      
      The human mind cannot fathom, let alone justify, a death inflicted in such circumstances. To accept it is to face horror and dehumanization. The family members express this anguishing sensation of finding death meaningless.
      
      
      • "My mother had died a year before, and I told myself it would bring her rest. My father died when I was young, and I told myself it would make me mature and responsible. I cannot find any meaning to give this unjust death that defies explanation."
        
        
      • "I am coming to believe that they have eliminated him. It is as though they had erased him. He was useful to society. Why should they eliminate him? He was good in sports and at chess."
        
        
      • "I had to explain to my five-year-old son that, just like animals and flowers, human beings sometimes kill human beings."
        
        
      • "I still do not understand it. He was killed in an attack by a subversive group while he was on guard duty in a shantytown in Santiago."
        
        
   3. GRIEF DISTURBED: "They weren't ours even in death..."
      
      Family members were denied not only the possibility of finding out why their loved ones had been killed, but even of seeing their bodies, giving their remains a decent burial, and expressing and sharing their grief. Since they were prevented from participating in any funeral rites, since this death was associated with horror and they then had to survive for years in fear, loneliness, and poverty, these families could not let themselves feel the pain of death.
      
      "They never returned his body to me..."
      
      
      • "My wound had to heal without first being cleansed. I know he was killed, but they never returned his body to me. The mourning period is still going on."
        
        
      • "I never learned what had happened. They just told me that prisoners of war are buried in common graves."
        
        
      • "I learned he had died through the Civil Registry. No one ever told us anything."
        
        
      • "When my son turned seventeen, he felt so much that he had to know where his father was that I said to him, 'Son, go down to the cemetery and look for the most abandoned grave. Take care of it and visit it as though it were your father's."'
        
        
      "I don't know if it was his body or not..."
      
      
      • "They gave me a closed and sealed coffin. I had to bury it by myself, in one hour. What if it wasn't him?"
        
        
      • "I don't know if it was my husband's body or not. My father had to identify it, but he wasn't sure either because it was all mutilated."
        
        
      • "They allowed my brother-in-law and me to dig up about twenty graves. Finally we came across one whose build was like my husband's but he had no arms and legs. We buried him to put my in-laws at ease. I'm sure we buried someone else."
        
        
      "There wasn't any wake..."
      
      
      • "They shot him on the road near our house. I heard the shots, and I came out and found his body. They yelled at me to go bury the dog that had just been killed. That dog was my only son. They gave me three hours to bury him and get out of town. I had to wrap him in a blanket, get an oxcart, and leave him in the cemetery."
        
        
      • "When they told us they had shot them, they forbade us to go into mourning and to have a mass said."
        
        
      • "He always said that he wanted a wake with all his friends, a big funeral. That's not how it was; there wasn't any wake, and at the cemetery they beat us with rifle butts."
        
        
      • "The dead are buried in their clothes. They buried ours naked, wrapped in a sheet."
        
        
   4. UNRESOLVED MOURNING: "I don't even know whether he is dead or alive..."
      
      The situation of the relatives of those who disappeared after arrest is one of endless ongoing pain. They cannot rest and their feelings of powerlessness become chronic. As more and more mass graves are discovered, the possibility that their arrest might have ended in death becomes fact. But questions remain: do I have to consider him dead? When did they kill him? Insofar as there is no answer or proof enabling them to resolve such questions, the relatives find themselves in the dramatic situation of having to be the ones who bring matters to a close. Most family members find this unacceptable. That aggravates their feelings of powerlessness and uncertainty.
      
      
      • "My children ask questions, and I don't know what to tell them. I can't tell them where he is or even if he is alive or dead."
        
        
      • "Every time I see a madman or a hobo in the street I think it may be my husband; or that he might be somewhere in a similar condition."
        
        
      • "Luis' disappearance has meant the destruction of our home, of our common plans. It is hard to describe the torment and psychological torture involved in not knowing what happened."
        
        
2. TORTURE: "If they had just killed them outright, it wouldn't be so hard..."
   
   Many of those killed were tortured. The family is aware of what happened because they have seen the signs on their bodies or through the accounts of other prisoners. The way they died thus becomes a nightmare harsher than their death itself. Astonishment and incredulity over torture combine to produce a new horror: horror at the cruelty of other human beings.
   
   
   • "They hung him from a crane. He was in such bad shape as we were returning to the cell, that we wrapped him up, and helped him down the narrow staircase. He was very much beaten up and traumatized. When no one was looking, he threw himself over into the bottom of a hatchway. He couldn't endure one more day of torture."
     
     
   • "I had searched for him so much. I went down to the beach to cry, and there he was, all swollen with bullet wounds. They had pulled out his teeth."
     
     
   • "They told me he smoked his last cigarette in handcuffs; he was trembling and couldn't inhale. That's the image that keeps me from dying in peace."
     
     
   • "If they had just killed him outright it wouldn't be so hard. But since you know they tortured him and don't know what they did to him, your imagination torments you more than the death itself."
     
     
   Torture was also inflicted in the presence of family members, or they were tortured to get their cooperation.
   
   
   • "They brought my son to my cell, unconscious and all bruised from torture."
     
     
   • "They brought my husband to my house, beaten to a pulp, and asked me to convince him to talk."
     
     
   • "I could hear their sobbing and cries of pain. When I couldn't hear it any longer, I felt that they had died."
     
     
   • "I took them where my son was because they promised me that they would treat him well. I wanted to save the younger ones from abuse. They killed him just the same."
     
     
   • "While they were raping me, my husband was screaming at them to let me go."
     
     
   • "When they took my father, they took my husband and me as well. I was raped by a whole group that was guarding me. I never told my husband. That was fifteen years ago."
     
     
3. PROLONGED UNCERTAINTY: "...this long nightmare from which I don't know if I'm ever going to awaken..."
   
   The families of those who disappeared after arrest have been condemned to live in permanent uncertainty. Over and over in the stories told to the Commission, the unanswered questions and hovering ghosts keep coming back. Such is the uncertainty that becomes chronic and that completely permeates life.
   
   
   1. WAITING: "The front door of the house was left ajar..."
      
      Waiting is a fact of life painfully experienced by the relatives of those who disappeared after arrest. Many have not changed their house, their city, or their job despite threats and problems; others have kept the clothing and possessions of the absent member just as they were. Many have seen their hope of finding them alive evaporate. All would still like to know where they are and what happened to them. Life transpires as waiting.
      
      
      • "For two years I hurried home from work to see if he had returned."
        
        
      • "At every party the front door is always left ajar."
        
        
      • "On windy nights, my mother thought the creak in the door was him. She used to get up to let him in, and then she would weep."
        
        
      • "My mother keeps his room just as it was when they took him away: his clothes, his notebooks and books, and alongside his bed, a devotional shrine where she puts flowers waiting for him to arrive."
        
        
      • "I want them to return him to me alive. I talk with him; somehow I see him. My mother's heart tells me he is somewhere."
        
        
   2. LOOKING FOR THE DISAPPEARED: "We've dug up the entire land looking for them."
      
      One's whole life revolves around looking for the person-nothing else exists. Familiar routines are no longer observed; family members become isolated from one another. The search is unending, but over time the style changes. First came the pilgrimage around jails, detention sites, emergency rooms, the Medical Legal Institute. Then it was a matter of following tips, reports, and rumors leading to secret places and organizations. Today it is the search for remains, for places to dig up, graves to discover. The search for the missing has led family members to become organized, to carry out joint actions, and to act together as a community confronting this challenge that has such power over their lives.
      
      
      • "I went everywhere, from Arica to Chillán. We've dug up the whole countryside looking for them."
        
        
      • "All these years his mother took part in the Group of Relatives of Disappeared Prisoners and never stopped looking until she died of cancer last year."
        
        
      • "When all this happened my mother-in-law paid no attention to anything else. She spent five years devoted entirely to looking for her son; nothing else mattered. After five years she woke up as though she were returning from a long journey. She suddenly realized that my sister-in-law had finished her fourth year in high school and that her son was managing the home."
        
        
      • "Until recently we hoped to find them alive. Today we are going around looking for the bones. This is never going to end... this long nightmare from which I don't know if I can wake up, because I've forgotten what it means to live a normal life."
        
        
   3. THE SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH: "I have to know the truth..."
      
      Contradictory official accounts or complete silence on the part of officials impel relatives to an untiring search for the truth of what happened. Finding out the truth is a way of putting an end to speculation and finding comfort. What happened to them? Why did they kill them or make them disappear? How did they act? What did they do? How did they arrest them? Where did they take them? These questions obsess the mind and prevent people from finding peace.
      
      
      • "I have to know what happened to him. I've spent so much time looking, and what happens is that you don't know whether perhaps they need something; whether they might be cold or want a cigarette. How can I live like this! I want to rest and die in peace. That's why I need to know what happened."
        
        
      • "Even though it won't do me any good, even though it might look useless, I need to know why they killed him; what happened, what he was doing, how they caught him. Anything to put my mind at ease."
        
        
   4. DENIAL OF HOPE: "I no longer dare to have hope..."
      
      For long years the relatives have lived with their hope continually frustrated. They have tried to maintain it, partly so as not to betray the missing person, partly out of their own need, but it is ever being denied them.
      
      "We no longer had anything left. We had lost everything looking for him. A fortune teller came to the Araucano Hotel, and my mother sold the last things we had left and went there with my little brother. The fortune teller told her not to worry, that my brother was going to arrive for Christmas. My mother called everyone and cooked up a feast...He didn't arrive that Christmas or ever again."
      
      "My husband was under arrest. I went to see the commander of the regiment, and he told me not to worry, that they were going to release him for Christmas, that he was a good person. I went to see him December 31, but they told me he was not being held there any more. I came home. A truckload of soldiers had just left a sealed coffin at my front door a few minutes before."
      
      "I no longer dare to have hope. Many people are now happy but not me. And what if they close off all doors?"
      
      
4. DAMAGE TO PERSONAL INTEGRITY: "Why did they take away my chance to be happy?"
   
   Statements made to the Commission express the relatives' feeling that they have been wronged in their deepest recesses as human persons. This perception extends to every aspect of the personal life, encompassing their future plans, feelings, attitudes, identity, adaptability and their physical and mental well-being.
   
   
   1. AMBITIONS RUINED: "I couldn't achieve my life dreams..."
      
      Relatives are nostalgic and sometimes angry over what could have been and was not-over what death or disappearance cut short.
      
      
      • "I got married on August 5. By October 5, I was a widow. Why did they deprive me of my chance to be happy with my husband?"
        
        
      • "I was six months pregnant when they killed my husband. My little baby was never born; I couldn't hold it back."
        
        
      • "My husband was going to retire from the police since he was about to finish twenty-five years of service. We had so many plans, and when we were almost at the finish line, we lost everything-and in such a horrible way."
        
        
      • "I was expecting my first child. He was a lieutenant and had been in the army for six years. He saved many lives by deactivating the bomb, but I had to go back home to my parents."
        
        
   2. GROWING UP PROCESS DISTURBED: "It is their offspring that have continued to suffer..."
      
      Both parents and children express frustration and fear over the impact these events and the overall situation may have had on childhood.
      
      Children's view: "They deprived me of my childhood..."
      
      
      • "I was eleven years old. My family fell apart. At fifteen I tried to commit suicide. They deprived me of my childhood. In my house there were never any birthdays, Christmas, or anything."
        
        
      • "I was eight, but after they took my father my life never returned to what it was. That day they left my brother and me locked up in the apartment, and cut off our water and electricity. My brother was seven, and he was crying. They had left everything in a mess and had smashed things. Some neighbors came to get us and took care of us for a few days, because my mother was also being held prisoner, along with my twelve-year-old brother."
        
        
      • "I was thirteen and they took me to the regiment for questioning so I would tell them where my father was. I didn't continue in school or anything. All I wanted to do was die."
        
        
      • "My mother and father never even noticed when I came in the house or left. From the time I was eight, I felt alone. I felt I didn't exist for anyone. I don't blame them. Now that I have children if I had to see one of them tortured and then went to visit them before they were shot, I wouldn't be normal either."
        
        
      • "We were six and five years old when they killed my father, who worked as a bodyguard for the intendant."
        
        
      Parents' view: "Our children are different..."
      
      
      • "Our children are different from everybody else. We hid the truth from them so they wouldn't suffer. Later on people pointed to them as children of someone who had been killed by firing squad."
        
        
      • "My son tried to stop them from taking his father out of the house. After what happened he became disturbed."
        
        
      • "My daughter doesn't talk to me about this issue. I know she's doing it to avoid causing me problems, but she's writing a diary. I've read it, and it's filled with bitterness."
        
        
      • "Since Pisagua my son doesn't want to watch TV or read the paper. He doesn't want us to talk about the issue. I had to take him to the psychologist again."
        
        
      • "When they came looking for my husband, our little boy grabbed his legs. They knocked him away with rifle butts and fractured his head. The other children were screaming and weeping. They often have nightmares. They don't look like the other children to me; they've been cut short."
        
        
   3. DISTURBANCES IN MENTAL AND PHYSICAL HEALTH: "My mother let herself die..."
      
      The experience of individual and social trauma has an impact on the physical and mental health of the affected families. The impact of these events goes far beyond specific events and colors their whole future. Their lives seem to revolve around a particular point: the death or disappearance of their loved one. The relatives of both civilians and members of the military experience that reality.
      
      
      • "Neither of my two daughters has been able to have children after what they did to them during the raid on our house."
        
        
      • "When they shot my father, my mother suffered a facial paralysis."
        
        
      • "My mother went blind from crying so much; I can say she died of grief."
        
        
      • "When my brother disappeared my father became a little old man; he went crazy. He died wandering through the streets crying out his son's name."
        
        
      • "So many years have gone by, and I still have horrible nightmares every night."
        
        
      • "I am still weeping from sorrow and a feeling of impotence. Nothing can assuage my suffering as a father; he was a model officer."
        
        
   4. LOSS IN THE REALM OF FEELING AND SELF: "Life has changed us..."
      
      People's stories reflect many contradictory feelings and attitudes, ranging from resignation over these lives that were cut short to rebellion, and from certainty to doubt. The result has been major changes in people's self-image.
      
      Guilt: "I feel I'm to blame..."
      
      
      • "I don't expect anything. I came to present my case because my children despise me for being cowardly and never having spoken out for sixteen years."
        
        
      • "I sent word to my son to turn himself in, that nothing was going to happen. I feel I'm to blame."
        
        
      • "I had to tell them I didn't remember the date or place where my husband died. I was afraid they would connect the events, and I wanted to prevent them from feeling hatred and wanting revenge. One day one of them told me he didn't understand how I loved my husband so much and yet didn't know where or when he died."
        
        
      • "This is the first time I'm doing something; I've probably been a coward, but I wanted to save my children. Do you think I was right?"
        
        
      Ambivalence and shame: "I asked him to quit many times..."
      
      
      • "For a while I hated my husband, since they killed him for getting involved in politics. I blamed him, I felt he had opted for his ideals rather than his family."
        
        
      • "He was just beginning in the police. I asked him to quit many times, but he answered that he loved his uniform, and so he wasn't going to quit."
        
        
      • "When I felt so many people rejecting me or not understanding, I preferred to keep quiet. I was ashamed to face reality. I didn't know how to answer where my father was. I wasn't sure whether he was dead or had abandoned us."
        
        
      • "I was bothered by being questioned about my father. I was convinced that being the child of someone who disappeared after arrest was quite bad."
        
        
      Hatred: "Hatred is like a disease..."
      
      
      • "You feel so much hatred...it frightens me because they rotted my brother's soul. He became so hardened."
        
        
      • "It's the calumny that fills me with hatred-this hatred that I passed on to my children and that they are going to pass on to their children."
        
        
      • "I have to get rid of all this pain, and also-why not admit it?-all this hatred I have inside; because hatred is like a disease. You can't live when you're full of hatred."
        
        
      • "From the moment they found his remains and I knew they had killed him, I have been seized with an enormous hatred. We used to have the hope of finding him alive or dead, but at least his whole body. But now we have to be content with just a bone. It's as though they're laughing at us."
        
        
      • "How terrible is human hatred. The evildoer does not elude God's gaze."
        
        
      Fear: "Fear is not erased..."
      
      
      • "We didn't eat, we didn't sleep, we were scared to death. You live as though your forehead were branded."
        
        
      • "I don't enjoy life. I'm always afraid. I'm afraid of people."
        
        
      • "Everyone was afraid, and I'm still afraid. I think the whole town now knows that we've come to the Commission. Do you think that after this something could happen to us?"
        
        
      • "Fear isn't erased in four months. We've learned to live a double life."
        
        
      • "I'm afraid to wear my uniform. The only thing I want is to reach my retirement."
        
        
      • "None of us remains unaffected."
        
        
      Impotence: "Why didn't my instinct as a father alert me?"
      
      
      • "My son was tortured in the study while I was sleeping. Why didn't my instinct as a father alert me?"
        
        
      • "They came by my house and asked us for some chains to put on the truck wheels. Later we found out that they had tied their hands with these same chains."
        
        
      • "Justice has not been done in high profile cases like that of Orlando Letelier. What can we expect?"
        
        
      • "There was always a climate of tense expectancy in the commander's house. The family was on a state of alert."
        
        
      Disenchantment and the difficulty of starting over again: "Nothing appeals to me, I don't have any incentive..."
      
      
      • "After they killed my brother, my father sat down in an easy chair and waited to die. We went to Argentina, to a two-room apartment. My father sat there in his chair, with my mother hanging up photos of my brother. When my father wanted to die, we returned to Chile, and a few days later, he died, in his chair, exhausted, back in his native land."
        
        
      • "I don't do anything because nothing appeals to me. I don't have any incentive. I do things because I have to, but otherwise, I would bury my head like an ostrich."
        
        
      • "We were married so few years. I have never managed to fall in love again. I have tried to start over again, but I can't. They screwed up life for me and my children."
        
        
      • "Since the day they set fire to the bus I've been invalid and unemployed."
        
        
      • "When the bomb went off my right eye was punctured, and I lost my sight...I had to change my life."
        
        
      Keeping quiet in order to survive: "I buried my husband's death in order to survive with my children..."
      
      
      • "When I buried my husband, I buried his death, and I have lived alone with my memory. I buried my husband's death in order to survive with my children and give them the best possible education."
        
        
      • "They killed my brother-in-law in Santiago. My husband was in prison on Dawson Island. Meanwhile we women had to work and to try to go on living as though nothing had happened."
        
        
      • "I haven't wanted to even think about that whole period. I haven't wanted my daughters to feel hatred. I've never done anything. I've wanted to forget."
        
        
5. FAMILY LIFE DISRUPTED: "They didn't sentence just him. They sentenced the whole family..."
   
   While many people say that their family came together in the face of adversity, in most of the accounts people feel both nostalgia and impotence, as they recall how family ties broke down, family members were scattered, or roles were changed.
   
   
   1. BREAKDOWN OF FAMILY TIES: "All relationship was broken..."
      
      Individual members of the same family often had different reactions to the death or disappearance of one of its members. Some stood in solidarity with the situation and devoted themselves to efforts to clarify the death or locate the missing member; others did not regard it as such a serious event; others justified it, and others remained silent. Mutual mistrust sprang up among them, and family ties were plainly weakened. The results were greater loneliness, isolation, and a sense of loss and abandonment.
      
      
      • "They took us both in the same truck. My in-laws thought I had turned him in. I couldn't go to their house for seventeen years. I remained by myself, hated by those who killed him and despised by those who loved him. What happened in this country if someone could believe that a woman in love is capable of turning in her husband?"
        
        
      • "My parents never gave me any support. I'm an only daughter. They applauded the government. They forced me to sell my house so that if my husband came back I wouldn't go back to live with him. My parents said to me: 'It's because of that no good husband of yours that we're mixed up in this."'
        
        
      • "My daughter left home because she thinks we're all cowards for maintaining relationships with those responsible for the death of my oldest son. It's because my other sons went into the armed forces. There's no way to heal this split."
        
        
   2. FAMILY SCATTERED: "This has broken the family to pieces..."
      
      Economic hardship, exile, or the need to protect the lives of other members after what had happened has scattered families.
      
      
      • "In order to work I had to distribute my children. I was left with no husband and no children."
        
        
      • "They killed my father. My mother went to Argentina because she couldn't stand the situation. I was left in an orphanage. They beat me a lot, until I got out. Now I live with an uncle. I've never been able to go to school."
        
        
      • "After what happened I had to go into exile with my children. I couldn't get used to things elsewhere, and I came back in '81. My three children stayed in Sweden."
        
        
      • "I've recently gotten back in contact with my son...After his father's death, we were separated for ten years-I was in jail, and he was with my family outside the country."
        
        
   3. CHANGE OF ROLES: "I worked year round with no relief..."
      
      The imprisonment, disappearance, or death of a family member, usually the head of the house or a son, leads to a change in the usual roles within the family: women have to look for the missing person, flee, or get paying jobs with long hours in order to maintain the home; children have to leave school and go to work; the older daughters, closest relatives, and neighbors replace the mothers in taking care of the younger brothers and sisters.
      
      
      • "The oldest daughter took care of her brothers and sisters while her mother was trying to locate her father."
        
        
      • "My father was the family breadwinner. We were all little. We had to leave school and start working."
        
        
      • "My mother was left alone in the countryside with my nine younger brothers and sisters. I had to leave the university and go to work to help her. She has done nothing else but live to help her children get ahead. I gave up my career as a teacher, the thing I most wanted."
        
        
      • "When my husband was killed in the attack, I was left alone with my son. He now takes care of my mother so I can work."
        
        
   4. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HARDSHIP: "At dinner time, all my mother could do at the table was cry..."
      
      In many instances deaths and disappearances are connected to being poor. Relatives see the lack of money as an obstacle to the search, to getting things done, having contacts. Because their houses were flimsy a bullet fired during a demonstration could go through the walls. In other instances, death itself has led to a notable lowering in the living standard of the relatives, causing a feeling of abandonment and helplessness, and turning daily life into a matter of survival.
      
      "We were poor..."
      
      
      • "When he disappeared I was left with eight little children. I managed to find a sitter for the three youngest, my sister took the girl, and the others went to stay with neighbors and some relatives. I went to work as a live-in maid, and whenever I had some money I bought wheat germ and milk to take to my children."
        
        
      • "There were five of us brothers and sisters when they killed my father. We were very little. My mother began to work washing clothes outside the house. She became chronically asthmatic as a result of her weakness and our poverty. She died of her suffering. Everyone called us 'the urchins."'
        
        
      • "My brother left two children. We were poor. My sister-in-law had to go out begging in the streets to feed the children."
        
        
      • "We were out in the street when everything happened. We were poor. I still don't understand how that bomb exploded."
        
        
      "Because we were poor..."
      
      
      • "This is the first time we've made a formal accusation. We were afraid, and we didn't have money for the fare."
        
        
      • "I have the death certificate, but I'm not sure it's really him. I didn't have enough money to do any more checking."
        
        
      • "I went looking for my seventeen-year-old son everywhere. I did it all on foot because I didn't have money to take the bus. I never found out anything about him."
        
        
      "We got poorer and poorer..."
      
      
      • "We had to sell everything we had to go looking for him from one city to another. We went wherever they told us."
        
        
      • "There were eight of us brothers and sisters. They threw us out of our house. My mother went out every day looking for him. When she got back at dinner time, we would sit down, and all my mother could do at the table was cry."
        
        
      • "One of the many times I was away looking for him, I was robbed of the little I had-even the boards on the floor."
        
        
      • "First I sold my poultry. Then because I was alone they robbed my animals, and later they took away my land because my husband had been arrested and disappeared."
        
        
      • "We have spent money we didn't have so my daughter could recover from the acid burns the terrorists caused her."
        
        
6. SENSE THAT FAMILIAR REFERENCE POINTS HAVE CHANGED: "They changed the country on us..."
   
   Families experience death as part of an overall changing context. The legal framework in force makes people do things that endanger their lives, such as reporting when summoned by a military decree, or going back to work to pass on one's responsibilities. Executions take place without trial; when people disappear there is no investigation, and no one is responsible. The city is no longer the same. It is difficult to distinguish what is safe from what is dangerous. Friends cannot get together. Even words no longer have the same meaning.
   
   
   1. DISRUPTION IN THE MEANING OF LEGALITY: "We believed in the legal order..."
      
      
      • "I was 24, and I was taking classes at the university. I took him to report to the authorities myself."
        
        
      • "My brother reported voluntarily. Later we found his remains buried in the quarry."
        
        
      • "Everything began to happen on the basis of decrees nobody had seen."
        
        
      • "They arrested them because they didn't have their identification cards. They were minors and weren't politically active. After all, they were practically illiterate. And they shot them to death."
        
        
      • "They didn't die in gun battles. They were murdered while they were in prison and had no chance to defend themselves."
        
        
   2. SENSE OF BEING STIGMATIZED OVER THE DIRECTION OF ONE'S POLITICS: "To them we're all dangerous subversives..."
      
      
      • "Our relatives' only crime was to have an ideal and a commitment that was different from theirs."
        
        
      • "They hit young people and workers hard, as though killing were a heroic act."
        
        
      • "They did away with the poor as citizens; since then the rich have always been running things, and it has been a sin to have aspirations."
        
        
      • "They crushed the workers. They didn't have a chance to show that they could be useful to society."
        
        
   3. LOSS OF SECURITY: "Today you never know..."
      
      
      • "After they took him away I went ten days without sleeping, watching over my two babies. I was sure they were going to take them away from me as well. The greatest damage we have suffered is never to have felt secure."
        
        
      • "If they killed the mayor and innocent small farmers, how could you know who was going to be next?"
        
        
      • "Since '73 when they disappeared there's no way of knowing whether the ocean swept them away - or whether it was the military."
        
        
7. BEING STIGMATIZED AND OUTCAST: "We feel like outcasts in our own country..."
   
   Relatives despairingly speak of how, in addition to the sorrow caused by death, they have had to bear the mistreatment that both the victims and they themselves have received from society, the state, and government agencies. The result has been that their relationships with the outside world have been disrupted, and they feel they have been cast aside.
   
   
   1. DEFAMATION OF THE VICTIMS BY OFFICIALS AND THE PRESS: "They weren't terrorists or criminals..."
      
      In their official statements, government authorities referred to those who were killed or disappeared as criminals and terrorists who were dangerous to society. The press adopted that same kind of language and assumed that such persons were guilty. A segment of society also absorbed those ideas, and so those who were wronged were A segment of society also absorbed those ideas, and so those who were wronged were not seen as victims. The families say that the fact that the government itself was defaming their name and that they were prevented from publicly defending their loved ones harmed them in a way that was very hard to repair. It has had a strong impact on their children and has prevented them from sharing with a community their grief over death or disappearance.
      
      
      • "In our first meeting with the governor, he told us our husbands were criminals."
        
        
      • "The papers said they were terrorists, and so everyone justified it."
        
        
      • "The official press presented the victims as the bad guys and as undesirable characters, and portrayed the perpetrators as heroes for whom anything was justified."
        
        
   2. ABUSE OF THE RELATIVES: "The thing is, they add insult to the pain you already feel..."
      
      Sometimes whole families were arrested. Persecution was accompanied by raids, theft, security forces occupying homes, people being followed. The families tell of how they were humiliated, lied to, insulted, and threatened as they were searching, visiting detention sites, picking up bodies, and looking for traces of those who had disappeared.
      
      Humiliations: "I don't even want to remember all we've been through..."
      
      
      • "I don't even want to remember all we've been through. Those interminable periods of waiting, being followed, being called traitors and criminals."
        
        
      • "They told us he was alive. When my mother remarried, they taunted us asking why she had done this if her husband was still alive."
        
        
      • "When I went to ask about him, they used to say that since I was so pretty I wouldn't lack for men at night; they even offered to come with me themselves. I would have slapped them, but I didn't say anything, and I was left with their mocking remarks stuck in my heart."
        
        
      • "The regiment commander sent me this letter that I've brought to you. In it he tells me that if my husband does not come back even though he has been released, I ought to ponder in my conscience whether we really had a good marriage, and whether he might have gone off with another woman. Now his body has shown up in the common grave."
        
        
      Lies and mockery: "They made fools of us..."
      
      
      • "They told me they had released him. Now we find him in the common grave blindfolded and with his hands tied."
        
        
      • "They told me he was fine, watching television. At that moment he was already dead."
        
        
      • "They told me to bring lunch for my husband. I left and fixed him rice and a fried egg. When I got back to the police station, he laughed and said, 'Lady, you're crazy. Nobody is being held here."'
        
        
      • "After eight months they handed us over a body, which according to the forensic specialist, was my father's. We held an all night wake. Just before the funeral, the police came by with an order and said there had been a mistake and that this body belonged to another family. We had to hand it over."
        
        
      • "I went up and down the country looking for him. When I got back they were laughing at me. Once, when I was coming back from the Dawson Island, as I was getting off the bus in the square, they spit in my face and laughed."
        
        
      • "During this period there have even been jokes about our situation."
        
        
      Threats and persecution: "We have been persecuted..."
      
      
      • "The first time they raided our house, they took us out-my mother was pregnant-and put us up against the wall and pretended it was a firing squad. After that outrageous treatment, they grabbed my six-year-old brother and threatened to beat him if he didn't tell where the weapons were."
        
        
      • "My sister was disappeared, and they phoned my house and played the song, Late un corazón-["Beating Heart"]. You could hear the receding sound of a man whistling and a woman groaning in pain."
        
        
      • "They told me to stop looking or otherwise I would suffer the consequences."
        
        
      • "They harassed my brother so much that he committed suicide."
        
        
      • "One day the investigative police came to the house for questioning. This won't be any problem, I thought, but for the company where I worked it was, and they fired me."
        
        
      Material losses: "They robbed me of the little I had."
      
      
      • "My apartment in the San Borja towers was searched. When I arrived they had left the door open, and people were taking things. So I had the key changed. When I came back, I couldn't get in. The administrator of the building told me the apartment had been taken over by the junta."
        
        
      • "They searched the house, and they took all the animals in the yard."
        
        
      • "I went to my daughter's apartment after her death. They had destroyed it. They took her TV set, her equipment, her house clothes. They didn't give them back to me because they said they were needed for the trial."
        
        
   3. THE SENSATION OF HAVING BEEN CAST ASIDE: "It was like having leprosy..."
      
      After the death or disappearance of a family member there follows a long history of being outcast. Families encounter discrimination in their job opportunities as do children in access to high schools, universities, and government agencies. The stigma is so strong that when they feel the outside world spurning them, families find themselves sinking into ostracism and enormous isolation. They only feel at ease when they are with those who share their experience.
      
      Discrimination: "You are the daughter of a criminal..."
      
      
      • "After they shot my father, the principal called me in and said: 'You are the daughter of a criminal and so you can no longer teach in this city."
        
        
      • "When I reported for military service, they set me aside with the young men who had criminal records. They didn't let me do my military service because my father had been shot by firing squad. The same thing happened to my brother, and it has affected us when we tried to get work."
        
        
      • "I was left with my eight minor children. They only gave me a pension for six of them. They said the oldest was not going to get anything since he had the same name as his father."
        
        
      Loss of status and social esteem: "My husband was a well-known figure in town..."
      
      
      • "My father was alderman. They arrested him and brutally tortured him for three months. He was in very bad shape when he came home. He went from being an official in town to work cleaning offices and washing bottles. He died shortly afterwards."
        
        
      • "My husband was a well-known figure in the town. We had a good life. After all this, my children were so undernourished they had to go to the hospital. I had to work taking in laundry. There came a time when I was so lonely, I took up drinking."
        
        
      Rejection: "Our friends dropped out of sight, our neighbors never greeted us again..."
      
      
      • "At school they said to me, 'Your father got killed for being involved in politics.' They called us little subversives."
        
        
      • "My neighbors told me they were happy over what had happened because he was a Communist. I had to ignore them in order to go on living."
        
        
      • "So many people had doubts about us and mistrusted us. Our last name was stigmatized."
        
        
      • "We were like a dark night; we brought bad omens."
        
        
      • "This was like a plague; our family and friends turned their backs on us."
        
        
8. POSITIVE FORCES: "I got strength from God, from my wonderful memories of him, and from the support I received from so many people who had gone through the same thing."
   
   The individuals and relatives who came to the Commission said that in the midst of all their suffering they always found energy and positive strength from a number of sources. Such encouragement helped many of them avoid death even when that was all they wanted.
   
   
   • "I forced myself to come up with the strength despite my suffering. I had to show society that he wasn't a criminal. I had to clear his name."
     
     
   • "My greatest strength has been my faith in God."
     
     
   • "We're Christians. We believe in the resurrection."
     
     
   • "My children made me come up with the strength I had inside me but was unaware of. I had to do everything possible to keep them from being hurt."
     
     
   • "It was very important to know I could count on people who had suffered the same thing as I."
     
     
   • "I am encouraged that we are able to recognize that this is a problem we all share."
     
     
   • "The memory of how wonderful he had been, helped the family react and move forward."
     
     
   • "The Vicariate was so welcoming and helpful to us."
     
     
9. FEELINGS TODAY: "One phase is ending but a more difficult one is beginning..."
   
   In their testimony, the relatives express disenchantment, rage, and impotence over the way their experience has forced them to reassess social institutions. They also speak of their hopes, yearnings, and fears about the present, and the need for truth and justice so that they and the country may achieve peace.
   
   
   1. REASSESSMENT OF SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: "I never thought this would happen in Chile."
      
      The country
      
      
      • "I never thought this would happen in Chile. This is the most horrible thing that has ever happened to me."
        
        
      • "I am ashamed of my country."
        
        
      • "When they started looking, my brother reported to government officials. He said, 'There's no reason for me to leave my country, because I'm a Chilean."
        
        
      • "We felt like outcasts in our own land."
        
        
      • "I wish they would give us a country just for us, because we no longer feel comfortable with people who have had a normal life. They look at us women as though we were crazy, because we still cry after such a long time. They can't understand that these deaths are unlike all the rest, because we were never able to rest from our departed."
        
        
      The armed forces
      
      
      • "The ones who took them and killed them are right there, on active duty. They are still mocking us. When I see them a change comes over me. Just looking at them makes you sin, because so many things come to your mind."
        
        
      • "They've made their power felt in everything. And of course that has made fear an everyday reality."
        
        
      • "It's frightening to think that you are as human as they are. Where could such evil come from?"
        
        
      Justice
      
      
      • "In the courts they treated us like liars."
        
        
      • "We didn't even try to use the legal system because we was not operational. It was a waste of time. We lost confidence."
        
        
      • "It makes me angry. Those who ought to end up in jail are still free, and that's partly the fault of the amnesty law."
        
        
      • "They could have prevented these things from happening."
        
        
      • "We don't want revenge. We just ask for truth and justice."
        
        
      • "I don't want them to be killed like they killed my father, but I also don't want them to be out loose in the streets."
        
        
   2. THE NEED TO BUILD THE FUTURE: "For us this is a very painful but very important moment..."
      
      
      • "I was both happy and sad when Aylwin won. I knew one phase, that of silence, was ending, but that another more difficult one was beginning, that of the necessity and duty to do something."
        
        
      • "For us this is a very painful but very important moment. It's the first time we've been able to speak. We have to speak of this situation with dignity and not keep hiding."
        
        
      • "I don't want anyone to help me secretly any more. I want to be able to shout out proudly to the world that my father died for his ideas. Finally, 1 want society to understand that we children of those who were executed are not a public danger."
        
        
      • "Our family wants to know the truth and wants the whole country to know the truth, and wants to end the impunity surrounding the tragedy we have experienced."
        
        
      • "Let us hope that everyone in Chile wants the truth, that it's not just a matter of the president appointing a special Commission, but that all Chileans may want and seek the truth."
        
        
      • "I am ready to forgive, but I need to know who I have to forgive. If they would just speak up and acknowledge what they have done, they would be giving us the opportunity to forgive. It would be more noble if they were to do that. There will be reconciliation only if there is justice."
        
        
      • "I don't want revenge. I only want peace. I want to rest and so I have to know the truth. We don't want to get revenge, and we don't want others to suffer what we've suffered."
        
        

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Posted by USIP Library on: October 4 2002
Source: Report of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation
(Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), vol. II/II, Part Three, Chapter Four, 777-800.
Note: Digitized and posted by permission of the University of Notre Dame Press, February 22, 2000.