We will Step on the Streets Again - By Vivian Lavín

We will Step on the Streets Again The testimony of three ex-political prisoners of the dictatorship

© Vivian Lavín Almazán

Ediciones Radio Universidad de Chile ediciones@u.uchile.cl www.diario.uchile.cl

Editorial Coordinator: Felipe Reyes Cover design: Marcia Miranda

Layout: Gloria Barros Style correction: Álvaro Cárdenas

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Registration ISBN: 978-956-358-718-0 2a Edition: 200

Total or partial reproduction is prohibited, without authorization. Printed in Gráfica

"Memory is more than a prison of an unhappy past".

La cultura de la memoria, Andreas Huyssen

"But daughter, nothing is hidden in this sky, nothing.

And the heart deceased, rotten and all, does not forget under the ground..."

Reducciones, Jaime Huenún

PRESENTATION

This book is the result of many hours of interviews conducted by the journalist Vivian Lavín with three remarkable political prisoners of the Pinochet dictatorship. Chilean combatants who at a very young age joined the fight against oppression and courageously assumed their political commitment, they were arrested by secret services, cruelly and viciously tortured and then imprisoned for long years.

The testimony of three victims of repression, but also of their noble behaviour to face the horrors and continue their liberating fight from prison. It is known that torture was even crueller and more degrading with female political prisoners; to them and hundreds of other women the cowardice of our abject soldiers and "intelligence” agents became more brutal.

This book is a dramatic record of a situation that has just begun to write all its pages. Due to the natural modesty of those who not only suffered physical and psychological torments, but also the most brutal sexual attacks, among other reasons. It is, in fact, a text written in four voices: one is the journalist's voice, who investigates, contextualizes and is deeply shaken by what happened when she was just at her school phase, barely opening her eyes and ears to life; at the same time, it is the story of three tender and lucid victims who deserve the historical place of exemplary revolutionaries of the Chilean resistance.

Three political activists who, when they regained their freedom, found themselves in a very changed country and with a left party emboldened by opportunism. The post-dictatorship Chile feels uncomfortable with the Human Rights issue and refuses until today to recognize its most genuine heroes and martyrs. Who left prison to reconnect with who they love and restore their interrupted and mutilated family life; with the hope of realizing themselves as mothers, beloved women, and lovers. But without ever being able to free themselves from the traumas that were perpetrated on them, from the wounds that will forever bleed in their rebellious and unyielding spirits. As well as on their shy and torn bodies.

A beautiful, but a heart-breaking book. With a reading that gets fatigued in the despondency that each line causes us, the testimony of these three exemplary lives. Although their revelations finally make us regain faith and hope in the human being, as in the conviction that another world must become possible. And it is worth on continuing to dream about it.

Juan Pablo Cárdenas Squella National Journalism Award, 2005

THIS IS HOW A BOOK IS BORN

It was a Saturday in October 2005. The day dawned a bit foggy, and it was incredibly early when four women started on a journey. The night before, each in their own homes, prepared a small bag with some clothes for a couple of days. Nothing fancy or sophisticated. The idea was to be comfortable, to be able to walk maybe but, above all, to talk.

Some hesitated whether to take one or two blue jeans. Maybe due to the deceptive nature of October, another doubted whether a thick cardigan or a parka was better, although for the climate of La Serena it might have been too much, especially at this time of year, when spring was already beginning.

Elizabeth, Gina, Valentina, and Miriam were anxious and eager over what could happen those days when they would be together again from morning to night, day after day, as it had been more than a decade ago.

If someone had seen Gina leaving in her car at dawn, perhaps they would have been able to intuit her nervousness and joy. She accelerated, although there was no hurry, and she went to the Andean foothill sector, through the southern area of the capital. She had enough time to get to the meeting point at the agreed time, where Elizabeth was waiting for her. A few minutes later, she spotted her in a corner. Elizabeth was next to Victor, her partner, and after both hugged affectionately, and Victor greeted Gina, it was him, who placed the small bag inside. The truck took up the road, now with the two women heading to the eastern sector of the capital. I feel like when I was a girl, and I was going for a school trip... Yes, me too, it was hard for me to fall asleep, how are your children, Ginita? They are fine, they loved the idea of us getting together... is it for sure that Miriam is coming?... I have not seen her for so long!

They went by Américo Vespucio. At that time, the truck was moving almost alone through the streets of Santiago. They went down Bellavista and on the corner with Pio Nono, in front of the Law School of the University of Chile, there were two other women. Valentina's abundant mane was unmistakable. Gina parked on the side of the street. She put on the emergency lights, and they got off. The four women hugged each other among laughers and joy giggles. We managed to convince Mama Bear! said Gina. Miriam smiled lovingly. It has been so long since the four of us were together... Yes, like five years.

The first rays of the sun had already begun to rise, giving colour and other shapes to the buildings and advertisements. Now the four women were driving, and they stopped at a gas station. Full tank, please. The journey is long. They put on music and conversations began to cross, between laughter and demonstrations of affection: I brought grapes... and I brought cookies that my children gave me. As long as we do not have to do cleaning shifts or *SIPONA everything is fine... hahaha! Nor listening to the news nor Eli send us to bed early we are going well ... haha!

Gina told them that she was happy working in a kindergarten, although there were things she did not like so much. Valentina's enthusiasm was also evident. She was on a project with other sociologist colleagues that could have many possibilities, which made her eyes sparkle and vibrate while sharing the details. Miriam had been arriving from a long trip full of memories and projects. Elizabeth, as always, calm and with a melancholy look, expressed her displeasure with private

medicine It has taken me a while to get used to it, to the extent that health is a business, everything is distorted, and the patient is suddenly an enemy who can sue you for anything…

The conversation went from one topic to another, without much order. The four women shared their joys and talked what had done with their lives in those years, their jobs, and their families, they also exposed their fears and sorrows. There were no inhibitions or secrets between them. They were four women who had taken an active part in the fight against the Pinochet dictatorship and who had paid for it, with long years in prison. They were four former political prisoners, but first, four friends who met again on an intense weekend, in which they cried, laughed, and healed some pending wounds from the time of captivity.

Through those conversations, they understood that their lives were to be told, as García Márquez would say, and they were willing to do so.

This book was born then, that weekend in 2005, in the city of La Serena, but the story it tells began before I joined it. Much later, when three of them decided to do it.

WOMEN'S VOICES

It was the middle of December 2013 and I had just returned from the Guadalajara Book Fair, in Mexico. I came back stocked with books and the voices of their authors for the program Vuelan las Plumas, which I have been conducting for more than a decade at the University of Chile. As I heard say to Monsiváis, Guadalajara is a zone of cultural resistance. Because of the political gesture that a book implies, I did not hesitate to immediately say yes to the offer made to me by the director of Radio Universidad de Chile and editor of the publishing house linked to the station, Juan Pablo Cárdenas, when he asked me to make one about the testimony of three former political prisoners of the Dictatorship, willing to tell their stories.

I did not know who they were, except that one of them, a Mirist Dr, had been visited by Juan Pablo in prison at that time. I knew how much it had been difficult for him to do it when entering prison distressed him and he remembered his nights of confinement ordered by the military courts addicted to the regime and allergic to freedom of expression.

We arranged a meeting with all of them, it took place a week later. It was there, in Juan Pablo's office, that I thought I would meet women who had been beaten, mistrusted and mistreated women by years of confinement. However, what I found that afternoon, was three cheerful, affectionate, sensitive, flirtatious women... so distant from the image I had made of those, sentenced to long years in prison due to their dangerousness. I watched them and it was hard for me to find in them the terrorists whose faces appeared in the dictatorial press. Those women were known for their stony-spoken portraits, for blurred black and white photographs that confirmed the danger attributed to them. Women who carried weapons and were part of complex insurrection operations that sought to destabilize the totalitarian government. Extremists who stared in front of the cameras, defiant, rebellious, and indomitable, terrified their own jailers, to the point that they granted them privileges and a regime different from the rest of the prisoners.

I was facing three ex-combatants who lived underground, with fake names and legends to cover their identities, and who now are not afraid to say their real names and validate themselves as mothers, women, and professionals. Those who yesterday wielded a weapon to rob supermarkets and banks, today are seen leaving those department stores calmly carrying the bags with the fruit and vegetables for the family feeding of the week.

From that afternoon in December 2013, I began to know them, to listen to them and to follow with great difficulty the threads that would lead me to those combatants that one day they were.

There was the helper of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR), who lived in the Clinic Piacenza and gave aid to the rifle shooters of the attack against Augusto Pinochet. She was Gina Cerda, today a teacher of bio dance and specialized in coaching and the two militants of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) prosecuted for several attacks and attempted murders: Valentina Álvarez, now a sociologist and official of the Labour Directorate, and Dr Elizabeth Rendic. Three women who were sentenced to long years of imprisonment and who left in those years, behind bars, the stories of those young fighters.

My job was to listen and thus reach out to them. “The conversations of memory have been preserved by women's practices, transmitted in oral stories inside the private space," says Raquel Olea.

My job was to take them out of that area, to share them with those who inhabit this amnesiac Chile, to tell their lives because they are an essential piece of our collective memory that must be preserved.

Santiago, January 2015

WOMEN FACES

"... they printed my portrait in the hospital's newspaper as an unavoidable example. Their rushed and always poorly edited headlines claimed that I was an abnormal who had offended the most valuable for the humankind. A whole medical case.

I obeyed to my mom an shut my mouth. I closed it for now because when my mother dies, I will tell you everything I know about the doctors and their fans".

Impuesto a la carne, Diamela Eltit

“The fire, the fire, the fire, and the epic. I felt it again: I felt again about the wasteland, superimposed on my childhood. We all let go the body and the movable and dexterous hands We saw the continent, became combatants and sisters again, almost humans.

I talked long, happy, discreetly, and generous: Women, the bar opens. We opened it, managed it with hierarchy. And the thirst seized them whole” Por la patria, Diamela Eltit

GIRL'S BODIES

I am lying on the floor. So are my mom, dad, brother, and little sister. On the living floor, we are all lying facing down. We are not listening to my Snow White CD as I do almost every day in that place by the very same position: lying on the carpet, looking at the cardboard sleeve lined in a piece of plastic that I am slowly scratching over the beautiful princess's face and her forest animals. There is no music this time. Gunshots and some screams are heard on the street We live in a three floors building. Our apartment takes the entire top floor. They are snippers. They shoot anyone who moves, they are on top of the 13th tower my father said. He refers to one of the San Borja remodelling towers, they are in front. I think a snipper is a dangerous person who wants to shoot us I don't understand how he distinguishes the good people from the bad from so high up.

I am barely breathing. I am scared. My parents are scared too. Airplanes are audible. I can see them passing in a straight line through the window. Strong booms roared in the distance. They are bombing La Moneda! My mom says the UP finally finished. My dad says, with the military boot on, what is coming will be worse. I imagine a huge black boot crushing my family…

It is Tuesday 11th , September 1973. I am five years old.

Valentina is at school. It is about ten o'clock in the morning and many moms are looking for their children at an unusual time. The joy of leaving before classes is not expressed. She put her books and notebooks inside her bag and goes out to the yard in silence with the other children who also perceive the tension in the environment. The faces of the mothers show fear. People look at each other in a different, mistrustful way. They speak quietly. The authority of her school says a couple sentences that she did not understand very much, but she does understand that everyone should go home as soon as possible. By the hand of her mother, Valentina leaves at a fast pace. The woman's nervousness increases as she passes in front of the adjoining school. A group of boys walks along the roofs. They carry chairs, canvases, and flags of the UP. Her mom squeezes her hand, and they hurry. They are in the house already and listening to the radio. They overthrew Chicho these fucking soldiers said the mother to her children And Valentina hears the words, coup d’état. She tells them that she is worried about her father who left for work early. The radio stops playing and the four of them are silent.

There are only a few minutes until ten in the morning and the terror has broken out in the Liceo de Niñas N°3 of Santiago. Gina along with her classmates from sophomore have stampeded out of the room… You have to go home; the military people are on the streets says the inspector. The school is on San Ignacio Street, three blocks from the Alameda. Shots, bombs, and screams are heard... Gina and her sister see how many parents have gone to pick up their daughters. They are waiting for their own to appear, however, they are certain that this will not happen. It is the father of a friend who offers to take them, and they quickly get into his car. There's chaos, tanks in the streets and soldiers everywhere: they are young, and their faces are painted with war, giving orders, screaming. The adult explains to the girls that there is a coup d’état. They do not understand much but they remember their mother's concern the days before. The car stops. Gina and her sister are ordered to get off at the intersection of Ochagavía with Departamental, twenty blocks from their house. I cannot get you any closer he says. They feel defenceless and start running. They are scared. Very scared. They arrive at their house. their mother, she is not there. She will arrive the

next day in an ambulance with a white flag waving. The woman will cry a lot, she has seen trucks with dead people piled up. Gina is sixteen years old.

Elizabeth arrives early at the university that morning. She arrives at the Medical School of the University of Chile where she is a student. But the atmosphere is eerie. People look scared and the students are ordered to return to their homes. The coup, it started. Elizabeth does not understand how a political and social process that she had enjoyed so much was being brutally put to an end. So much joy in the atmosphere, so much energy, an overflowing communion among thousands of people at the marches, in the towns where she was doing community work... From that morning, everything would change. Together with a group of classmates, she goes to the house of one of them, in Providencia, which is the closest. There are no buses or cars on the streets. Just people walking at a quick pace. Everything is stopped. Her classmate's dad is going to drop her off at home. Hours later, together with her parents and her two sisters, she will cry when Augusto Pinochet appears on the television, heading the Military Junta and reading the sides about the state of emergency that would not end in seventeen years. Black and white images. Elizabeth cannot stop crying.

NEITHER APOSTLE NOR MESSIAH

The military coup put an end to the government of Salvador Allende and the Popular Unity. A thousand days in which the Revolution with the taste of empanadas and red wine made the eyes of the world fall on our country. It was three years of social explosion and fundamental changes. The implementation of the itinerary outlined in the UP-government program and the forty measures that involved the nationalization of banking, coal, steel, and copper, as well as the deepening of the Agrarian Reform and the nationalization of various companies, the economic and social foundations of Chile remained. Everyone was on the streets. The young people who came out to manifest for social reforms; the students for the right to education; the workers for wage improvements and in support of the “Chilean economic independence” that comrade President had promised; men and women who found in Allende's speech the illusion of another possible world. But there were also those who saw with fear the depth of the reforms and a change of the world that they had known until then. And there were the young men of Fatherland and Liberty, the women of the moneyed classes and the wives of uniformed men throwing corn in the regimentals to incite the military to an uprising that would put an end to the UP. At the other extreme, the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) proclaimed its ideology of armed struggle as the only way to establish a truly revolutionary government.

In the same way, as it happened in other distant scenarios, the Cold War between the USSR and the United States was installed, this time, on Chilean soil. The CIA and the KBG were fighting inch by inch to gain influence in the political process of the country: military uprisings put down, and the death of the commander-in-chief of the Army, René Schneider in October 1970, was one of the attempts to destabilize the country and prevent the assumption of Salvador Allende. It was a failed operation that was born from the same Army, where General Roberto Viaux, one of the brains who a year earlier had organized a coup at Tacna, along with other generals and members of Fatherland and Liberty, were planning a kidnapping to tension the political scene. They got backfired, literally,

and they ended up murdering their highest military authority. Then, it would be the turn of Edmundo Pérez Zujovic, a crime that was attributed to the Organized Vanguard of the People, VOP.

Allende was already aware of what would be his end when, at the beginning of September 1973, he said:

“I tell you, comrades, of such years, I tell you calmly, with absolute tranquillity. I do not have apostle's or messiah's vocation; I do not have martyr's conditions. I am a social fighter who fulfils a task, the task that the people have given me. But let it be understood by those who want to go back in history and ignore the majority will of Chile. Without having martyr's flesh, I will not take a step back. And let them know! I will leave La Moneda when I fulfil the mandate that the people gave me. I have no other alternative, only by riddling me with bullets will they be able to impede my will to fulfil the people's program.”

And so, it happened.

NO LIES BETWEEN US

It had been forty years since the coup d’état. And in front of me, I had three women who lived that time of illusion of a collective project with political consciences and different ages.

For me, who grew up under the State of Siege, they had been the terrorists of which Pinochet spoke so much in his old fox tone. This is how their faces appear in the press... There they are, Valentina, Gina, and Elizabeth, and they are so different from these women with whom I talk. It is not just a matter of years. They look like other women but identical, others to whom I listen carefully.

I think they must have inspired fear in the teenager I was during the dictatorship, in a home where politics was talked about but with fear of the military and extremists alike. In the yellowish cuts where their young faces appear, I also sense the fear, but also pride and even sadness.

How to reach those young fighters who were so many decades ago? The most tangible are the images provided by the newspapers. I need to reach out to those women who were considered the most dangerous in the history of recent Chile. I need to know how they were, how they thought, how they moved around the same city where I was also moving then, if perhaps I could recognize their traces in my own memories of that time.

But these young fighters do not go out that easy to talk to those who sit in front of them and ask them questions. Even less, when they have been silent for decades when they were beaten, tortured, and had to remain locked up for long years for the dare to challenge one of the cruellest regimes in our recent homeland history.

It never ceases to catch my attention, as I observe them in this first meeting, how they welcome each other, show affection to each other, pamper each other, grieve each other's suffering, and celebrate each other in their achievements. They protect themselves. They look at each other with indulgence. We do not lie among ourselves they tell me. The endless hours of seclusion forged in them a relationship of friendship so deep that it overwhelms me. Affections were born in pain and strengthened in freedom.

To get to know these young fighters who once were, I decide to go first to the girls who still inhabit them, to get to know them in their joys, fantasies, and also childish fragility. To go to those little girls who are still palpitating and who look out in their loving gestures and laughter ... perhaps in that childish world I will find many keys that will allow me to understand the radical decisions they would make a few years later.

THE ÁLVAREZ PÉREZ

“There are four of us. A still possible number. We add an amount that makes sense and allows us to show that there is a weak family pride in us."

Fuerzas especiales, Diamela Eltit

José Alamiro Álvarez Aguartin and Felisa Pérez Ahumada.

Children: Emilia, Antonio, Octavio, and Valentina.

As a child, Valentina was the mother of nine dolls to whom she owed all her care and responsibility. She liked being alone with them. For that, she would go to the back of the courtyard of her house in the commune of Pudahuel and there she would sit them in a row. She fed them a mixture of mud and flowers that they loved. She told them stories, pampered them but, above all, she tucked them in. Despite little Valentina's enormous efforts to keep her nine daughters warm, they were always cold. That distressed her a lot. The sense of responsibility was so strong in the matter of playing with dolls that, when she was allowed to take them to school, she did it with a crib and bottles. But soon, the teacher ordered her not to take them anymore because she paid more attention to her dolls than to the class.

She was considered "wild” by her manners somewhat curt, used to the manly games of her two older brothers, she enjoyed more spending time in the most classic girls' game even though she felt it was a burden, due to the considerable number of tasks it demanded of her. Someone told her that the dolls lived at night, which triggered in Valentina a feeling of guilt that, if she neglected them during the day, they would take revenge while she was sleeping. I felt them cold and tried to warm them and cover them, but they never warmed up. That was an uncomfortable feeling. The responsibility with which she took care of her dolls also translated into her school commitment. Of the four siblings, she was the one who did the best at school. The back of the courtyard, which was her refuge as a precocious mother, was the place where she went to study and review the subjects she had learned during the day.

Valentina is, of the three former prisoners, the one who most clearly remembers her childhood. She evokes her early years as a space of freedom and happiness. Without much awareness of the world but of games, she remembers that it was a universe of her own that she enjoyed.

Her school education began in first grade and that is when all that joy dissipated.

"I remember long hours playing with my cat, trying to wrap it up and put it in the bedside drawer. The whole afternoon barefoot wandering with my friends through the streets of white dust, aimlessly and with a negative view of myself and others. They were paving the area and all of us watching. I have an image of me above of a mechanical shovel of one of the machines that make excavations. I am happy, smiling.

When I entered school, what I liked the most was participating in sports and artistic activities. I enjoyed the performances and dances that were organized around typical dates of celebration or important commemorations of our national history. And in my house, in addition to being with my dolls, I played with my brothers. We would play with mud, at the ball, or we would climb on the wooden fence, or the roof and throw ourselves from there to the ground. I still have my knees scarred from that time. I do not know how we did not break a bone or two. And I loved all that, going around muddy, playing in the street, something wild, maybe…

But at school, I got a trauma that I can see more clearly today. Then I did not understand it well and it was the death of my childhood. My personal and lonely world, in which I spent long hours singing and chatting with my dolls, became a system of schedules, routines and the impossibility of doing what I wanted. However, the most awkward thing, was that the contact with other little girls my age, made me compare myself and I felt quite different. I began to structure a look about myself in which I felt less than the others. I was more boyish, but I also looked different. The school was something like ceasing to be me and borrowing from others what I should have brought with me and that, for reasons I do not know, I did not have: manners, grace... I did not know how to play soft like my classmates. They were young ladies and I wanted to be like them. They were all in their blue aprons in check, with nice and polished shoes, new bags, and ribbons in their hair. Instead, I remember myself with a discoloured apron, unpolished shoes, torn socks, and tight panties. At one time they made me form in the line of the lazy ones, I also have the memory of having peed in the classroom, and the teachers were very accusatory and punitive for my behaviour. All of that made me feel very inferior. That is when I realized that I lived in a different house, in a different town, and that I was poor. So, poverty becomes concrete, it hurts, and bothers. The critical gaze of the one who has the most appears and my attempt to hide everything: the violence of my mother, the brutality of my father, everything that smells or gives indications of material and human misery. This feeling of inferiority has marked me a lot in my life.”

Valentina is an attractive woman. It does not go unnoticed even walking down the street. In her, I distinguish the pretty girl she was big and lively brown eyes, a small nose and a cute smile that makes a discreet population of freckles shine on a face enveloped by a voluptuous mane. I pity her pain, her shame of poverty. I imagine the cruel looks of her neat little classmates. As a child, I remember that I wanted to have blue eyes. To achieve it I spent crying all afternoon next to a huge pot of chopped onions, after the advice of a cook who told me that its juice would turn the hazel tone into the longed-for blue colour. My eyes were red for hours and my disappointment forever.

The prototype of beauty and the rejection of what in chilensis slang it is loosely called as low-class, is a condemnation in Chile. We are one of the most classist and racist societies in Latin America. We do not realize our cruelty. Valentina's pain hurts me.

“Despite that inferiority feeling and the difficulties, I recognize that I did well at school, and it was not difficult for me to learn. I liked studying. I adopted a very particular method. After lunch, I would go to the back of the yard and hide behind the chicken coop and a pile of bricks, I would study and memorise the contents. But not only that. I also had to fulfil the obligations of the house. My mother, a short woman with a thick physique and an easy laugh, kind, generous and very hardworking, had a marked obsession with cleanliness and order. She was an excellent cook. She made delicacies out of nothing. She also knitted very well and with the same wool, she made us many times different models of knit wear, depending on the fashion. She would undo them and knit them again. But her obsession with the cleaning she would unload it on my sister and me, only on her daughters. We had to endure their shouts and scolds if we did not adopt her rules, which consisted mainly of washing clothes on Thursdays and general house cleaning on Sundays. She freed our two brothers and our father from this requirement. They were never required in anything that had to do with the duties of the house. They were taken care of in all their domestic needs, from lifting their dishes at lunchtime, to making their beds and tidying up their things. This always seemed like a tremendous injustice to me. We complained in a thousand ways to our mother, but she never showed signs of wanting to change her system. My father was a very handsome man, with a white skin and blue eyes. Serious and locked in his inner world, distant, difficult to get to know. He was labourer in different companies that, for our luck, worked with basic food. So, he came back daily with milk, butter, cheese, and yogurt. In another time, he brought meat and hamburgers. That was a great contribution to overcoming the low income he received, since my mother did not work outside the house. It happens to me with both of them that I have them as incomplete, as if I cannot identify them being people, independent of their role as parents.”

To all the economic difficulties, in the house of the Álvarez Pérez family cohabitation began to break irretrievably as they grew up. The relationship between her mother and sister was an element that affected the entire family. Valentina still cannot figure out what happened between them. Already an adult, she asked her mother, who did not remember hitting or physically assaulting Emilia. She refused to give any explanation.

“I always had the feeling that for my mother, my sister was an alien person, as if she never had her in her womb. In his eyes, my sister was an indomitable, crazy, irresponsible with everything, the school, the house... she treated her as a liar, lazy, messy, and cheeky She would beat her uncontrollably and without regrets. I was so hurt by what was happening between them that I questioned my affection for my mother. I feared her and it was hard for me to love her. I also began to feel sorry for myself, as if I were the only one in the world in misfortune, with an aggressive family, with beating and abusive parents. I was not sharing this with anyone. I remained silent and suffering. The men of the house allied themselves with my mother, whom she authorized to beat Emilia. It was a every person for itself. It was clearly not a welcoming, protective, or dialoguing family. But it was my family and my way of loving them was not to repeat their behaviour. I was worried about my sister, I helped her so that she would not get beaten, I hid some of her secrets from her and I would pay attention to protect her. But she did whatever she wanted: she would go out without saying where or with whom, she would flirt with anyone, she even messed around with cops, which

was terrible. In a neighbourhood where all the houses were close together, everyone knows each other, she was the family shame. I was seventeen years old when I realized that my sister was pregnant. It was such the distress for what could happen to her in front of my parents, that I remember getting rash all over my body ... when I left the house, I felt a huge relief, I would no longer have to worry about her anymore.”

THE CERDA YEOMANS

Eduardo Cerda and Sylvia Yeomans.

Children: Patricia, Sylvana, Gina and Marko.

Who can, with barely four years old, arms in a jug position, head held high and voice on neck say: Let me live my life! That was Gina and this anecdote is one of those family stories that are recalled every time the brothers are together, which is not usual, since three of them live out of Chile. Gina says that her childhood memories are sparse, however, they are vivid and eloquent.

"I hate my name I always hated it. I am the third woman, and I was the youngest until my brother was born. However, when I was born, they already had chosen my name: Gino. They had two little girls already and they were expecting for a boy, but I was born. And that not having been expected is something that has marked me all my life. In addition, something happened in my parents' marriage because when I was only three months old, I was sent to La Serena to live with my maternal grandparents. I asked my mom once, but she could not answer me. She, who was a confident and rotund woman, remained mute, wanting to cry. This time I went with my grandparents, however, it seems that it was a time of love because they worked in a school and say that my grandfather put my wicker cradle beneath a poplar tree, and when the girls went out to recess, they all came to pamper me. I went back to my house when I was one year old. Then, when I was five years old, my mom put us into a nunnery school. I have a few memories of that time, and they are all of mistreatment and threats. The nuns scared me with the headless priest so that we would not get out of our rooms. Once, a nun died, the oldest one, and they made us to wait the funeral cortège and throw rose petals at it while it passed. I was the youngest and the smallest in stature and I was trembling with panic with the petals in my hand. The most horrible thing was that they forced us to look at her in the coffin, and they lifted me up by the waist and I saw this little old lady with her face contorted. Horrible! I hate priests and nuns to this day. Boarding school left me with a feeling of abandonment that has always accompanied me. But I had a strong personality and since I was little my mom praised me for that. It was stubborn and I would not let my older sisters to impose over me. I remember fighting with them holding their hair without letting go... they were terrible fights. And the "brave" fame, I earned it. In another school of nuns, they said I was evangelical, that keep going for many years, but I did not care. I was a teenager and at that time, I was in a semi-boarding school student at Santa Rosa de María Auxiliadora School. Prayers were said in the morning and in the afternoon, and then we were forced to attend mass every day. Until once I rebelled and went to the playground, I remember that a nun went to get me and started pushing me to go to mass and I hit her. She dragged me to the school chapel. I got suspended, of course, they called my mom and, from then on, at school I got thought to be evangelic. It was the worst thing they could tell you, but I felt it with pride. When I took communion and they told you that you could not chew the host, well

I chewed it ridiculously hard, to see what happened. My dad made me go to mass and I never learned the prayers. I moved my mouth and pretended to know my prayers, but he realized it and it did not bother me. I lived with that label of being independent, rebel, that I could do anything. I was the odd one out of the family, for taking risks. And it is true, the sense of risk is something that I get thrilled about, borderline situations, dangerous situations, are perfect components that it is impossible for me to resist. I was like Emma Peel, of The Avengers, who was my role-model. My mom was always a left-wing woman, extremely sensitive, always involved in the social issue because of her work. She was a midwife and worked a lot. She looked after to the women with a wonderful delicacy. When she arrived at the house, she would tell me how she had been doing, and I felt a lot of admiration for her and what she was doing. My dad, on the other hand, was kind of unstable at work, he worked on different things. He was a right-wing, Pinochettist of the worsts. They had political discussions. Since I was a little girl, my dad started calling me a communist and would get mad with what I did or said, instead, my mom praised me for everything. She was always working, that is why I was raised with nannies. And my dad did not stay in the house much either, but he was always in a bad mood and would get angry if he arrived and my mom was not there And Mom? Where is Mom? What time is she coming? and all three sisters shivered. After a while, my mom arrived, and I barely looked at him. She ignored him. And on Sunday, my dad brought her breakfast to bed on a tray, with a rose, for Tilita, it would say. And my mom would be reading the newspaper lying down, as if nothing. They slept in separate beds. I never saw them kiss or hold hands"

The departure to Canada of her mother and brothers, in the mid-eighties, would mark Gina. She stayed in Chile. Her father too. With him, she would maintain a distant relationship in the affective and the political matter.

THE RENDIC OLATE

Pedro Rendic and Sigrid Olate.

Daughters: Ana, Sigrid, and Elizabeth.

In front of me was Dr. Rendic, the dermatologist who runs from one consultation to another and who among her patients has some who, in the past, were her own party leaders. Those men that she used to obey without thinking, that she barely saw and on whom her life depended for long years.

Her mother, Sigrid, left her pedagogical studies to get married. She was a submissive woman, daughter of her time, who later in very tense situations will show all her strength. Pedro, her father, arrived in Chile at the age of fourteen traveling alone from the former Yugoslavia (present-day Croatia) following his own father, who had gone ahead a few months looking for new horizons for his family, far from a Europe stressed by ideology and nationalisms.

“I think about how difficult it must have been for my dad to take over my grandfather's, Nono grocery store, without knowing the language. He would leave him a list with the names of the products, as phonetically they understood it, and their corresponding translation so that my dad could sell them. He was able to study, integrate, get married and educate us at three, an issue that was a priority for him.”

There are the three Rendic Olate sisters, the classic blond-haired person and fairy-tale looking like little girls from the tale books. I wonder how Elizabeth's life evolved to jump into the fight against the Pinochet dictatorship.

“As a child, I had zero awareness of where I was. It was a little bird. I had no special concerns outside of my own world. There was no questioning about what was going on. I was doing what I had to do: study and obey. I was very introverted, very shy. I took refuge in books. I read a lot, and in the summer, when we were going to spend the summer in my aunts' field, I was going to read under a pear tree.”

Elizabeth says that she came to study medicine almost by inertia. She had been one of the best students during all her school years. For the same reason, and in the fashion of the time, she was repeatedly elected president of the class, despite the fact that her deepest desire was to go unnoticed, hopefully in the last corner of the room. Leadership was not her thing in the nun school, she lived the severity and spiritual discipline that tempered her spirit. Raised as a passive, receptive and uncritical student, she embraced reading and religion with heart and spirit. She made her first communion embedded in the catholic catechism. Her religious commitment was deep, to the point that she felt that her second Sacrament, after Baptism, was a “marriage with God.”

Her duty, from an early age, was to fulfil her obligations in an exemplary manner. The paternal visit was the only prize she needed. An attempt that was too laborious for the grand expectations of a father who was not happy if she did not give her greatest personal effort. The cinema showed her a type of woman that she did not know. Rebellious women even, reckless. This was how the heroines of the French Resistance penetrated very deeply into the young Elizabeth who saw in them the courage that she then did not even suspect was growing inside her.

Together with her older sisters, she suffered the rigour of a man who, despite having become close to the communists in his youth, no longer cared about politics. After the break between the USSR of Stalin and Tito, from the then former Yugoslavia and whom he admired so much, Pedro Rendic was no longer for collective dreams or distractions. Politics was not a matter that hovered in family conversations.

However, the political and social effervescence of the early years of the seventies was introduced into the feminine Rendic clan, as it happened in all Chilean households. The three sisters, now teenagers, were seduced by the revolutionary campaign of the Christian Democratic candidate Radomiro Tomic. Enthusiastic but not political militants, they began to understand and become part of the historical feat of Chile at that time. Elizabeth, the youngest of the Rendic sisters, was not old enough to vote and when Salvador Allende arrived at La Moneda she felt invited to the epic that dreamed of changing the face of Chile.

On September 4, 1970, Elizabeth was on her birthday. That night Allende, from the headquarters of the Federation of Students of Chile (FECh), gave his first speech as the winner of the presidential election:

“It is with deep emotion that I speak to you from this improvised rostrum through these deficient amplifiers. How significant is -more than words - the presence of the people of Santiago, playing the vast majority of Chileans gather to reaffirm the victory that we achieved cleanly today, a victory that

opens a new path for the country, and whose main actor is the Chilean people here assembled! How extraordinarily significant it is that I am able to address the people of Chile and the people of Santiago from the Student Federation! This is very worthful and meaningful. Never has a candidate triumphed by the will and sacrifice of the people, used a platform that had greater significance, because we all know it: the youth of the homeland was the vanguard in this great battle, which was not the struggle of a man, but the struggle of the people; this is Chile's victory achieved cleanly this afternoon. (...) We are the legitimate heirs of the fathers of the homeland, and together we will make the second independence: the economic independence of Chile. Citizens of Santiago, workers of the homeland: you and only you are the winners. The popular parties and the social forces have given this great lesson, which is projected beyond, I repeat, our material borders. I ask you to go home with the healthy joy of the clean victory achieved and that tonight when you caress your children when you look for rest, think about the hard tomorrow that we will have ahead, when we have to put more passion, more affection, to make a better Chile and a fairer life in our homeland.”

Elizabeth remembers the UP period as a time of tremendous vitality, exciting, full of expectations, of hope, in which they were moving towards a joyful, new, supportive, young, beautiful society. She felt that she lacked time to do everything she wanted, in addition to studying, participating in volunteer work and enjoying the great cultural offer that opened with good films, music, theatre. She remembers the student meetings, the discussions that were generated and the noticeably clear and consistent analyses of those who supported the government and those who did not. Among the latter was the MIR, whom Elizabeth thought to be too extremist to break the established boundaries. She felt that they did not contribute to the process but rather hindered it.

Elizabeth felt, as never before, communion with the less fortunate. Her spirituality was changing its foundations from the traditional Catholics in which she had been raised to the humanist and social ones. She felt part of an unprecedented historical process. She had no qualms about declaring herself "UP adherent". The great protests in the streets captivated her. She believed that the impossible could come true. Fidel Castro visited Chile and together with a group of classmates they saw him passing, in the distance... and they were excited. The world of the shy young woman was opening up at an accelerated rate.

“We were in the second or third year of medicine. We felt very committed to the democratization process that was taking place within the University. During a strike performed by doctors who were against the government, we worked awfully hard so that patients did not feel their lack. We had a great passion and dedication. we were there, for the hospital to continue functioning. My world was expanding, and I began to form in the ideological. My classmates started lending me books. I had no political background and wanted to learn. In our discussions the ideas of Sartre and Marcuse appeared, whose thought I knew through the books that we shared from hand to hand. It was a time of illusion and dreams of which it was impossible to stay out of it. I was amazed by the popular government project, and I was a fervent "Allendist". During the UP I did not like the MIR. I considered them "extremists" and that it did not contribute to the historical moment. I even remember that I hated the Mirists because they spoke in the mass meetings, no one could shut them up. They were unbearable. After the Coup, everything broke down. It was a very traumatic thing. I did not understand what was happening, and the only way to understand and share was by talking to friends. Seeing the Allendist strategy defeated, I gradually got closer to colleagues who were in the Resistance. That was between the years seventy five and seventy six. We were frightened and I

remember that I entered in a very existentialist phase. I was obsessively wondering, what am I doing in the world? is it worth living?... it was a period of great distress. I was part of the group of nerds of the class, and I got along better with men than with women, even to this day.”

The founder of the MIR, Miguel Enriquez, months before the military coup, already announced what was coming in one of his most remembered speeches at the Caupolican Theatre:

"Comrades, the people must prepare to resist, they must prepare to fight, they must prepare to win. Workers of Chile: Let us go, forward with all our strength! Forward with all the forces of history!”

A year later, Enríquez was assassinated in one of the most brutal operations resulting from state terrorism that was implemented after September 11, 1973. With its main leaders dead and others in exiles, such as Pascal Allende and Nelson Gutiérrez who took refuge in the nunciature in 1975 to go into exile and then return, the MIR would resist faithful to its principle: Fatherland or Death.

THE COMMITEMENT OF A GIRL

When Dr. Salvador Allende Gossens assumed the presidency of the Republic, Valentina was an eightyear-old girl and already felt part of the Popular Unity. Politics was not a central theme of family life, however, Valentina felt precociously committed to the struggle for socialist values. Her father belonged to the union of the company where he worked but was not a member of any political party. Despite that, he was fired after the 1973 military coup.

Incredibly early on, Valentina showed a lot of clarity to interpret what was happening around her. Her solo games were the refuge of an environment, many times, violent and hostile. As she grew older, her interests expanded, and she began to look for a female role model to emulate. Her mother's path did not satisfy her. Being a mom yes, but being a stay-at-home spouse, no. However, there not many more women around her whose life paths inspired her. On the television of the time, when the channels were just beginning to show commercials in colour, one appeared that showed five prototypes of women. It was a shampoo that adapted to the type of woman who used it. Valentina identified with a young woman who appeared with lustrous hair and modern glasses: it was the so-called intellectual one. What did it mean to be an intellectual woman? “I had no idea, but that was me," she recalls.

She recognized herself as different from her cousins and most of the girls of her age who were more influenced by fashion. If it was necessary to decide on thin brows, curls and wooden clogs, Valentina preferred the more “handicraft” clothes, as it was called at that time the most hippie, and go out with friends to talk, play guitar, and read poetry.

The closest job model was that of teachers. She used to emulate from an early age playing to teach her dolls and then, to other kids Then years later, it was her who taught her little cousin to read before he started school.

As a teenager and as a girl's game, she began to write long dedications in notebooks that were passed by hand. With drawings and small illustrations, Valentina enjoyed highlighting the virtues of her friends in a private and affectionate manner. They also appreciated and enjoyed when Valentina gave them, their own lives, biographies written in a literary tone and in the first person. But it was

a brief time. Reaching high school was a very definitive step for her to leave childhood behind. She all of sudden she felt almost an adult. The idea of feeling lacking in front of her classmates, especially in material matters, remained in her, however, the bonds of friendship that she began to establish with her high school classmates, reinforced her self-esteem. She discovered herself as a leader and as class president she began to develop her abilities to organize and, above all, to group around some educational or social cause. She also started earning some money by reading Papelucho to a little girl.

It is at this time that she begins to recognize the social and political conflicts that plagued the Chile of the dictatorship. The headlines in a certain press and the conversations with older friends who had lived the Popular Unity made her understand that she did not have to accept the dictatorial government. Social injustice began to appear timidly, first, and then increasingly strongly until it became a life commitment. It was the volunteer work that captivated her the most. She attended meetings in which recreational activities were planned for the children of the town, and suddenly, to some meeting with political overtones, where she did not understand her role there, but she did perceive that something important was happening and she wanted to be part of it.

The volunteer work experience allowed her to lead campaigns together with her old school classmates, when with supermarket carts they would go collecting nylon, newspaper, a glass bottles to sell them later and collect money for the activities. Cleaning the school on the weekends, including the classrooms ceilings, as a form of dignify the place where they studied was another was of commitment. This is how they felt part of the educational process as active agents and not as passive recipients of knowledge. It was arduous work, the harder it was, the more they enjoyed it. There, debate, and reflection were generated where politics was analysed in a very subtle but effective way.

Young Valentina, at the age of fourteen, also wanted to go out to parties, enjoy and live those wonderful years. She and her cousins, who worked hard to get the permission. Like a new broom, they cleaned the house and were the most cooperative so that when requesting it there was no objection. Her mother, despite how strict she was in certain aspects, openly told her that she trusted her and therefore allowed her to go to a party which took place at a friend's house, to dance the nascent Chilean rock of Los Prisioneros or a good slow music cassette.

Just as the song by Miguel Mateos, one of the most fashionable Argentine singers in the eighties, says, tell me, tell me, what are you going to do when you grow up, she constantly and repeatedly felt harassed by adults who asked her about her future work. Valentina felt confused. She did not understand why she was being insisted on so much by those who had barely managed to put something together with their own lives. She saw older people as a hermetic group, without reflections on themselves, worried about the younger ones' future and nothing about themselves. They did not talk about their desires, their failures, or the experiences that marked them.

About her future, she had only two things clear: that she would never marry in a white dress and that she was going to study at the university... whatever it was. Vocational training meant a world that she did not know, but it was presented to her as something fascinating, full of mysteries and knowledge, restricted to a few ones. Studying was the privilege of some, of the chosen ones. Valentina knew about the economic restrictions, however, she was certain that she would be part

of that group, because she had the conviction that knowledge changes the sense of belonging, of interest, of position.

Despite her cheerful and open character, as she grew up, Valentina was becoming increasingly selective with her friends. She was not interested in interacting with everyone, but only with those who had a political or hippie vibe. If she chose a boyfriend, she did it very selectively: the most hippie, the most political or the funniest of the school. Romanticism was fuelled by the novels of Corín Tellado and the photonovelas of torrid and impossible loves. Together with her mother she listened to radio programs, especially sentimental radio dramas that at night made listeners burst into tears, such as "What the mirror tells". The radio was also a source that awakened her taste for stories through programs such as "Home sweet home" or "What the wind tells". This complicity place with her allowed, it her closer at that other woman, more generous, less irascible, who also enjoyed her home, beyond household chores.

However, her greatest concern was in the social issue that soon took shape in a political commitment that she felt increasingly urgently.

Chile was living a dictatorship that had no signs of ending. The regime that at the beginning said to be de facto, was later institutionalized as a civic-military government. The Constitution of 1980 that came to repeal the one that had ruled since 1925 installed the foundations of a State with a deregulated economy, the most liberal on the planet, an experiment by the University of Chicago that would deepen and consolidate inequality and injustice in Chile.

A country ravaged by the military boot and plunged into a crisis that bottomed out in 1982 with an economic recession that came to punish its population doubly. In the Presidential Message of September 11, 1981, Augusto Pinochet repeated what he had been doing since 1973 to justify his regime of terror: insult and feeding the fear of a society that was already beginning to lose their patience, while boasting of his poor achievements.

“Those who then did not hesitate to assassinate Chile's children are the same ones who today intend to return resorting to vile tricks and without stopping their calumny and lies. If we allowed the return of these agents of communism, we would be betraying our men killed in action. This is why I emphasize once more that we will not surrender our unwavering decision to defend the security of all Chilean citizens (...) Today we show the world, one of the economies most robust and healthy of the continent, at the time that we as a nation can overcome their problems with the effort of all its people, with legal standards, objective and impartial, which apply to all alike, without exceptions or privileges to anyone (...) Obviously, the goals achieved by Chile in the economic and social field and the institutional progress known, are communism, a new defeat, whose consolidation will definitively keep it away from the national life. Having failed all his approaches, and repudiated by the overwhelming majority of Chileans, he has opted for the violent route, pretending to promote agitation and disorder, without trepidation in the treacherous murder of innocent victims."

A year earlier in Moscow, the Communist Party, through its general secretary Luis Corvalán, announced the Policy of Rebellion The People's Mass Movement (PRPM), ending the “unarmed policy of the CP” that it had defended in its 68 years of life as a political organization. The CP called for encouraging “all forms of fight,” including what it called “acute violence,” recognizing the right to rebellion that assists peoples in the face of a tyrant. And Pinochet showed this change in his

message, in his particular oratory, inelegant and staggering, so distant from what I imagined a president should be:

“In recent months we have witnessed a new attempt by the agents of Soviet Communism to alter the institutional path along which we are going forward. The formation of front organizations of the Communist Party and its cunning purpose of creating a climate of social commotion, which favours its objective of destabilizing the government, have been the latest practices employed. The hatred and blind fanaticism of these representatives of chaos and destruction are joined by others who, out of naivety, ambition, or bad intentions, become accomplices to the conspiracy. (...) In the face of such events, I declare that our commitment to the country will be fully fulfilled and that we do not accept any alteration of the path we have chosen! Those who dare or intend to divert it will have to abide by the consequences!”

Those consequences had been experienced with pain by the MIR, which in 1981 suffered one of its greatest blows in Neltume. Seven guerrillas died there, some of them, part of the Return Operation. Since 1979, the exiled Mirists or who had been expelled from the country begin to discuss their role in the fight against the dictatorship. Most of them were in Europe and were already beginning to rebuild their lives, forming their families, and studying at the most prestigious universities in the Old World. The criticism from the militancy that remained on Chilean grounds and resisted the dictatorship became stronger. This is how the so-called Return Operation, a strategy that implied the return of the militants in a clandestine way, after passing through Cuba where they conducted a political-military preparation... that would never be enough to face the force and the appropriate crushing resources of the civic-military dictatorship of Chile.

But the Army Intelligence Leadership (DINE) had prepared its own Operation, which they called Machete and that it ended with a massacre in the Neltume area, nine hundred kilometres from Santiago. The National Renewal (RN) outrageous deputy had directed the action, Rosauro Martínez, captain of the commando unit N° 8 of the Valdivian "Lancahue" regiment, back then. The relations between those who conducted state terrorism and those who dress as Democrats today is undoubtedly one of the outstanding debts of the Transition that began after 1990.

The Statement of the Political Commission of the MIR on Neltume, appeared in El rebelde of September 1981, it gives an account of the decision to continue in the frontal armed struggle against the Dictatorship. It would take a few more years and a few more severe blows like this, to understand that this fight was too unequal.

“It does not ignore workers, Mapuche country people, the timber worker, the rural and urban workers, who have been fiercely repressed by the Pinochet hench men in the gigantic repressive operation that the dictator has organized, that those who fell there and those who continue to fight, defend their rights and their dignity a thousand times trampled over. Those who fell did so by defending the right of the Mapuche people to their usurped lands, the right to work and a decent wage for timber workers and that of all the men and women of our homeland, run over and subjugated by the servants of the monopoly capital and imperialism. At the hard price of freedom. It is the cost that is assumed when moving from longing to action, from the will to reality. The people of Chile, the MIR militants and their leadership pay an emotional and combative tribute to our dear comrades who fell on this day. Heroic comrades, a symbol of a new generation of Chilean combatants who, on a daily basis, confront the enemy in the homeland, and of those who,

overcoming all difficulties, leave exile to re-join the vanguard of this struggle. Glory to those who will remain indelibly in the memory of the Chilean people and every militant of the MIR.”

YOUNG MILITIAWOMAN

Valentina was already 16 years old. The volunteer work that she had done at the forefront of pastoral youth was no longer enough. She needed to take one more step. It was not a solo process. Together with a couple of friends, she looked for a way to get more involved in the fight against the dictatorship.

"The sisters of one of my friends were older and had been left-wing militants during the Popular Unity. We did not understand which parties they belonged to. One of them told us that when Fidel Castro came to Chile, the retinue had passed a block from our houses, and she had gone that distance slowly and had shaken hands with Fidel. She bragged and we idealized her. We wanted to know more, but above all, to participate more. And for that, it was essential to contact someone who was militarizing. That was our goal. And we began to pay more attention. At the school, we already realized that there were some militants. There was a boy who walked around with canvases and pamphlets, and who passed by my house every day. Until one day I made up my mind and talked to him. I told him that I was interested in talking to him and he invited us to his house to have an afternoon snack. But at that point, we were no longer alone with my friend, but there were six of us. And when we arrived, there was this boy and his brother, and they were both incredibly surprised. With my friend we told them that we wanted to know more about politics, that we realized that the situation was exceedingly difficult, and we wanted to do things... And there we told them that we were six girls. We already had some grounding! So, the six of us entered the Resistance, which was a very transversal organization, whose motto was: Resist the Dictatorship. At the time, we did not quite understand that this was an intermediate front of MIR. We began to attend regular meetings and get involved with the work of political formation and understand what the labour movement was. The best ones were chosen from the Resistance to be part of the party. They were the ones who chose you and invited you to be a member of the party. It was at that time that the repression in the towns began to get stronger every day.

As soon as we started participating in political meetings, I joined the urban colonies, linked to the Catholic Church. It was the same boy from the Resistance who took us to the Christian Community of Lo Prado. There we got to know the Nicaraguan mass and the Salvadoran mass. It was a Church linked to Liberation Theology. There were very committed foreign priests who transmitted the spirit of Theology to us. He was a Christ who was able to give his life for others. And I made that commitment. We were about three hundred young people linked from different sides to the social and political work, very committed and combative. We knew each other through the youth dynamics of that time, associated with social and political work, to the group meets. In addition to planning and taking care of the children of the camps in municipalities such as Pudahuel, Cerro Navia and Lo Prado, we got involved with their social problems and demands own a house, better sanitary conditions, a decent job for parents... I lived in the Villa Arturo Prat, in Lo Prado. And in 1983 the protests began, and the taking of churches, schools and our sector was very combative. It was in the heat of the national protests and the massive mobilizations that we moved from the game to school support at the barricade and active participation in the fight against dictatorship. With the beginning

of the protests in May 1983, that year the labour became increasingly intense. From preparing the pamphlet to the barricade, the canvas, everything... it was a permanent job that had no rest. The repression was unleashed brutally and inhumanly, especially in these places where were some organizations. Raids, detentions, the removal of social and political leaders, kidnappings, intimidation, injuries, and deaths. One of the most violent situations was when the Yungay camp was evicted. They took the entire families overnight, without us being able to do anything, and distributed them in various places in Santiago. From social militancy, I moved to political militancy. There was no time to project me professionally. I knew I was going to study a profession at some point, but revolution came first. That is why I did not hesitate to look for a job that would allow me to earn some money and also give me more freedom of movement. Thus, in the middle of sixth form 7 A level, I started working as a nurse, taking care of a grandmother. It was a way of being in semihiding since during the protests the police beat us and had us identified. My shield was Mrs Pepa, whom I remember very fondly. To be honest, I was pretty bad as an employee. I did not cook. I only did clean in a small apartment, in the middle of the day, so that I had the whole afternoon free for the political activities that were increasingly the most important thing in my life. She did not know much about me, but she sensed, even though you are a communist, I know you have a good heart... And I did the cleaning quickly and took one of her books and locked her in the bathroom to read. Until she realized it and went to find me and took them off. That is how I discovered Cortázar, and I read Hopscotch. She gave me some aprons and a white shirt front, impeccable, starched, I did not even realize when they were already dirty... —If I did not know that you have a good heart, I would dismiss you tomorrow I would tell her the story that I had little brothers whom I had to take care of and support. She was incredibly grateful to me because I was the only person who took her to the cemetery to see her deceased Argentine husband. No one from her family accompanied her. And the trip was not easy in the micro, since I had to get on first and pull her by the arms, or I had to push her up by the bum and I was skinny and small!

To do my job in the Resistance, I told my mom that I had to stay with Mrs Pepa until later. Even though I stayed some nights accompanying her, which coincided with the most challenging period in my house until my mom caught me when she called. Mrs Pepa, she told her that I had never stayed beyond two P.M., I had never stayed to sleep…

"That year was genuinely nice because I fell in love with Mauricio Maigret, a student at the Liceo de aplicación He was from the MIR, and I was still only from the Resistance. It was difficult to coincide romance with militancy."

Valentina's growing political commitment was the cause of tension and many family frictions. It would be years later her mother, who so much rejected her activism at the time, ended up chained to the bars of the Courts of Justice demanding the release of Prisoners and Political Prisoners, among whom was her daughter Valentina. But for that, it would have to take some time. By the end of 1983, Valentina had already finished school. She is 18 years old and experiences a radical break with her father and leaves home. She had ceased to be the young rebel of the Resistance. She was a militant of the MIR, a select group of young people called to be part of a party that selectively chose its members. That greater degree of involvement would make her go clandestine very soon.

"It was Mauricio who taught me that the Resistance was an apparatus of the MIR, that it had three areas of agitation and propaganda of social work and armed resistance, when I thought it was just

a symbol with that of the R enclosed in a circle. It was very epic. Mauricio was a leader in the Liceo de Aplicación and anywhere. He was one of those who stood on top of the trucks that were carrying the workers of the PEM and the POJ and spoke to people urging them to organize. I met Mauricio at the house of another friend who was also kind of clandestine. It was when I was arriving with three friends, and he was chatting in the street with other guys. They greet us and at three we were struck by their attractiveness. After a while, my friend comes into the house, and he tells us: They sent greetings to you. To me? we all said almost in unison. To the skinny one he replied. It was me. This friend, breaking all the safety rules, began to look for a way for us to see each other. And we started dating quickly. And Mauricio was getting more involved every day. He was always starving because he had already left his house and was walking around. So, when Mrs Pepa sent me to the supermarket to buy the things for the house, I would buy bread and things to make him a sandwich. I made those nice sandwiches for him and took them with me when I got off work. Mrs Pepa did not realize these additional expenses because the only thing that worried her was that the change fits with the total purchase, nothing more. And we spent time together in the parks, and I enjoyed watching him eat whatever I brought him. He would get so happy. We knew that our relationship was going to be difficult, not only because of the tasks that each one had to fulfil within the organization but because of the cruel and harsh practices of repression and torture against leftist militancy, especially towards the MIR, by the military forces. We talked about the forms of torture and what could happen to us if we were arrested. They were painful and challenging conversations. His convictions and orientations were clear and precise, we should not give up, whatever will happen we should continue. It was exceedingly difficult for us to find each other and spend time together, but when we managed to see each other, we enjoyed it a lot, we laughed, talked, and loved each other from the naïveté and the little experience that we both had in the love field. He was my first love. Our point was Avenida Sur, next to the University of Santiago. It is a super long street, which starts at General Velázquez and ends at one of the entrances of the USACH. It was our meeting place. Each one entered from one side and ten or fifteen minutes could pass until we met. We walked slowly to give the other time to get there. We could not return or re-enter, because it was suspicious. I remember seeing him coming walking towards me and thinking how much I liked his gestures, his smile... that I could distinguish in the distance. On March 28, 1984, we spent the night together. The next day, we would develop an armed action that consisted of simultaneously attacking a Special Forces Police barracks located in the municipality of Cerro Navia and the reinforcements that would come from another unit. I participated in the attack on the barracks and once we did, we retreated. Mauricio along with other comrades waited to lash out against the reinforcements, attacking them before reaching the barracks. "At 16 hours, in last-minute information, from Radio Chilena his death was announced. It was a pain so deep. It hit me most brutally manner, as I would never have imagined"

Mauricio Maigret died on March 29, 1984. He was 18 years old and fell in the attack on the Lieutenant Merino Police station where he was hit by two bullets, one from a SIG rifle and another from a UZI submachine gun while doing containment covering the retreat of his boss and colleagues. The photographs of the press of the time show his body lying lifeless in the Pasaje Nassau of the commune of Pudahuel, covered by a red and black flag. A year later, on the same day, the Vergara Toledo brothers would be shot down, which had instituted March 29 as the Day of the Young Combatant.