1970-01-01 02:00:00
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La Jornada | President Gabriel Boric will announce a working group to establish where the remains of the missing are and the circumstances in which they were murdered. What do I expect from this new attempt to establish a historical truth?
Gaby Rivera | Governments have never had the political will to tackle the issue of detained and disappeared people, nor the permanent torture that this means. If the president now says that we are going to look for them because we need them, this phrase makes him friendly to our cause. We worked on a proposal that was included in this search plan, this makes us part of this process. Not only do we want to find them, but we also want to know the day they were taken, who, how and why, this whole process from “day 1” until they were buried, the country must know what happened to each one of them.
Anatomy of a coup I: The story of 9/11 in Chile, by Paulo Cannabrava Filho
What role do you think the armed forces should play in this process for it to be successful?
First, end the pact of silence they have. The 50 years passed for them and for us, but our mothers passed away without knowing what happened to their families. And they (the kidnappers, cover-ups, torturers and murderers) are also dying with this truth that they know. We have no doubt that the armed forces have the information, they know what they did to each of them.
The archives of the armed forces must be opened. Are we going to continue fighting alone? This is the question to society and the State, if they had all the facilities to make our family members disappear, the same State must do everything to find the truth about each one of them.
After 50 years, expectations can be very high, as well as very low, but they are there… I always prefer to expect less than to have very high expectations because it will hurt much more. We have to get down to the concrete, meet each of our family members and indicate the entire path they took to the end.
Around the 50th anniversary there was a discussion about the meaning of the celebration and there was this talk of leaving the past behind, how do you think it was resolved?
Anyone who feels like a democrat and wants to consolidate democracy cannot say that for certain things the coup d’état was bad, and that for others it was not so bad. These mediocrities cannot be, there are thousands of Chileans about whom we do not know what happened. Therefore, it is not just a search for family members, it must be for the entire society and also for the State it must be permanent, it cannot be a cycle.
Anatomy of a coup II: The story of 9/11 in Chile, by Paulo Cannabrava Filho
How old were you when the coup occurred: what do you remember, how did you experience it?
14 years. My memory must go back further, when I saw my parents happy when their fellow president, so they said, was elected by the people, I believe that those years were the happiest for the whole family, which was very united, only to dissolve later. if, when they took my father. I remembered this moment with such affection all my life and I cannot help but say that our missing and executed family members were part of this Popular Unity (UP) process. They murdered them and made them disappear because they were militants of the UP, which was building a dream for Chile. That dream was shattered on September 11th in the most macabre way, with the execution and disappearance of thousands of Chileans, many leaving for exile. Mexico was one of the countries that welcomed many and we are grateful for that.
This Sunday, September 10, we march like every year to fight for the Memory, Justice and Truth of our detained and disappeared relatives and of all those tortured and executed during the civil-military dictatorship. pic.twitter.com/v5aFNGiLaG
— AFDDChile (@AFDDChile) September 10, 2023
About the arrest of your father, Juan Luis Rivera Matus, in 1975: how did you find out and what do you think about never knowing about him again?
I was very little, we were a very united family, my mother, my father and seven living children (one had died as a baby). My father was a union leader, a member of the Communist Party, and we knew that was why they were looking for him; We managed to get him to hide, but DINA (Directorate of National Intelligence) arrived and detained him at work…. these are tremendous memories, I have the feeling that it was yesterday… I arrive from school, get off the bus, it arrives I come to my house and see that the door is wide open and I tell myself that something very serious has happened. It was the most difficult moment to understand, first my mother was devastated, screams of deep pain, I don’t think I’ve ever heard her cry like that again, she was 42 years old and was left alone with seven children.
Sociologist who saw the coup in Chile up close says: Allende was overthrown because he triumphed!
I think it was the hardest moment because we didn’t understand if we were going to be able to see him or if he was going to be saved, there were already companions who had been missing for a year or two, we thought that this wouldn’t happen to our parents. So things started to happen and as time went on, we adapted, I don’t know, understanding that the most likely thing was that we hadn’t resisted because we knew what the tortures were. It was very difficult to get out alive, some survived, but the vast majority at that time did not survive, they did not return.
The bravest thing is that our “old women” went out from the first day, with their balls, I say, first to ask about our relatives every day and then to organize themselves because they would be able to do more things than look for each one for your account. This was a source of strength for each of the companions who had spent a year or two on this search.
Aldo Anfossi | La Jornada, special for Diálogos do Sul – Rights reserved.
Translation: Beatriz Cannabrava
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Diálogos do Sul
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