“A People Without A Memory Is A People With A Future” Plaque Outside the Estadio Nacional
The Gate 8 sector of Estadio Nacional is left empty in memory of the estimated 20,000 people held in the stadium following a 1973 military coup in Chile.
“Our scars make us know
that our paid was real.”
Jane Austen
“Closure” is a lie!
When it comes to trauma, there’s no “closure”!
We may lock some things away – deep in our memory and our gut, but they’re still there. Waiting.
In early June my “safety vault” was blown open by an email with two attachments. They followed a call the day before from the former Maryknoll Brother who was incarcerated with me in Chile’s infamous Estadio Nacional – national futbol (soccer) stadium in 1973. He had recent discovered an affidavit completed six weeks after our return to the United States and asked if my memories confirmed his.
My emotional reactions and churning stomach after his call and reading his sworn statement prove “closure is a lie!”
For too many years, Father Tobin has repeatedly insisted “write about it.”
Even now, the problem has been flashbacks, not-necessarily-anxiety but emotions that made it difficult even to pray, and a sense of – occasional – isolation because, unless you’ve been there – as are the so many newcomers to the “land of the free” today, it’s not that folks don’t understand. It’s that they can’t
Some parts – the blanks you’ll never see or know about – are still too self-preservingly buried so deep that I can’t – or don’t want to - “write about it.” To try – at least try -to respond to Father Tobin’s “write about it,” I‘ll break this into a few entries.
But here goes:
I was in a graduate theology class in Santiago’s Catholic University of Chile on Tuesday, September 11, 1973 when six British-made Hawker Hunter fighter jets buzzed the rooftop on their way to bombing la Moneda – Chile’s White House.
The coup d’etat ushering in a 17-year dictatorship that would “disappear” more than 3,000 (often young adult) men and women and imprison 38,000 political prisoners – most of them victims of torture – was underway.
Dodging gunfire several times and before the nationwide curfew fell at sundown, I made my way home - the “mission parish” of San Juan de Dios in the Buzeta neighborhood. An absolute curfew would remain in effect until Friday morning; violate it and you’d be killed – often by an unseen military sniper. (It happened too many times in Buzeta over the next few days.)
On Thursday night, Father Elmer Myers, our pastor, violated curfew, sneaking through backyards and alleyways to bring back my birthday cake prepared by the Maryknoll Sisters. On Friday, an American Holy Cross seminarian took refuge in Buzeta and recounted tales of a Holy Cross chaplain at the Universidad Tecnologica: Having anointed so many murdered students that he was on the verge of a complete breakdown. (Ironically, the Buzeta church belltower afforded a great view of the nearby Air Force base runways and my American seminarian friend and I decided to survey the city from that appealing height – only to be fired on from a no-lights-showing helicopter apparently surveilling the landing strips. As the two of us ran past Father Myers after dropping from the tower, he inquired “What’s happening, boys?” Of course, we responded “NOTHING!”)
The entire nation was almost completely pinned down by curfew until Sunday Mass time. [Murderous dictators expect God’s favor because they let people attend Sunday Mass.] The after-Mass scene repeated itself too many times: Parents, families coming to beg me to go to the Estadio Nacional – the national futbol (soccer) stadium. Five days after the coup their sons and daughters hadn’t returned from the Tecnica; with my American passport they assumed I would be “safe,” and could go to the Estadio and see if their children were there.
The plan was that the Maryknoll Brother and I would rendezvous at 1234 Nataniel Street, the residence of two Maryknoll priests, before going to the Estadio. While I met with devasted families, he headed out early. His 11:45 entry into 1234 was quickly followed – “at approximately 12 noon” – by the arrival of six Investigaciones (secret police) officers. (My memory is the contingent included at least one or two armed soldiers; his affidavit does not include this.)
[When the Brother arrived at 1234, he found an American woman reading in the living room and claiming she was a lay volunteer from the Methodist Church in the U.S. and working at a nearby daycare center. She claimed she needed a place to decompress and speak English; she asked to be able to stay for a while at 1234 and volunteered that she had never to have been to any other country then ruled by murderous South American dictatorships. However, when she and the Brother were ordered to empty their pockets by the invading secret police, she had “rolls” of Brazilian, Argentinian and Chilean currencies. She was among the eight Americans – including the Brother and myself - released into the custody of Frederick Purdy, American Consul in Chile on Wednesday, September 26. Weeks after the Brother’s and my exile from Chile – under threat that we would be killed if we were not “on the first available flight out,” she was still waltzing the streets of Santiago and enjoying the hospitality of Maryknoll Sisters. The American Methodist Church denied any knowledge of her.]
I arrived at approximately 1:30; because of the design of entryways of homes in that neighborhood, it was impossible to know from the street what was happening inside.) My memory is that a young soldier turned and pointed his rifle at my chest as, spreading my arms out from my side, I said, “Oh god, are we in trouble now.” It is possible that God responded, “What do you mean WE?”
The Investigaciones (aand soldiers?) gathered up printed materials – an important issue I’ll return to quickly – before the Brother and I were bundled into a car together with five of the investigations officers. The Brother recalls that the American woman was also in the vehicle; I don’t remember that. We were taken to the Ministry of Defense headquarters, where four of the officers “proceeded to bring the literature discovered in the Nataniel house, up to an office.”
While they were inside, the Brother and I repeatedly implored the driver to accept a slip of paper with the name and telephone contact number for Father Thomas Kirscmyer, our Maryknoll regional superior in Chile. He eventually acquiesced, provided we could not make the call ourselves from the Estadio to which we were being transported and “that we not tell the remaining four officials that he might make this call for us.” Upon arriving at the Estadio, we were denied any calls.
It's my memory that during this initial interrogation that the spirit of my persecuted Irish ancestors surged.While I easily provided essential background -name, age, citizenship, reason for being in Chile (a member of a Catholic missionary community working in Chile and teaching in the Buzeta parish school), I denied that I was arrested in a “house filled with Marxist propaganda and materials.”
The “Marxist literature” – a close cousin to rightwing American claims that politicians with whom they disagree are “communists,” “socialists,” “Marxists” or “hate America” – really pissed me off. Included in the materials taken as “evidence” from 1234 were works of the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, the Documents of the Second Vatican Council, reports of the Latin American Episcopal Council of Catholic bishops’ Medellin (1968) conference, and copies of papal encyclicals on social justice and human rights
“Mire, Senor…” “Look, sir,” (As my parents’ son I was still respectful.) “I know that Monsignor el Cardinal (the Cardinal Archbishop of Santiago) has many of these same books. If you are willing to go with me to Monsignor Cardinal and tell him that his library is full of Marxist propaganda, I’ll sign your statement.”
The poor guy was a “hunt-and-peck” typist using a vintage, stand-up (heavy as cast iron) typewriter. He “typed” out three different “statements,” each of which I refused to sign while declaring “mentira” – “a lie.” Exasperated, he pushed his old standup at me with instructions to produce my own declaration. Somewhat arrogantly, my newspaperman-self kicked in. I dashed off the briefest possible facts-only statement, pulled it from the typewriter, signed across the last word, and made a big X – leaving no room for any additions.
I remember thinking – but not saying, “I survived fourteen days of Hell Week in Gamma Phi Chapter of Sigma Chi Fraternity at the University of Miami. Give it your best shot.”
That’s when my interrogator’s supervisor showed up, asking what the problem was. Told I was being “uncooperative,” he directed “Don’t worry about that [really nasty Spanish slur]. We’re sending him to the firing squad in fifteen minutes.”
I went full-Miami-Irish-Catholic-educated-by-the-“good-Sisters” on him: “It doesn’t matter to me. I just went to Mass and Communion. Do whatever you want.”
Eventually, the Maryknoll Brother and I were placed cell (locker room) No. 1 “which contained at that time seventy detainees.”
“At midnight a bus pulled up outside of our cell. Men and women, who appeared to be of latin (sic) origin, were ordered out of the bus by soldiers and made to sit on the side walk with their hands behind their heads. They were then beaten by the soldiers with rifle butts. 'Ihis vas (sic) described to us by a Candadian who was sitting on a bench approximately ten feet off the grotmd (sic) that afforded a view to the outside through three small windows which were open...
“At the same time people were being beaten outside of the stadium soldiers had formed a gauntlet outside of our cell i.n (sic) the hallway. Men were made to run this gauntlet and as they did so they were beaten by soldiers with rifle butts. One man fell from a blow he received and was shot in the chest by a soldier. No soldier or other individual approached thie (sic) man and he died five minutes later. The soldier who shot the -man blew off the end of his rifle and laurhed (sic).
This was described to us by a fellow detainee who was peering through a wall fan, which had been turned off, and which faced the hallway. Hie story was substantiated by a Nicaraguan doctor who was being processed in the hallway and who eventually was brought into our cell.
The beatings on both sides of our cell lasted from approximately midnight to 1:30 AM.
The wooden benches behind the north goal at Estadio Nacional are reserved in perpetuity, a memorial to the thousands of people who were beaten and tortured here 42 years ago in the home of Chilean soccer.
The new regime jailed forty-five priests and expelled another fifty. On September 16, a naval patrol arrested Anglo-Chilean Father Michael Woodward and tortured him on the naval training ship Esmeraldo. At this writing, investigators are still searching for his body.
On September 19, Spanish priest Joan Alsina, the head of personnel at the San Juan de Dios Hospital, was arrested an executed. His body finally appeared in the Mapocho Rever on September 27.
The Spanish priest Gerardo Poblete disappeared in northern Chile on October 1 (the day we arrived back in New York); that same evening his religious superior was called to administer the last Rites of the Church. When he arrived at 8:00 p.m. Father Poblete was already dead. Witnesses later asserted he died as a result of the sustained beatings he endured at the police station. The police claimed “Father Poblete…slipped upon exiting the van, falling heavily on the pavement without initially apparent consequences.” However later “[the police] went to get him to be interrogated and found him unconscious.” They also alleged a search of Father Poblete’s bedroom uncovered “Marxist materials.”
On July 1,2014, CBS News reported:
“A Chilean court said U.S. military intelligence services played a key role that led to the 1973 killings of two Americans in Chile in a case that inspired the Oscar-winning film ‘Missing.’
“A court ruling released late Monday said former U.S. Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis gave information to Chilean officials about journalist Charles Horman and student Frank Teruggi that led to their arrest and execution just days after the 1973 coup that brought Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power.
"’The military intelligence services of the United States had a fundamental role in the creation of the murders of the two American citizens in 1973, providing Chilean military officers with the information that led to their deaths,’ the ruling by Judge Jorge Zepeda said…
“Davis commanded the U.S. Military Mission in Chile at the time of the Sept. 11, 1973, American-backed coup that ousted the democratically elected government of leftist President Salvador Allende. Davis was investigating Americans in Chile as part of a series of covert intelligence operations run out of the U.S. Embassy targeting those considered to be subversives or radicals, according to lawyer Sergio Corvalan, who represents Horman's widow.”
Closure is a lie.
Only for Father Tobin would I “write about it.”