the CHILE that WAS shot DEAD
Chile underwent radical changes between the decades of 1960 and 1990. The healthy way in which ordinary people participated in politics during the sixties mutated. Hatred ended up dividing the country. Evelyn treasures those memories, although there were always differences between one and another depending on the perspective someone had, left or right, between 1960 and 1970, you could still enjoy lively gatherings, full of energy and passion, but at the end, everyone was still friends. With the military dictatorship, the country became polarized. The deaths, the disappearances and the fear left a separatist trail that still today afflicts the country.
The names of Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez, Eduardo Frei Montalva and Salvador Allende started to make noise among the candidates for the presidency. Each of them representing very different ways of seeing Chile and its future. The Chileans began to choose who they thought best represented the people. Within Evelyn’s circle, her friends were often confronting one another in energetic talks where opinions were articulated according to the values of each other. Evelyn’s father and stepmother did the same, both followers of Frei. Amelia, the woman Evelyn admired so much was divided between what her own conscience told her, supporting Allende, and what her father advised, Frei. Don Carlos Bruhn, Amelia's father, was even a Nazi sympathizer, says Evelyn. In spite of everything, they were still united. Red and blue supported causes that were worth fighting for, they helped in the earthquake of 1964, for example, that had the epicenter in the fifth region, Valparaiso, and which left great setbacks.
Everything changed with the military coup. In 1976 Evelyn suffered the first great tremor of the many that would be added throughout the seventeen years of terror (1973 - 1990). A day like any other, Amelia was disappeared. The details of her disappearance would never be clarified, except for vague information that her family and investigations carried out in years of democracy, would reveal. Amelia was taken from her office in Cathedral 2808 in Santiago, where she was working as an interior decorator. Men dressed in plain clothes arrived at her office and took her. Evelyn points out that Amelia studied at Santa María University of Valparaíso, which in those years was free and specialized in offering practical careers, job opportunities and trades, for low-income families. After the coup, these and all Chilean universities would become semi-private with impossible fees for humble families. Today, Santa María University is one of the most exclusive in the country. Once they dragged Amelia from her office, with violence, according to witnesses, she was taken to José Domingo Cañas, a torture center, and then transferred to a second torture center, Cuatro Álamos. According to one of Amelia's brothers, after Cuatro Álamos the track is lost, but everything indicates that it was one of the many victims who ended up with their feet tied to pieces of heavy metal and thrown from a helicopter into the Pacific Ocean.
In 1980, another episode that marked Evelyn's life occurred on a night of October. John, friend of the family for many years, arrived at her house in Peña Blanca, looking for Luis, Evelyn’s husband. He told them that the CNI (secret police of the government in dictatorship) was, apparently after him, and that they were raiding his house. John asked Luis to go and see what was going on, John's wife was alone and if he went, he would be taken prisoner. It was a trap! John handed Luis to the police. When Luis arrived at John’s house, he was asked to identify himself and the man that approached him shouted, "Here's the dude, the one that we are looking for." They threw him onto the floor, gave him as many kicks they could and brought him and John’s wife, detained. While Luis was tortured, Evelyn strolled through the gates of the concentration camps carrying a two-month-old child, her youngest kid. The tortures were brutal, it's true, but the uncertainty was too. Not knowing if her husband was still alive kept her with one foot on the cliff and the other on solid ground trying to be the mother her children needed. Evelyn did everything in her power, prepared a letter of appeal for the Vicar of Solidarity, which looked after cases like Evelyn's in those years. Luis was released some time later, he was mistreated and tortured physically and psychological. The wounds would last the rest of his life.
Despite everything that was happening in the country, Evelyn and Luis were brave. One day he came home to tell Evelyn that one of his colleagues, also a teacher, in the school where he was working at the time, in Casablanca, had a folk music band and had offered to do a gig in his house. It was well known that joining groups was forbidden, it was suspicious. Especially if all they did was to sing rebellious songs. That could be considered a suicidal sin in the eyes of the vicious authorities of the oppression. Aware of all this, Evelyn accepted. Warm red wine, guitars, wind instruments, a charango and percussion, they were the Inka-Qhamachu. Not only was the name familiar to the left for its notorious resemblance to the Inti-illimani, the exiled folk music band, they also sang their songs, obviously also forbidden. As guests started to arrive, the curtains were shut. The lights went out and candles were lit. the house was filled with smoke from the burning cigarettes and a watchman took turns in the bushes out in the garden. In front of the house located in Canal Chacao, in Quilpué, there was a neighborhood of marines and it was expected that someday they would come out following the noise. The watchman was in charge of warning the people inside the house in case something out of the ordinary was seen in the shadows of the night. Thanks to some divine miracle, nothing ever happened. Patricio Manns, Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés, Violeta Parra, Víctor Jara, Quilapayun and Inti-Illimani, were sang inside the house.
Letter of appeal for the Vicar of Solidarity
October 6, 1980