Stargazing on the Road to Oblivion?: Counter Memory in
Chile’s Atacama Desert(1973-Present)
University of Amsterdam
MA Heritage and Memory Studies
Thesis by Sara Helin-Long
Supervisor: Rob van der Laarse
Second Reader: Ihab Saloul
Submission Date: 18-03-2019
Introduction 1
Historical Framework 5
1988 Plebiscite 5
Alexander Wilde’s Irruptions of Memory 6
The “Reconciliation President": Aylwin’s Official Responses 7
Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle(1994-2000) and the 1998 Arrest of
Augusto Pinochet
11
The official Story 12
Calama. 14
Chapter 1: Why Calama? The ‘Extra’ Factors 17
Actions of the Caravan of Death in Calama 17
A Precedent of Terror: The Resumes of the Caravan of Death 19
The Desert that Made Chile
22
Chapter 2: The Women of Calama 25
Between Two Silences: Military Obscuration and the Natural
Landscape
25
Terrorscape
29
Archaeology as ‘Memory Activism’: Building a
Counter Memory
34
Chapter 3: Patricio Guzmán’s Nostalgia for the Light 40
Visual Analysis
42
Narrative Analysis
46
Projection onto the Social Body of Chile and Re-imagination
of the Official Story
47
Chapter 4: Constellation for the Fallen 50
The Campaign for the Constellation of the Fallen
51
Physical Commemoration and Memorializations
53
Aesthetics
55
Memory and Heritage: Localized Memory and the
Official Story
56
Conclusion 59
Appendixes 64
Images 67
Position as a Research
In 2015, I took a class called ‘Dirty Wars/Memory Wars in Chile and Argentina’. The reading and viewing assignments consisted of The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, An Open Secret by Carlos Gamerro and Ian Barnett, Salt in the Sand by Lessie Jo Frazier and Nostalgia for the Light directed by Patricio Guzmán. This class was my first extensive introduction to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and the first time I learned about the history of the Women of Calama(through Guzmán’s film). Since then, the history of Chile has captured my attention and my academic work has largely focused on Chile—including my undergraduate thesis— and the artistic works produced after the end of the military dictatorship including novels, films, poetry and memory projects. Nostalgia for the Light sparked this interest, in part, because of reasons which become prominent throughout this thesis: the beauty and allure of the desert landscape. I have undoubtedly become attached to Chile and specifically to the case of Calama. Undoubtedly, they have greatly affected me and have influenced my academic career but nevertheless, I
“Podrán cortar todas las flores, pero no podrán detener la primavera” - Pablo Neruda
Introduction
On September 11, 1973 in Santiago, Chile, the Chilean military staged a coup d’etat—supported by the U.S. government—resulting in the death of the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende(1970-73) and the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet(1973-90). In the capital city of Santiago, there was an immediate and outright display of power and repression from the military. Military actions included bombing La Moneda,—which houses the Chilean government and where Salvador Allende gave his final address— the implementation of a curfew, a high presence of military officials and the detention of thousands of prisoners in sports stadiums, including musician Victor Jara who was killed on September 16, 1973. In order to solidify the power of and compliance to Pinochet, the military needed to demonstrate similar force in the remainder of the large, long country. On September 30, 1973, a few weeks after the initial assault in Santiago, Pinochet created a death squad appropriately named La Caravana de la Muerte[The Caravan of Death] which exclusively functioned outside of the capital city. On the premise of expediting the trials of political prisoners—whose arrests were solely based on the crime of direct or perceived association with the Allende presidency—the Caravan visited three provincial towns in the northern-located Atacama desert(Copiapó, Antofagasta, Calama), one in the northern-region of Coquimbo(La Serena) and one in the southern-region of Maule(Caquenes). No trials were held. 1
The political prisoners were instead taken into isolated locations, such as the Atacama desert, brutally executed, remains concealed and information about their whereabouts and well-being silenced thereby assigning them the designation of
detenido-desaparecido[detained-disappeared].
The Caravan’s route of terror which stopped at the five aforementioned towns resulted in the death of 75 people over the course of 21 days(Appendix 1). The Caravan’s 14 members, led 2
by General Sergio Arellano Stark, had two objectives: strike fear into the hearts of the civilian Patricio Verdugo. Los zarpazos del puma. 1989, p. 13.
1
Patricia Verdugo. Pruebas a la vista: La Caravana de la muerte. 2000, p. 2.
population and instill a ‘hard line’ of ruthlessness into the military. To realize these goals, its 14 3
members did not hesitate to massacre and disappear defenseless political prisoners. As a result of the Caravan’s terror-instilling actions, Pinochet assured compliance to his new hardline politics and clearly conveyed the message that coexistence with the oppositional, left political parties would not be tolerated. The focus of this thesis is the death squad’s final stop, Calama, the 26 4
executed men and their female relatives— that would come to be known as Las Mujeres de Calama[The Women of Calama]— who immediately after the men’s disappearance began searching the Atacama desert for information about their whereabouts and eventually, searched for their remains, as well. 5
The case of Calama and its inspired productions of memory, including Patricio Guzmán’s documentary film Nostalgia for the Light, Paula Allen photo-documentary project Flowers in the Desert and physical memorializations have been evaluated in parts but have not yet been assessed together in one text. My hope in addressing and analyzing multiple aspects of this case, the historical significance and the artistic memory works, is to demonstrate how one subversive, localized act of counter memory— the Women of Calama searching in the desert landscape— ensured that the memory of the 26 victims of Calama and the agents of terror—the brutal actions of the death squad and the military dictatorship— are not lost within the silences of Chile’s official story of the dictatorship. In this analysis, location is crucial because the landscape where the massacre occurred naturally facilitates silence and oblivion due to its topographical characteristics— immensity, monochromatic terrain and beauty— therefore complicating its ability to facilitate remembrance or commemoration of what took place within its boundaries.
Verdugo; 2000, 5.
3
Jorge Escalante. La misión era matar: El juicio a la caravana Pinochet-Arellano. 2000.
4
There are discrepancies surrounding which towns were targeted by the Caravan of Death and
5
subsequently on the number of people massacred. Variations on the information include an increased number of victims in the south to a total of 26(from 4) in the towns of Rancagua, Curicó, Talca, Linares, Concepción, Temuco, Valdivia, Puerto Montt and Caquenes. The increased number is most likely due to time of publication and the emergence of new data
however the reason for discrepancy is not clearly evident. I use the information found in the texts of Patricia Verdugo(Los zarpazos del puma and La Caravana de la muerte).
The vast, barren, isolated and yet beautiful landscape of the Atacama desert, however, is not merely an environment which witnessed the massacre of 56 people by the Caravan of Death(in the towns of Copiapó, Antofagasta and Calama) or a facilitator of silence but also provides an enchanting physical background and narrative setting for the actions of the Women of Calama and the subsequent related memory works. Moreover, the desert is of great social, historical and political importance to Chile therefore it will become an active character in the following analysis. Through the actions of the Women, the case of Calama not only overcame its susceptibility to oblivion but also revealed gaps in the official narratives of the dictatorship which resulted in a re-imagination of the official story to include the 26 men, the Women of Calama themselves and the brutalities committed by the dictatorship.
In regard to academic research, my initial interest in the case of Calama centered around my belief that it provided an example of how physical commemoration can signal successful incorporation of a countermemory into official memoryscapes. This notion was strengthened by Atacama desert’s tendency toward oblivion. In Brian S. Osborne’s Landscapes, Memory,
Monuments and Commemoration:Putting Identity in its Place, the author articulates the
capability of monuments to “focus attention on specific places and events and are central to this endeavor of constructing symbolic landscape of power”. Without dismissing the importance of 6
monuments, throughout the following analysis I will propose that the construction of physical monuments to the 26 men in the desert landscape is not what brought attention to this case or the site. Rather, the Women of Calama and the landscape itself withstood the outward forces of oblivion and facilitated new productions of memory in the Atacama desert. In combination, the Women of Calama and the Atacama desert make it possible to re-imagine the official story of Pinochet’s dictatorship to include the ‘other’ story: those harmed, brutalized, murdered, and disappeared during the dictatorship. Additionally, I have specifically chosen Calama as the case study because of its association with the Caravan of Death whose repressive and brutal actions against Pinochet’s political opposition set an incredible precedent of terror and established Pinochet’s power throughout his 17-year long dictatorship. This thesis hopes to expand upon the
Brian S. Osborne. Landscapes, Memory, Monuments and Commemoration:Putting Identity in
6
understanding of the physical and artistic productions of memory related to the case of Calama, located in the Atacama desert, in order to highlight the unique capacity of the artistic memory works to penetrate what they have always been on the physical and social margins of—the official story. My intention in discussing and analyzing the story of Calama is to understand the significance of this case within the development of Chile’s collective and official memories about the dictatorship and their evolving position within Chile’s national heritage.
The research question then becomes: How is it possible to overcome the purposeful and natural hiding techniques of the military dictatorship and Atacama desert which led to an official story full of and based in silences and furthermore, how can a subversive act of counter memory influence and provoke the re-imagination of official, collective narratives and memories about the Pinochet dictatorship? To address the question, I will outline the story of Calama: the initial tragedy, the female relatives of the executed who searched the Atacama desert for answers and the subsequent memory works which they inspired. I will argue that through subversive acts and artistic mediums, a localized case of memory can in fact catalyze the creation of a counter memory which is influential/strong enough to provoke the re-imagination of the official story of the dictatorship. Throughout the presentation of this case, I must also consider how the
purposeful silences within the official stories have permeated collective memories about the dictatorship to exclude the ‘other’ stories. In order to discuss and argue the potentialities of this case, I will primarily focus on three aspects of the case: The search conducted by the Women of Calama in the Atacama desert, Patricio Guzmán’s documentary Nostalgia de la Luz [Nostalgia for the Light] in which he reflects upon Chile’s relation to its past centered in the Atacama Desert and physical commemorations to the 26 men, particularly the newest monument which is
comprised of stars, Constelación de los caídos[Constellation of the Fallen]. In addition to a visual and theoretical analysis of each case study, they will be evaluated in relation to the national and official Chilean narratives.
Historical Framework
This section focuses on two transitional governments after 1990 and the actions they took to commemorate and address the recent past. Commemorative events and government acts inform the construction of Chile’s official story and narratives concerning the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The analysis of the development of the official story relies on the actions of and restrictions place upon the transitional presidents, in addition to public discourse, laws and legal trials regarding the perpetrator and popular culture.
1988 Plebiscite
On October 5, 1988, Chile held a national plebiscite to determine whether or not Augusto Pinochet would extend his rule for an additional eight years. According to a 1986 report by the International Commission of the Latin American Studies Association to Observe the Chilean Plebiscite, “ninety-seven percent of the registered voters, or 90 percent of the eligible population, turned out to vote, the highest percentage in the nation’s history”. The No campaign won with 7
3,967,579 votes(54.71 percent) to 3,119,110 votes(43.01 percent) for the Yes, allowing democratic elections to be held. In March of 1990, the Christian Democrat, Patricio
Aylwin(1990-94) was elected which effectively ended Pinochet’s 17-year long dictatorship. However, Pinochet retained the title of commander-in-chief of the army until March of 1998 when he retired and was made a senator-for-life. In October of the same year, Pinochet was arrested in London on behalf of Spain on murder charges. Pinochet’s continued prominent position within the Chilean government until 1998, in addition to the Right’s control of the Senate and the close percentage differentiation in the plebiscite complicated the responses to human rights violations and the implementation of necessary commemorations to the military dictatorship’s victims of the subsequent transitional governments—also referred to as the
Report by the International Commission of the Latin American Studies Association to Observe
7
governments of the Concertación[Agreement]—of Patricio Aylwin and Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle(1994-2000). 8
Alexander Wilde’s Irruptions of Memory
Before discussing the specific commemorative actions of Patricio Aylwin and Eduardo Frei and their contributions to the formation of Chile’s official story of the military dictatorship, I present Alexander Wilde’s Irruptions of Memory in order to detail the restrictions faced by the
transitional governments. Irruptions of Memory both contextualizes their actions and provides another perspective to the democracies of Aylwin and Frei; both of which have since been heavily criticized. Patricio Aylwin and Eduardo Frei were and continue to be heavily criticized by victims of the military dictatorship and academic scholars for their government’s of consensus and push toward reconciliation. The principle criticism is articulated by Tomás Moulián in Chile 9
actual: anatomía de un mito where he states that “[c]onsensus is the highest stage of forgetting ... [c]onsensus is the enunciation of the supposed, of the imaginary harmony”. Wilde 10
acknowledges the criticisms but relativizes the transitional government’s actions and states that “when assessed against the diverse transitions to democracy throughout the contemporary world, Chile is widely and correctly considered among the most successful”. He supports this 11
assessment by pointing towards the successes of Aylwin and Frei: sustained political stability, an annual economic growth of more than 6 percent and achieving public commemorations and discussions about the military dictatorship. The economic successes of the transitional 12
governments undoubtedly aided in the nation’s prosperity, however as will be elaborated upon
Alexander Wilde. Irruptions of Memory: Expressive Politics in Chile’s Transition to
8
Democracy. 1999.
Refer to Michael J. Lazzara. Chile in Transition: The Poetics and Politics of Memory. 2006.
9
And Macarena Gómez-Barris. Where Memory Dwells, 2008. Tomás Moulián. Chile actual: anatomía de un mito. 1997, p. 37.
10
Wilde, 476.
11
ibid.
later, economic benefits were also used to justify the repressive actions and human rights violations of the military dictatorship.
Wilde continues on to appraise the governments of Aylwin and Frei, including their failures to prosecute pending cases of human rights violations in 1993 and 1995, respectively. In these failures, two considerations should be made: the impossibility to overcome the Right’s presence in the senate and perhaps more often forgotten, the real priority given to such issues by both presidents.[ ][ ] Both Aylwin and Frei began their presidencies with multiple 13 14
commemorative actions which indicates that both had the best of intentions to address the dictatorial past, however as will shortly be outlined their push toward the future in order to achieve national reconciliation and channel attention away from their nonsuccesses contributed to an official story based in silences about the military dictatorship’s crimes. Wilde
acknowledges the complications and failures faced by the transitional governments but more so contributes it to impossibility and naivety rather than incompetency or mal-intent. Lastly, Wilde states that “Aylwin’s admirable early use of his public moral authority has been insufficient to construct a shared understanding that would reconcile Chileans to their recent past and lend fuller legitimacy to their political institutions”. Neither moral authority nor presidential intent 15
was capable of overcoming the influence of Augusto Pinochet, his allies still in power or the greatly divided public.
The “Reconciliation President" : Aylwin’s Official Responses 16
From the outset of Aylwin’s transitional government in 1990, there was a push for Chile to achieve a ‘national reconciliation’. Under this concept emerged two prominent phrases —“turning the page” and “erase and tell anew”— which succinctly encompassed the memory politics of not only Aylwin’s transitional government but also that of the following president,
Wilde, 481-2.
13
For further information refer to: Marcelo Mella Polanco. Transition and democratization
14
during Patricio Aylwin government (1990-1993): the strategy of separate strings. 2014. Wilde, 485.
15
Michael J. Lazzara. Chile in Transition: The Poetics and Politics of Memory. 2006, p.18.
Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle. The official discourses regarding the Pinochet dictatorship of the 17
transitional governments were based on the notions of looking towards the future and in so doing, leaving the past behind along with the political and social tensions that had historically divided the country. Furthermore, the maintenance of legalities by Aylwin and Frei such as a 18
1978 amnesty decree which protected all members of the Caravan of Death contributed to the Chilean state’s acceptance and ease towards the “tendency on all part of all actors involved to treat human rights commemoration as a private and moreover a minority interest, rather than a stand-alone public duty or commitment”. This notion is supported by a public opinion poll 19
conducted after Frei’s election in 1994 which states that “only 8 per cent gave priority to human rights issues as their immediate political preoccupation” whilst concerns surrounding health services polled first. 20
As a result of public polls such as the one previously mentioned and the Right’s
continued presence in the government, official responses to the past made sure not to disrupt the transition to democracy thereby creating consensus-based politics based in "forgetful
reconciliation”. Aylwin and Frei, however both initiated numerous commemorative acts and 21
legal efforts. Patricio Aylwin’s inauguration occurred in Santiago, Chile’s National Stadium— where thousands of political prisoners were held, tortured and executed— which was considered an immediate indicator that he wanted to address the nation’s past, specifically the human rights violations committed by the military dictatorship. His other commemorative actions included the April 1990 formation of a truth and reconciliation commission led by lawyer and former senator, Raúl Rettig, and the September 4 1990 official funeral proceedings for former president Salvador
Michael J. Lazzara. Tres Recorridos de Villa Grimaldi. 2003, p. 128.
17
ibid.
18
Katherine Hite and Cath Collins. Memorial Fragments, Monumental Silences and
19
Reawakenings in 21st-Century Chile. 2009, 383.
Allen Angell and Benny Pollack. The Chilean Elections of 1993: From Polarisation to
20
Consensus. 1995, p. 107. Lazzara, 2006, 16-7.
Allende. In subsequent years, the initial commemorative responses have been analyzed and 22
critiqued for solely having funerary functions.
According to Katherine Hite’s and Cath Collins’s Memorial Fragments, Monumental Silences and Reawakenings in 21st-Century Chile, funerary-based commemorations are not limited to Aylwin but rather the majority of the commemorative efforts by the Chilean state had and continue to have a funerary function. Examples including Allende’s funeral and a wall of 4,000 names—divided by ‘Salvador Allende Gossens: Presidente de la Republica’— of
detained, disappeared and executed at the general cemetery in Santiago. After 17 years of being 23
denied the possibility to properly bury or mourn, the dead and their families certainly deserved funerals and funerary commemorations. Their occurrence signified public acknowledgment of the military dictatorship’s victims. However, in relation to memory discourses, Hite and Collins identify four problems with funerary commemorations which are also reflective of the
transitional governments push towards the future. The authors’ outlined problematics are as follows:
[M]any see funerary commemorations as reinforcing an association with death still not proven in the case of the remaining disappeared…Secondly, funerary memorials keep the focus on the absence of victims – the dead or disappeared – rather than on the presence of survivors or even of perpetrators….Thirdly,
funerary representations convey what was done, but not why it was done nor who did it. Official commemorations have evaded representing the machinery’s
genealogy and agents. Fourth, the artifacts tend to create or reinforce a peripheral geography of commemoration, restricted to certain places that are not part of everyday civic or political routine. Physical relegation lends to the sense of a fragmented Chilean memory landscape, in which the state fails to enact
The Rettig report is often criticized for only including crimes which resulted in death. Wilde
22
offers a less critical perspective on the report by stating that the Right— who were still prevalent in the public and the government— was able to dominate the discourse and therefore the Rettig report was not properly interpreted or utilized to its fullest potential at the time of publishing. Furthermore, due to the Right’s strong presence in multiple social and political spheres, Rettig’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee should be considered an achievement given the political environment.
Hite and Collins, 382.
commemorative policies that might engage the public more meaningfully in collective explorations of the past. 24
Despite the importance of the occurrence of funerary commemorations, they allow for the focus of the public and governments to remain on the dead victims rather than the surviving victims or perpetrators. Consequently, the dead and the ideologies they stood for and the motivations
behind their death are left in the past. As Hite and Collins outline, the visible memorializations of the dead allowed the Chilean nation to acknowledge the crimes of the Pinochet dictatorship without having to address difficult questions such as ‘why’ of ‘how’.
Additionally, the dominant existence of funerary practices within commemorations immediately following the end of the dictatorship quite literally encapsulated and confined the memory and stories of its victims. This notion, in combination to that of ‘national reconciliation’ and its resulting notions assists the development of silences and gaps in the official, narratives and myths about the dictatorship. Furthermore, the base idea of funerary-commemorative practices goes against the possibility of active and living forms of memory and discourse. The funerary based commemorations therefore posed little risk of controversy or disruption of the transition to democracy. The probability and expectation for oblivion about the military
dictatorship’s crimes was and continues to be defied by survivors, family members of the victims and activists and organizations whom are concerned with human rights. The critique of 25
funerary commemorations is specific to their potential negative impacts on remembering the actions of the military dictatorship and their victims but does not directly address or criticize Patricio Aylwin or his intentions. In contrast, for the most part, Aylwin’s initial drive and multitude of commemorative efforts have been viewed positively. Aylwin’s choice location for his inauguration(National Stadium) and commemoration ceremonies(general cemetery)
legitimized “iconic places for remembering the victims of the dictatorship” and allowed for
Hite and Collins, 382-3.
24
Peter Winn, Steve J. Stern, Federico Lorenz y Aldo Marchesi. No hay mañana sin ayer:
25
spaces of acknowledgment, reflection and expression by those who Pinochet had intended to silence. 26
Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle(1994-2000) and the 1998 Arrest of Augusto Pinochet
Amidst funerary commemorations and fear of disrupting democracy and Chile’s road forward, Eduardo Frei assumed the presidency believing that Aylwin had sufficiently managed issues related to memory and human rights. During the presidency of Frei, Augusto Pinochet was 27
arrested in London. International condemnation of Pinochet’s human rights violations was not fully endorsed by the Chilean government— most notably by the then president, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle— and in March 2000, Pinochet was granted immunity from persecution and was given a financial allowance by Congress. In response to the arrest, the Frei government “opted for a legal and diplomatic defense of Pinochet’s immunity from prosecution in Spanish courts and, implicitly, for a political defense of Chile’s institutional stability”. 28
Until Pinochet’s death in 2006, his immunity status was constantly in flux. It was rescinded and subsequently re-granted numerous times and therefore he was also indicted and arrested on murder and human rights violations on multiple occasions. The first retraction of immunity is of note because it was in reference to disappearances and human rights violations in the Caravan of Death cases. Throughout these processes Pinochet lived under house arrest and in the end, he was never actually convicted for any of the crimes committed during his regime. 29
Legal protections to Pinochet facilitated the emergence of an official story about the dictatorship which mainly focused on the positively viewed outcomes such as economic and social
progresses. Contrastingly, there was a consistent production of legal documents, academic reflections, testimonies, narrative works and artistic projects which aimed to open and facilitate the process of obtaining justice, preserving memory and examining human rights violations.
Del Valle Barrera, María, Tomás Koch, and Benigno E. Aguirre. Commemorating Chile's
26
Coup: The Dynamics of Collective Behavior. 2012, p. 110. Lazzara; 2006, 19.
27
Wilde, 490.
28
Mónica Pérez and Felipe Gerdtzen. Augusto Pinochet: 503 Días Atrapados en Londres. 2016.
Nevertheless, the arrest of Pinochet is considered a “critical turning point in Chile’s memory saga” not only because it caused an increase in the release of testimonies, books and 30
other works about the dictatorship but also because the arrest signaled to the Chilean people that the human rights violations committed in their country were of global concern. Since the turning point in 1998, there has been an immense production of art, narrative fiction, testimonials and academic works which mostly focus on stories of persecution of and resistance by members of the opposition party to the dictatorship and how, ultimately they experienced and now remember that time period. In regard to academic work, the majority of it is focused in the capital of Chile, Santiago, and specifically on detention centers within the city limits and the 2010 museum of Memory and Human Rights. There has not been a great focus on the sites, narratives, events and memories which are located outside of Santiago such as detention centers(Pisagua, Chacabuco, Colonia Dignidad), the Caravan of Death and other sites of terror. However, art, narrative fiction and film have expanded the geographical scope of memory work in Chile to include the
countryside, other smaller provinces and the Atacama desert. It is in these realms of ‘outside’ geography and artistic productions where the majority of alternative, counter memories to the official narratives of the Pinochet dictatorship exist and thrive.
The official Story
For the purposes of this essay, official memory will refer to the memories which are “generated, endorsed, and policed” by the ruling political party of the given nation-state. The previous 31
history outlined the socio-political actions which influenced the development of the official story of the Pinochet dictatorship whilst the following detail future references to the ‘official story’. Following the end of the dictatorship, the public opinion immediately diverged into two distinct viewpoints: Pinochet as Chile’s ‘savior’ and Pinochet as a brutal, tyrant. The majority of those 32
who viewed Pinochet and his dictatorship in a positive light held elite positions in society, such Lazzara; 2006, 20.
30
Lessie Jo Frazier, ‘Subverted Memories’: Countermourning as Political Action in Chile. 1999,
31
p. 114.
Lazzara; 2006, 2-3.
as government jobs, business owners or were part of the upper class. They either believed in his social message or prospered from his economic policies. Furthermore, a prosperous and ‘market-driven economy’ has been used to justify the ‘regrettable’ state violences committed by the military dictatorship. Those who held the opposite opinion mainly consisted of survivors of 33
torture and detainment, families of the dead-disappeared and those concerned with human rights violations. The latter group was ostracized amidst a society which wanted to move forward and/ or determined the victims deserved the violences which befell them because of their political ideologies. By alienating the victims, the ‘elites’ granted themselves the ability to dictate and inform the official views of Pinochet as a ‘savior’. 34
The two prominent diverging stances on Pinochet and the resultant subversive memories were mediated and enforced to the public by means of government statements, popular culture and news coverage. Due to Aylwin and Frei’s fear of disrupting the transition to democracy and 35
the hope of reconciliation, many stories were left out of the official dialogue and narratives, including those of terror, violence and of people who had been imprisoned, tortured, murdered or disappeared. Lessie Jo Frazier summarizes her analysis of how these stories fit, or do not fit, 36
into the national discourse of Chile:
Those memories of state violence incommensurable with national-state memory took the form of aberrations or flaws in what was presented as an otherwise whole cloth of national memory in a functioning political system. Countermemory wove into that cloth to the extent that oppositional movements accepted the general framework of the Chilean Political system. 37
Lessie Jo Frazier. Salt in the Sand. 2007, p. 245.
33
Frazier, 2007.
34
Examples of news coverage where Pinochet is referred to as “his excellency” and “savior of
35
the country” are detailed in, Valeria Andrea Gurr-Ovalle. The Other September 11th: El Mercurio Media Coverage After The Chilean Coup Of 1973. 2013, p. 200-208; also refer to, Clifford Krauss. “Pinochet Receives Hero's Welcome on Return to Chile”, The New York Times, March 4, 2000.
Lazzara, 2006, 17.
36
Frazier, 115.
Subsequently, accounts and testimonials of suffering became alternative narratives or counter memories because, as previously stated, Chile as a nation generally wanted to move on. The Women of Calama, however could not and would not move forward. The Women of Calama’s search, physical existence and voice did not allow Chile as a nation to move on or forget whilst the subsequent memory works integrated their and the 26 men’s story into that of the Atacama desert and Chile.
Calama
As previously stated, this thesis intends to discuss the case of Calama in order to discuss how a localized act of counter memory can provoke re-imaginations of official stories and subsequently can inform collective memories in Chile. My argument is that the Women’s search can be
analyzed as an act of ‘memory activism’ which resulted in the case becoming a case of counter memory itself. To inform the following chapters, in this section I will define terms such as ‘collective memory’, ’counter memory’, ‘subaltern’ and ‘subversive’.
First, the physical and artistic acts and production of memory which have informed the case of Calama and my analysis are the following: The search of the desert conducted by the Women of Calama; Deborah Schaffer’s documentary film about the formation of the Association of the Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared, Dance of Hope; Paula Allen’s photo
documentation of the Women’s search and construction of the first monument, Flowers in the Desert; The 26 pillar monument; Patricio Guzmán’s Nostalgia for the Light; The human rights work of Carmen Hertz, the widow of one of Calama’s victims(Carlos Berger); Germán Berger-Hertz’s personally informed reflection about Chile and his father, My Life with Carlos; Patricia Verdugo’s testimonial book about the actions of the Caravan of Death, Clawings of the Puma and the proposed memorialization of 26 stars. In regard to academic contributions, Macarena Gómez-Barris Atacama Remains and Post-Memory has greatly informed this work. Gómez-Gómez-Barris argues that in the Atacama desert the two filmmakers— Guzmán and Berger—are greatly affected by the aesthetic qualities of the desert. Nevertheless, both use the landscape as an ‘anchor’ between memories of the 26 men and the Women who remember them because the desert holds the physical dead bodies of the past and the living ones of the present. Additional works which have
provided historical context and theoretical bases are Michael J. Lazzara’s Chile in Transition:The poetics and Politics of Memory, Macarena Gómez-Barris’ Where Memory Dwells: Culture and State Violence in Chile and Steve Stern’s Memory Trilogy. Lazzara studies various ‘lenses of memory’ that can be utilized to inform the perception of Chile’s dictatorial past and the resulting trauma. For Lazzara, this is possible through artistic productions which seek to evoke the
memories of the past. Gómez-Barris reflects upon the implications of Chile’s most well-known torture and disappearance center, Villa Grimaldi, on cultural memory and the experience of survivors with the intention of revealing a significant part of countermemory in Chile.
The case of Calama can be considered one of counter memory to the official story because it is “in opposition to hegemonic views of the past and [is] associated with groups who have been ‘left out’ as it were, of mainstream history”. It is only recently, mostly after Patricio 38
Guzmán’s documentary in 2010 that the case became widely known outside of groups who were directly concerned with the particular case or cases of human rights. The brutal nature of Calama and the cases of the Caravan of Death indicate that silence surrounding them would benefit the military, whose members during the transitional governments were largely over from the
Pinochet dictatorship, and therefore the transitional governments, as well. Additionally, the case of Calama geographically exists outside the parameters of what has traditionally informed the official narratives of the dictatorship and where the majority of the commemorative productions have taken place(Santiago). I use Saint-Laurent’s understanding of collective memory “as a social representation, as something that is both shared by the group and appropriated by its members”. This is to say that a particular history cannot only be preserved, shared and lived by 39
one group of people in order to consider it part of the collective memory. All members of a nation, in this case Chile, including the government, must acknowledge the cruelties committed during the military dictatorship.
To further expand on the theoretical classification of Calama, under the umbrella of countermemory, I will also label Calama as a subaltern and subversive case of memory. It can be
Ann Rigney. Plenitude, scarcity and the circulation of cultural memory. 2005, p.13.
38
Constance De Saint-Laurent Memory Acts: A Theory for the Study of Collective Memory in
39
considered as ‘subaltern’ because it is not part of the official narratives of the dictatorship therefore not part of Chile’s collective memories or heritage. The nature of the case is intrinsically ‘subversive’ because the Women intended to disrupt the official story of what happened to the men and how both parties were/are perceived within Chilean society. This intention to disrupt the official story about what happened to the 26 men and the emerging narrative about Pinochet was situated in relation to the Women’s desire to know the whereabouts of and information about the 26 men; not necessarily or outrightly to commit a political act.
In Chile, according to Frazier, “subaltern memory could do very little to challenge the terms of official memory other than to reveal its gaps”. Gómez-Barris also identifies the ability 40
of locations and stories outside of the official to reveal gaps in the official and states that “the prisons and deserts of Northern Chile cannot be fully assimilated and resist incorporation into nationalist discourses. Instead, the emptiness represents contemplative possibilities and memory’s fractures…”. In the ‘gaps’ or ‘fractures’ of memory is where artistic works can 41
reflect upon the past and consequently, force or demand consideration into the collective, official narratives. The ability of subaltern and subversive counter memories acts to reveal gaps in the official story is how the Women of Calama began the construction of a counter memory which included the crimes of Pinochet. At the time of the transitional governments of Aylwin and Eduardo Frei, the potential of the subaltern, counter memories was limited because they were not given a platform but the Women persisted and eventually became the focus of multiple artistic memory works. I will discuss how the case of Calama as subaltern, subversive and counter to the official story of Pinochet’s dictatorship has the ability to not only reveal gaps in the official story but ultimately demonstrates a potentiality for enriching the official story by incorporating the counter narratives of violence, terror and death into it.
Frazier, 1999, 115.
40
Macarena Gómez-Barris. Atacama Remains and Post-Memory. 2012, p. 9.
Chapter 1: Why Calama? The ‘Extra’ Factors
This chapter provides the exact accountings of what took place in Calama in 1973 as we know them so far and the ‘extra’ factors— including the resume of the Caravan of Death, the history of the Atacama desert and northern Chile and the aesthetically appealing qualities of the desert landscape which have attracted so many— which contribute to the transformation of the
Atacama desert into an appealing setting and active character. I have already provided a relevant history of the Pinochet dictatorship and Caravan of Death, however these factors, in addition to the Women of Calama, contribute to why this specific case has become a focal point in multiple memory projects and now represents a strong counter memory to the official story of the
Pinochet dictatorship.
Actions of the Caravan of Death in Calama
On October 19, 1973 at approximately 10:30 AM, the Caravan of Death arrived in Calama in a Puma helicopter—now a symbol in Chilean history which between 1973 and 1990 was highly associated with death and torture—in order to perform its final mission. Upon the Caravan’s arrival, General Stark immediately called for a war council, under the direct authority granted to him by Augusto Pinochet, in order to imitate the trial of the political prisoners housed in the local prison. The prisoners were to be tried for the alleged conspiracy to blow up the DuPont 42
explosives factory located in Calama. The selection criteria of which prisoners would ‘face 43
trial’ has not yet been revealed but at the request of second-in-command, Lieutenant Sergio Arredondo González, the selected prisoners were meant to be interrogated and then put on trial. 44
No trial was ever held in Calama or in the other provincial towns which were visited by the Caravan. Instead, the 26 prisoners in Calama were taken to an isolated location in the middle of the Atacama desert, executed and their bodies buried and hidden within the desert landscape.
Verdugo, 1989, 8.
42
Ramona Wadi. Flowers in the Desert. The Search for Chile’s Disappeared. 2013.
43
Paula Allen, Flowers in the Desert. 2013, p. xii.
As the result of a five-year-long official investigation, filed in the Lower Court 2 of Calama in 2002, the details of the men’s final moments and the brutalities they suffered were later revealed and documented. Paula Allen summarizes the findings in Flowers in the Desert.
On the afternoon of October 19, 1973, the prisoners were lined up in the yards and called by their full names to step forward one by one. The prison guards then blindfolded the men, tied their hands, and forced them into vehicles, all the while beating them…They removed the prisoners four at a time from the trucks and lined them up against a hill in the Topator area on the outskirts of Calama. While laughing and insulting them, they mutilated the men with corvos(surved
sabers). At about six o’clock in the evening, they executed the twenty-six men with bursts of machine gun fire. 45
This account of the incredibly violent happenings in Calama is support by General, Joaquin Lagos Osorio, who was stationed in Antofagasta—a town in which the Caravan murdered 14 people— and also witnessed the actions of the death squad. In 2001, Osorio gave an interview on Chilean TV where he specified the brutal capabilities of the Caravan. 46
Se los mataba de modo que murieran lentamente. O sea, a veces los fusilaban por partes. Primero, las piernas; después, los órganos sexuales; después, el corazón. En ese orden disparaban las ametralladoras. 47
They killed them in a way so they would die slowly. That is to say that sometimes they shot them by parts. First, the legs, then, the sexual organs; after, the heart. In this order, they fired the machine guns.
In July of 1990(two months after the official end to the dictatorship), the Women were presented with the location of a mass grave located only 15km from Calama. At the site, they found
Allen, 84.
45
“Gral Joaquin Lagos acusa a Pinochet - Caravana de la Muerte”, Youtube video, 8:55,
46
“thebibliotecatv”, February 8, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-z_nQnnAWI. Lagos, Andrea. “Reportaje | El General Que Acusó a Pinochet.” EL PAÍS, El País, 27 Jan.
47
“crushed remains of their men—pieces of skulls, ribs, and other bones”. It took five years to 48
identity 13 of the men. In 2011, more advanced testing became accessible which allowed in-depth pathology reports about 10 of the men. However, “for three of the families, there was nothing to receive: the tiny traces of their missing relatives had dissolved during the laboratory testing, the remains had vanished just like the men”. Forensic testing of the bone fragments was 49
conducted by state forensic experts and after 2003, the Special Unit of Forensic Identification, as well. 50
A Precedent of Terror: The Resumes of the Caravan of Death
In the first three months after the coup d’etat, 45,000 people were arrested and more than 1,000 people executed. The majority of those arrested and executed in this time period “were trade unionists and/or former members of the radical leftist parties, particularly those advocating armed revolution against the right”. Among the political prisoners, some had no direct political 51
association with the Allende presidency barring a job appointment but their names had been put on a list which required them to report to the local authorities. Many followed the order and were arrested. Others questioned the authorities about what was happening and consequently also arrested. Among the victims of Calama, there were men who turned themselves in willingly. 52
Citizens willingly reported to local authorities and even questioned them because, at the time, the
Allen, xxiv; Refer also to Jorge Escalante. Operación Retiro de Televisores in Los crímenes
48
que estremecieron a Chile. Las memorias de La Nación para no olvidar. 2013, p. 357-73. Allen, xxvi.
49
Garrido Varas. The “Unidad Especial de Identificación Forense” and Human Rights in Chile.
50
2012.
Peter Read and Marivic Wyndham. Narrow but Endlessly Deep: The Struggle for
51
Memorialisation in Chile since the Transition to Democracy. 2016, p. 3. Verdugo; 2000, 64-6.
brutalities which were to come were unfathomable. Chile was viewed as an “exceptionally 53
stable” example of democracy within the America which made the military coup d’etat all the more unpredictable and calamitous. 54
Due to the numerical figures detailing the amount of people arrested and executed, along with the described actions of the Caravan of Death, the first three months of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship have become thought of as the period which witnessed the greatest level of
repression. The numbers definitely support this notion, however it could also be said that the 55
connotation of the three-month long era as the epitome of terror also evolved because of the following two reasons. First, the military dictatorship had not yet learned to fully hide their repressive or cruel actions and second, they allowed for public knowledge their cruelties in order to instill absolute horror, shock and unease, resulting in the public’s fear of and submission to the new authorities. Nevertheless, most certainly these three months saw actions committed that were brutal enough to earn it that reputation and moreover, that set the stage for the brutalities which were to come during the remainder of the Pinochet dictatorship. Furthermore, the aftereffects of the crimes committed by the Caravan of Death—not only as members of the Caravan but throughout the military dictatorship—continue to permeate legal and social discourses in Chile.
In his afterword to Flowers in the Desert, Ariel Dorfman provides a striking visual and in so doing, clearly specifies the cultural significance and potential impact of the Caravan of Death and the case of Calama on the representation of the Pinochet dictatorship. Dorfman writes:
Among the 26 men in Calama, there were men who reported to the authorities and
53
subsequently detained and executed. According to the 1991 Rettig National Truth and
Reconciliation report, a motivation for the arrest, detention and murder of those who willingly turned themselves in could not be determined.
Frazier, 2007, 1.
54
Flora Vilches. From nitrate town to internment camp: the cultural biography of Chacabuco,
55
Puma helicopter descended from the clear sky and from it emerged a group of men in combat uniforms who, in the near future, would be the backbone of the repression and torture of thousand of patriots. 56
The terror inflicted and perpetrated by those who participated in the Caravan did not end with their final stop in Calama. After October 19, the 14 members went on to occupy prominent positions and inhabit multiple spheres of the military dictatorship, thus advancing and solidifying Pinochet’s agenda of repression. Furthermore, the original acts of cruelty committed during the member’s time in the death squad set a precedent for the cruelties which sustained terror throughout the dictatorship. The resumes of the Caravan of Death detail how the 14 men
infiltrated multiple sectors of the military dictatorship and eventually, legal trials in Chile and the U.S. were largely based on crimes committed during their route of terror.
The death squad was led by Sergio Arellano Stark who had been a military aide to
President Eduardo Frei Montalva(1964-70), received training at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and was an instrumental figure in the realization of the coup d’etat. The death squad comprised of the 14 men who Stark had hand-picked. Stark’s 57
second-in-command was Lieutenant Sergio Arredondo González who would later become the director of the Infantry School of the Army. Another member, Major Pedro Espinoza Bravo, was an army intelligence officer and after October 1973, he became chief of operations of the Chilean secret police, Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional(DINA)[National Intelligence Directorate]. Espinoza Bravo was later sought by U.S. officials for his role in the car bomb assassination of Orlando Letelier—a former diplomat and minister of economy in the Allende administration— and his American co-worker, Ronni Moffitt in Washington D.C. Lieutenant Armando Fernandez Larios also became part of DINA and was later investigated, prosecuted, convicted and
sentenced in the U.S. in February 1987 to a minimum of 27 months in prison for his role in the assassination of Letelier and Moffitt. He served only five months. After participating in the 58
Ariel Dorfman. Forward in Flowers in the Desert. 2013, p. 122.
56
Mark Ensalaco. Chile Under Pinochet: Recovering the Truth. 2013, p. 39.
57
Alfonso Chardy, “Crime Against Humanity: Jury finds ex-Chilean officer liable in 1973
58
death squad, Captain Marcelo Moren Brito, became the commander of Villa Grimaldi—DINA’s most notorious detention and torture center located in Santiago from where many political prisoners disappeared.
The Desert that Made Chile
The North of Chile is considered a “historic stronghold for the Left” and therefore became an instrumental location for Allende to initiate his policies concerning consumer goods and the nationalization of copper mines. To this accord, Frazier indicates that “the North was 59
particularly targeted for repression, given its high level of political mobilization and
militarization”. More specifically, Calama was specifically chosen as a site to implement terror. 60
During the Allende presidency, there were many job appointments in the area of Calama, specifically to the DuPont explosives factory and the Chuquicamata copper mine. Both 61
industries are not only historically important in the economic and social progresses of Chile but also, specifically copper is related to Allende because of his nationalization of the copper
mines. In addition to the sites’ history and association with the Allende presidency, the DuPont 62
explosives factory was perceived as a threat because of the thought that the opposition could use explosives against the military, resulting in the arrest of many of its employees. Many of those who were arrested in Calama and later executed by the Caravan worked at the DuPont factory. 63
The Atacama desert(located in northern Chile) specifically contributes to the North’s association with the Left and before the Atacama’s association with the Caravan of Death, it was a place that embodied and facilitated the economic and social progress of Chile. The earth of a vast, isolated and, apparently, barren landscape not only financially assisted the social progresses of Chile but also lent its terrain for the people of Chile to reap its spoils until they were, finally,
Frazier, 2007, 39.
59
Frazier, 2007, 40.
60
Verdugo, xii. (in flowers in the desert)
61
Frazier, 2007, 254.
62
Patricia Verdugo. Los zarpazos del Puma. 1989.
exhausted and the desert couldn’t give back anymore. Additionally, the origins of many long-standing positive national identities and narratives are buried in the desert sand such as pride regarding the Native Americans and the resounding resilience of the Chilean people. In the following excerpt, Ariel Dorfman brings to life the connection between the Atacama Desert and the successes of Chile,
This desert, still unwilling or unable to render up more bodies of the disappeared —how strange and almost ironic that it should be this very desert that created Chile as we know it. It was the Atacama that the Native Americans flourished for centuries, near Calama, where they built their cities and funeral mounds… And then, many ventures later, this desert was to be the site of war for valuable
minerals, at times hidden in its depths, at times exposed on the surface, the
conquest of the nitrate deposits by the same Chilean armies that had slaughtered the Araucanians in the South and now had brought this new land under the
dominion of Santiago and greedy foreign bankers and investors. It was in this desert that hundreds of small towns blossomed and thousands of migrants from all over the worlds came to reap the bounty that the stones had accumulated over millions of dry years. It was the wealth from this desert that built the mansions in Santiago and the roads in Concepción and the ports form which yet more riches were sent abroad…And Allende himself, the first socialist to become president through democratic elections, though born in Valparaíso, was also a product of this desert, a senator for many years from this zone…It was the North of Chile, in that desert where hardly anything but hope grows, that the deeds were sowed for Allende’s peaceful revolution and the three years of his Popular Unity
government. 64
In the North of Chile, both Allende and Pinochet— who served in the North before becoming political— have routes. The Atacama desert has facilitated major turning points in Chile’s 65
history. In the case of Calama, it has done so again. The 1973 massacres in Cauquenes, La Serena, Copiapó, Antofagasta and Calama signaled the beginning and solidification of a repressive government in Chile but moreover, definitively ended any illusion to the Allende years in the very space that propelled him to political importance in the nation. In 1990, a few
Dorfman, 120-2.
64
Frazier, 2007, 39.
months after the end of the Pinochet dictatorship— another critical turning point in Chile —the Women of Calama first encountered the bone fragments of the men in the desert.
Chapter 2: The Women of Calama
The focus of this section is the Women of Calama’s 17 year search of the Atacama desert which began in 1973 immediately following the execution and disappearance of their loved ones. The physical act of searching performed by the Women of Calama will be analyzed as an act or form of archaeology which subsequently can be considered an act of ‘memory activism’. My
argument is that the ‘archaeology as memory activism’ not only differentiated Calama from other cases related to the Caravan of Death but also catalyzed the development of a counter memory that included the violences and brutalities committed by the Pinochet dictatorship. The beauty, intrigue, silence and obscuration provided by the physical qualities of the landscape of the Atacama are crucial to this argument because they are the setting to the memory act. Therefore, I will use the idea of the landscape as beautiful and silence inspiring as a basis to discuss not only how the physical silence of the desert can be broken but also how this break can disrupt the silence found in national, collective stories to include the horrors which the beautiful landscape obscures.
Between Two Silences: Military Obscuration and the Natural Landscape
From the moment the 26 men in Calama were murdered, the Caravan and the military aimed to obscure what had happened to them and to the other victims of their route of terror. The military dictatorship did not allow members of the Caravan of Death to disclose information about the murders or the locations of the bodies. A local officer in Calama, Colonel Rivera, later provided 66
another reason for the immediate secrecy.
I was informed that the bodies were scattered in the desert and had been massacred and mutilated. I suggested the possibility of returning the bodies in sealed urns, but the regiment doctor told me ‘No, Colonel, their relatives will open them, and imagine what they’ll think of us if they see the bodies!” 67
Patricio Verdugo. La Caravana de la muerte. 2000, p. 17.
66
Allen, xii.
Initially Rivera, who was overwhelmed by the circumstances, told the families of the 26 men that their bodies would be returned after a year. This was the beginning of false hopes, and the 68
bodies were never returned to the families. Moreover, as if trying to rub salt in the families wounds, the first official story given to the public about the Caravan’s victims was that they were executed during an attempted escape from prison. This, too, was later confirmed false. Although the official story of escape contained an account of the men as dead, their death was never truly confirmed by the military dictatorship, thereby suspending their relatives in a horrid state of false hope and incertitude in regard to the fate of their loved one. This ghostlike state of existence, between almost certain death and the potentiality of life, was how the Women existed until July of 1990 when they were handed a pouch containing the crushed remains of their men. For 69
seventeen years, amidst a military dictatorship which periodically impeded their investigations on grounds of allegedly disrupting archaeological sites, the Women persevered in their search. 70
However, despite allowing the Women to continue, the military unearthed and re-buried the remains of the men on multiple occasions in the attempt to preserve silence. According to 71
official statements by the military, the final disposal site and resting place of the men was the middle of the sea where they were thrown from helicopters but the pilot died without ever giving testimony and there is no record of this flight. 72
Furthermore, Since the transitional governments of Aylwin and Frei, the Chilean
continues to have difficulties in reconciling with the recent past and commemorating it. Although there have certainly been efforts to commemorate the victims of the Pinochet dictatorship by the state, it has also kept information regarding the military’s crimes hidden and, in some cases, furthered the view that the left was deserving of the violence. A written document by former centre-right president, Sebastián Piñera(2010-13) in Larraín and Nuñez’s Las Voces de la
ibid.
68
Allen, xxiv.
69
Ramona Wadi. Flowers in the Desert. The Search for Chile’s Disappeared. 2013.
70
Allen, 84-8.
71
Allen, 88.
Reconciliación [The Voice of the Reconciliation] displays the long-lasting affects of the stark oppositional perceptions of Pinochet and outlines how, even after many of the crimes committed throughout Pinochet’s regime have been detailed in Truth and Reconciliation reports, the victims can be blamed by government officials. Piñera carefully suggested that the left was to blame by stating that “the first to bear responsibility should be those who promoted hatred and armed violence and who despised democracy as the simple tool of the bourgeoise, while themselves attracting no more than a third of the popular vote”. Most likely referring to more radical 73
political parties such as MIR(Revolutionary Left Movement), the implication is that they initiated the violence and therefore were both to blame and deserving of the consequent violences committed against them and other oppositional parties to Pinochet. 74
Piñera’s comments demonstrate that the move towards national reconciliation by Aylwin and Frei silenced harsh truths about violences committed by the military dictatorship and
continues to affects memory politics in Chile. One example is the enduring silence and lack of exposure of information regarding cases, including Calama of the military dictatorship’s crimes. In Narrow but Endlessly Deep, Read and Wyndham state:
No post-Pinochet government has as yet been prepared to release the secret information that would identity lists of perpetrators, arguably because it is
consistent with the Via Chilena, That is to say, each government since 1990 has calculated that the majority of Chileans agree that the mass prosecution of
malefactors by the state itself, whatever the moral imperative, was undesirable in the interests of national workability. Even President Bachelet, her father
dead after torture, her mother and herself tortured and exiled, has presumably thought better of pursuing the morally justified path. 75
Through the creation of an environment of repression, an intriguing paradigm of visibility and obscuration arises because although the goal of the military dictatorship was to establish silences and complicity, they sustained repression because they alone were the gatekeepers of knowledge.
Sebastián E. Piñera. Por un Chile reconciliado y en paz. In Las Voces De La Reconciliación.
73
2013, p. 25-35.
Read and Wyndham. Narrow but Endlessly Deep. 2016, p. 5.
74
Read and Wyndham, 4.
Outcomes of the military’s actions, such as torture and disappearances, were evident to the public but few details of their cruelties or of the fate of the murdered or disappeared were ever exposed. Knowledge was made public only insofar as it could instill fear. However, at some point, the lack of knowledge, evidence and truth became an equally efficient tactic of terror and repression. The Women of Calama’s search actively pursued knowledge, thereby not only directly defying the intentions of the Caravan to solidify the Atacama as a place of terror and repression but also preemptively counteracted the silence based discourses of the subsequent presidencies.
Known as the driest place on earth, the Atacama desert itself provokes two main
challenges in remembering and commemorating those who suffered in and were disappeared into its landscape. The first dilemma is inspired by an incredibly beautiful contradiction between a boundless yet monochromatic ground and an extensive sky full of stars and color above. The romantic quality of the paralleled landscapes generates an easy idealization and embellishment of the Atacama desert and, therefore, gives its landscape the capability to hide and not acknowledge the cruelty that has stained the desert earth. The second challenge is also based in the desert’s physical characteristics: barren, extensive, daunting and silent. These features not only function to further the contradictory beauty of the Atacama, but also create an ease for physical remains, such as fragmented bone, to disappear into the sand of the desert and be forever lost in the immensity of its terrain. The proclivity for bones to disappear into the sand renders the women’s search almost futile because of the near impossibility that anything could be found and yet, result of natural science offers one form of assistance to the Women’s search. The reason that bones are visible amidst the desert sand is due to the calcination of the bones which occurs under the harsh sun. The bones are then “brighter points of whiteness amidst the red landscape, like tiny stars in 76
the vastness of the universe”. The Caravan of Death was conscious of the physical obstacles 77
which comprise the second dilemma and used those characteristics to their advantage, assuming that the desert would never “yield its secrets”. Continuing this presumption, the Caravan 78
David Martin-Jones. Archival Landscape and a Non-Anthropocentric ‘Universe Memory’.
76 2013, p. 715. ibid. 77 Dorfman, 120. 78
subsequently took advantage of and abused the landscape by excavating, moving and re-burying the 26 bodies to different locations in the desert.
Terrorscape
The historical, social and political importance of the Atacama desert in the history of Chile has been previously established. However, these factors mostly focus on what took place in the desert, such as the mining industries and ancient peoples, rather than the physical qualities of the desert landscape itself. The military dictatorship and the Caravan of Death acknowledged both the Atacama desert and its landscape. They realized the importance of the industries in the town of Calama and consequently choose it as a site of terror and additionally, they perceived the desert landscape as a place which facilitated concealment of and silence about their crimes. Therefore, in order to better understand the physical landscape on which the Women conducted their search, I begin this section with characterizing the landscape of the Atacama desert as a terrorscape. By applying the term to Calama and the Atacama desert, I aim to discern how the landscape of the desert has been affected by the actions of the Caravan of Death.
A terrorscape refers to physical spaces where “terror, political or state-perpetrated violence has happened or was prepared”. The specific terrors which allow for the use of this 79
term to be applied to the Atacama desert are the violent actions committed by the Caravan of Death and the military dictatorship in 1973. During their route of terror, the Caravan visited two towns in addition to Calama— Antofagasta and Copiapó—which are also located in the Atacama desert region. The total number of people murdered in these three towns by the Caravan is 56. Thus, even though the Atacama desert covers an expansive and impressive 105,000 km2 of earth in the northern part of Chile, I will not limit the classification of terrorscape to the town of Calama because the horror inflicted by the Caravan was not geographically limited to this area. Additionally, in the case of Calama, the sites and spaces of bloodshed and fear are also not limited by the parameters of the town. Neither the location of the initial burial site nor that of the subsequent excavations and re-burials of the 26 men were made known to the public. Therefore, up until the day the Women were handed the first remains and told the definitive location of the
Traces of Terror, Signs of Trauma. 2014, p. 4.
grave site, the entirety of the desert was a potential site to be searched, making the totality of the 105,000 km2 a potential site of terror. Here it should be quickly re-iterated that the intention of the military dictatorship in physically scarring the landscape of the Atacama by murder and acts of cruelty was to instill fear, terror and complicity throughout Chile and thereby reinforce and solidify the intense fear caused by arrests, detentions and executions which were occurring in Santiago. Furthermore, the members of the Caravan went on to become prolific characters in carrying out brutalities on the opposition for the duration of the dictatorship. For those reasons, the terrorscape which is the Atacama desert is neither limited by space nor time because the cruelties which the Atacama bore witness to in 1973 continued and still continue to generate terror and trauma.
In the awe-inspiring Atacama, violence and terror conjoin and find their origin. By night, stars illuminate the vast desert making its true beauty apparent while by day uninterrupted sand and rock formations emphasize the immensity of the terrain that facilitated the disappearance and obscuration of the 26 men. These natural physical qualities suggest that the Atacama is not an immediately obvious place of terror. It has been observed that not only do many massacres occur in spaces that are deliberately inaccessible but also that these mostly rural sites “are tranquil pastoral scenes that do not immediately evoke horror”. Beauty, immensity and remoteness 80
contribute to the lack of immediate attention payed to the horrors perpetrated by the Caravan of Death which results in a history that can be easily forgotten, overlooked or misrepresented. Moreover, the natural features of the Atacama mean that aside from the Women of Calama, people’s main interest in the desert is related to scientific studies, such as astronomy and geology, or aesthetic, imaginative and artistic memory projects.
In regard to the argument that the Women’s actions prompted the construction of a counter memory it is vital to mention that the Women have a unique relationship with the landscape. They experience the terrain as a place of horror, terror, exhaustion and absolute sadness, meaning they can neither concentrate on its scientific value nor romanticize, beautify or embellish it such as has been done in the focus of the following case study, Nostalgia for the Light, and Alison McAlpine’s 2017 documentary, Cielo. Those who were not severely impacted
Tunbridge and Ashworth. The Heritage of Atrocity. 2004, p. 113.
