Villa Grimaldi

Today was a tough day. We spent the afternoon at Villa Grimaldi, which just 26 years ago was one of the over 700 secret torture centers during Pinochet's dictatorship (1973-1989), where people were murdered and 'dissapeared'. While it was not easy to visit this place, I think it's important in Chile's recent history. The place was beautiful, which I feel is a little ironic. Our guide was a guy who had actually spent time as a prisoner in Villa Grimaldi in 1975, which made the experience especially emotional. After a brief overview of the history of Chile immediately before the dictatorship, we started to walk around, and we took the path that the prisoners did.

We first went to the  front door. The plaque above says 'Here began the prisoners journey. Old entrance. This door will stay closed forever. Today the entrance to Villa Grimaldi is at the other side. The old door is locked shut.

One of the next stops was the first torture chamber. All of the buildings were destroyed at the end of the dictatorships, but some have been recreated. Hearing about the torture techniques almost made me sick. The peoples' legs and arms were tied, and they were blindfolded, with one time a day to go to the bathroom, and 3 minutes to eat lunch. I won't go into detail, but the inital torture treatment was between 1 and 3 hours of electric shocks, along with beatings and so many more terrible things. The second room involved more electric shocks, but with metal bunk beds, so that one could listen to someone else suffer.

Torture room. Metal beds with electiricty

Although you can't see very well, this is a wall of names of people who had dissapeared. We next walked over to a tower where some people were kept in solitary confinement and taken out once a day to be tortured. There is a beautful rose garden dedicated to all of the woman murdered and raped in the torture centers in Chile. 

Throughout the tour, our guide shared some personal experiences, or experiences of friends who had spent time in Villa Grimaldi, and the stories were heartbreaking. It's so hard for me to fathom that this was happening less than 30 years ago. Our guide was 23 when he was taken to the torture camps, and spent 13 months in total in 3 different camps. 23 is not that much older than I am, and I can't imagine being in that sitution. Seeing this place- this evidence- made me so angry that there are still people who deny, or try to diminish the important of existance of the camps. While I can understand the opinion that Pinochet did good things for the Chilean economy, how can you disregard the violation of human rights? I would say the Chile is still very politically divided. About 40/45% of Chileans agree with the dictatorship.

One story our guide told me affected me especially. He told us that there was a man who wanted to get married at Villa Grimaldi. While the first thought was that the man was ignorant, uninformed or insensitive, the reason was that his father had dissapeared at Villa Grimaldi, and he wanted his father to be with him on one of the most important days of his life.

This visit eerily reminded me of the holocaust. While I know they are completely different,  hearing about the horrible treatment of these 'communists', the feelings were similar.  I felt like I was walking around a concentration camp. The idea of this place though is a memorial, and just like the holocaust, it's our reminder of the past to ensure-never again.

It amazes me that our guide gives tours 1-2 times a month. He has to relive these horrible memories every time. They have to be so strong.  It's so important though, we need to remember even the horrible parts of our history.

Sorry if this was a bit of a downer, and a bit more serious that usual, but I guess this visit impacted me a lot more than I had expected...