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It was 25 years ago, a quarter of a century, a life-time for so many people.
For many Chileans, it is a long time to forget. I was eleven years old the
day of the military coup in Chile. On the 11th of September 1973, the military
killed the first democratically elected socialist president the world had
seen. They invaded people's homes, killed thousands of Chileans, tortured
many thousands more, disappeared many fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers
of my friends, and compelled more than two thirds of the country's population
to live in a state of terror and hunger. According to the Colombian Nobel
Prize novelist Gabriel García Márquez, one million Chileans
were forced into exile.
The brutal dictatorship lasted seventeen long years; books were burned publicly
in the streets, social sciences departments in all universities were closed
down and banned, and for a period of time even Andean musical instruments
were made illegal. The country lived under a state of siege for more than
two years, curfew was not lifted for at least seven of the seventeen years.
By the time the military stepped aside, and allowed for what Chileans call
a "democracia light", or a "low fat-democracy", five
million Chileans, more than one third of the population, lived in extreme
poverty. Some economists have termed this the economic miracle of Latin
America.
I was about to finish my eighth grade year one gray morning in September.
I was up early to attend school and share a cup of tea and a piece of bread
from the day before with my mother. I looked out the window and saw that
our house was being surrounded by hundreds of soldiers. Seven or nine of
them with their faces painted black, in full gear, with their fingers on
the triggers of M-16s stormed through the door and told my mother that she
should take the young children out of the house with her, for everyone else
was to be detained. My mother held my younger brother in her arms, while
my little sister and I grabbed onto her dress with stiff fingers and eyes
open wide with fear.
Four of my brothers who were sleeping in the back room of the house were
taken out in their underwear. With their hands on their heads, they made
them lay flat in the back of a truck and took them to concentration camps
set up by the military Junta. My brother Ricardo, fourteen years old, was
taken to the Military School and held for seven days in captivity. He saw
men and women executed in the back-yard of the school, cut in half by the
bullets of the machine guns--nightmare images that to this day he cannot
forget.
My brothers Rubén, René, and Raúl were taken first
to the Lebu, a ship used as a prison for the initial months of the coup.
They were periodically showered with cold salt water, kicked and beaten.
Ruben came home three months later, and we did not recognize him. He was
beaten so badly his face was completely disfigured and his entire body was
bruised. He was eighteen years old.
René was twenty years old and Raúl was twenty four. They were
later taken to the concentration camp of Puchuncavi, where they were made
into force-labor, beaten and questioned unexpectedly at any time during
the day or night. Raúl, spent weeks in solitary confinement. After
six months, he was moved to Chacabuco, a concentration camp in the far north
of Chile. After all the torture he was submitted to, he was told he was
not going to be able to walk again, but fortunately a year later he was
sent into exile to Denmark and was one of the first patients of the program
for survivors of torture.
Ten School of the Americas graduates are among the thirty Chilean officers
cited in the recent Augusto Pinochet case. Along with the former dictator
they are accused of genocide, terrorism, and torture. Although Pinochet
did not attend the US Army training school, visitors to the SOA in 1991
could view a note from Pinochet and his ceremonial sword on display in the
Commandant's office (cited in SOA Watch press release, 11/11/98). I implicate
the School of the Americas in what happened to my family and so many other
Chileans during this time.
My father, at age fifty four spent one thousand days in jail. Tortures consisted
in being hung with a rope from the ceiling with a short stick between his
knees, his arms naked and shivering from the cold water that was thrown,
electric shock to the testicles and other sensitive parts of the body, under
the feet and hand nails, gums. Some early mornings he was blind folded,
taken out of the cell to the courtyard and told that he was going to be
executed. He would hear the machine guns pass the bullets after being set
against one of the prison walls. Loud orders were given and after a long
silence the soldiers would laugh. His worst torture he used to tell me,
was not knowing where his children were and whether the rest of us had enough
to eat.
I learned many important things from my father, and he spoke for hours on
end about the real history, the people's history of the United States. I
know the great majority of the people of this nation would never support
the kinds of atrocities committed in their name. The School of the Americas,
known throughout South America and the Caribbean, as The School of Assassins,
has been responsible for training cruelty and murder--the kind of inhumane
torture that my father and brothers had to endure. The training of violence
must end. We ask, we plead, we demand, the immediate closure of the School
of the Americas.
Poema XI
por Roberto Leni
Qué vida más larga hacia la muerte
llevan sus pasos decrépitos
un sonido a gotera que no deja dormir
es sangre de cañería humana
eco ensordecedor de carne desgarrada a tirones
torcida de rabia
Decretó
a su propio pueblo
una herida larga como la geografía
vendió por dólares las ballenas
por atn a los delfines
arrancó de raíz las Araucarias
aplastó con inmensas llantas de camiones leñeros
la flor del Copihúe
cambió por Coca el cargamento de los barcos del puerto
y por Smog
cambió Puro Chile es tu cielo azulado de Santiago
Cambió por pasta base
el pan y la leche a los niños de La Serena
por tanques, aviones y entrenamientos a torturadores
las riquezas del Cobre Nacionalizado
y por un televisor la conciencia del minero
De Iquique hizo un comercio
hasta llegar a Arica y en cada farol
una jovencita vendiendo su cuerpo
Su boca avinagró el lenguaje de la poesía
la vendimia de nuestros sueños
Pinochet fue la peor sequía en nuestra historia
Es largo tu camino hacia la muerte dictador
como tu juicio es eterno
y cada vez que nazca un niño
y con él una sonrisa
y cada vez que se eduque
una niña humilde en Chile
Se hará tu sentencia
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