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Repairing broken dreams
SOURCE: The Guardian Unlimited, UK
DATE: September 14, 1999
Today is the deadline for defence queries in the case against General Pinochet.
But in Chile, Tito Tricot finds, little has changed
I never knew if you cried the day they killed your father, but I do remember
crying the day they machine gunned you to death under the midday sun.
I remember the times when, sitting at the seaside at dusk, we used to dream of
the future: there will be no hunger, street children, beggars, or clandestine
abortions, we said categorically. Homosexuals would be able to make love
wherever they wished, credit cards would be banned as would murder, robbery,
torture, rapes and ragged clothes.
We do not repent for anything we did, for we do not need anybody's permission to
struggle. After all, did the military ask anyone for permission to incarcerate,
torture and murder our people?
No, they did not, they simply filled that cloudy September sky with the smell of
burnt flesh and crushed bones, agonising screams and shattered dreams. It was
the beginning of a long nightmare, the coup d'etat that we all feared, but were
unable to halt. How naive we were thinking that we could resist their violence,
hatred, tanks and planes armed simply with our ideals and hopes of a better
world. We just forgot that sometimes we have to arm ourselves to the teeth to
invade the passivity of history and defend our rights.
Today, 26 years after the coup d'etat that overthrew the democratically elected
government of Salvador Allende, very little has changed: The disappeared are
still missing, the tortured are still being tortured by their experiences, the
murderers and torturers are still at large, the exiled are still living away
from their homeland.
The government has set up a "dialogue table" in order to deal with the human
rights issue and, for the first time in decades, representatives from the armed
forces, some human rights lawyers and other "personalities" designated by the
government, have met to talk about history, reconciliation and forgiveness.
However, it is clear that the government is using this instance as a means of
bringing General Pinochet back to Chile. Or put somewhat differently, the armed
forces have agreed to talk about missing prisoners, and, eventually, provide
limited information about their whereabouts, if Pinochet is brought back to the
country.
But the army has never accepted the possibility of justice being done. Quite on
the contrary: general Juan Carlos Salgado, the army's representative at these
talks, has explicitly stated that "the quest for absolute justice could
jeopardise social peace and the happiness of the Chilean people".
The happiness of our people? How can he talk about happiness when it was his
army, his guns, his bayonets that destroyed the very soul of our nation?
The armed forces insist that there never was a state policy to eliminate
opponents, that - if there were ever any human rights abuses, it was due to the
action of overzealous individuals. Also, in spite of his constant denials,
general Pinochet himself unequivocally stated once that "not a leaf moves in
this country without mine knowing of it".
The English patient has conveniently lost his memory, but our people have not,
therefore, in the past few days thousands of university students have been
demonstrating throughout the country to show their opposition to the dialogue
table and to commemorate all those who fell in the antidictatorial struggle and
for justice to be done. It is just not enough for the armed forces to say that,
maybe, they will provide some information about the disappeared, because they
will not provide the names of those responsible for the executions or torture of
thousands of men, women and children.
In fact, Admiral Jorge Arancibia, head of the Chilean Navy, has once again
denied that the Navy ever tortured anyone. You lie, admiral, I was tortured at
the Naval War academy, thousands of others were tortured at the Quiriquina naval
base in Talcahuano, southern Chile, at the Navy's Silva Palma prison in
Valparaíso, at the Isla Riesco concentration camp run by the marines and at the
Maipo, Lebu and Esmeralda ships that were reconditioned as floating prisons.
So, very little has changed, the government does what the army tells them to do,
the army does what Pinochet tells them to do and our people have no say in our
country's future. However, no one can take from us the right to dream, that's
why we propose to create thousands of workshops for repairing broken dreams,
painting puffins and unicorn horns, teaching kiwis to fly and mending
butterflies' wings.
Cowardly politicians and the military will not be admitted into these workshops,
only common people, beggars, street children, teachers, sex workers, the ugly
and the fat, the skinny and the short ones; the neighbour's lover and the
husband of the neighbour's lover.
Reconciliation is not possible, for wounds are far too deep, so deep that they
are ingrained in our skin, our rivers and mountains, but we firmly believe that
our broken dreams can be repaired and then, only then, you can rest in peace,
brother, for your death will not have been in vain.
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