A Chilean Ex-Soldier Guiltily Recalls His Unit’s Atrocities
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Version 0 of 1. SANTIAGO, Chile — The scene has haunted Guillermo Padilla for over 40 years. As an 18-year-old soldier in the Chilean Army in 1973, Mr. Padilla was on patrol with his unit in a southern city when the owner of a supermarket turned in his own son, accusing him of supplying munitions and food to a guerrilla group. The soldiers threw the young man into a well and began shooting at him. Then they dragged out his bloody, bullet-riddled body, put it in a military truck and drove off. Mr. Padilla was watching from a nearby jeep. “I never knew where he was taken, and not even his name,” he said. “The whole experience in the army made me mature quickly. I became a soldier at 18, and after everything I saw, by 21 I had become a different person.” Mr. Padilla was part of a commando unit that spent months combing towns and remote outposts in southern Chile in late 1973, searching for suspected opponents of the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and for weapons. The unit raided homes, arrested and tortured suspects, and killed at least 30 people, he said. He admitted to participating in several executions as part of a firing squad. “I didn’t feel anything,” he said. But now, he said, “there are times when I can’t get the images of these people out of my head.” Under successive civilian governments, Chile has been investigating human rights abuses under military rule. But progress has been slow. More than 1,370 military, police and civilian agents have been indicted, charged or sentenced for human rights crimes. Of these, only 117 people have been imprisoned, according to a report released in December by the Interior Ministry’s Human Rights Program. Up to now, no conscripts have been incarcerated. Judges have treated these soldiers benevolently, hoping to encourage them to come forward and help establish the truth. “They are a valuable source of information,” said Mario Carroza, a judge who is in charge of more than 200 human rights cases. “They were subjected to a strict military hierarchy and forced to obey orders they couldn’t refuse. Our laws allow for certain benefits if they cooperate, so they may feel liberated from the weight of keeping the secret.” Like thousands of other conscripts, Mr. Padilla still carries the emotional scars of having been forced to witness or commit atrocities — many were ordered, on fear of death, to beat, kill, torture or rape innocent people. They still feel the shame and fear instilled in them as they jumped from adolescence to manhood almost overnight, and fear retribution, being shunned by family and friends, or ending up in jail. But while most are reluctant to reveal the secrets of their pasts, Mr. Padilla speaks openly of his experiences. “The others tell me not to mention the executions, and remind me that I have a home and family,” he said. “My wife doesn’t like it, either, but I’ve lost all fear.” Mr. Padilla, 62, was drafted into the army five months before the military overthrew the socialist President Salvador Allende in September 1973. He never imagined what lay ahead. According to an official report on prison and torture during the 17-year Pinochet dictatorship, after the coup, Mr. Padilla’s Puente Alto regiment held prisoners in train wagons, blindfolded, bound and deprived of food and water. Many detainees were subjected to torture and rape. For years, he has taken medication to sleep at night, and he longs for the forgiveness of the victims’ families. But he hesitates to approach them; he says he does not know how, aware that much of society regards the soldiers as criminals. A father of three adult children, Mr. Padilla and his wife of 40 years live in a modest, well-kept home in Cajón del Maipo, a mountainous area on the outskirts of Santiago, the capital. He is an operator of heavy machinery at Alto Maipo, a dam project. He describes himself as having been a tough, rebellious teenager from a working-class district in the capital who liked to box. His father died when he was a boy, and he was brought up by his grandmother in Santiago. When he was drafted in 1973, Mr. Padilla was working at a gypsum mine in El Volcán, in Cajón del Maipo, spending weekends with his grandmother and dating a young woman who worked at the company cafeteria. Months later, he witnessed her arrest during a raid on the company. She did not recognize him as she was forced out at gunpoint, arms above her head, along with other employees. He was speechless, wearing full military gear and operating a machine gun on a jeep, pointing at his girlfriend. She was detained only briefly. After Mr. Padilla was relieved of his military duties in 1975, they resumed the relationship and married. Mr. Padilla wanted to join the army. He liked the uniform and military life and had no interest in politics. He is friendly and chatty, but his eyes well up with tears when recalling events. Days after the coup, he recounted, a lieutenant in his regiment, Aníbal Barrera, picked a group of conscripts to be part of a firing squad. “We didn’t want to go, but he shouted and insulted us and threatened that if we didn’t comply, we would also be killed,” Mr. Padilla said. A prisoner was thrown face-down on a truck, and the officer and soldiers took him to La Ballena Hill in Puente Alto, a few miles away. The prisoner was not blindfolded, but was placed with his back to the firing squad. Then the soldiers were ordered to shoot. Mr. Padilla’s account corresponds with records of the execution of José Rodríguez Hernández, who was arrested by the police on the street carrying Marxist books, handed over to the regiment and killed at La Ballena on Sept. 14, 1973. Decades later, Lieutenant Barrera and the commander of the regiment, Colonel Mateo Durruty, admitted to the killing. In 2011, Mr. Durruty was sentenced to four years on conditional freedom. Mr. Barrera was not charged. Mr. Padilla was not identified as a member of the firing squad, and has never been summoned to court to testify about this or any other crime. He has spent decades trying to convince himself that he is not a murderer. “I’ve fired at people, but I can’t say I have killed because I don’t know if my shots were the ones that killed,” he said. “Or I just don’t want to believe it.” He added, “It’s been eating away at me all these years.” When he was chosen for the mission in the south, which he described as a “death caravan,” Mr. Padilla and other soldiers were given special training in the Buin Regiment in Santiago. One day, as the conscripts were watching a movie, he recalled, officers led a soldier to the patio and shot him. The conscripts were told the soldier had been passing classified information to the communists. “They killed him there so we would all see what could happen to us,” he said. Although Mr. Padilla never learned the name of that soldier, he may be referring to Mario Gho, a 19-year-old draftee who had opposed the coup and was beaten and executed by members of the Buin Regiment in October 1973. Whenever the topic of the draft and dictatorship comes up with friends, family or co-workers, Mr. Padilla said, he is asked how many people he has killed. He said: “ ‘So, you’re one of the assassins from ’73?’ I live with that kind of question all the time, to this day. My children still can’t believe I could have done those things.” Despite the distance of time, the emotional toll continues. Now he cries even when watching some commercials or cartoons on television, he said. Over the past decade, hundreds of former conscripts have organized around the country, and they are now suing the state for compensation for the moral and psychological damage done to them during their mandatory military service. “I spent two years living in fear,” Mr. Padilla said. “We were just boys, and they destroyed our lives.” |