I have memories of the days before, of the months before and also of the very day of the plebiscite. At that time, I was 76, 86, I was 13 years old. I was at school. And, I studied in a school that was completely free of politics, I could tell you, I lived in a microworld outside. Those are schools that are called Waldorf schools. An education arrived, that is, different from traditional education and with schools that are isolated. In this case, my school was isolated outside of Santiago. We lived like a kind of farm and the only thing that caught my attention, let’s say, from this world of isolation, where I didn’t have from the teachers, I would say political influences, in fact. It was that there was a photo of Pinochet in the office, let’s say, of the address, and they explained to me that it was because it was one, it was an obligation. He had companions on the left, he had companions who lived in Peñalolen, combative people. But the truth is that my life had passed without a very strong political influence, because politics was not talked about much at home. Despite the fact that my mother had a position, she still has a position very to the left, let’s say, more to the left than me, than my position. On her mother’s side, my grandmother was also a leftist. However, my mother’s father was from the right and my own father, I would tell you, was from the center right.
At that time, many of the human rights violations were not known. I would tell you that I don’t remember him, neither for the yes nor for the no. But I do remember the day of the plebiscite, which was a day of great happiness and of having gone out with my mother and my aunt in the car to Plaza Italia to celebrate. And there it is like seeing this crowd of happy people, let’s say, celebrating. And it was a very, very exciting time. I also saw the campaign of No and Yes, and for an almost natural reason I also identified with the no in it, through the same strip, let’s say, because the campaign of no was a campaign that was inclusive , solidarity, etc. the other era of fighting as of wars and as it was very violent, very militarized, etc. And despite this change of look that they did to Pinochet, let’s say they transformed him from the general to a grandfather in a sweater who took children in his arms. I feel that there was a failure there, a communication failure also on the part of the people who assumed the yes campaign, because they were not able to convince the undecided. I remember that from the period prior to the plebiscite, before, let’s say, a lot of repression, I have many memories of fright, of fear, let’s say in the dictatorship of many things that the dictatorship did, let’s say, that were useful, now when I’m older, one understands them At the time they received it as fear, like when they killed the boy named Anfruns, who was a boy who could be like me.
I don’t remember if he lived in Las Condes or La Reina. I lived in Las Condes too, let’s say, and it was like the parents took it, as it could happen to anyone because they had attacked a child from a wealthy commune, they had murdered him, they had torn him to pieces and they had left him lying there. So it was something very strange. I remember that people, for example, with whom I had confidence, like the milkman or before, used to bring the milk to the house with some carts and sometimes some bakers would also pass by, people with whom I talked, I could no longer talk. I also remember the curfews, all that for me, one at a time in general, the dictatorship of a lot of fear, of a lot of oppression. And I felt it both in my family and in the external world, when I inhabited it, when I went out into the street only saved, I would tell you to a large extent because of this school where I studied, where, for example, they never passed me a story of Chile. I did not know what the history of Chile was and how they were indoctrinating other children here in Chile regarding heroism, for example, of the Military Junta. Roman mythology, Greek mythology, the Nibelungs, that kind of thing happened to me at that time.
So I left Giordano Bruno’s school and entered another school when the transition was already beginning in 1990, 1991. So, from an educational point of view, I skipped that whole process. It was a school, nothing to do. It was a school with, I went without clothes, without, let’s say, uniform. They never gave me a list. It was beautiful rooms. I had music classes with teachers from the Philharmonic. It was like, the environment. They chose an instrument according to your character. There were colleagues who studied cello, others violin, others piano and so on. And I moved to an ultra-Catholic, ultra-conservative school, only for men in uniform, let’s say, where many of the students knew much more than I did about history, mathematics and artistic matters, for example, which I had developed, I knew a lot further. So there was a difficulty and communication to be able to relate. So it was very difficult for me to adapt to that, to that education and I lived through this entire transition process. Many aimlessly, I would tell you, trying to survive in a school where survival was very difficult. Very violent, let’s say, very violent, all on the part of the teachers and as a reflection on the part of the students as well. Obviously, it was very difficult to adapt. I never managed to motivate myself in school. In the first half I did relatively well because I tried hard to level myself, but when I realized that the education that they were giving me in the second and third years made no sense, I was a very rebellious student with the teachers, I always passed conditional with the parents too.
They also got me in that school out of a bit of concern, because they were separated and they didn’t think carefully about which school to put me in. So I was half a captive there. My dad got this school because he knew the director, I don’t remember who, he knew the director and they managed to get me into this school because entering another school from Giordano Bruno wasn’t easy either, from what I’m telling you, because there was a lot of difference in the teachings. In that period then, second and third half were courses for me where I was very rebellious, where I did very badly. Then I got to fourth grade and didn’t go to class. I escaped many times and repeated for non-attendance. Finally, because he did not meet the minimum attendance required by the Ministry of Education in order to pass the courses. And I did it on purpose. So I kept repeating fourth grade and after that I had one, my dad, he took me and cut off my sources of income, let’s say, money, all those things and then I did very well at school. The heavy hand worked in my case and I did very well in school and for the first time I got a notable scopre in school, let’s say, and I left with honors from that one, from that course, from that fourth grade that I repeated.
So of all my classmates, they grabbed me for the chop because he had been a joint student all his life. And suddenly one year I became a Mateo of the course. After a year passed, I gave a good test, but my dad wanted me to give an extraordinarily good test so that he could choose what he wanted me to choose, medicine. So he began to teach me, to indoctrinate me, because he is a doctor. Then he began to indoctrinate me in the specific biology test and I studied very little because I had very little time, I was very behind, I had to get a very good average in school and also be prepared for the academic aptitude test. And the truth is that I hadn’t done anything during the four years of high school, so I had to do everything tightly. So I did very well in school, but the academic aptitude test did not go well. I only had about 50 points to be able to enter Medicine where he wanted, who was teaching me. So he told me, “you know what Javier? If you dedicate a year only to study for academic aptitude, you will enter what you want”. And he wanted me to go into medicine. Right there we quarreled, we quarreled and I went to work in a video store because I have always liked movies in a video store that existed. The video stores at this time no longer exist, which was close to my house.
I lived in Colón with Sebastián Elcano next to Balihai, which is a big restaurant there. There was a video store there and I got into it with a friend who was a friend from school. Neither of us was in the university, he had entered and we went to work there. And we had a great time, but I didn’t prepare again for the academic aptitude test, because the truth is that I wasn’t interested in the medicine that my dad was proposing to me and nothing interested me. Did you see this? Nothing interested me. I even thought about just working or studying a technical career. I don’t know. I had no appetite, really, like doing something that would fill me up, that didn’t exist. So I took the academic aptitude or the PSU I don’t remember anymore and it went more or less well. Let’s say enough to enter any good private university, let’s say as I say, Portales, La Finis Terra, etc. Eh, but not a state university and I like it, the way I liked it, I had liked cinema more, like everything else this, I liked writing movie reviews, I thought. I said, one thing I can do is write a movie review. As I like to analyze, I realized that I was capable of analyzing movies, as I liked to read film reviews, too. I went to the Normandy cinema a lot, I loved art cinema, etc. So I said maybe this could be what I do in the future.
And I entered La Finis Terra, which was a university that is close to my house. That’s the truth. I didn’t have any other criteria, ni excellence, I didn’t say anything, and this university is super good. I had a first sister who was studying architecture and she told me “look Javier, I know this university is good”. So if you ask me, I would tell you to go in there. So I took the test because I also had to do an entrance interview. I did an entrance interview with the director of the degree and she told me that yes right away, that she accepted me at the university and that she was very cordial. Also, I was on vacation in the north and I came here alone to apply to this university. And she was very cordial with me, she even offered me money if she needed to take me back on the bus or if she needed something. Like she was very motherly. So I said, like, I valued that above other things, I said this woman is super cool. So I stayed at that university, really. And that was. And I was a bad student during the first two years of my degree. I threw a lot of credits a lot of credits really, and I couldn’t find the motivation either. Later, with time, I was not interested in film criticism either. And maybe for the third year. I’m not sure if in the second or third year, this same lady who had given me the entrance exam was the one who was taking a course that was informative journalism. And she, while in class, explained to us that they had broken up a pedophilia ring in Europe some time ago and that when they broke up the pedophilia ring, they had fallen from journalists, judges, businessman, politician, a lot of people from different fields, let’s say, that made this kind of child sex trafficking network work. And the truth is that I felt a lot of fear and a feeling of vulnerability that was deep but deep, deep, deep. I was kind of traumatized that those things happened because I thought they didn’t happen. That there could be so many people from different fields that they are supposed to take care of, right? And that they were linked to, let’s say, violate, attack whatever you want, let’s say, the children, cachai? Which is like the most basic and obvious thing to take care of, let’s say, so that a society can, let’s say, have a healthy coexistence. So I started to study there. And they made me want to take the degree and there I became an excellent student again and I took the degree. Finally, I recovered all the courses that I had lost and I completed the degree in less time. I rushed so much, I wanted to get out so bad that the degree lasted five years and I got it out in 4 and a half years. I went one semester ahead and graduated one semester in advance and there I entered research journal called “7 plus 7” , which was directed by Mónica González.
My partner’s father at that time of my ex-partner was one of the owners of the magazine. If it was closer, a shareholder, actually, a minority shareholder and he allowed them to give me permission to do an internship because, no, they didn’t even receive interns at that magazine. And he made them give me that opportunity, but an opportunity to practice, he just told me, so that I can learn a little and understand what you like. Of course, the level of these journalists was so high, it was pure stars, people who appeared on television, Mónica González, etc., and I was nothing. So they forced me to have to somehow try, even if I couldn’t, to raise my level a lot, let’s say. And there I ran into a person whom I love very much, who is a friend of mine to this day, who is Juan Andrés Guzmán, who was the director of the Clinic, he was also an editor at CP, and he was the person who took me as his assistant and he began to teach me how the art of the report worked, the reporter in the report and how to get sources, strategy, etc. And thus I began to transform into a reporter, into his reporter. He gave me topics to get things, let’s say, and little by little I became independent. That’s how it was and I was interested in children’s issues, a product of what this lady had pointed out to me, but I didn’t have faith, out there, at that time.
When I was in college. This Paidós pedophilia network, I did not have the source of information to be able to cover something like that. He didn’t have the ability to find a pedophile ring and accomplish that. If he had the capacity, for example, to enter the homes of Sename and begin to identify why these children, who at that time were politicians like Moreira and another Espina, wanted to toughen the penalties against minors who committed violent crimes, who they were already high and make more jails. The typical speech of the right to solve the issue of crime. So I began to get into children’s prisons to understand a little why they were so violent later and of course, they were centers for the reproduction of violence, it was not a protection center, but in the criminal center, where they were raped, etc. . everything was, let’s say, they murdered each other, etc. So I began to specialize in that, in getting into foster homes for minors and telling from the inside what was happening there and how the uncles, the gendarmes, etc. they mistreated, tortured and this was a story. Let’s say that it also came from a long time in the children’s homes, etc. And since no one paid attention to things as obvious as the place where these homes for minors were located, they were isolated and the family bond was already complex and they were placed hundreds of kilometers away, so in the end they were children who had been abandoned to their fate.
So later, when they went out into the streets, let’s say, it was more or less easy to predict what they were going to do with their lives, or the respect they might have for society. So I began to specialize in that and on one occasion I entered a juvenile home. I told this in a book in “The Awakening of the Ravens”, I think. I entered a juvenile home called El Arrayán. And, of course, there was also mistreatment, a lot of issues, and the people who let me into these places were some SENAME officials who wanted the model to be modified. So, to show me how it worked, they would help me in. That’s where I came in. And when I arrived at this center for minors in Arrayán, these people who worked there found some identity cards, four identity cards, in an office behind a closet. And those cards had already fallen behind the closet and that closet had not been moved for about 30 years. That is to say, it belonged to the previous administration before the Sename arrived there. And that place, that’s why I found out that it had been Tres or Cuatro Álamos, which was a very important detention and torture center. So I took these names and began to go to the groups of relatives of those detained-disappeared by the school, hoping that some of them were detained and disappeared. One executed and that it would have been a mistake by the political police and that they would have kept this card and it was proof that they had been murdered or made to disappear.
If these cards corresponded to the detainee, the missing person was the concrete proof that they had made them disappear. I didn’t get that truth. One of them had been tortured. But it was the way I linked up with the people of human rights, of the dictatorship. That’s how I met them and I was looking for a missing detainee. On that occasion, I remember, he had very little connection with the violations of human rights and, since I did not find in these cards any disappeared detainee, but only a victim of torture. I was disappointed. So what I published was one of the four cards, it belonged to a victim of torture. But and I wrote a short note. One of the people who helped me with this in the Code, because it is an organization for human rights, for people who have been tortured or disappeared, etc. that helps, let’s say, these people. One of those people had been tortured. And she saw me and told me “you are very disappointed because you only found a victim of torture on your identity card.” At that time she did not tell me that she had been tortured. I told her well, yes, the truth is that I was expecting something else and she handed me a volume of a judicial case called Tejas Verdes, which is a torture center, which operated here between 1973 and early 1974, which was the place where the DINA was created.
So there I began to read the testimonies of how people had been tortured in this place. And of course, I had no idea what torture really was. So I felt very ashamed of my original position, of having felt disappointed for not having found one and only for having found the card of a victim of torture that for me was like something second class. So I started reading this. Of course, and things, I had never read anything like it, really, in my life. The things they did to people was an indescribable thing. I wrote it later over time and went to meet the people who did that to him, later in Tejas Verdes, in San Antonio. But I felt a lot of shame, a lot of anger, a lot of helplessness and I fell into a state of depression. After reading this. I don’t think I had ever felt like this and that also gave me the strength, after the necessary rage, to be able to investigate all this and start to find out about it. And at the same time, I had already left “7 más 7”. I was collaborating with the Clinic, where Juan Andrés Guzmán was directing it and I was also collaborating with La Nación Domingo, which was another outlet for the two places.
So I began to work more and more on Nacion Domingo every day and I began to sell more and more issues of human rights violations and I began to investigate more. First, from the simplest until I start to get into the most complex operations. It’s been a while. This started to consume me all the time. Basically, I felt that there was a very big wound in the country, a very big wound and I felt like a very big injustice with the people who had experienced human rights violations and with their families as well. And with the generation that corresponded to mine, with the children and the grandchildren. I found it difficult that we could move anywhere, if we did not take charge of the recent history that we had. So, somehow I felt with each report that I wrote that it was a piece of reparation that was not doing justice, because justice was not taking much responsibility either. In other words, people were dying because it was an eternal process. They were human rights violations that had occurred in the year 1973, we were in the year 2005, 1983, 1993, 2003, 32 years had passed. When people are tortured or go through these complex processes, many times they live less, also, because they leave their organs, let’s say bad because of the torture, etc. So there are no people either, what I have had to see is that they have a very, very wide, very long life span.
So I was very anguished that they left and that they left with the feeling that their country had not done them justice because they had violated their human rights, their own country, the authorities, regardless of what they thought, let’s say. Today we can discuss whether or not Marxism was the way, that they were also violent, that perhaps they would have killed people if they had come to power. It’s true, a lot of that and maybe it’s true, but that doesn’t mean that in the name of that you give yourself permission as a country, as a State, as a government, to kill those people and to make them disappear and to finish them off, let’s say. They are citizens too. And that was not. There was still this polarization that well, why did that happen to them? Because they were Marxists and the Marxists, you know what, Stalin and Lenin and Germany and all those speeches, let’s say political. And it is very violent, let’s say very violent, that it comes from the state apparatus itself, even, even in the newspaper. When the year 2005 arrived and I began to publish all these topics, the editor of the newspaper himself told me that by order of the government I had the first government of Bachelet or the last part of the Ricardo Lagos, he told me that, as a country project, we were going to stop writing about human rights.
Because a lot has already been done, Javier, he told me. A lot has already been done and you know what? People are tired of this refrain of pain and question, so we’re going to start closing. So you, Javier, start thinking about reinventing yourself. To give it another side, I was just with all the impetus and with all the force of this question and seeing how what happened in the Courts when people went to throw stones and questions at him, when Mamo Contreras was arrested. So it was very strong, he also had to fight against the direction of my own newspaper, where I had just arrived. And to do it I had to reinvent myself to some extent. Begin to cover issues about corrupt businessmen such as Sebastián Piñera, let’s say, the President of the Republic and many others, and begin to gradually introduce human rights issues again, but in less quantity. I could no longer dedicate myself exclusively to human rights, I had to have this half-hidden side and go launching one or the other. And in the newspaper they realized that those topics that I wrote were finally the ones that were read the most, because the public of Nación Domingo was the people, the returnees, the relatives, it had disappeared and it was the only means that covered that in a way I would be. So it was a battle that I was winning and losing for many years. In other words, it was a war that I was winning and losing, that cost many battles and that I won some and lost others in relation to that.