In November of 1974, I was kidnapped by a unit of the DINA [National Intelligence Directorate], commanded by Osvaldo Romo Mena, who is responsible for at least 250 missing detainees in Chile. He was a torturer. He was even singled out (it was a singular case in human rights history) and named in one of the resolutions of the General Assembly of the United Nations as a torturer.
[The Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (English: National Intelligence Directorate) or DINA was the Chilean secret police in the government of Augusto Pinochet.] [Osvaldo Romo (1938 – 2007) was an agent of the Chilean Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) from 1973 to 1990, during the rule of Augusto Pinochet. He was tried and convicted of kidnapping by a Chilean court.]
As part of a huge battalion made up of members of the DINA, he kidnapped me in November of 1974 from the home of my parents, where I lived. I had begun criminal charges against him because I had identified him as a participant in a series of kidnappings. They were kidnappings; they were not arrests because there was no legality, no formality.
During one of those kidnappings he had raped someone. So I had initiated criminal charges against Osvaldo Romo Mena for that rape.
Shortly after he kidnapped me, he drove me to one of the DINA’S torture centers, located in a residential sector of Santiago, where I was [held] for approximately forty hours. The purpose of the kidnapping was to mount a plan, using me against Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez, the head of the Chilean Catholic Church.
[Raúl Silva Henríquez, (1907 –1999) was a Chilean Cardinal of the Catholic Church.]
During those forty hours the mistreatment and torture was constant. I was prepared to be executed by a firing squad. For several hours a gun barrel was pointed at my forehead, next to my forehead, etc.
I was in the torture chamber. I was severely beaten and tortured. At some point, the plan that had been designed against Cardinal Silva Henríquez for which they had kidnapped me was changed or was dropped and I was released.
The dictatorship never acknowledged that I had been detained. I was the first of those of us who were in the human rights legal defense team to be kidnapped and tortured. The Catholic Church’s response was very strong and powerful, achieving its goal of freeing me.
Álvaro Varela Walker is a Chilean attorney and human rights activist. He was born in 1951.
Varela studied law at the University of Chile. He became student body president and was active in politics. He supported Salvador Allende, a leftist who was elected president of Chile in 1970. In 1973, Allende’s government was overthrown by a military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. As the universities in Chile came under control of Pinochet’s military regime, he was expelled.
In 1974, he began working as an attorney for the Committee for Cooperation for Peace, an ecumenical initiative of the Catholic Church to catalog and defend against human rights abuses committed by the dictatorship. In 1976, Pope Paul VI established the Vicariate of Solidarity (La Vicaría de la Solidaridad) under the leadership of the Archdiocese of Santiago, where Varela continued his human rights work. In addition to publicly denouncing the human rights abuses of the regime, the Vicariate provided legal assistance to 250,000 Chileans and became a target of the military government.
After the restoration of democracy in 1989, Varela served as a member of the Valech Commission (the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture Report) chaired by Catholic Bishop Sergio Valech, which investigated the human rights record of the Pinochet regime. The Commission found that there were more than 38,000 people detained by the regime. The Valech Commission built on the work of an earlier Rettig Report, which had determined that more than 2,200 people were executed by the Pinochet regime. The Valech Commission provided an accounting of the abuses of the military regime, as well as determining reparations to its victims.
Spanish conquistadors led by Pedro de Valdivia conquered Chile in 1541. The country’s capital, Santiago, was founded in the same year. Throughout the 277 years of Spanish rule, there was resistance by indigenous groups, such as the Mapuche.
In the early 19th century, an independence movement began in Chile with the establishment of a national front. The front maintained power from 1810 until 1814, when Spain reestablished control of the colony. Many leaders of the pro-independence movement reorganized in Argentina. In 1817, the exiled rebel independence leaders regained control of Chile and formally declared independence on February 12, 1818.
While initially under the leadership of authoritarian General Bernardo O’Higgins, Chile later established a tradition of democratic rule that largely continued until the 1970s. In 1970, prominent Marxist leader Salvador Allende won power in democratic elections. While the economy initially boomed under Allende, domestic opposition and international pressure, especially from the United States, led to increasing difficulties for the government.
On September 11, 1973, a military coup overthrew Allende and installed General Augusto Pinochet as president. Allende committed suicide as troops advanced on the presidential palace.
The sixteen years of Pinochet’s military dictatorship were marked by significant human rights violations and the abolishment of civil liberties. The dictatorship jailed dissidents, prohibited strikes, and dissolved the national congress and political parties. Thousands were tortured and killed; many more were forced into political exile.
In 1980, the Pinochet regime promulgated a new constitution. It included a provision calling a referendum in 1988, allowing voters a yes or no vote on whether to prolong Pinochet’s tenure as president. The referendum campaign saw massive opposition efforts to encourage voter turnout, with nearly the entire democratic opposition united against the military government. While the Pinochet regime belatedly began making reforms, 56 percent of the population voted “no” to continuing the dictatorship, setting the stage for a return to civilian rule.
In 1989, Chilean democracy was fully restored by a democratic election to choose a new president, the first free election in nearly twenty years.
Since the return to democracy, Chile has implemented significant economic and political reforms, including a free trade agreement with the United States. Although there have been major strides in promoting equality and human freedoms, the human rights violations of Pinochet’s dictatorship still haunt many people. The Rettig and Valech Reports investigated and documented the human rights violations and torture under Pinochet’s government, but many Chileans continue to demand greater accountability for those responsible.
Freedom House’s 2014 Freedom in the World report categorized Chile as “free” with an overall freedom rating of one, with one being the freest and seven being the least. The country also received ratings of one in political rights and civil liberties. However, in the 2014
Freedom of the Press report, the nation was categorized as “party free” due to a lack of diversity in the media.