Chile remains a country of contradictions, influenced by the struggle between memory and forgetting. The dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet has left a legacy that has not been adequately challenged since the country's return to democracy.
Human rights and memory groups in Chile have struggled against state institutions and military secrecy over dictatorship crimes. They demand, for example, that Punta Peuco, the luxury prison for former agents of National Intelligence Directorate (DINA, the Chilean secret police under Pinochet) be closed and the inmates transferred to ordinary jails. That such demands remain unmet provide foundations from which impunity can make inroads.
Last week, Chilean media reported that Javier Rebolledo (pictured), an investigative journalist and author specialising in uncovering dictatorship era crimes, was taken to court by former DINA agent and Punta Peuco inmate Raul Pablo Quintana Salazar. Rebolledo is facing 'calumny' charges in court, over one particular quote published in his most recent book, Camaleon.
Rebolledo has published several books about the dictatorship's torture, extermination and disappearance of its opponents, and mentions Quintana as part of the notorious Tejas Verdes regiment of DINA. Quintana was in charge of the prisoners held at the port of San Antonio, 100km west of Santiago, and part of a group of agents that specialised in torture.
Here, Rebolledo reveals that a former officer, Gregorio Romero Hernandez, witnessed Quintana inserting a carrot into the vagina of a Uruguayan woman, Nelsa Gadea Galan — who is one of the disappeared — during a torture session at Tejas Verdes.
The revelation is not out of the ordinary. There are various testimonies of depraved sexual torture committed by DINA agents against female detainees. One former prisoner, Nieves Ayress, testified that agents 'placed rats in my vagina and then gave me electric shocks'.
Quintana, who is being represented in court by his daughter and whose lawyer, Juan Carlos Manns, is also the lawyer of former DINA chief Manuel Contreras, has claimed that Rebolledo's revelations are injurious to his purported 'honour'. Public support for Rebolledo also prompted Quintana to claim, through his lawyer, that the author is threatening him. Rebolledo can face up to three years in prison if the court rules in favour of Quintana.
"The end result would be to consolidate Pinochet's request for oblivion. Chileans would be forced to forget, while dictatorship crimes, many of which are still classified, would remain out of public scrutiny."
However, the underlying motives have little to do with the alleged honour