Human Rights in Chile: Pedro's Story

For some time I’ve been meaning to record our meeting with Mr. Pedro Matta, a captive of the military dictatorship in Chile during the 1970s. Mr. Matta spent several hours with us; about an hour for a lecture at our hotel and then taking us on a tour of Villa Gramaldi, a torture/detention center just outside of Santiago. Two weeks later, here are my recollections of our time together.
Shortly after the 1973 coup, the military government declared itself to be “at war”. Communists, socialists, trade unions, student leaders were considered as threats and labeled as enemies. Initially the detention activities were conducted in an unsystematic fashion. This changed however in 1975 with the creation of “DINA”, a sort of military intelligence unit. At the peak of its operations DINA operated 850 detention centers throughout Chile. One of them was Villa Grimaldi. As suggested by its name Villa Gramaldi had been a very upscale property. It became the property of the government in the 1960s. The location and configuration of Villa Grimaldi made it well suited as a detention and torture center in the 1970s.

The story from here quickly becomes very grim. Pedro walked us through the grounds, describing the careful, even scientific methods of torture. The interrogators knew how far to take the torture without killing or somehow incapacitating the prisoners. Every few meters we would stop, seen the remnants of a building foundation. We might hear about how this site was used for the application of voltage (applied with various intensities, durations and to body locations) or prisoner containment areas (e.g. four prisoners in dark box about four feet in width and length). Also about twenty percent of the prisoners were women.

A comment came from our group that the personnel that participated in the operations of Villa Grimaldi (and similar torture centers) had to be “sociopathic sadists”. Pedro’s response was very telling. These people had been trained to see the detainees as “less than human” and “the enemy”. Once that thought was successfully implanted (not a difficult thing to do) the captors readily accepted the notion that the prisoners deserved this treatment.

After several hours of hearing about torture center operations in precise detail my revulsion reflux was overworked and I became numb to the vivid descriptions. Plus Pedro’s affect seemed rather flat during much his presentation. Certainly there were moments his outrage and pain came through, but almost always in a controlled way. He described himself following his release from custody as a “zombie”. Makes sense I thought, you’d have to put some major distance between yourself and these events just to survive.

At the final point of our tour, Pedro described the circumstances of his release. When the captors decided a prisoner was of no further use and there was no new information to be learned a decision was made: to release the prisoner back into society or make the “disappearance” more permanent. Fortunately for Pedro he was allowed to return home (though he sought asylum in the US and lived here for fourteen years). Upon release from a torture center most prisoners were transferred to other facilities, so at least some of the worst wounds (physical and mental) might heal.

Pedro told us that shortly after arriving at this facility he was befriended by another prisoner. “What did you tell them skinny?” the prisoner asked while offering Pedro a cigarette. Pedro was immediately suspicious and just repeated what he had already shared. “I told them everything skinny,” the prisoner continued. “When they tortured me, I told them very little. Then they brought in my wife, and tortured her in front of me. I still said nothing. Then they brought in my eight-month old child, and tortured him in front of me. At that point I told them everything. What would you do?”

At this point, Pedro’s eyes had tears. He told us early on he gave up nothing and no one during his imprisonment. “No one was tortured because of what I said. No one followed me and I can look myself in the mirror because of that” he told us. But now Pedro shook his head. “What would I have done? I had a wife; I had a baby at home. What would I have done? That question haunted me.”

This tragic set of circumstances gives us many haunting questions, about then and now. I am very grateful to Mr. Matta for sharing his story.