September 11th, 1973 SANTIAGO, CHILE
On September 11th, 1973,
I was supposed to get married at 9:30am.
But, at 9, we were still fighting at the Moneda palace,
so I called Catalina, my fiancée,
and told her that we wouldn't be able to get married
that there was a little problem.
I got married on the 26th.
Up until the 24th, I was held prisoner in the National Stadium.
When I got back home on the night of the 24th,
my mother-in-law had already arranged it all,
so we could get married on the 26th.
Juan is one of the defenders of the Moneda palace
whose life was saved.
A group of 36 people fought to the bitter end
to defend Salvador Allende,
the socialist president who attempted a pacifist revolution,
but failed.
In 1973, the country was in chaos.
After the military coup d'etat, Allende was killed.
The world cried.
Allende was the only Marxist head of state
to have gained power by means of a democratic vote.
He was the symbol of a different sort of politics.
Ever since that day,
Juan has always remembered the fighting at the Moneda palace.
His wedding day was almost the day of his death.
He's here in the palace as an assistant on our film
to say a few words.
Like me, it's the first time in 23 years
that he's been back to this place.
We're not in the mood to talk.
Juan's best friends "disappeared" here.
At the time, I often came here
and met Juan.
He was one of the anonymous characters
who I filmed to make "The Battle of Chile",
a long documentary on the experience
of the Popular Unity.
After the coup d'etat, this film was shown in 37 countries
and won numerous awards.
A considerable popular movement was born here,
which we followed for a year,
not always knowing what we were doing.
To this day,
"The Battle of Chile" has never been shown in Chile.
Under Pinochet, the film was banned.
Today, distributors are still reluctant to show it.
For many, memory is a sensitive topic.
We defended this spot.
Everything was destroyed by the bombs
and the fires.
We had to go and fetch more ammunition
from the police garrison, opposite.
We had to cross the courtyard under a hail of bullets.
They got us near the building, over there.
They fired from the top of that building
to stop us getting away.
One's memory
only holds on to the basic facts.
ERNESTO MALBRAN university student
There are certain things people don't remember.
IGNACIO VALENZUELA my uncle
It's difficult to talk to them
and bring them back to reality.
When there's a wound on your body...
ALVARO UNDURRAGA doctor
it has to heal,
and then you can touch it,
but if you touch it too soon,
it gets infected, it bleeds.
PABLO PERELMAN film-maker
When you endure pain, amnesia is an automatic response.
But if you overcome the pain and transform it into a memory,
then the memory can come back.
This is where I fell,
I was out of ammo.
Our hair was a real mess,
dirty and blackened by gunpowder,
because of what we'd been through.
Did you have your hands up?
No, they wanted to kill me there and then,
but the sergeant saw that I was disarmed
and told them to stop.
"He'll be useful as a shield."
I fell down the stairs
of number 80, Morandé street.
I took a blow to the stomach, and landed on my back.
There's a photo where I'm on my back.
What does this painting represent?
This is one of a series of paintings...
JOSE BALMES painter
which I did just after 1973.
You can see even the smallest details
of the clothes.
I like all these little details.
As if there's a movement,
this part is more blurry, more ambiguous,
much less clear
as far as the image goes.
In this kind of movement,
you can definitely see, there's a hazy area
something undefined.
You can't tell where the clothes begin
in relation to the body and the head.
It makes the movement seem very alive,
suggestive, rich, and at the same time very open.
Look, there, you can see.
I made several photocopies which I altered.
Memory and forgetting are recurring questions.
It's like the positive and negative
of human action and man's reflection
throughout his life,
upon what really matters.
Is that the town hotel?
Eladio, he's the one in the sweater.
And that's Julio.
What happened to them?
Eladio's still alive, Julio disappeared, Julio Tapia...
There, that's Elly!... And who's that?
That's the brother of that girl, Mirta.
Oh yes, Boris!
- He "disappeared". - His name isn't Boris.
A lot of our people shot at the soldiers who fled.
ISIDRO and MANUEL Allende's ex-bodyguards
They came back via Morandé street.
Here, they're running inside.
There, that's before the shooting.
Look at these soldiers, they seem so sure of themselves!
Our comrades' bullets were ricocheting off the walls,
we had to duck to avoid getting shot.
I pictured myself dying several times,
but there, I really was dying.
In response to that attack,
the soldiers brought the prisoners out...
into the street, they got a tank to come
to take on our comrades
who were 20 or 30-strong.
The tank was advancing, they lowered the gun
to show us that
they'd crush them if we didn't stop firing.
- You were there? - Of course, we had to be there.
We were the first six or seven there.
That must have been you, there?
Over there, at first...
I was one of the first to come out.
Jaime Sotelo...
- "Disappeared"? - "Disappeared"!
He was also imprisoned in the Moneda palace...
That's "Raul", Enrique Valladares Caroja.
He's still "disappeared".
He "disappeared" in the Moneda.
When they took him prisoner.
They killed him?
He's dead, "disappeared".
This comrade was at Canaveral's house.
Ramon.
- What happened to him? - He "disappeared".
They took Carlos, the head of security.
They took Anibal, one of his officers.
Mauricio, second-in-chief of the bodyguards.
Raul, the head of our group,
and the "Chinaman" Jano, he was a hell of a character.
They took them away, they never came back.
Their bodies were recovered
this year in row 29 of the cemetery,
but with no sign of the other comrades who are still "disappeared".
All of them "disappeared" except for two.
A few were never found.
And those who were found...
were in pieces.
Memory is a powerful thing
and I think it's memory that makes us die
and suffer, but it makes us live too.
For the first time in 23 years, in the centre of Santiago,
we can year the "Venceremos", the hymn of the Popular Unity.
Its composer, Sergio Ortega,
living in exile in Paris, sent us the score,
and some young musicians have agreed to play it,
to everyone's great surprise.
23 years of censorship and self-censorship.
The youth of Chile
has grown up unaware of what happened.
In my suitcases,
I've brought a copy of "The Battle of Chile".
It's a corrupt and degenerate government, Sir.
Degenerate and corrupt, scum!
These disgusting communists must all leave Chile!
Sir, what is your position regarding the elections?
For Popular Unity to get at least 20%.
I think it's a referendum matter.
On Sunday, Chile will make its choice between Marxism and freedom.
If we understand...
that at this hour, the essentials are...
to consolidate the government in its policies
and to give ourselves the tools, to make sure that
there's flexibility at an institutional level,
then the opposition must understand
that they cannot refuse us the essentials...
We're making a film about memory.
Do you recognise anyone in these images?
We'd like to find them to talk to them, 20 years later.
Carmen Vivanco.
Yes, that's Carmen Vivanco.
Is this you?
I'm not certain. Maybe...
when I was young. This photo is very old.
23 years.
It's possible, but I'm not certain.
Carmen,
which members of your family "disappeared"?
My husband, Oscar Orlando Ramos Garrido.
My son, Oscar Arturo Ramos Vivanco.
My brother, Hugo Vivanco Vega.
My sister-in-law, Alicia Herrera Benitez.
My nephew, Nicolas Hugo Vivanco Herrera.
Five members of my family "disappeared".
There, there...
a bit more over there.
- That's Hugo. - Your brother?
Hugo Garcia, my brother.
- Yes, it's your brother. - Of course, it's Hugo.
Who's that?
It's me.
- The one on the right? - Yes, that's me.
- And this? - Silvano.
And this?
Next to Manuel.
There, that's me.
With hair!
- Your first job? - Washerwoman...
HELENA Allende's ex-housemaid
After that, I was a switchboard operator
and I had the honour of working for my President.
That was wonderful.
And especially today,
finding our old comrades,
we can say "there they are".
Because it was incredible,
what they did...
with their lives!
Staying by the President's side, until the last moment.
They were men...
of great courage.
Being with the comrade President
until the end, regardless of the consequences.
It was an exemplary thing to do, and it's the most important
heritage they left us.
Don Salvador, your words were not in vain...
He was everything to me, he made me happy...
I'll always keep him in my heart.
Those were the 1000 happiest days of my life.
That's what I have left of him.
Isn't that right, comrade?
Ernesto, a friend from university,
has always spoken and lived with more passion than anyone else.
He's a professor.
He's also one of the protagonists of "The Battle of Chile".
Since I was young, I've always felt
that I was at the heart of a big adventure.
I swear, for me life is one big adventure.
We met at the university, you were writing
a science-fiction novel.
We met again at the filming of "Battle..."
You went off to the north, I dropped out of university.
I became Director of Industrial Relations
for the Popular Unity.
Here, comrades invent the missing parts.
They make these parts. The workman thinks in concrete terms,
he doesn't understand the language of the students.
My passion in life is being a professor,
my passion is teaching.
But today, a new problem faces
the state-employed workman:
the lack of raw materials and spare parts
mean the workmen are facing salary cutbacks.
First of all,
you have to define
the word memory.
"Recordar", i.e. to remember,
comes from the Latin "re"
and "cordum, cordae", the heart.
"Re", returning. Which means
"returning to the heart"...
to awaken once again.
There's a trap in this round-trip through memory,
the way I see it.
Because memory builds up,
like with mirrors,
all the important moments of your life,
but the trap is not being able to rid oneself
of looking at these images...
and you start to fiddle with these little mirrors,
to play with them.
The idea was the Revolution. Even if Allende
wanted to build a socialist country
by the means of democracy, pluralism and freedom.
This path could only ever lead
to an armed confrontation.
Popular Unity was this "ship of dreamers",
driven by a collective dream,
which failed.
This dream was supposed to carry away and unite an entire country.
It was a dream of justice:
the right to education, health and housing.
Dreams which don't come true
are the of validation a saying:
"Don't believe in dreams,
"for dreams don't fill empty stomachs."
It's not true.
It was a noble dream...
The failure of a dream is hard to take.
Especially knowing that there's no way to move forward without dreaming.
Because dreaming is part of
our way of understanding life.
Well, anyway...
we were beaten.
We were wrong.
You can't give up
the ends for the means.
That's the major lesson to take away from this.
What shocks me and worries me in this country...
is that here, were being painted
a false picture of reality.
Many young people here
have opinions based on
manipulated information.
The best proof that the C.I.A. never intervened
is that the coup d'etat was a perfect military success.
The Chilean armed forces were more effective
in the fight against Marxism-Leninism
than the US military forces.
According to the left, there were only 2132 deaths
in 17 years.
It's been the least bloody anti-subversive battle
in all Latin America.
The film isn't objective
because Pinochet got bad press
all over the world.
Thankfully, the armed forces were not split up.
The coup d'etat was more effective, more surgical.
The people suffered less than they were reported to have done.
Ultimately, the country side-stepped a civil war.
The film shows why the coup d'etat was a necessary thing.
Allende wasn't in control of his partisans,
and also, the film depicts
a certain popular pressure,
which is totally untrue.
I didn't agree with Don Allende
but I undestand what he was saying.
And it's fantastic.
I think that the military government led by Pinochet
was the first one in the world to defeat communism.
He gave the first hammer blow
to bring down the Berlin Wall.
The coup d'etat was necessary, the country was not doing well.
It was tough... it was a coup d'etat.
There were casualties.
When you reach the point of killing for your ideals,
it's really quite extreme.
Was there a better solution than the coup d'etat?
If our loved ones were tortured or killed, we have other views.
Popular Unity did it too.
Of course, but a democratic solution is possible.
With Popular Unity, we would have gotten nowhere,
we'd be worse off than Cuba.
Not with 16 more years of detention!
Sorry, but killing is no justification for economic progress.
I don't know the opinion
of the political majority, on that point.
We're also missing the factory boss's opinion.
What happened?
Here, we can see workers
taking over the factory.
Each point of view on a historical fact is valid
and contributes to building the history of the country.
Me, with all my criticisms of Allende,
at the end of the day, I think he was a loyal guy.
And I also think that's rare.
At that time, neither the Christian Democrats,
nor the National Party, nor the Extreme Right
could propose a government
which could win over the majority.
We're the result of that coup d'etat.
We're here to talk about it
because we're living with the consequences.
We ought to sit down and talk about it.
It's not our job to point out the mistakes,
because that achieves nothing. We, the students,
no matter whether the university is right- or left-wing,
we want an explanation
from those who were in power at the time.
Listen to me,
Popular Unity held a lot of land, Carmen.
Rich people sent their money abroad.
Why do you think there was nothing to eat?
Giving money to the poor: that's easy to say.
The people had no way to make themselves heard.
Why did they take over the factories and cause this scandal?
Let them work!
Their ideas were good... the government was bad.
They were good but utopian.
For me, it was very emotional
seeing those images again.
I was at university, at the time.
I wasn't really...
right-wing,
but I thought that something
needed to happen in Chile,
things needed to change.
I was wrong.
Today, I have a different view.
It's hard to admit one's mistakes,
especially knowing the price of that coup d'etat.
That morning, I was very happy,
because I didn't understand
the consequences it would have.
2 days later, I had already changed my opinion,
and even more so with time.
JORGE MULLER SILVA
Jorge lived through the "Battle of Chile".
It was his way of living out the events that were taking place:
by filming them.
PABLO PERELMAN film-maker
Jorge Muller was the chief cameraman
on "The Battle of Chile".
One year after the coup d'etat, he was arrested by military police,
and held in a torture camp,
Villa Grimaldi.
He was 27 when he "disappeared".
Jorge wasn't your typical MIR militant,
dying by torture in Pinochet's prisons.
CARLOS FLORES film-maker
It was a strange thing,
be he wasn't your classical militant.
Jorge smoked marijuana, he drank...
He preferred the beach to a demonstration.
He liked clothes... It was a mistake
at a time when you had to give everything for the Movement.
He used to talk about clothes, girls, wine...
those were his little sins.
It wasn't serious, just a mistake.
Jorge was really just a little bourgeois.
It was part of his charm.
He was the type to be "kidnapped"
to incite some terror in an area
where word travels fast.
He was a film-maker and friends with film-makers,
he was a nice guy.
He was even the perfect target to be "disappeared",
so that it would have an impact.
Of course, my biggest mistake was to live in denial of the pain...
and forget about Jorge's death.
I haven't taken enough time
to cry.
Now, the time has passed...
but it's my way
of replying to what you asked me.
Don Rodolfo, Jorge's father,
left Germany to come to Chile at the age of 15,
with his family, to escape the Nazis.
Villa Grimaldi... it's a sinister place
not only because people suffered
but also because many were humiliated.
When the political game gets back to normal,
these atrocities will be impossible to put behind us.
The cause of Pinochet's downfall
was the human rights issue.
Nothing else.
The country was doing well economically.
That's what brought Pinochet down.
No more, no less.
This is the only person in my family who's still alive.
It's my uncle Ignacio.
He's just turned 80 and I think he has a good memory.
Very bad.
It's the pianist's fault, not the piano's!
To you, what does "remembering" mean?
Remembering, it's going back...
you can see the past as if it were yesterday.
I hid all the film reels of "Battle..." at my place.
Weren't you scared?
Scared? Well... what did I have to lose?
I had to do something.
THE BATTLE OF CHILE the struggle of a people without weapons
You brought the reels and we put them in a suitcase.
That's what I had to do,
for you, and for what it meant,
for future memory.
For me, historical memory
is remembering the facts,
particularly those related to the country,
and also to the whole world, without doubt.
So many names, my God!
It's unbelievable!
After the coup d'etat, you were imprisoned in the Stadium.
The people from the Swedish embassy came
to take the suitcase. I had organised the whole thing.
They took the film reels
to Valparaiso...
and they were checked by the police several times.
The driver told me they were terrified.
At Valparaiso, the soldiers didn't want to allow
the luggage to be embarked.
Luckily, the ship's captain
told them it was a diplomatic suitcase
and they had to let it on.
Two months later,
when I got out of the National Stadium, Federico and I
went to Stockholm to retrieve the reels.
Not one was missing.
23 years later, revisiting the Stadium with a doctor friend, Alvaro
who took care of the prisoners
and got our messages to the outside.
I remember it was a sinister place.
The prevailing sentiment was of fear.
A feeling like
it was war...
I was a volunteer, helping tend to the people in the Stadium.
I knew that one way or another,
I could provide a little comfort...
and I'm happy I was able to do that.
In a tunnel, a lot of people were calling out.
I went in but they stopped me...
very graciously by the way...
Then I asked why... "Because those people..."
"they're about to be shot".
One day I went to the Stadium and I saw you.
You were the next patient in line.
I don't remember if we hugged
but we at least had a handshake.
Was I very frightened?
No.
I remember what you said to me
that you had participated in mock executions.
That you were in a room with other people
and that they were rehearsing executions.
And you asked me to come with you
to reassure your wife.
In 1973, thousands of people passed through here.
The Stadium was the first school of terror
beating down on us.
Second squadron! Atten-shun!
Left!
Quick march!
We're like a cemetery...
a holy camp,
where "all those who we were" sleep.
But "those who we were" are not dead,
for they wake up at the slightest mention.
So many years of memories,
so many years of interviews!
Hortensia Bussi, Salvador Allende's widow,
had to wait 17 years
to attend the official funeral of her husband.
She and her daughter Isabel hope one day to recover
the family's personal items.
You're asking me for the photo albums...
What infuriates me the most,
is that they never gave me them back.
Why are they not in my possession?
I can't even show them
to my grandchildren. à
I don't have a single personal item.
I'll never be able to give my grandson
that watch, that sweater, that tie...
Never!
... telling him it belonged to his grandfather.
I miss them,
I'd like very much to have them back.
It's a debt they owe me...
and all my family.
They looted the house, on Tomas Moro street.
To want to forget is an instinctive defence mechanism,
I'd like to forget.
I don't think too much about death,
except from time to time, to get used to it...
I've seen a lot of people die,
my family was very large.
Hundreds of people died,
and the stadia became
concentration camps.
The longest-running democracy in Latin America
has ceased to exist.
But, the Battle of Chile is not over.
"History belongs to us, and people make it...
"to build a better society."
I'd like to say something...
Watching "The Battle of Chile"...
I was 6 when all this happened...
all the information I've had throughout my life
came either from films,
or from my family, my entourage, my friends...
but seeing this film now
makes me think about something important:
I feel pride for my people.
Even though we failed, as David was saying,
we have to keep on fighting... I think that everyone
has to keep fighting their own fight.
But before coming to arms,
I prefer to continue fighting the way we do it here.
In schools, we teach them to see things differently.
I'm proud of all these people
who fought for an ideal.
Unfortunately, during the film's projection,
I knew it would end in a massacre.
I think we're entitled to dream,
to fight for our own personal dreams.
Today, I have the impression that I'm in this process:
of throwing away all the rage and all the shit
I have in me.
And when I see the policemen
and the rich folks holding all the money...
I'm in that process, throwing out the shit inside of me.
That's what I feel.
It's very strong.
I was a child...
the 11th of September, I remember,
I was jumping on my bed...
happy that I didn't have school.
Today, seeing that,
I don't understand how men can be...
so barbaric.
Killing a family because they don't share your point of view.
You understand...
Would you kill the dreams of history
because you don't like art?
I've stopped believing in anything,
believing in Man, in military power,
everything. My faith is gone...
The dictatorship took that faith away from me.
These last 15 years
have been extremely dark,
from anyone's perspective... They killed my brother.
It was a dream of justice, I think.
That dream failed.
I was happy to be part of the crew,
on that boat full of madmen.
But I'd like to say
today,
now that these models
and ideologies stand for nothing:
it's our job to be the memory,
the living witnesses
for the young people
looking everywhere for something to hold on to.
They ought to know that the coup d'etat
wasn't a shipwreck
but a little earthquake, nothing more.
Subtitles: M. Nicholson