Falling on my feet, and Parque por la Paz

So I have an apartment hoorah! Two girls who live and study here in Santiago found my other blog, where I mentioned I was coming to Santiago, and emailed me before I got here inviting me to rent out their spare room. I went to visit them yesterday evening and they are both really friendly and the apartment is lovely so I've decided to take it. I have my own bathroom connected to my room, Wifi access and laundry service, so it's all rather nice.

At first I was worried about living in one of the richer areas and working in a poor area, but I think I will be a more effective worker if I am able to have my own space and chill out between work shifts, which I may not have been able to do living with a family in a poorer area, plus me living in a poorer area isn't really going to benefit the kids I'm working with, so I might as well take the opportunity to see both faces of Santiago. I move in on Sunday and start work on Tuesday.

Before going to visit the apartment we went on a group trip to Parque de la Paz, which is a memorial to those who were killed and tortured under Pinochet: left wing political activists, teachers, priests who extended help to those of a socialist persuasion, members and associates of left wing political parties : men, women and children. The area the park covers was one of two main torture centres in Santiago and was also one of the places where people deemed a threat to the military regime were processed for 'disappearing', or in other words sentenced to die.

We were given a guided tour by a man who spent two weeks there in the 1970s as a prisoner. For one week he was kept blindfolded in a wooden shed a couple of feet square with three other men, taken out only to be tortured for 'information', and another week was spent in the cells, again blindfolded and tortured three or four times a day. Listening to, and translating for others, the stories he recounted, was one of the most harrowing experiences I have ever been through. I also realised halfway through that I had read testimonies of other people who had been held here when I was studying Chilean history last year, and seeing the place where these awful things happened was incredibly upsetting. I had to have a big cry after the visit and felt very shaken up for the rest of the evening. Below are some of the anecdotes he shared with us - they are upsetting and could be triggering so please scan down if you don't want to read them, but I think it is important that these human rights abuses are not forgotten. There are many people in Chile who continue to ignore these abuses and insist that Pinochet was a blessing for the country, while members of the military regime who were complicit in these abuses and doubtless know where the bodies of the disappeared can be found continue their lives without fear of reprisal.

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Women prisoners were systematically raped by both male guards and the guard dogs. Their children were often present. Other children were born as a result of these abuses - another form of torture, this time psychological, as each time the women looked at their children they were reminded of what happened to them.

Doctors were kept in the complex with the sole aim of judging how much torture the prisoners could take and ensuring that they were kept alive in order that this torture could continue.

Many former prisoners have fled Chile, unable to come to terms with what happened to them in their own country, and with the fact that, under torture, they often ended up condemning their friends and comrades to the same abuses they themselves suffered.

Prisoners who were sentenced to death were taken to 'The Tower' where in the early years they were treated better than in the cells. This led to rumours that being taken to the tower was a blessing, or good luck. What the prisoners did not know was that the tower meant 'disappearing', or death : they were taken away, injected with cyanide, and their bodies dumped in the sea. The metal bars used to compress their bodies have been found off the coast and one stands outside the parque, but as is the case for the majority of Pinochet's victims, their bodies have never been found.

The guide recalled hearing a little girl running up and down the corridor outside the cells, shouting and playing as most children do. What was horrifying, and a testimony to the psychological damage inflicted on these children that they have to deal with as grown ups today, is that her playful cries mimicked those of the women undergoing electrical torture.

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From this hellish place, the survivors have created a park where children can now play in peace, where families of the disappeared can come to remember their loved ones, and where the horrors of the Pinochet regime can never be dismissed as mistakes, necessary evils, or mere fabrications.

It's definitely somewhere I will go back to, and somewhere I will never be able to forget.