A scholar, a politician, and an insider

During orientation, we´ve had the opportunity to hear a variety of perspectives of Chile´s recent political history (particularly the Pinochet years), and it´s been fascinating. First, we met with the director of Harvard´s Latin American studies office here in Santiago. He gave us the scholar´s perspective. Next, we met with the US ambassador to Chile at the US Embassy. He gave us the politician´s perspective. Today, we went on a human rights tour that included a trip to one of Pinochet´s clandestine torture sights. The tour guide there had been detained in another prison. He gave us the insider´s perspective.

The scholar gave us lots of background information and framed the discussion in terms of political factions and the contrast between Chile´s astounding accomplishments and it´s huge income disparity (among the worst in Latin America, which is one of the most economically-imbalanced regions of the world). He enthusiastically answered all of our questions after tailoring his talk to our interests. The student in me soaked it up.

The politician towed the party line. He artfully dodged our questions as he charismatically pulled off the infamous political trick of answering the question you wish you´d been asked. He slithered around the US involvement in Pinochet´s coup to overthrow the democratically-elected Communist President Allende. I´m still learning more about this, but the US funded right-wing opponents of Allende; paid truckers not to bring food to Santiago, aggrevating already-long food lines; sponsored articles in the press to forward its viewpoint; and the US´s infamous School of the Americas provided training for the torturers who operated at Chile´s 1000+ detention centers after Pinochet stole power. I realize that by sticking to the talking points, the ambassador was doing his job -- but it was maddening to ask a pointed question and get back a bunch of bull.

The insider gave us the tour of a lifetime. I stood inside small wooden boxes that routinely held six detainees. I saw memorabilia that the families of the people who were tortured to death had donated to the not-for-profit foundation that maintains the site. A wall of photographs of the the people who died there and their objects -- including cards with their footprints taken at birth -- made their humanity so real. Our guide made it explicit that he did not hold us responsible for the actions of our government. I wanted to apologize anyway.

He told us that the ambassador had recently visited the site, without notice and without contacting the foundation, which is comprised mainly of survivors, their families, and the families of the people who were killed. The ambassador toured the facility without an official guide, leaving the foundation´s slighted and disrespected. They also felt that as a representative of a government that is currently detaining and torturing large numbers of people, the ambassador was not in a position to write in their visitor book that torture is wrong and that hopefully the atrocities that have come to light in Chile will never occur again anywhere in the world. We felt even more fleeced by the ambassador, who had mentioned his visit to the site as a sign that the US cares what happened here. It was hard to feel that the sentiment was sincere. Why is denying wrong-doing such a fundamental -- and largely accepted -- part of politics? How will we ever learn from our mistakes if we never acknowledge that we made them?