Chile: Forgotten Atrocities

To the Editors of The Crimson:

One reads in the papers every day about tradedies and atrocities so staggering that one runs the risk of forgetting what they mean. One also runs the risk of relegating to the back of one's mind those pressing realities and circumstances that the media relegates to the back pages. The situation in Chile today is one of those realities we must not forget.

Even in the face of fierce repression, even greater numbers of Chileans are finding the courage, born of desperation, and of hope, to openly demand an end to the 10-year dictatorship of General Pinochet and a return to democracy. Every month, with tear-gass, attack dogs, clubs and bullets, police attrack the non-violent protests and rallies of unarmed Chileans. Because of press censorship, the Chilean people cannot fully know what the world hears about events and conditions in their country: they do not know whether their cause has found support or anonymity in the outside world.

Mail is often opened and inspected as it passes through the Chilean mail service, a Chilean friend ran a considerable risk to send me the following letter which I would like to share with readers (my translation):

I hope that this letter finds you well I was very glad to receive your note and to know that you haven't forgotten us...

I have been very sick. The cops beat me brutally at a rally called by the democratic youth which had been authorized by Pinochet. You cannot imagine how they hit me, what's more, they shot me in the back which hurt me very badly, causing a blood clot in my kidney. It is very painful on top of all the other internal complications produced by the blows, from which I have not yet recovered.

With respected to politics, everything is very grim and there's terrible repression. We have lamented over many dramatic events. People sent into internal exile, mass torture, large scale illegal searches of homes, deaths, and on and on without end. The other day a man in Concepcion [Chile's second major city] lit himself on fire in the central plaza because his son and daughter had disappeared. They were being held in secret prison by the CNI [Chilrean Intelligence Service, known for its practice of brutal tortures].

The 18th of November we have a rally called by the Democratic Alliance and various sectors of the working class and the Political Parties in O' Higgins Park [all political parties are illegal in Chile]. We hope and expect it to be a big one. I hope it goes well for us and they don't kill all of us...

Dearest Dove, I am happy to hear you are well...

(Dated November 15, 1983).

I learned about the rally my friend refers to from a one-paragraph piece in The Boston Globe. Five hundred thousand people demonstrated and one person was killed as demonstrators fled police at a political rally in Santiage, the article said. Dove Scherr '84