Listening to silence – trauma and recovery in post-golpe Chile

School of Medicine, Medical and Biological Sciences, University of St Andrews, UK, email lindsey. [email protected] I visited Chile for the first time in 2003. Over the course of the 12 months during which the country became my home, I realised there was a secret side to the capital city, Santiago. Never was this clearer than when I witnessed a demonstration to mark the 30th anniversary of the 11 September 1973 coup, when General Pinochet took power. I watched tears stream down the cheeks of men and women as they sang along with the revolutionary Cuban folk singer Silvio Rodriguez, raising their fists in the air. I felt the distrust of and anger towards the police who lined rooftops with snipers and the military units which filled side streets with water cannons. It was a visceral experience, made more so by the contrast with day-to-day life on the city’s streets. This was a boom town, proud of its malls and economic growth, and the residents of Santiago made every effort to remark upon their high standards of living. In contrast, there was a marked silence about the long history of the Pinochet regime, infamous for human rights abuses, including torture, lengthy detentions, murder and disappearances. While some felt the General was the man who saved Chile from communism and made the country an economic force to be reckoned with, others saw him as a despotic leader who silenced all those who stood in opposition to him and carried out abuses with impunity. These two perspectives on Chilean history, almost unbelievably contrasting in their stances, divided Chilean society and often meant that those who had suffered during this period were left to inhabit their silence. This was partly self-censorship but is understandable when there was seemingly no national or unified narrative which acknowledged their suffering, or any significant punishment of those responsible. They were left to quietly face the long-term consequences associated with surviving human rights abuses and institutional violence, including mental and physical ill-health, social isolation and economic disenfranchisement. On only two occasions did I hear echoes of stories hidden – a woman who remarked that she had never seen her daughter or grandchildren again after they were forced into exile, ‘like so many others’. A man spoke of his changed life, playing music for tourists in the streets of Bella Vista after losing his job as a pilot following the coup. These were such quiet echoes, buried in the Global Echoes