The horrors of Villa Grimaldi and musings of Cemeterio General

Chile Part 8

This is a joint entry because I went to both places the same day. I remember feeling very tired at the end of it all, emotionally and physically exhausted...

Villa Grimaldi

I remember when I heard that we were going to Villa Grimaldi, I had forgotten what the site signified so when we had to go to school in the morning, all I remembered was that we were going to hear a professor talk about Villa Grimaldi. Not only did I forget that it was a horrible torture site during Chile’s military dictatorship, but I didn’t realize that the professor who was going to talk to us was a survivor of said torture. Needless to say, when I sat down in the classroom and listened to his presentation, I was quickly shocked and unsettled as he retold the site’s old history and his personal experiences. In the classroom, he had brought a mini-reconstruction of Villa Grimaldi showing what it looked like during the dictatorship, because the culprits destroyed the evidence after it seemed like Pinochet was going to be voted out of power. I started feeling sick as he described the various methods of torture, from taking off fingernails to hanging people in unnatural positions for hours at a time. After his presentation, we went to the site, which seemed strange because it was so beautiful. In place of torture rooms and cramped dormitories, trees and green grass had grown over, making it seem like a pleasant place. Such an atmosphere was balanced out by our guide’s descriptions, who seemed almost detached when describing what happened to him. None of us could imagine how he could talk about such cruelty, every day, constantly reliving the experiences.

Cemeterio General

After seeing Villa Grimaldi, we went with the same guide to Cemeterio General, the site where almost every single person born in Santiago has been buried.  I found it to be incredibly powerful in terms of how striking the class differences are in the city. We started out at the rich side, where people obviously paid handsome sums in order to have Greek columns and stained-glass mausoleums that display their power. We continued along, eventually gazing in awe at the grand tomb made for Salvador Allende. His tomb was almost in the middle of the rich and poor side, metaphorically shown as a force that could have united a society on the brink of tearing in two. Further along, we got to see the other side of how Santiago lives. It was simply astonishing. Unmarked graves, broken fences and decaying weeds cluttered the burial grounds. I realized that despite being in Santiago for almost 4 months, I’ve only seen a very small part of how the people live here. Come to think of it, even in Oakland I’ve only seen certain areas. It’s important to keep that in mind when you think you know everything. 

Here is the model of Villa Grimaldi in its "prime." When we walked into the classroom, this is the first thing we saw. It seemed innocent enough at first, but our professor/guide for the day, Pedro Matta, wasted no time in painting the gruesome picture of reality. He would casually walk around the model, pick up a piece, and show it to us while he recounted stories of torture. You'll notice that the prisoner areas, the lower right section of the model, are relatively small. The DINA (Chile's secret police during the military dictatorship) made it that way because they realized it was more effective to brutally break down an opposition leader, and make him an example, then deal with hundreds of people at a time. Pedro was one of those leaders.

After our class lesson, we went to the actual site itself, where many areas are marked with mosaics to describe what happened in each place. Here, the sign says "Nunca más en Chile," or "Never again in Chile." It seems sad to be how many signs like this around the world have had to be made...and it doesn't stop.  

Our guide, Pedro, showing us the peephole in the last standing relic of Villa Grimaldi - the actual door they used to let in the prisoners.   

The door.

A reconstructed shack to demonstrate the size/appearance of the torture rooms

This is purely an artsy photo, but a dark one at that. I saw the contrast of the red leaves against the green ones, and I thought of the blood spilled here, and how it was so well cleaned up by the DINA agents. But the nature was there, it saw everything that happened, and it still bears the stains...

It really would have been a different experience if we hadn't had the orientation beforehand. On the surface, it simply looks like a beautiful estate.

Interestingly, at Villa Grimaldi, while the men were kept in separate sleeping quarters, the women all stayed together. Pedro himself still does not know why they did this, but he did tell us that such a shared bonding experience led to the women, to this day, maintaining a strong network of support and friendship because of what they went through together. 

Some of the original paint from the walls of Villa Grimaldi. I kept thinking about how many people had put their hands on those walls, how it looked as if the paint had been viciously scraped away.

Finally, the wall of memory, where every single victim of torture at Villa Grimaldi, killed or otherwise, is carefully noted.

One of the most powerful scenes of all. Here in the rose garden, DINA men would take the female prisoners and brutally rape them as a further dehumanization. One of the girls once remarked that she felt it horribly ironic to be in such a beautiful place after such a disgusting deed.

Other names in the rose garden

A replica of the immense guard tower where they would keep some of the most rebellious prisoners in a kind of solitary confinement

Drawings recovered from some of the prisoners in the guard tower

I was incredulous at first to see this, but these were actually the entrances to the guard tower cells. The prisoners were forced onto their hands and knees like dogs and shoved in, not heard from for weeks at a time.

Throughout the tour, I kept thinking about what it must be like for Pedro to tell these stories every day, reliving it all. At the end of the tour, I asked him how he dealt with it. He replied, "Every day I go back to my house and I drink half a bottle of wine. That is all I can do." Serious stuff.



We then went to Cemeterio General...

This is the grave of Orlando Letelier, a Chilean diplomat whose citizenship Pinochet tried to revoke while Letelier was abroad in Washington, D.C. The grave reads, "I was born Chilean, I am Chilean, and I will die Chilean."

The rich section of the cemetery - marble columns, checkered floors...and that's only for the cremation section!

A typical Chilean mausoleum, complete with beautiful stained glass in the background. The impressive architecture makes it seem as though it were built for a king, when in reality some people just paid a lot of money for it.

The impressive tomb of Salvador Allende. Interestingly, it is located in the rich section of the cemetery, something I don't think he would have liked. Pedro choked up when talking about how much he admired the man, how he saw him as a visionary trying to unite a country divided.

The somewhat more modest arrangements in Cemeterio General, a stark contrast to those marble columns

This grave impressed upon me the love that this family must have had for their fallen loved one. I did not see such a beautiful sight at any of the columned mausoleums...

Cheaper graves, but still relatively well kept and respectable, with the occasional laurel or family touch. 

And finally, the cold reality that we do not see on a daily basis. Battered, twisted crosses for families who love their fallen ones just as much as the others, but who do not have adequate funds to give them a proper burial. These are the unmarked graves. 

Finally, the intimidating wall of memory for every single person killed or disappeared during the military dictatorship. 

It is simply immense.

What a long day. I needed to see it all, but it still rocked me inside. We must always honor the past and those who gave their lives for what they believed in, because to forget them is to forget where we come from.