A personal testimony on behalf of the City of Noli in Liguria, Italy
by Marcello Ferrada-Noli
In
occasion of the 100 birthday of the late Chilean President Salvador
Allende, the Region of Liguria and the City of Noli organized a
commemorative program. The Vice Mayor of the City of Noli, Prof.
Alberto Peluffo, asked me to write a personal testimony on the
happenings around Pinochet Coup D’État of September 11th 1973. This is the English version of my text.
Poster by Amnesty International - 1977, of my painting "Esperando al desaparecido. . ." (Amnesty text, Swedish, "How could 2,000 people disappear?")
"Although
a majority democratically elected Allende as their president, which was
killed thereafter, it was only a minority of Chileans which confronted
Pinochet with active resistance. Where does courage come from, to do
such a thing? Marcello Ferrada-Noli resumes after a long reflection: -
It is a question of honour to act according one’s conviction, which is
not to be confounded with martyrdom. It is also a question of instinct,
an altruistic behaviour such as the person who risks his/her life in
saving the life of another person. Perspective must be to see mankind as
something bigger than only the ego of our own, and not like the amoeba,
that, in Einstein’s words, experiences the drop of water in which she
lives of being the universe. When there is no other available
alternative, the one who fights has nothing to lose but his own
oppressed existence” / Dagens Nyheter (DN) interview with the author, “Professor has sailed in dangerous waters”, DN 17/7 2008.
It is estimated that 30.000 people were killed
in the aftermath of the U.S.-sponsored military coup in Chile of
September 11th, 1973. Combatants of the leftist organization MIR and
from other leftist parties offered active resistance to Pinochet’s army
on the 11th of September. However, the resistance to the military
takeover was in general sporadic, with low firepower, and did not
prevail. In other words it did not occur in the scale expected, or
planned. We in MIR were at that time on high alert (see below Plan Militar de Emergencia),
psychologically prepared “for the moment to come” and for the relevant
activities. Moreover, we new (and even provided Allende with
intelligence on the coup-preparation) that the putsch was imminent.
But
the open direct resistance was crushed very soon, and also due
to the brutality of Pinochet forces the core-militants did not succeed
to encourage the mobilization of the vast majority of Allende supporters
in order to take up the fight together.
Yet another aspect it was that Allende
himself warned (on the very 11 of September) the supporters that have
elected him, of not taking unnecessary sacrifices. I was in
Concepción at the moment of the coup and at that time with assignment in
the Organization detail of the Regional Committee, meaning that my
“structure” was of a “central” kind. Three of the five members of the
detail were captured. I spent times at different detention centres such
as the Stadium, the Navy’s camp of prisoners at Quiriquina Island, the
“marines” detention quarters at the Navy base in Talcahuano, and finally
back to the Stadium in Concepción.
Many
died in these places either under torture or executed by firing squad.
For instance, in the photo here below taken at the prisoner camp of
Quiriquina Island and published in the front page of the mayor Chilean
newspaper ”Tercera de La Hora” (6 of October 1973), is mentioned the Intendente of
Concepción Fernando Alvarez (head for the Regional government at the
moment of the coup), at the centre of the picture. In fact, he died
under torture at the camp in Quiriquina Island some days after that
picture was taken. I am also depicted in the same photo, upper right
(indicated by the red arrow). The photo was taken during a visit of the
Red Cross International at the camp. This fact did enable, or forced,
the public "recognition" that I was held prisoner – instead of risking
the standard status of “disappeared" person.
Translation of photo caption above in La Tercera (Chile), 6 Oct 1973 [Notes in brackets]: "THE PRISONERES IN QUIRIQUINA. In Quriquina Island were imprisoned the extremists and local authorities of Concepción of the past Marxist regime. The first ones [the 'extremists' for have attacked the Armed Forces with firearms [indicated by the arrow, Marcello Ferrada de Noli, militant of the resisting MIR and then professor at the University of Concepción]. The second ones [the authorities], as the case of ex-Governor Fernando Alvarez [communist militant and Law School graduate, in circle at centre, for being intellectual authors of the plan to exterminate the armed forces' officers and prominent [Allende's] opposers. [Fernando Alvarez was executed one month after the photo above].
Three factors have contributed to obscure the real magnitude of the resistance on the 11th of September and the days ensued. One is the reluctance of the putsch leaders of acknowledging the true magnitude of their casualties. Doing this would have shown that the resistance was effective and thus motivating its continuation. A second factor is that the far most of the operations were of clandestine character. Also, due to the fact that all the press, all TV channels and all radio stations were seized the 11th and remained under the direct control of the military (not only by decree, but physically under control) it was not possible either to communicate eventual results of the actions.
A
third factor is the “factor seguridad” of the militants and units involved. As
cadres become arrested in increasing numbers, the units or combatants
acting with own initiative tightened security to keep knowledge of the
actions to the absolute minimum, or even unknown. For instance, not even
the closest members of our families, spouses, etc. would know or
suspect what had really happened. This ignorance would save them too.
And that silence continued for the years to come, no matter that many
lived then in exile. However, an unequivocal recognition from the part
of the military authorities on that the active resistance in Concepción
took place in form of armed attacks is given in the text of the photo of La Tercera (6/10 1973) above.
I
was then 30 years old and a professor at the University of Concepción.
Having worked previously as invited professor in Mexico with books
published there etc, I was released from captivity partly after direct
demands from Mexican academic scholars and authorities (pressures and
solidarity came also from colleagues in Italy and Germany), and partly
after demands from my family which had strong tradition among the
military. I was not set free in Chile but expelled from the country
directly to Mexico from the prison, escorted to the airport by the
military.
I
had to sign in the airport a document committing me of not to speak
about the atrocities in Quiriquina Island etc. However, I changed route
in Lima (the first stopover in my way to Mexico), from where on
instructions of my organization I went directly to Rome, Italy, in order
to participate in the Russell Tribunal which had started in Rome on the
crimes of Pinochet’s junta. I was main witness at the Russell Tribunal
and thereafter member of the scientific committee of the Russell
Tribunal together with writer Gabriel García Márquez, Linda Bimbi, and
Senator Lelio Basso. Thereafter I was sent to Sweden where my last
assignment from MIR’s Comité Exterior was to organize
intelligence work for the counterattack to Pinochet liquidation squads
in Northern Europe, activity which I lead until 1977. I resigned all my
activities in MIR in June 1977, during the MIR Conference in Stockholm.
Part I
September 11th, 1973
It was a very shiny seven o’clock, that morning of September 11th 1973
in Concepción, the largest city of southern Chile. I was then staying
at the family country house some 20 kilometres north of the University
campus, where not so long ago I had been appointed professor of
psychosocial methods. I have come back from México some months before.
Going out towards the garage, the meeting of a sunny day made me decide
at the last second to ride instead my motorcycle to the job. As it did
show, it was a spur-of-the moment decision that most certainly save me
from being captured, tortured, and killed that very same day.
Nearly
exact three years ago had Allende became the first democratically
elected president in the western world. I was then 27 years old and
living at that time in London, and I decided to come back immediately to
Chile. During those first years, the structural changes made by
Allende’s government in favour of the less privileged sectors of
society, and that to certain extent were to be financed by the
nationalization of the Chilean cooper mining industry – then exploited
by private USA corporations – brought about many powerful enemies to him
and his government from both in and outside Chile.
The
biggest and most important parties of the centre-left coalition that
supported Allende’s government were yet in good faith convinced that the
vast popular support to Allende together with the democratic
credentials of his government would indeed avert any serious political
attempt against the “gobierno popular”. On the other hand, a tiny
minority voice within the left ranks, mainly represented by MIR – the
revolutionary left movement – was pretty convinced that Allende
government was not safe, and that a coup d’état would be imminent. With
thesis as point of departure, MIR had instead prompted Allende to secure
his support among the masses by deepening the socialist measures in
their favour. At the same time, MIR started to do some preparations to
resist militarily if necessary, and seriously thought that such
resistant could be prosperous when the time would arrive.
The
facts probed, fatally, that both theses were equivocate. Pinochet and
his generals were not only well militarily prepared but their mission
well assisted and even organized with powerful help from abroad, from
the land of the foreign owners of the Chilean mines.
In
short, using drastic and brutal over violence, Pinochet generals and
their allies seized militarily the power that has been denied to them
politically by the course of the democratic polls. With all, the most
effective tactic of Pinochet operation was the consequent concealing of
his purposes to his chief, President Allende, to whom he had swear
loyalty until the last moment. Not even MIR, in spite of all the
intelligence was able to gather about the coup preparations, was able to
predict the very date of the putsch.
Consequently,
that morning of the 11th of September, while I was riding my motorbike
to Concepción, entering Collao Avenue, I was not aware that Pinochet
troops were since earlier setting up checkpoints and stopping every
single car or bus going downtown. The military were in search of combat
weapons and looking for cars transporting persons whose names were in
their arrest-lists. They did let pass through only single walkers, and
when it was clear at first sight they could not be wearing combat
weapons.
The
military and the police forces collaborating with them in the
preparation of the military take-over have their lists, exactly like
Gestapo. In these lists were all the authorities appointed by the
government, all the trade unions leaders (not only of national or
regional organizations, but of every single union leader at the working
sites) and the leaders of the left political parties and organizations,
the academic and intellectuals with left sympathies, the leaders of
student organizations, etc.
I
dare to say that my odds were not the best. I was at that time member
of the leadership of the association of university teachers and workers,
which was my public political assignment. Besides, as a young
university professor graduated in philosophy and recently having
published a book [1] which – although its mainly philosophic content – I
had expressly dedicated it to an Indian leader of the agriculture
workers (Moises Huentelaf, who fallen death 1972 by the bullets of the
powerful landowners of Southern Chile), I was indeed considered by the
military among the so-called “left intellectuals”. Not to mention I had
published articles in the independent leftist magazine “Punto Final”.
And “worst” of all, I have been one of the founders of MIR back in
October 1965 and also co author, together with long-time friend Miguel
Enríquez (MIR’s leader) and his brother Marco Antonio, of the first
“Tesis politico-militar” of MIR approved in the constituent
congress [2]. Although no more than eighty people from all along Chile
was present at the constituent congress of 1965, at the time of the
coup, 1973, MIR had grown to thousands of supporters, and many of them
core-militants. For the first time, I will also acknowledge here that
my clandestine political role as MIR militant was member of the
Organization Committee of MIR for the Region Concepción.
As
I saw increasing checking points I left the motorcycle and continued
more discretely per foot towards Concepción. As I was already in the way
towards the University I decided to get into the house of Avenue
Roosevelt 1674, the residence of Dr. Edgardo Enríquez Frödden (see here)
which was then living in Santiago in his condition of Education
Minister in Allende’s government. I knew that his son Marco Antonio, one
of my closest friends (brother if Miguel Enríquez) was living there.
Marco Antonio Enríquez was a scholar from Sorbonne university in Paris
which also had come back to Chile. There we were updated of the
happenings via the radio. Pinochet coup had started in the Navy base in
Valparaiso and coordinated with Army troops in Santiago. They were now
moving around the President Palace “La Moneda” in downtown Santiago.
From
the Enríquez’s place I called the “central” but it was not operative
that early. In the meantime we saw the army trucks, full lasted
with soldiers, going in direction to the university campus. At
aproximately10.30 I made finally contact and I was given a “punto”
(meeting point) in Concepción downtown, specifically at the exit
Maipú Street of Galería Rialto (if I remember the name well), to receive
details of the orders.
At
that times MIR had prepared, nation-wide among its core organization, a
military-political organization based in the “GPM-structures”
(“grupos político-militares”). This means that every single militant,
regardless his/her public political commitment, was member of a
concrete GPM. These GPMs, also called “structures”, were in turn
organised in clandestine military-political cells (“las bases”). In my
particular case, being at that time working clandestine at the
Organization detail of the Regional Committee, my GPM was the one called
“the centralized structure” and my operative cell was the detail
itself, integrated at that time by five members (of whom three have
survived, all of us living in different countries in Europe).
The
main contingency strategy of MIR for the eventuality of a putsch was
contained in the nation-wide “Plan Militar De Emergencia” (PME),
according to which every single GPM, and its turn every concrete cell,
had a previously assigned geographic area to act upon politically and militarily
during the planned resistance. Up to my knowledge, every single MIR
militant have had some military training. Apart of the cells mentioned
above, existed at MIR also a few so-called “grupos de fuerza”,
integrated with militants with a certain degree of specialization for
this kind of resistance task. For instance, during the months prior the
coup, the training coaches of MIR ranks used to belong to those
structures. Some of them, also as militants of MIR, had previously
served as bodyguards of President Allende. Nearly all of them are now
dead.
The
organization cell which I belonged to – as I said before pertained to
the central structure of MIR in Concepción - had been assigned combat
stations precisely in the centre part of Concepción City. This posed a
terrible problem for me, personally, since my parents lived in the
building of Colo-Colo Street and Avenue San Martín, two blocks from the
Concepción “Plaza de Armas” and were the government offices were
located. This means also that near my parent’s residence was situated
(circa two hundred meters towards the opposite direction) the head
quarters of the Military Division of the garrison Concepción are (at
O’Higgins Street and Castellón Street)! Also my son and his mother have
been sheltered at my parents’ residence; this after my father went to
the country side and brought them to “safe”. In fact, Pinochet forces
have had – during my absence – a siege to the property at the country
side on the afternoon of September 11th.
The
resistance in Concepción, and in Chile as a whole, was not done at the
scale that MIR had expected, although numerous combats took place in
several sites all over the country. In this fight participated also
militants from other political parties of the left. In Concepción,
sporadic skirmishes were reported regarding the nights of the 11th and 12th
of September, both in the centre of the city and in some point of its
periphery. And this was supposed to be according to the plan.
After
35 years it is not possible to be exact without the documents in hand,
but, as I recall in gross terms, the PME had among other items in its
strategy these four moments to be implemented: a) MIR cells assigned for
combat in down town were not to seize positions or barricade but to
develop hit and run operations in multiple targets with the principal
focus of distracting Pinochet forces from the combats in the
“cordones industrials”. b) These so called industrial cordons were the
regions in the outer perimeter or outskirts of the city where factories
were allocated, and also many “poblaciones” – the living areas of that
time for the working class and the poor. Here it was previously
organized, and predicted, severe resistance to the military forces. c)
The cool mining workers from Lota and Coronel, cities near Concepción,
were “expected” to cross Bio-Bio Bridge in a mass march (a political
demonstration, not necessarily with arms) towards Concepción and thus
reaching first the city’s periphery where the workers would unite with
the people in the cordones. d) The battle would continue pushing the
military towards the centre parts of the city and were they had their
head quarters and also the three regiments were located.
The
only aspect I can personally testify is the one related to the night
“enfrentamientos” (perhaps more properly referred as sporadic “fire
exchange”) from some roofs of buildings in Concepción down town the 11th
and 12th of September. They did exist. And I was personally involved in the nearby of the Hotel Alonso de Ercilla in Coco-Colo street, between San Matín and Colo-Colo Streets. And I also remember vividly some
sounds of explosions and the sound at intervals of automatic fire,
heard long away from downtown, during those two days. As a matter of
fact, in a visit I made to Concepción in 1984 (my first visit to Chile
after my exile in Europe), the impact of bullets were still visible on
the white walls by the stairs in the interior of the building in
Colo-Colo St. and San Martín Av. They were also clearly noticeable on the large neighbouring wall of
the Hotel Alonso de Ercilla. Most certain, those marks have
still survived in one or another fashion under the make up. They were too big
and too many to be concealed by cosmetics.
On
the other developments, I never knew for real what real happened at the
“cordones industrials” of Concepción. We heard the automatic fire and
some heavy explosions-sounds that came from the city’s outskirts. Mostly
the very same day of September 11th. I met some comrades
both at the stadium and at Quiriquina Island who were assigned to that
front. But one fundamental rule (for one’s survival and the rest’s) is
that you never, ever, ask your comrades in captivity on “how did it go”
on such matters. On the other hand, I certainly know what happened with
the projected march of the mining workers.
According
to the information I have, the head of MIR’s Regional Committee in
Concepción, which was supposed to have the ultimate responsibility for
the political side of the PME would have ordered MIR militants in Lota
and Coronel – in spite of the orders contained in the PME - to halt the
march towards Concepción. He visited me at my residence in Stockholm in
1980 and after his account of facts I am prone to believe the version I
had heard from before that he tried to halt the march in order to avert
the almost certain massacre that march would eventually end in.
Indirectly, this is a clear acknowledgement for us that the resistance
against the deployment of military Pinochet forces in Concepción did not
achieve the goals of the PME.
Personally,
I was first publicly declared dead at the combats of Concepción, which
in the beginning occasioned much problem during my first time in
military captivity, as I explain down below (in order to survive
torture, it existed the praxis to attribute to the perished combatants
the responsibility facts and whereabouts searched by the interrogators).
In fact, I continued moving myself in clandestine forms in Concepción,
and in regular contact with our operative-liaisons (females all of them.
Known as “las compañeras de la central”), until the order of cease
operations and “submerge” was given to me by her and as it was contained
in a communication from MIR leadership in Santiago to all the GPMs
which had survived in Chile.
We
could sum up that in that period the armed resistance to Pinochet’s
forces was defeated, but not perished. The year after, being in Rome, I
painted the piece “Vinta ma non sconfitta” which also was the motive of
the poster for an art exhibition organized by the publishing house
Feltrinelli, here below:
As
MIR cadres were abated and our logistics became more and more
precarious I have to mover more and more often between safe houses. MIR
transports were in a moment extremely scarce or too risky to use, and I
had finally to rely in my family for such transports. “Safe houses” were
at the end just places of people around your private life,
acquaintances without political bounds, or places dangerous per se.
This was the case of the last safe house I could count with, in the
northern sector of Concepción, and actually belonging to the maid
employed at my parents’ residence. What I did not know it was she had a
relationship with a sergeant of the Regiment Chacabuco. I call my father
immediately to come and pick me up but the car was detained “for
driving after the curfew”. I never knew if it was a set up. My family is
indeed right-wing and many were, and in later generations still are,
officers in the armed forces or in the Navy. On the other hand this fact
contributed that I am still alive.
I
was taken first to the Stadium in Concepción. The morning after I was
lined with two other prisoners waiting execution – right under the goal
frame – by firing squad. One of the fellow prisoners was the former
executive director of the state-owned SOCOAGRO in Chillán, and the other
was a 16 years old worker from a “cantera” (sort of stone mine) caught
with explosives apparently taken from the mine. I was recognized by a
petty officer years before serving under my father’s command. I was
saved, and it was not going to be the last time. For more details, read
the text by Anna-Leena Jarva - based on my testimony and other documents
- in Ferrada-Noli VS. Pinochet, (Go down to Part II, The Aftermath).
Part II
Prisoner in Quiriquina Island
Torture "Pau de arare". Painting by Arte de Noli, exhibited at Kulturhuset, Stockhom 1977
The author, prisoner at Quiriquina Island
At the time of General Augusto Pinochet’s Coup D’état I was mobilized in the organization-unit belonging to the GPM (Grupo político-militar) of the Comité Regional Concepción of the MIR. The actions were already set for each GPM and its units in the Plan Militar de Emergencia (PME) which
prevailed in MIR in anticipation of the Coup D’état. This plan
was not in the main followed by MIR in Concepción. Partly due to the Nr
2 ordinance (comunicado nr 2) distributed by the Comite Regional the 12
of September in which we were asked to “wait and see”. I received this
communicate in hand through personal courier, in a rendezvous sat in
Maipú and Aníbal Pinto street, close to Galería Rialto, where
the Communication and Telephone Central of MIR in Concepción had its
clandestine quarters in the second floor (“La Central”). This was also a
centralized unit ad hoc the Regional Secretariat of MIR. The unit’s
task was also the decoding of the encrypted messages coming from MIR
command in Santiago (“La Comisión Política”, led av Miguel Enríquez). The communiqué was given to me by one ot the three militant-girls ascribed to La Central ( ”H”, I have her name), and she said were instructions of the Secretario Regional of MIR in Concepción.
Sharing
my first safe house – already from early morning of September 11 –
with Marco Antonio Enríquez (elder brother of the leader of MIR) in
Avda Roosevelt near the University campus, we questioned the
authenticity of such comunicado nr 2 apparently contradicting
what we knew of Miguel’s activities in Santiago. Thus, in trying to
adjust to the Plan, I changed again to a safe house located ad hoc a
Pharmacy in Barros Arana Street – in the vicinity of a building of the
Carabineers – to monitor troop movements. We choosed safe-houses only
located in central Concepción or around military compounds, in order
to deal with the curfew-situation, which otherwise limited our night
operations (situation – regretfully - not contemplated in the PME). The
first house, rather big, was owned by a family of
Allendes’s sympathizers which also run there a
Pharmacy. We initiated nocturnal actions in central Concepción the first
night after September 11. However, since in the house were also hidden
various non-combatants Allende sympathizers, ultimately we were asked by
its owners to leave the premises, in fear of a searching if we would be
followed or captured.
If
I remember well, these actions were reported by the newspaper “El Sur”
the 13 or 14 September, with a picture of fire-giving from the roofs in
central Concepción.
I
was later captured while transported under curfew by my father (a
former officer) obliged to leave suddenly my fourth safe house and with
no contacts left in the organization. The head of the Comisión de organización (my
unit) was captured in Las Higueras and taken to Quiriquina Island were I
later met him heavily tortured. He never talked and saved thus several
lives (he is now a doctor exiled in Holland). La Central at Galleria
Rialto had been closed down by MIR’s initiative.
My
father did not know anything beyond that I was “on the run” and in
need of help for transport that night. Having my father right-wing
political sympathies, I did not carry anything that could compromise.
The vehicle was intercepted by an Army patrol in Las Heras street. At
the spot identified only as a Professor of the University of
Concepción (closed down by the military the very day of the
coup) and not as militant of MIR, I was taken to the Football Stadium in
Concepción. However – as courtesy to the family this transport under
the custody of Artillery officers under my brother’s command (at the
time a captain in the Artillery Regiment, and whom my father contacted
immediately). It was not the last time he would save my life.
The
Stadium in Concepción was a first detention portal of unprocessed
detainees. DINA did not exist at that time yet, and the Intelligence and
repression activities at the Stadium coexisted with the ordinary
logistic and security “taking care” of the prisoners. The Intelligence
activities carried our in the beginning by an hybrid ad hoc
pluton integrated by officers and petty-officers of the Army,
Carabineers, Political Civil Police (Servicio de Investigaciones, and
the repressive part performed by brutal ordinary staff and officers of
the “Gendarmería” (ordinary prison or jail-guards formations). The
logistic and security tasks were in charge of a company from the Army.
Here
at the Stadium of Concepción the detainees were sorted according to
political hierarchy and participation character (political or
insurgents). Most of the categorised as political cadres,
militants or profiles and leaders of the Unidad Popular (Allende’s political coalition) and MIR, were taken from the Stadium in Concepción, airborne, to a camp in Northern Chacabuco.
On
the other hand, political leaders with suspected responsibility
in former “subversive” preparedness (the so-called ”Plan Z”, an
euphemistic denomination found by the Military Junta to refer potential
subversive capability), or cadres suspected of participation in
resistance activities, were either shot or taken for further
interrogation to Fuerte Borgoño (Marines) and eventually to the prisoners camp in Quriquina Island. In
these two compounds were also executed several prisoners. Eventually,
later in 1974, some few prisoners in Quiriquina Island which after
re-evaluation met the “Chacabuco” criteria (se above), were again
gathered at the Stadium in Concepción and together with other
prisoners (59 in total) sent in an Air Force Hercules to the Chacabuco Camp.
For
my part I was identified by Intelligence officers at the Stadium
as militant of MIR, and suspected of resistance participation. First I
was in the line to be shot – at the orders of Teniente de
Gendarmería Vallejos - together with two other prisoners, the former
Director of Socoagro in Chillán and a young adolescent detained when carrying dynamite he had taken from the Cantera he
worked at. We were saved from under the Stadium’s Southern arc at
last-minute by the intervention of Capitan Sánchez, the commander of the
Military company at the Stadium (more of this dramatic episode in the
biographic report “The red, the black, and the white“ ).
From
there I was taken together with a number of other detainees to the
Navy Base in Talcahuano, where a concentration of detainees from
elsewhere in the military region took place. Here were selected after
further investigation those detainees who would fall in the military
jargon under the category ”prisoners”, meaning that they
would be held in captivity at the infamous Quiriquina Island Camp.
But some perished under torture or were assassinated.
Quiriquina Island
The author, prisoner in Quiriquina Island. See picture at left
I
arrived at Quiriquina Camp with eleven other prisoners. Two of them had
come as detainees from the cool-mine city of Lota and were shot at the
Quiriquina Camp short after we had arrived. One was of the name
Carrillo, a trade union leader in the mining zone and heroes of the
resistance against Pinochet.
When
I entered the main gate in the “Gymnasium” – where at the time all the
about 800 prisoners were kept together in one local – my comrades in MIR
were surprised, to say the least. The reason was that I have been
reported dead in the Concepción actions. One of the prisoners which
received me, a young student of name Quiero, even said to me that in
Coronel (a mining city in the Region) they have set a hit-unit called my
name, as honours to the dead in action!
Also
Miguel Enríquez got the report of these actions and my
presumptive death. This was told to me in Malmö in 1976, by the
compañera of Alvaro Rodas (an old-timer from the VRM period, and if I
remember well, member of the first Central Committee of MIR). According
to what she told me in occasion of a MIR-meeting (cells of MIR for the ”trabajo de apoyo exterior”) we had in their apartment in Malmö, she heard herself from Miguel that, literally ”calló Ferradita” (Miguel used to call me Ferradita) and that he was affected by it.
The
above situation – that I was believed by many comrades killed by the
military in Concepción - had important, and even determinant, positive
consequences for my survival at the Camp and at the interrogations under
torture.
For
those not acquainted with clandestine operations under severe violent
military repression, it will be perhaps difficult to understand what
follows. The fact is that before I came to the Quiriquina Camp, various
of my comrades - interrogated under torture – blamed me for the
personal responsibility or executor of the particular operations or
activity these comrades were suspected to have had in MIR. The “blame
the dead” was a necessary tactic of survival that spontaneously grew in
such torture centres.
The
above in turn served me as a miraculous survival tool under torture.
For when the agents asked me about all kind of items including the items
which were truly my responsibility, I invariable responded that
“naturally” nothing of that was – altogether - true, for the
source of those reports on my doings was most certain the practice of
“blame the death”, and that I had left my active contacts with MIR (I
could not deny that I was a founder of MIR, but “that was historic”) for
long time ago when I became Professor at the University of Concepción.
All wich the interrogators finally accepted after several weeks.
In conjunction with above, it is important to understand the nature of these interrogation processes at the Quiriquina Island.
a)
The interrogations were NOT carried out in the first place by the
personal in charge of the prisoners or the Navy personnel at the Island.
Instead the interrogators were Intelligence personal from the
Carabiners, the Army, and the Navy, which travelled episodical and
constantly to the Island to exercise their sinister task. Also, they
belonged at that time to their respective Intelligence departments.
Situation changed after that time with the creation of DINA, Pinochet’s Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia.
b)
These individuals rotated constantly. At least under my time at the
Quiriquina Island (one), at the Detention centre at the Naval Base in
Talcahuano (twice), and at the Regional Football Stadium in
Concepción (twice). At Quiriquina Island the arriving interrogators some
times were only Carabineers, or only Army, and some times a
mixture from all services.
c)
1973-1974 it was a time of no computerised information, no data files
reachable with a click. Instead the information was gathered in notes
taken by the interrogators themselves under a situation in which they
were at the very same time the torture-agents themselves.
What
I mean – in the context of my experiences at the Quiriquina - is that
this constant rotation meant that many of the items asked to me in those
interrogations were based only in note-reports taken from other agents
in different occasions and before I got in the Island. All which made
less difficult for me to play the convincing survival plot described
before, added that the agents interrogating me were not those with the
relevant hard data.
Four decades. Graphic by Armando Popa, 2009. Basedon Portrait of political prisoner Armando Popa (Ferrada-Noli 1973)
But that was of course not the ultimate reason
of my survival, of why my true role in MIR at the time of the Coup and
in the actions afterwards was never known by my captors at the
Quiriquina Island. The reason, as I see it, is because those who
actually knew of my activities, such as the head of the Organization
Detail of the GPM Regional Committee of MIR in Concepción I truly
belonged to, and not only the front political unit at the University of
Concepción. This friend is Renato Valdés, a doctor living now in
Holland. He never revealed anything, never talked at the interrogations
even under heavy and prolonged torture.
It
was everything so dramatic. Every time one of our comrades was
called by complete name in the loudspeakers and asked to report himself
at the gate of the huge collective cell (the gymnasium) to be taken by
the marine-guards to the interrogation/torture sites. Another time, any
time, it would the turn again of any of us who were left for the time
being in the uncertain waiting list.
It
was on those circumstances which I remember most vividly Renato Valdés,
which is a situation I am sure characterizes the situation of any of
the prisoners of MIR at the Quiriquina Island. Coming back from
interrogation after hours of us waiting anxious for his eventual return.
And the dramatic mixture of feelings while two or three comrades sat
around him on the floor of the gymnasium:
Disappointment,
because in the best of cases he could have set free. Relief, by the
fact he was still by us, and otherwise he could have resulted much
worst, including the risk of perishing under torture. Sadness, because
of the horrible shape – physical and psychological – that those
interrogations inflicted in all of us. And finally, the satisfaction
and proud that he survived the interrogation without saying anything
that could compromise us.
See also
I
While we were at Quiriquina Island, I made in the hide this portrait of Armando Popa, a fellow prisoner. The portrait is from December 1974. Popa and his younger brother - also in captivity at the Island - come afterwards to Sweden to work as doctors.
