Lined up like soldiers guarding a nation’s treasures, dozens of shelves preserve an archive that provides account of a painful episode in Chile’s history: 47,000 instances of human rights violations through the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
The documents were gathered between 1976 and 1992 by staff of the Vicariate of Solidarity, a human rights organization founded by Chilean Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez. Led by social staff, lawyers, archivists and physicians, it provided support to those harmed by the regime.
“The archive gives an account of how the repression occurred,” said María Paz Vergara, executive secretary at the inspiration created to preserve the documents after the Vicariate was closed.
The protection that Silva Henríquez provided for Pinochet’s victims had no precedent in Latin America. In neighboring Argentina, where the military also took power within the Seventies, the Catholic Church distanced itself from most of the people and remained near the federal government and upper-class sectors.
“In Chile the response to assist the victims was immediate,” said Chilean historian María Soledad del Villar. “And not only from the Catholic Church, but from other churches as well.”
Soon after a military coup deposed President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973, Silva Henríquez led efforts to create the Committee of Cooperation for Peace. As a part of the inter-religious group, Christians, Jews and other faith leaders provided spiritual, judicial and financial support for victims until it was dissolved because of government pressure in 1975.
Immediately after, Silva Henríquez established the Vicariate of Solidarity within the Archdiocese of Santiago.
“This was an excellent move because, as an establishment of the Catholic Church, Pinochet didn’t have the facility to shut it down,” Del Villar said.
During 16 years of service, the social staff and lawyers of the Vicariate comforted moms whose children didn’t come home from a protest. They gathered files to back the claims of daughters whose parents disappeared after leaving work. They looked for economic resources to travel to prisons removed from Santiago and asked for news about family members who were unfairly detained.
All of this while being cautious for their very own safety. Many were harassed by telephone calls or followed in the course of the day. Just a few were killed.
“This job gave intending to my life,” said María Luisa Sepúlveda, who was a Vicariate social employee. The organization closed in 1992, two years after Chile regained its democracy. Since then, Sepúlveda has extensively advocated for human rights and worked to unravel cases of political imprisonment and torture under the previous regime.
People first heard concerning the Vicariate through their local parishes. When victims approached a priest saying that a relative was taken away, he advised: Head to the archdiocese and they’re going to assist you.
Once there, the primary contact was a social employee like Sepúlveda. She took notes and assessed the situation. If someone’s life was threatened by the military, she would try to search out a protected place or a visa to get the person overseas. If the victim was in custody, she would pass information on to a lawyer who would prepare court proceedings.
On certain days, her job involved heading to the morgue. She saw corpses whose faces and fingertips were ripped off to avoid identification; pregnant women whose abdomens were severed.
The worst, Sepúlveda said, was the uncertainty among the many families. “People were totally disoriented by the unprecedented situations,” she said.
By being backed up by the cardinal, the Vicariate of Solidarity was in a position to support victims everywhere in the territory. “The religious metaphor that fueled its work is the story of the Good Samaritan,” said historian Del Villar.
According to the biblical story, a person finds an injured person, and as an alternative of passing by, he stops and heals his wounds. Under this principle, the Vicariate assisted all those in need – no matter their faith – and arranged activities, resembling “ollas communes” (soup kitchens), labor exchanges and fasts to denounce disappearances.
Nowadays Chile has one in all the most important number of spiritual disaffiliations on the continent and the Catholic Church never recovered from allegations of clergy sex abuse that erupted in 2010. During the dictatorship, though, it was a well-respected institution. Pinochet attended Mass every Sunday and said the Our Lady of Mount Carmel saved him from a murder attempt in 1986.
“The church was attempting to help Chileans reconcile since the horrors we saw were tremendous,” said Guillermo Hormazábal, a journalist who served as communications director for the Vicariate and later managed a church-owned radio station.
Although the investigative police kidnapped him in 1980, he was released inside 24 hours due to media pressure exerted by the radio station where he worked.
“The church was the one counterweight to the dictatorship,” he said. “It was a church that was not within the sacristy, but with the people.”
Until democracy returned to Chile in 1990, the church’s social work was a headache for the federal government. In 1989, a military prosecutor knocked on the door of the Vicariate and demanded that Bishop Segio Valech hand over their files. The bishop refused.
“When the Vicariate closed, the fate of the disappeared was unknown,” said Vergara, the manager secretary of the archive. “Seeing the importance of historical memory and educating on human rights, the cardinal thought that each one documentation can be essential for actions of justice and reparation.”
He was right. Thanks to the archives and the work of the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, many cases were reopened. Survivors and relatives of victims still request documents allowing them to ask for reparations, resembling pensions and priority medical care.
“There are also victims who come to recollect what happened,” Vergara said. Others seek to share their story with their children.
She recalls a person whose father was arrested in 1973. The son had never met his father, but years later he got to see photos of him due to the archives. Looking at his father’s likeness for the primary time, the son and his wife — now adults with a boy of their very own — were struck by how much their son resembled his grandfather.
The archive has a legal fund compiling greater than 85,000 documents, including judicial files and affidavits on deaths, kidnappings or torture, in addition to photographs, press clippings and movies on human rights.
“The government was saying, ‘This person has not been arrested.’ And even went to date as to say that some had no legal existence,” Vergara said. “The committee kept documents that made it inconceivable to disclaim the facts.”
According to Sepúlveda, almost 70% of the victims were registered through the first three months of the dictatorship. “That’s key to understanding why our society was hit so hard,” she said.
Pinochet died in 2006 without being convicted of any crimes. The foundation continues to hunt justice by keeping the archive protected and promoting the legacy of the Vicariate.
“In addition, many have never wanted to acknowledge the seriousness of the coup or the violations of human rights,” Sepúlveda said. “They say, ‘Let’s forget.’”
For hundreds like her, it’s inconceivable. “I’d have liked these 50 years to have been different, that society would have understood the necessity to have an actual commitment to human rights and democracy, that the coup would have been rejected by nearly all of society.”
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