Last fall, I
travelled with my wife Luisa to Chile, her native country. Although she has visited there every other
year or so, I had not been there since January 2002, primarily because of my back
and the difficulty of long plane rides.
Chile—like every
other country—has changed over 17 years; some good, some bad. There is more acceptance for LGBTQ people,
there is more homelessness and a growing inequality. One of the profound changes is simply due to
the passage of time: today, most people in Chile have no first-hand memory of
the military dictatorship, because they were born in the last couple years of
Pinochet, or after democracy was restored in 1990.
But thank
God, Chile has not allowed that memory to disappear. Some, who still admire the dictatorship,
continue to try to sweep it under the carpet or try to rewrite history, casting
military rule as some kind of strict but benevolent parent that was needed to
straighten out its misled child. But
memory is not that easy to bury.
We went to
two places where that memory is guarded.
One was Villa Grimaldi, a secret detention center in Santiago, where at
least 4,500 people were tortured, and at least 240 were killed or were disappeared. This torture site has now been converted into
“El Parque Por La Paz”—the Park for Peace.
It is a peaceful place, in one sense, because of the flowers and trees
that have been re-established. But it is
also a place of peace in a more difficult way: where the memory of those who
were victimized helps keep history alive, and (we hope) prevent a military coup
from happening again. As Chile Today puts it, it is “Peace In
Memory”.
We also went
to the Museo de la Memoria, built so that the memory of those who suffered will
not disappear. One part that impacted me
fiercely was the wall with photos of all those who are known to have been
killed or who were disappeared. In the
1960’s and 1970’s, “to disappear someone” became a verb in the lexicon of the
military regimes of Latin America, implemented by military and secret paramilitary
officials, many of whom were trained by the United States. It happened in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, El
Salvador, Guatemala and other places.
“To be
disappeared” means that your family and friends may never find out what
happened to you. Often, you were
kidnapped at night, taken to a secret location.
Maybe you were tortured there for weeks or months. Maybe you were thrown—alive—from a helicopter
into the ocean, or buried in a mass, unmarked grave. When your family went to look for you, there
was no record of you ever having been taken.
No file on your arrest, no help from any agency.
One of the
most cruel aspect of intentional disappearing was the taking of babies born to
women who were being held as political prisoners. After they had given birth, their children
were given to officials in the military, or sold to wealthy families connected
to the regime. Usually, the mother was
killed or disappeared afterwards. There
is a powerful movie, made in Argentina, called “La Historia Oficial” or “The
Official Story”:
The title
is in itself a macabre play on words of how truth is silenced, even disappeared
under dictatorship. The official story given
to the families of the disappeared in Chile and elsewhere was that the
government and the military knew nothing about their loved one. The real story, uncovered by courageous
family members and journalists, who fought for decades to bring the truth to
light, can bring healing and a recommitment to fight for justice.
I write
this because of my love for my adopted country, which is suffering through one of
the hottest summers ever, while I gaze out at mountains of snow (clearly
nothing like Chile’s mountains!).
I also
write this because of my love for the country I was born in. For we are, once again, intentionally
disappearing people. In this case,
children of migrants coming here to seek asylum or a better life. Our government has flatly stated that it
doesn’t know where thousands of these children are, and that it may never be
able to find them. Some parents of these
separated children have had their parental rights terminated, because they failed
to show up at the court hearing. Failed
to show up, because they were deported (a “softer” kind of disappearing)
without knowing what was happening to their children.
We shouldn’t
be surprised at this. We have a long history
of disappearing children: children of slaves sold away from their parents;
Native American children forcibly adopted and robbed of their language and
culture; a disproportionate number of children of color today being labelled as
deviant in schools and as criminals by the society. We shouldn’t be surprised, but we should be
angry. And we should keep their memory
alive.
How can do
that as a people? How can we make our
history—especially the parts we want to stay hidden—present before our daily
lives in such a way that produces real peace?
Be justice.
Be beauty. Be skeptical of the official
story.
Patrick
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