For nearly 20 years, the women of Calama traveled into the desert each day to search for their loved ones.
Monday through Sunday, sun-up to sundown, they scoured the harsh desert earth with strainers and rakes.
Searching and hoping.
The crunch of the ground beneath their feet. The harsh wind whipping at their clothes. The hot sun on their faces.
“For us there was no wind, there was no cold, there was no heat, there was no hunger,” Violeta Berríos says.
Her partner, Mario Argüelles Toro, was a taxi driver and a local leader in the Socialist Party. It was his death sentence.
Mario Argüelles Toro was detained and tortured just weeks after the September 1973 coup d’état by Chilean General Augusto Pinochet.
On October 19, 1973, Mario was taken from prison, executed, and disappeared alongside 25 others for their support for the former democratically elected President Salvador Allende.
Executed during what they called the Chilean army’s “Caravan of Death.”
The men’s partners and mothers responded, transforming their sadness into action.
They founded the Group of Family Members of the Politically Executed and Disappeared Detainees of Calama.
They took to the desert, scratching at it each day, demanding that it reveal its secrets.
And after years, finally, it did.
In 1990, in a place called Quebrada del Buitre, or Vultures Gorge, on the edge of a hillside overlooking the expansive Atacama desert, the women found fragments of bones and pieces of teeth.
This was the location their loved ones had laid buried for 17 years. But most of their bodies were no longer there.
Just as the women were getting closer, General Augusto Pinochet had ordered their remains dug up, removed and buried someplace else. An evil scavenger hunt, in which the rules are rigged and the dice are staked.
Between 1990 and 2003, the women would find the partial remains of 21 of the victims.
Today, a memorial lives on a hillside just off highway 23, heading east out of Calama.
This was once barren desert for miles, but it now lies beneath a sea of wind turbines. The sun burns overhead. The wind threatens to knock you over.
The memorial is in the shape of a circle. Almost like a small amphitheater, with stairs leading down. In the middle is a patch of dry Atacama earth. Rocks and small marble stones are laid there in the shape of a cross. Pink and red flowers have been placed throughout. Pink concrete columns rise into the air. Each of them bears a name inscribed on a little plaque. The name of each of those who was detained, tortured, executed and disappeared here in the Atacama desert.
This is the location of the mass grave, where the women of Calama finally found the fragments of bones that proved their loved ones had been here.
Behind the memorial is a crater in the ground, where the grave was opened, and where they exhumed what they could. Rocks, in piles or in tiny circles, mark the locations where parts of their loved ones were found.
The memorial is a sentinel in the desert. A beacon of memory. Memory of lives lost. Of the horror and the pain of the past. But also the memory of the women’s determination. Their hope and struggle. Their resistance in the desert…
The women are still searching for and demanding justice.
For nearly 20 years, the women of Calama traveled into the desert each day to search for their loved ones — their husbands and partners who were ripped from them, detained, tortured, executed, and disappeared in the weeks following Chile’s US-backed 1973 coup d’état.
Monday through Sunday, sun-up to sundown, they scoured the harsh desert earth with strainers and rakes, searching and hoping.
And finally, in 1990, on the edge of a hillside overlooking the expansive Atacama desert, the women found fragments of bones and pieces of teeth. This was the location their loved ones had laid buried for 17 years.
This is the May Week of the Disappeared — a week to remember and honor those who have been forcibly disappeared and the fight for truth and justice for their families.
This is episode 38 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
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Written and produced by Michael Fox.
Resources:
Filmmaker Patricio Guzman’s masterpiece of a documentary, Nostalgia for the Light: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1556190
Spanish singer Victory Manuel wrote a song for the Women of Calama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pkzzsK-uuA
Mujer de Calama Afeddep Calama Dictadura Chile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6hG5m3BYhw
Acto de conmemoración de Afeddep a 45 años del paso de la Caravana de la Muerte por Calama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__pUZR-68OE
Memorial for the Disappeared Detainees of Calama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2D6-es9Nnw
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.