Pedro M. (Part I)

I had an interview with Pedro M. at 10 am this morning at his house in Ñuñoa (have fun pronouncing that), one of the comunas of Santiago. Ñuñoa is a bit to my south I suppose. In general, it is more residential, but still very much a part of the Santiago taxi and bus routes and is reached by all the major roads which intersect the more pedestrian-trodden parts of the city. I arrived there by taxi and was greeted at the gate by two yapping dogs with little plaid dresses on (which I preferred to the growling and salivating horse-dog in the yard next door.) Pedro M. met me at the gate and welcomed me into his home.

He is the director of Trinity College's study abroad program in Santiago and, while at his house, I met an exchange student who was staying there. We sat down to discuss and I began trying to frame the problem/question. It's getting harder. With more information, I am no longer sure what my question is or should be, so while I hope to get more focused, I find myself giving longer winded explanations of the different frameworks I am looking at. Of course, for those who have experienced first-hand what I am discussing, it gives more opportunity to interrupt me with sidebars. Well, "sidebar" makes the topic sound diminutive. The interruption was more like a central artery. Pedro got up to get me a guide to Villa Grimaldi. What he handed me was a self-authored "visitor's guide" to a 20th century torture center.




In his guide, Pedro M. gives an in-depth history of the villa's past:

Built around 1835 on an estate in the foothills of the Andes overlooking Santiago Valley, the main house was constructed of adobe and thick oak beams supporting of roof of Spanish tiles. On the west side of the house ran an elegant gallery supported by twelve classical columns. On the east side looking to the majestic Andes, another gallery, smaller than the first, served for dining and entertainment...

The writing goes on to state that:

During the Allende years, Villa Grimaldi became a place where progressive-thinking Chileans and other Latin Americans met at conferences and gatherings to exchange ideas and experiences. Prominent figures who came included Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet and Nobel Prize Laureate; Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian writer who later would be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature; Osvaldo Guayasamin, Ecuadorian painter; Claudio Arrau and Roberto Matta, Chilean pianisht and painter, respectively.

However, in May of 1974, Villa Grimaldi turned into a torture center for those who were detained during the worst years of the repression and "would become the most infamous interrogation, torture, murder, and disappearance center in Chile under the code name Cuartel Terranova."

As well as diagrams of different methods of torture used at Villa Grimaldi (whose pictures and descriptions I am sparing you), the guide has a map of the Parque por la Paz, which now occupies Villa Grimaldi's former location. The map of the park is overlaid on a map of the Villa when it was in operation. Below is the map of the Peace Park (zoom in-click- for better detail) which the different numbered points describing what used to be at each location:


In this next photo is a map of Villa Grimaldi when it was in operation as a torture center. If you compare this picture to the one above you can see what each number refers to:

I haven't been to Villa Grimaldi and I don't think I will visit. Although it is within Santiago city limits it is very difficult to get to (involving a car for sure) and people who have gone say it is a bit of an odd trip without someone who knows more about the subject coming along.

We continued the discussion as Pedro M. gave me a brief history of his experience with the dictatorship. He was a law student at the University of Chile in 1973 when the coup took place. While in the law school, he was a leader in the Socialist Youth, an organization whose name has surfaced frequently as I find out what people were involved in that led to their arrest. He was arrested by DINA (Direccion de Inteligencia Nacional), the secret police established in 1973 when the coup took place, in May of 1975 and held in Villa Grimaldi for 13 months where he was tortured and interrogated. He was never charged and never given a tribunal. He was released from prison when the Organization of American States (OAS) met in Santiago in July 1976. In 1976 he emgirated to the United States where he had already been granted asylum and recognized as a political prisoner (A UN mandate had created a refugee relocation program at the start of the dictatorship combined with work by Vicaria de la Solidaridad to keep meticulous records of who was arrested and disappeared, which meant the US could already documented and recognized prisoners.) He testified before the UN Commission of Human Rights when he arrived in New York and later moved to San Francisco.

Pedro M. returned to Chile in 1991 at the start of democratization. He came back with the goal of rebuilding democracy. He wanted to make testimony. He wanted to find lost friends (and companeros from prison) and he wanted to find first truth, and second, justice.

Instead he found a society that wanted to "look forward and not back." He found a "viel of forgiveness" had swept the country. He found a double-speak about past human rights violations ("excesses") and those murdered ("presumed disappeared") and the respressive power of the dictatorship ("military regime").

He has made it his charge to investigate the past violations, recreate history, take testimony of victims and fight for trials against the military personnel who perpetrated the crimes against humanity 30 years ago.