About 20,000 people a year visit the Villa Grimaldi Park for Peace, built in the foothills of the Andes mountains, where the city of Santiago lies, from the ruins of what was the biggest torture centre during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Dec 8 2016 (IPS)

After 26 years of democratic governments, Chile has finally passed a law that defines torture as a criminal act, but which is still not sufficient to guarantee that the abuses will never again happen, according to human rights experts.

On Nov. 11, President Michelle Bachelet enacted a law that typifies torture, cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment as crimes, in what she described as “a decisive step in the prevention and total eradication of torture” in Chile.

“It is good that this law has been enacted and that torture can be prevented at a national level, which is what the United Nations demands. But for us this doesn’t mean anything,” Luzmila Ortiz told IPS.

Ortiz’s husband, sociologist Jorge Fuentes, was a leader of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). He was detained in Paraguay in May 1975 and handed over in September of that year to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), the Augusto Pinochet military dictatorship’s (1973-1990) secret police."To fully recognise the phenomenon of torture as a serious crime to be eradicated and punished with sentences proportionate to its gravity is part of the state’s obligation to not repeat these acts in the future." -- Nelson Caucoto

DINA repatriated him to Chile, where he was tortured and later “disappeared” in January 1976 under Operation Condor, a plan involving the coordination between the military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay to track down, kidnap, torture, transfer across borders, disappear and kill opponents of the regimes such as guerrilla fighters, political activists, trade unionists, students, priests or journalists.

“They destroyed our lives, because this is a wound that will not close until we know what happened to him. This is terrible, and it not only hangs over me but over my son as well,” Ortiz said.

She recalled with sorrow that in Villa Grimaldi, a notorious torture centre, “they subjected him to atrocities. He was confined to a dog house. It is a pain so profound that you can’t get over it.”

For Cath Collins, director of the Diego Portales University’s Transitional Justice Observatory, the new law is welcome, but “no law can, by itself, guarantee that these things will never again happen.”

“To that end, efforts are needed in many areas, including a change in the institutional culture and day-to-day practices of the armed forces, police, prison guards and other state entities,” she said.

“Never again” was a demand set forth by groups of victims of human rights violations in the “Truth and Reconciliation” report drafted in 1991, a year after Chile’s return to democracy.

The report stated that reconciliation is impossible unless the truth comes out about every case, in order to avoid a repeat of human rights abuses.

Approximately 2,000 people were tortured in Londres 38 between October 1973 and January 1975. In the building, there are plaques with the names of the 98 people murdered and disappeared there. Credit: Courtesy of Memory Space Londres 38

Collins said that, to make progress towards the eradication of torture, “we have to eliminate every vestige of tolerance or normalisationof actions of brutality, incidental or systematic, and break the culture of denial and impunity.”

However, she cautioned, “institutional interventions are not enough.”

“The authorities as well as civil society also have to educate and educate ourselves, in favour of ethics and respect, and against authoritarianism, arrogance, verbal and physical violence that often invades our
social interactions and day-to-day relationships,” said the expert.

Despite its limitations, the law enables Chile to present itself as a country that has accomplished this task, on Dec. 10 when Human Rights Day is celebrated. This year’s theme is “Stand up for someone’s rights today” – a reference to the need for everyone to play an active role in defending the rights of others – part of the new ethics that have to be promoted in this country, said Collins.

Nelson Caucoto, a human rights lawyer who has defended many victims of the dictatorship, says the new law that typifies torture “provides better protection for fundamental rights.”

“Every measure that entails the advancement, recognition, protection and guarantee of human rights helps build the edifice of ‘nunca mas’ (‘never again)’ To fully recognise the phenomenon of torture as a serious crime to be eradicated and punished with sentences proportionate to its gravity is part of the state’s obligation to not repeat these acts in the future,” he told IPS.

He added that “the issue of torture and its victims in Chile has been one of the poor cousins in the struggle to enforce human rights with respect to the dictatorship. Pinochet was arrested in London for (cases linked to) torture, but in Chile there were no legal proceedings against him for torture,” he said.

In 2004, the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture classified more than 40,000 Chileans as victims of this crime.

But human rights organisations say the figure is much higher. They estimate that half a million Chileans were victims of torture during the dictatorship, Caucoto said.

According to official figures, 2,920 people were killed in the political violence during the military dictatorship, including 1,193 who were “disappeared”, while 40,280 were tortured and one million fled into exile. Of the disappeared, the remains of 167 have been identified, according to the forensic medicine institute.

For Leopoldo Montenegro, member of the Londres 38 Memory Space, which was another major detention and torture centre, the new legislation is of utmost importance.

But in his opinion, “the state has failed to take strong decisions with respect to issues such as justice, restitution, compensation and measures to ensure non-repetition.”

Montenegro told IPS that while the new law has a preventive effect, in order to guarantee that the abuses will never again be committed, the most important element is justice. This means “that the courts must admit the charges of torture filed by the victims and punish the perpetrators. In that sense, there have only been symbolic rulings,” he said.

Two verdicts that stand out were handed down by Judge Alejandro Solís in cases involving 23 survivors of Villa Grimaldi, which has been turned into a Park for Peace and Memory, and 19 survivors of Tejas Verde, another illegal detention centre.

Caucoto hailed Bachelet’s announcement of the creation of a National Mechanism for Prevention of Torture, “which is required by the Optional Protocol to the Convention against torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatments or punishment.”

“Its creation is important because in Chile there is no body with the necessary powers to prevent torture. It has to be noted as a great advance,” he said.

Montenegro, meanwhile, advocated the adoption of measures to create the conditions to ensure that the abuses will never again occur, and complained about the state’s lack of will “to carry out public policies of justice with respect to crimes committed during the dictatorship.”

Collins said that what is needed is “a cultural shift and a change of mindset with respect to eliminating the acceptance of inflicting violence or tolerating passively that it be inflicted on our behalf. It doesn’t matter whether it is the political opponent of the past or the alleged ‘criminal’ of today.”

An annual report by the Ministry of the Interior’s Human Rights Programme pointed out that as of Dec. 1, 2015 there were 1,048 human rights cases in the courts.

Of the 1,373 former agents of the dictatorship facing prosecution, 344 have been convicted, 177 are serving prison sentences – 58 with benefits – and six are on parole.

Meanwhile, Luzmila Ortiz continues to face the trauma of her past and to deal with the psychological problems suffered by her son, who is now 45. “He was two and a half years old when he witnessed my detention (when agents of the regimebroke into their house searching for her husband) after being separated from his father. He has been affected since then,” she said.

Her case, dismissed by the Chilean justice system, is now pending in the Inter American Court of Human Rights “where there are many other legal proceedings and there is practically no hope.”

“There are always legal mechanisms to protect the perpetrators,” she lamented, arguing that “the crucial thing is to do away with the protection that the torturers still enjoy.”

Excerpt:

Ana María Luna Barrios searches murals of photos of people “disappeared” after the 1973 coup d’etat that ushered in the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, looking for a face that might be her mother, from whom she was apparently taken after being born in captivity. Credit: Marjorie Apel/Creative Commons

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Dec 31 2014 (IPS)

The suspicion that babies of people detained and disappeared during Chile’s 1973-1990 dictatorship were stolen is growing stronger in Chile, a country that up to now has not paid much attention to the phenomenon.

“There has always been a suspicion that something similar to what happened in Argentina also occurred in Chile, and that many women who were pregnant when they were detained actually gave birth in detention centres,” a 70-year-old woman who asked to be identified simply as Carmen told IPS.

“No one dug into that issue much back then, because we were afraid, and nobody would have listened to us,” she added.

During the Sep. 11, 1973 coup, Carmen, a high school teacher who actively supported the left-wing Popular Unity government of socialist President Salvador Allende (1970-1973), was in a small town in southern Chile doing political work with a group of other young activists.

A few hours after Allende was overthrown by the coup led by General Augusto Pinochet, Carmen saw one of her fellow activists killed right next to her as they were protesting against army troops advancing on the small town. “You never get over that pain,” she said.

Despite the violence and insecurity, she made it back to Santiago and from there managed to flee into exile.“In this country things have moved forward slowly, very slowly at times, but with the certainty that there will be no backsliding. And this issue is not going to disappear, in case someone was hoping for that." -- Lorena Fríes

“I wasn’t detained or tortured, but many of my fellow activists were. A number of them gave birth to children, and no one knows if they are alive, while others fell pregnant as a result of being raped during torture,” she said.

According to the official investigation, 40,000 people were tortured during the 17-year military dictatorship, and 3,095 of them were killed, 1,000 of whom are still disappeared.

It has been confirmed that at least 10 women were pregnant when they were detained and disappeared. They were between the ages of 26 and 29, and were three to eight months pregnant.

In August, the moving images of Argentine activist Estela de Carlotto with Guido, her grandson, who was finally tracked down, made headlines around the world.

The discovery of the grandson of the president of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, who was stolen during Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship, moved many people in Chile, who see progress being made across the border in healing the wounds left by human rights violations in a particularly sensitive area – the question of babies born to political prisoners and stolen.

Lorena Fríes, director of the National Institute of Human Rights, said there are well-founded suspicions that some children of political prisoners were taken by agents of the dictatorship, “but not in the same magnitude as in Argentina, where it formed part of the repressive policies.”

“I do not have the conviction that it was widespread, although there may have been cases,” she told IPS.

Human rights lawyer Alberto Espinoza has not yet handled any cases involving the theft of babies born in captivity.

“I know about pregnant women who were tortured and as a result may have lost their pregnancies, but I don’t have any information about those babies surviving,” he said.

But, Espinoza added, “I don’t rule out the possibility that it happened. Such extraordinarily inhumane and exceptionally shocking things happened during the military dictatorship that it can’t be ruled out that maybe some children survived and no one knows what happened to them.”

But for the first time, the suspicion that children were stolen by the dictatorship has been acknowledged to be well-substantiated.

That is especially true after the programme Informe Especial (Special Report) broadcast by the public station Televisión Nacional de Chile, with previously unheard accounts from women who were raped as part of the torture they suffered during the dictatorship, and who were told that their babies had died, in murky circumstances.

The report titled “the invisible children of the dictatorship” ended with an unprecedented appeal: “If you know or suspect that you were adopted and are between the ages of 35 and 40, contact the Interior Ministry’s Human Rights Programme.”

The information provided in the Special Report programme and the appeal put the spotlight on the official suspicion that children were stolen, but also on the children who were born as a result of the sexual violence that female political prisoners suffered in clandestine detention centres.

The programme, which aired Dec. 15, triggered a flurry of reactions on the social networks.

And the next day, Justice Minister José Antonio Gómez met with a group of former female political prisoners who were victims of sexual violence and promised to move ahead on a draft law that classifies torture and related sexual violence as specific crimes.

“It is certain that many people, principally women, have not given all of their testimony with respect to the politically-related sexual violence or sexual torture to which they were subjected during the dictatorship,” Fríes said.

“It has also been shown that it takes women a much longer time to report these kinds of situations. That means there is a pending issue here,” she said.

On the other hand, she added, “many years have gone by, and time is the main enemy of the possibility of seeing justice done.”

There is at least one concrete case of a baby girl who was born to a political prisoner. The name of the torture victim’s daughter, who is now an adult, was kept anonymous. Another young woman, Isabel Plaza, is the daughter of Rosa Lizana, who was kidnapped on the street when she was seven months pregnant, in 1975, and was held for a month before she was sent into exile.

Another special case is that of Ana María Luna Barrios, who since finding out she was adopted has been searching for her mother among the faces of the disappeared. She was abandoned in 1976 in the Military Hospital, where a nurse took her home and later adopted her.

She has taken her case to court, without results. But new investigations have found that a DINA – the dictatorship’s secret police – lieutenant Hernán Valle Zapata (now dead) registered her before she was abandoned, listing the mother as “failing to appear”, as he had done in the case of another baby girl.

Nieves Ayres, who now lives in New York, was held in Londres 38 and Tejas Verdes, two torture centres. She was systematically gang-raped, and in her account she describes that rats were inserted in her vagina, and she was subjected to sexual abuse by dogs.

She became pregnant, but suffered a miscarriage.

Espinoza noted that these cases are considered crimes against humanity, which means there is no statute of limitations and they can still be investigated, even though 24 years have passed since Chile’s return to democracy.

Fríes, for her part, said “these issues will probably be with us for a long time to come, which is why it is important to understand that the new times open up new doors with respect to what happened during the dictatorship and the need to bring these memories to light so that this never again happens in Chile.

“In this country things have moved forward slowly, very slowly at times, but with the certainty that there will be no backsliding. And this issue is not going to disappear, in case someone was hoping for that,” she concluded.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Valerie Dee

Catalina Marileo and Luis Aillapán, a Mapuche husband and wife in front of their home in Puerto Saavedra, in the central Chilean region of La Araucanía. In 2002 they and other relatives protested against military personnel preparing to build a highway on their land. They were prosecuted and tried under the anti-terrorism law and ultimately acquitted. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Jun 24 2014 (IPS)

Chile has made a commitment to the international community to improve human rights in the country and erase the lingering shadow of the dictatorship on civil liberties.Making progress on women’s sexual and reproductive rights, reforming the controversial anti-terrorism law, guaranteeing the human rights of indigenous peoples and universal access to education and health are among the promises Chile made to the United Nations in June.

“We see that Chile is constantly taking steps toward the fulfilment of its obligations,” Amerigo Incalcaterra, the regional representative for South America of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told IPS.

On Jun. 19 the country underwent its Universal Periodic Review, a mechanism overseen by the U.N. Human Rights Council, for the second time in 2014.

At its appearance before the Council in Geneva, Switzerland, the Chilean government formally accepted 180 of the 185 recommendations made by the 84 member states, and turned down five.

Chile is one of the most conservative countries in Latin America, and is one of just six nations in the world where abortion is banned under any circumstances. Divorce was only approved in 2004, and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community is still fighting for legal recognition of same-sex couples.

Education and health are deeply stratified, generating a spiral of inequality that this country of over 17 million people is clamouring to see reversed.

Native peoples like the Mapuche lack constitutional recognition in Chile and have engaged in confrontation with the authorities and powers-that-be for decades, seeking restitution of ancestral lands that were taken from them.

The Human Rights Council’s recommendations were addressed earlier this year by the rightwing government of President Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014), only weeks before he left office in March.

Piñera accepted 142 recommendations, rejected 13 and “took note of” another 30, which he said he could not commit to fulfilling because they depended on securing congressional approval.

“‘Taking note of’ these recommendations was a new departure in international law because recommendations must be accepted or rejected,” Paula Salvo, principal lawyer for the National Human Rights Institute (INDH) which took part in the session in Geneva, told IPS.

On May 30, the government of socialist President Michelle Bachelet sent a written “correction” to the earlier report, in which she accepted 180 recommendations and rejected five.

Among the five not accepted were two from the Vatican, on the rights of the human person from conception and the protection of traditional family identity, and another on Bolivia’s right to an outlet to the Pacific ocean.

According to Incalcaterra, Bachelet viewed many of the recommendations rejected by her predecessor as a part of her government programme, including the decriminalisation of therapeutic abortions in the case of foetal inviability, danger to the life of the mother and rape.

A bill to allow termination of pregnancy in these cases will be debated in parliament in the second half of this year.

Incalcaterra, whose regional headquarters are in Santiago, said that the U.N. recognises that abortion is “a complex, health-related issue”, while the Human Rights Council asks states to legislate for “at least these three cases” of abortion.

As well as legalising therapeutic abortions, the government promised to reform other laws inherited from the 1973-1990 Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, like the anti-terrorism law, which is enforced virtually exclusively against alleged offences by Mapuche indigenous people in their struggle to reclaim their traditional lands.

This law imposes high penalties, dual trials by civilian and military courts and “faceless” witnesses, among other anomalies. The government promised not to use the law against Mapuche people and to respect their human rights.

Another remnant of the dictatorship that still endures 24 years after the return of democracy is that any case involving military personnel, whether as victims or accused, can be tried in military courts. Under the promised reform, military personnel accused of common crimes will be tried in civilian courts and in future no civilian will ever be tried in a military court.

Hernando Silva, a researcher for Observatorio Ciudadano (Citizen Observatory), told IPS that his organisation is pleased that the state has accepted these recommendations, and is hoping that “they are implemented once and for all, and not just recognised.”

“It is not the first time that Chile commits itself to legislate about military courts or the anti-terrorism law” without anything happening to bring it about, he said.

“Bachelet herself  promised to stop enforcing the anti-terrorism law against the Mapuche people during her first term (2006-2010), but did not deliver,” he added.

Silva stressed that “this time, she needs to fully live up to her human rights obligations.”

Incalcaterra said that there is no legal compulsion to fulfil the Human Rights Council’s recommendations, but he pointed out that “all work done at the international level is based on good faith.”

“When you undergo this exercise, in dialogue with other states, and you agree to recognise the recommendations as appropriate, obviously you have to go back in four years’ time and report on what you have done,” he said.

The goal of the Universal Periodic Review, he said, is to promote the human rights of all people living in a country.

“We should see it as additional support to help states to establish public policies, improve their legislation where necessary, create institutions if they are lacking, devote resources, collect statistics and analyse them, organise campaigns, etcetera,” he said.

Chile’s fulfilment of its commitments will be reviewed in four years’ time.

The INDH has a role as the state supervisory institution and in its view there are urgent needs, such as the ratification of certain international human rights treaties.

A government human rights agency, a national plan and more human rights education are also needed.

For the many victims of the dictatorship who have not received reparations, the INDH believes a permanent assessment agency should be established for pending cases, and legal and social advice should be made available to torture victims.

INDH lawyer Salvo told IPS that “the government must create a permanent review mechanism for the U.N. recommendations,” because from now on “the challenge is internal.”

The Forensic Medical Service exhumes the remains of Pablo Neruda in Isla Negra. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Apr 9 2013 (IPS)

The investigation in Chile of the possibility that Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda was murdered by the 1973-1990 dictatorship is seen as a major stride forward in the search for truth and justice for human rights crimes that remain unpunished 40 years after the coup d’etat.

The remains of Neruda (1904-1973) were exhumed Monday Apr. 8 from his resting place next to his third wife, the singer Matilde Urrutia (1912-1985), at their seaside home in Isla Negra, 110 km west of Santiago.

Forensic experts will seek traces of biological elements related to the prostate cancer he was being treated for and to a possible poison that he may have been injected with.

The samples will be analysed in laboratories in Chile and perhaps abroad, as offers have come from Canada, Spain, the United States, Sweden and Switzerland. The process could take up to three months.

The exhumation was ordered by Judge Mario Carroza, who is investigating whether or not Neruda died of natural causes, as widely believed until now, on Sept. 23, 1973. He died just 12 days after the bloody coup by General Augusto Pinochet that overthrew democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende (1970-1973), a close friend of Neruda’s.

“It is extremely important for a judge to say that all cases of human rights violations must be clarified, including the death of Allende (during the coup), of former president Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970) or of Neruda, because that amounts to recognition that the justice system is in debt when it comes to the crimes committed in the dictatorship,” sociologist Manuel Antonio Garretón, winner of the National Humanities Prize 2007, told IPS.

Neruda died in the private Santa María clinic in Santiago four days after he was hospitalised for treatment of the cancer that had not kept him from living a normal life.

Some close to the poet suspected that the cause of death was an injection Neruda was given before he died, which they believe may have contained a poison – probably similar to what presumably killed Christian Democrat leader Frei Montalva in 1982, who at the time was one of the leading opposition figures to the Pinochet dictatorship.

When he died, Neruda, who was born with the name Neftalí Reyes, was 69 years old. He had been a member of the Communist Party of Chile for 28 years, and was preparing to go into exile in Mexico, where he would have been a strong voice of opposition to the regime.

The lawyer for the plaintiffs, Eduardo Contreras, told IPS that there were “strong suspicions” that Neruda was killed by agents of DINA, Pinochet’s secret police.

Contreras noted that around that time, Michael Townley, a U.S. citizen who was a double agent of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of his country and DINA, was active in Chile. He carried out several assassinations by poisoning with chemical substances.

Townley worked with Eugenio Berríos, the chemist who recreated sarin – a poisonous nerve gas invented by the Nazis – and worked with other lethal chemical weapons under the orders of DINA. Berríos was kidnapped and killed in Uruguay in the early 1990s by members of the Uruguayan and Chilean military.

In the days before his death, Neruda’s profound sensibility was overcome when his three houses were raided and looted by agents of the dictatorship.

His most beloved home, in Isla Negra, was looted by the troops, who overturned his seashell and butterfly collections and destroyed paintings, his incomplete writings, and the books, masks, wooden carvings, bottles, pipes and ocean-related memorabilia that filled the shelves of nearly every room.

The military had all of his staff fired, and only his wife and his driver and personal secretary, Manuel Araya, were allowed to stay.

Nearly 40 years later, Araya is at the centre of the lawsuit that the Communist Party filed in court.

“I want the forensic experts to put their hands on their hearts and tell the truth about Neruda,” Araya told IPS. “He didn’t even make a will, because he wasn’t actually dying.”

The sociologist, Carretón, said that above and beyond the question of whether Neruda was assassinated, it is important to investigate the abuses to which he was subjected before his death.

“Let’s suppose that there are no signs that third parties played a role in his death. Nevertheless, crimes were committed that have to do with the raids of his homes and actions that accelerated his death,” he said.

He added that if it is proven that Neruda was murdered, “the repercussions could be big, and many of those who still don’t believe that human rights violations were committed could realise that even the country’s top poet was killed, directly or indirectly.”

Furthermore, the case, involving Chile’s most famous poet, once again trains the spotlight on the human rights crimes that have gone unpunished, he added.

Some 3,000 people were killed or forcibly disappeared and nearly 30,000 were tortured during the 17-year dictatorship.

Neruda’s death certificate states that he died of cachexia, or loss of body mass, weakness and wasting caused by severe chronic illness. But he actually weighed over 100 kilos, according to Araya, and to Mexico’s ambassador to Chile, Gonzalo Martínez, who visited him in the clinic before his death.

A day after he died, the conservative newspaper El Mercurio published a report stating that Neruda had died “of a heart attack, a consequence of the shock suffered after he received a painkiller injection.”

Former judge Juan Guzmán, who was the first to prosecute Pinochet, said the exhumation of Neruda’s remains increased the odds that the homicide theory was correct.

“I imagine that in order to decide to do this, Carroza must have had strong presumptions that he died of causes that had nothing to do with his illness,” he told IPS.

“I used to be skeptical, but after all the investigations that I carried out, many of them involving medical questions, I’m not so sceptical anymore. And I believe it is necessary to investigate when there are indications that a murder may have been committed.”

If it is confirmed that Neruda was killed, “it would be appalling,” Guzmán said. “Pablo Neruda was a man of peace, who embodied peace through his poetry and his personal actions. So for me, more than a murder of a person, it would be the murder of everything he represented.”

By Fabíola Ortiz
SANTIAGO, Dec 6 2012 (IPS)

The legacy of Chile’s 1973-1990 dictatorship, which left some 3,000 people dead and “disappeared”, remains alive in the country’s society and political system, says journalist and writer Mauricio Weibel.

In this interview with IPS, Weibel says that elements of the regime of the late dictator General Augusto Pinochet survive in the constitution inherited from the dictatorship, and are the root cause of what he sees as Chile’s present social crisis, and of the failings of its political system.

Weibel and his colleague Carlos Dorat are the authors of a book, “Asociación Ilícita – Los archivos secretos de la dictadura” (Illicit Association: The secret archives of the dictatorship), one of the most widely read books in the country since its publication in October.

Chilean journalist and writer Mauricio Weibel. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

Official documents reveal how the dictatorship made its decisions, how it was allied with other military regimes in the Southern Cone of South America (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) by means of Operation Condor, aimed at tracking down, capturing and eliminating left-wing opponents, and how its diplomats kept watch on Chilean exiles around the world.

Q: How did you do the research for “Asociación Ilícita”?

A: We wanted to put on an exhibition in the Museum of Memory for the 40th anniversary of the military coup (Sept. 11, 2013). As I researched, I came across these files in the ministries of the interior and foreign affairs. They were memos and communications exchanged between 1973 and 1990. It took four months to put the files in order, organise and read them, followed by five weeks of writing.

Q: What did the archives reveal about the dictatorship’s secret intelligence network?

A: We decided to describe decision-making and high-level communications during the dictatorship. There is clear evidence of full participation in the repression by civilians and by the foreign ministry. No one was innocent; everyone knew.

In the documents, Chile’s foreign ministers request copies of Operation Condor from the secret police. In a few cases, the secret police suggest to the ministry of the interior that a particular exiled person should be allowed back into the country, but the suggestion is rejected.

Basically, we explain how they operated, what information was communicated, what reports were written, and what kinds of materials were burned, as recorded in the certificates of destruction.

Q: The book cites personalities active in the dictatorship who hold office today, like Alberto Cardemil, now a member of Congress. What was his role?

A: Cardemil was under-secretary of the interior, and is now a member of the lower house for National Renewal, the party of President Enrique Piñera. He used to distribute reports from the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) – the secret police – to the ministries, and he was in charge of distributing files with information on opponents of the regime.

It was known that he had been involved in some way, but we had no proof of anything. Now he has a lot of questions to answer: whether he kept copies of these files, of his reports, and whether he has used this information obtained by means of torture, since democracy was restored.

And the same is true of the other civilians, because many ambassadors are shown to have been involved. Cardemil denied the existence of the files, and he denied distributing CNI information.

Q: Have you had any problems with the justice system because of the publication of the book?

A: No, because all the information is based on and backed up by documents. It is all based on signed documents with no opinion, no adjective added. It is raw information.

Q: What impact has the book had?

A: The book is currently among the top ten most widely read in Chile. It is a book for future generations. This month we are also presenting it in Argentina. At the book launch in Santiago, at the Museum of Memory, there were more than 600 people, and at the Santiago book fair there were 200 invited guests.

Q: Why is it important to shed light on the dictatorship’s secret files?

A: Without memory there can be no future; we have to take a look at why we arrived at these horrors so that they can never happen again. We have to carry out profound social and political reflection. And we must also find out why people who now hold high political office were involved.

There is apparently a certain amount of interest in Latin America in revisiting the recent past, to tell the stories that have not been told or were only told in an official version, and to rescue it all from oblivion.

Q: What was the role of the Catholic Church during the dictatorship?

A: The Chilean Church was quite committed to the defence of human rights. Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez was one of the most important and most powerful opponents of Pinochet. The Vicaría de la Solidaridad (a human rights agency of the Church) protected persecuted citizens, and provided legal services such as opening legal cases and drawing up writs of habeas corpus. The clergy were involved in dangerous work.

Q: What evidence was found in the archives about Operation Condor?

A: We thought Operation Condor was a strategy of the secret police. But it was a concerted operation by the Southern Cone governments, which cooperated above and beyond conflicts over some issues.

For example, Chile and Bolivia broke off relations in 1978 over La Paz’s maritime claim (to access to the Pacific ocean). But in 1979 they were still cooperating under Operation Condor. The countries had no diplomatic relations, and yet their regimes continued to cooperate at the level of intelligence.

Q: Did diplomats carry out surveillance on exiles?

A: Movements of Chileans abroad were infiltrated. It’s amazing how much information they had. It went far beyond the limits of national borders.

Q: The Chilean dictatorship was the longest lasting in Latin America. Is it still alive in Chilean society?

A: The dictatorship is not only in our memory, but also in the whole constitutional framework Chile has inherited from it, like the 1980 constitution, approved when there were no electoral registers; the political system; the binomial electoral system (in which the top two candidates are elected from each district); and the economic system.

It is omnipresent, and it is a major cause of the political and social crisis Chile is experiencing today. Our 21st century democracy has its origins in the dictatorship.

Q: What was the democratic transition like, under the long shadow of Pinochet up to his death in 2006?

A: It was a democracy under military tutelage. After 1984, the dictatorship suspected that the political and economic system would fall, and that ultimately they would be investigated and tried for crimes against human rights.

At the beginning of the transition, the president could not remove the commanders-in-chief of the armed forces from their posts. Eventually we came to our present position, with a constitution dating back to the dictatorship, where the state has a secondary role regarding the supply and demand of public goods, and an electoral system that prevents proportional representation of voters.

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