Communism and human rights in Pinochet’s Chile: the 1977 hunger strike against forced disappearance

Abstract

This article examines the activism of a specific subset of Chilean communist women – those whose loved ones were abducted and who mobilised to demand justice – against the Pinochet dictatorship. It focuses on a well-organised and well-publicised hunger strike inside the United Nations headquarters in Santiago, Chile, which denounced the dictatorship’s use of forced disappearance. It argues that these women’s prior political experience and contacts enabled them to organise demonstrations and make successful human rights claims in a changing global environment. In so doing, this article expands and re-politicises the cast of protagonists of the human rights revolution of the 1970s.

Keywords:

• Communist party
• communism
• human rights
• social protest
• Latin America

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and challenging comments and the staff at the Centro de Documentación del Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos for all their help during the research, especially Rodolfo Ibarra.

Notes

¹ The banner’s quote, and most of the information about the 1977 ECLA hunger strike discussed in this article, comes from the documentation held in Fondo Familia Ortiz Rojas (hereafter FFOR), Centro de Documentación del Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (hereafter CEDOC-MMDH). Part of this documentation can be consulted online: http://www.archivomuseodelamemoria.cl (accessed 1 January 2017). This fascinating documentation has also been used by visual artists, who built an interesting website: http://archivohuelga1977.cl (accessed 1 January 2017).

² On the AFDD, see Antonia García, La muerte lenta de los desaparecidos en Chile (Santiago: Cuarto Propio, 2011); Hernán Vidal, Dar la vida por la vida. La Agrupación Chilena de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos. (Ensayo de antropología simbólica) (Minneapolis: Institute for the Study of Ideologies and Literature, 1982). On the role of public demonstrations in the human rights repertoire, see Margaret Hagan, ‘The Human Rights Repertoire: Its Strategic Logic, Expectations and Tactics,’ The International Journal of Human Rights 14, no. 4 (2010): 559–83.

³ Quoted in José Miguel Varas, Los tenaces (Santiago: Lom Ediciones, 2010), 84.

⁴ Steve Stern, Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles in Pinochet's Chile, 1973–1988 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 237.

⁵ Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos, ‘Carta abierta,’ 4 July 1977, FFOR, Colección 26, Ítem 4, CEDOC-MMDH.

⁶ On the 1970s as a revolutionary decade in the history of human rights, see Kathryn Sikkink, ‘Human Rights, Principled Issue-Networks, and Sovereignty in Latin America,’ International Organisation 47, no. 3 (1993): 411–41; Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010); Jan Eckel and Samuel Moyn, eds., The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).

⁷ Patrick William Kelly, ‘The 1973 Chilean Coup and the Origins of Transnational Human Rights Activism,’ Journal of Global History 8 (2013): 166. On the importance of Chile in the growth of the human rights movement, see also Patrick William Kelly, ‘“Magic Words”: The Advent of Transnational Human Rights Activism in Latin America’s Southern Cone in the Long 1970s,’ in The Breakthrough, eds. Eckel and Moyn, 96–8; Jan Eckel, ‘“Under a Magnifying Glass”: The International Human Rights Campaign against Chile in the Seventies,’ in Human Rights in the Twentieth Century, ed. Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 321–41.

⁸ See, e.g. James Green, We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010); Guilhot, The Democracy Makers; William Michael Schmidli, ‘Human Rights and the Cold War: The Campaign to Halt the Argentine “Dirty War,”’ Cold War History 12, no. 2 (2012): 345–65; Sikkink, ‘Human Rights.’

⁹ In their perceptive review of the historical transformation of the field of international human rights, Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth use Zalaquett’s biography to illustrate how the structure of the field moved increasingly close to US power. Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth, ‘From the Cold War to Kosovo: The Rise and Renewal of the Field of International Human Rights,’ Annual Review of Law and Social Science 2 (2006): 238–39. Stressing the transnational flows underpinning the human rights movement in the 1970s, Kelly persuasively maintains that Zalaquett represents the advent of a new protagonist in world politics: ‘the transnational human rights activist.’ Kelly, ‘The 1973 Chilean Coup,’ 185.

¹⁰ See, e.g. Ann Marie Clark, Diplomacy of Conscience: Amnesty International and Changing Human Rights Norms (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Tom Buchanan, ‘The Truth Will Set You Free: The Making of Amnesty International,’ Journal of Contemporary History 37, no. 4 (2002): 575–97.

¹¹ See, e.g. Tony Evans, US Hegemony and the Project of Universal Human Rights (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); Guilhot, The Democracy Makers.

¹² Jan Eckel, ‘The Rebirth of Politics from the Spirit of Morality: Explaining the Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s,’ in The Breakthrough, eds. Eckel and Moyn.

¹³ See, e.g. Eckel, ‘The Rebirth of Politics’; Moyn, The Last Utopia.

¹⁴ See, e.g. Guilhot, The Democracy Makers; Kelly, ‘The 1973 Chilean Coup’; Vania Markarian, Left in Transformation: Uruguayan Exiles and the Latin American Human Rights Network, 1967–1984 (New York: Routledge, 2005); Moyn, The Last Utopia.

¹⁵ Winifred Tate, Counting the Dead: The Culture and Politics of Human Rights Activism in Colombia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).

¹⁶ These figures are based on the reports of truth commissions established in the 1990s and 2000s, complemented with information gathered by the Vicariate of Solidarity and the AFDD.

¹⁷ On Norma Rojas’s case, see Rosario Rojas et alter, eds., Memorias contra el olvido (Santiago: Amerinda Ediciones, 1987), 179–80; Eliana Bronfman and Luisa Johnson, eds., De enterezas y vulnerabilidades. 1973–2003. Hablan los mayores (Santiago: Lom Ediciones, 2003), 145–51.

¹⁸ Quoted in Iván Ljubetic, Sola Sierra: Una imprescindible (Santiago: El Pan Nuestro, 2000), 68–9.

¹⁹ Quoted in Verónica Troncoso, ‘Lenguaje y archivo: Exploraciones performativas, visuales y sonoras del archivo Huelga de hambre en la CEPAL, 1977,’ in http://archivohuelga1977.cl/investigacion/proceso-de-investigacion-y-puesta-en-montaje/ (accessed 1 July 2016).

²⁰ Interview with Ana González by María Eugenia Camus, Santiago, 16 April 2009, Proyecto 100 Entrevistas, CEDOC-MMDH.

²¹ Ana González to Apolonia Ramírez, Ulda Ortiz, and Pamela Pereira, undated [June 1977], FFOR, Colección 23, Ítem 13, CEDOC-MMDH. The letter is not signed, but the most likely author is Ana González.

²² Ljubetic, Sola Sierra. See, also, Comisión Nacional de Solidaridad to Comité Exterior, undated [1980], Archivo del Comité Exterior del Partido Comunista de Chile (hereafter ACE-PCCH), File C050, Instituto de Ciencias Alejandro Lipschutz (hereafter ICAL).

²³ ‘Así es un matrimonio comunista,’ Vistazo, 22 July 1958; Interview with Carmen Vivanco by Patricia Collyer, Santiago, 21 April 2009, Proyecto Cien Entrevistas, CEDOC-MMDH; Varas, Los tenaces, 71–86.

²⁴ Amnesty International, Amnesty International Report 1977 (London: Amnesty International Publications, 1977), 130–3.

²⁵ See, e.g. ‘Last Prisoner, Chile Says,’ New York Times, 19 June 1977; ‘Chile is Said to Free Communist in Return for 11 East Germans,’ New York Times, 19 June 1977; ‘Chilean Swap,’ Observer, 19 June 1977; Franklin Jordan, ‘Chilean in Swap Deal,’ Guardian, 20 June 1977; ‘E. Germans Hail Arrival of Chilean,’ Guardian, 21 June 1977; ‘Chile Frees Communist Prisoner In Exchange With East Germany,’ Washington Post, 19 June 1977; ‘U.S. Tie Cited in E. German Swap,’ Washington Post, 20 June 1977; ‘Pinochet Says Prisoner Release Shows Chile Returning to Normal,’ Washington Post, 21 June 1977; ‘Chile and East Germany Exchange 12 Prisoners,’ Los Angeles Times, 19 June 1977; ‘East Germans Stifle Facts of Montes Release,’ Los Angeles Times, 20 June 1977. For a similar exchange of prisoners, see Olga Ulianova, ‘Corvalán for Bokvsky: A Real Exchange of Prisoners during an Imaginary War. The Chilean Dictatorship, the Soviet Union, and US Mediation,’ Cold War History 14, no. 3 (2014): 315–36.

²⁶ Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos, ‘Documento’, 14 June 1977, Fondo Sergio Insunza (hereafter FSI), Colección 21, Ítem 19, CEDOC-MMDH.

²⁷ The New York Times, for example, reported on the strike’s beginning (16 June), development (22 June), and conclusion (24 June). ‘30 in Chile Continue Sit-In at UN Office Demanding Data on Missing Relatives,’ New York Times, 16 June 1977; ‘Waldheim Responds,’ New York Times, 16 June 1977; ‘28 in Chile Continue Sit-in at UN Office in Protest over Missing Relatives,’ 22 June 1977; ‘Hunger Strike Ends in Chile,’ 24 June 1977. Several other important newspapers in the United States and Europe reported on the strike. See, e.g. ‘Chilean Protest seeks Missing-Person Probe,’ Washington Post, 16 June 1977; ‘Chilean Promise Ends UN Sit-in,’ Washington Post, 24 June 1977; ‘Chileans end Hunger Strike,’ Chicago Tribune, 24 June 1977; ‘Waldheim to Visit Chile,’ Guardian, 19 June 1977; ‘Chili,’ Le Monde, 25 June 1977.

²⁸ See, e.g. ‘Protest on Chile Continues,’ New York Times, 19 June 1977; ‘Chileans Stage Protest in Geneva,’ New York Times, 24 June 1977; ‘5 in 5th day of Hunger Strike at UN Office,’ Washington Post, 23 June 1977; ‘Chilli,’ Le Monde, 22 June 1977; ‘Des parents de personnes détenues au Chilli font la grève de la faim,’ Le Monde, 24 June 1977; ‘Chilli,’ Le Monde, 28 June 1977.

²⁹ Sergio Insunza, ‘Minuta,’ 3 August 1977, FSI, Colección 12, Ítem 17, CEDOC-MMDH.

³⁰ Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos, untitled, undated [late July 1977], FSI, Colección 21, Ítem 39, CEDOC-MMDH.

³¹ Unsigned cable to Manuel Balboa, 14 June 1977, FFOR, Colección 23, Ítem 6, CEDOC-MMDH.

³² Unknown author, untitled, 14–24 June 1977, FFOR, Colección 26, Ítem 3, CEDOC-MMDH. Unfortunately, this 24-page diary is unsigned. It is a great source to understand the events inside the UN building from the perspective of the strikers.

³³ Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos, ‘Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos denuncian amenazas de la DINA,’ 18 July 1977, FSI, Colección 21, Ítem 9, CEDOC-MMDH. Similar documents can be found in FSI, CEDOC-MMDH.

³⁴ Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos, ‘Celebración 1 semana entrada’, undated [22 June 1977], FFOR, Colección 23, Ítem 12, CEDOC-MMDH.

³⁵ Ibid.

³⁶ Ibid.

³⁷ Ibid. Communist striker Aminta Traverso had previously come up with the strikers’ slogan: ‘The pain of hunger is nothing compared to the pain of losing the one we love.’

³⁸ Ljubetic, Sola Sierra, 34.

³⁹ Unknown author, untitled, 14–24 June 1977, FFOR, Colección 26, Ítem 3, CEDOC-MMDH.

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ Ibid. I myself found hundreds of telegrams sent to the UN headquarters in Santiago. See these telegrams in FFOR, Colección 25, CEDOC-MMDH. The Vicariate of Solidarity received several hundred more. See reference to these telegrams in Sergio Insunza, ‘Relación del viaje a Chile del Batonnier Pettitit’, undated [early August 1977], FSI, Colección 118, Ítem 3, CEDOC-MMDH.

⁴² ‘Filma’ [?] to Isolina Ramírez, 19 June 1977, FFOR, Colección 23, Ítem 28, CEDOC-MMDH.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ Unsigned letter to ‘muchachas,’ undated [June 1977], FFOR, Colección 23, Ítem 15, CEDOC-MMDH.

⁴⁵ Quoted in ‘Protesta en Sede de NU en Santiago,’ El Mercurio, 15 June 1977. On the regime’s anti-communist rhetoric, see Miguel Rojas, El dios de Pinochet. Fisonomía del fascismo iberoamericano (Madrid: Taller Mario Muchnik, 2007); Verónica Valdivia, ‘“¡Estamos en guerra, señores!” El régimen militar de Pinochet y el “pueblo,” 1973–1980,’ Historia 43, no. 1 (2010): 163–201.

⁴⁶ Quoted in UN General Assembly, ‘Report of the Economic and Social Council,’ 27 June 1977; copy consulted in FSI, Colección 22, Ítem 14, CEDOC-MMDH.

⁴⁷ Tom Wicker, ‘A Small Gain in Chile,’ New York Times, 24 June 1977.

⁴⁸ Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos, ‘Documento,’ 14 June 1977, FSI, Colección 21, Ítem 19, CEDOC-MMDH.

⁴⁹ See, e.g. the statement quoted in ‘28 in Chile Continue Sit-in at UN Office in Protest over Missing Relatives,’ New York Times, 22 June 1977.

⁵⁰ ‘Chilean Protest seeks Missing-Person Probe,’ Washington Post, 16 June 1977.

⁵¹ Quoted in ‘Comunicado de prensa en la NU sobre huelga de hambre,’ La Segunda, 16 June 1977.

⁵² Quoted in ‘Chilean Promise Ends Sit-in,’ Washington Post, 24 June 1977.

⁵³ Unsigned letter to Kurt Waldheim, undated [July 1977], FFOR, Colección 23, Ítem 38, CEDOC-MMDH.

⁵⁴ Insunza’s trajectory after the 1973 coup is not unlike that of Zalaquett, although he resettled on the other side of the Berlin Wall and has not attracted the same degree of scholarly attention. Insunza fled into exile in East Berlin in early 1974, where he joined the International Association of Democratic Jurists and participated in the foundation of the International Commission of Enquiry into the Crimes of the Military Junta in Chile. By 1977, he was spending most of his time gathering information about human rights abuses in Chile and lobbying the UN Ad-Hoc Working Group.

⁵⁵ Sergio Insunza, untitled, undated [late September 1977], FSI, Colección 20, Ítem 10, CEDOC-MMDH. The speech is not signed, but the most likely author is Sergio Insunza.

⁵⁶ Partido Comunista de Chile, ‘¡Apoyar la valerosa acción de los familiares de desaparecidos en Chile!’, 16 June 1977, FSI, Colección 21, Ítem 3, CEDOC-MMDH. For the Popular Unity coalition’s statement, see Unidad Popular, ‘Declaración de la Unidad Popular en torno a la huelga de hambre iniciada por familiares de desaparecidos,’ 15 June 1977, FSI, Colección 21, Ítem 4, CEDOC-MMDH.

⁵⁷ Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos, untitled, undated [late July 1977], FSI, Colección 21, Ítem 39, CEDOC-MMDH.

⁵⁸ Ibid.

⁵⁹ Tom Wicker, ‘A Small Gain in Chile,’ New York Times, 24 June 1977.

⁶⁰ Ibid.

⁶¹ Quoted in ‘US Defers Two Loans to Chile, citing Human-Rights Situation,’ New York Times, 29 June 1977. See, also, Don Oberdorfer, ‘U.S. Defers Aid to Chile As Human Rights Lever,’ The Washington Post, 29 June 1977; ‘State Dept. Defers $11 Million in Loans to Chile and Welcomes Exiled Argentine,’ Los Angeles Times, 29 June 1977; ‘Human Rights Issue Snags Poverty Aid,’ Chicago Tribune, 29 June 1977.

⁶² See, e.g. their speeches in ‘Three Chilean Women: Gabriela Bravo, Ana González, and Ulda Ortiz’ (New York: National Chile Centre, 1978).

⁶³ Ljubetic, Sola Sierra, 69–70.

⁶⁴ On the origins and transformation of the AFDD, see Manuel Bastías, Sociedad civil en dictadura. Relaciones transnacionales, organizaciones y socialización política en Chile (1973–1993) (Santiago: Ediciones Alberto Hurtado, 2013), 180–92; Lucía Sepúlveda, 119 de Nosotros (Santiago: Lom Ediciones, 2005), 347–48; Vidal, Dar la vida por la vida, 100–7.

⁶⁵ On the MIR, see Eugenia Palieraki, ¡La revolución ya viene! El MIR chileno en los años sesenta (Santiago: Lom Ediciones, 2014); Cristián Pérez, Vidas revolucionarias (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 2013); Sergio Salinas, El tres letras. Historia y contexto del Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) (Santiago: Ril Editores, 2013).

⁶⁶ Corporación Nacional de Reparación y Reconciliación, Informe de la Comisión Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliación. Volumen I, Tomo 2 (Santiago: Andros Impresores, 1996), 973–4.

⁶⁷ See, e.g., Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos, 20 años de historia de la Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos de Chile. Un camino de imágenes… que revelan y se rebelan contra una historia no contada (Santiago: La Agrupación, 1997), 15–17; Mireya García, Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos (Santiago: AFDD, 2002), 13, 15.

⁶⁸ See, e.g. Sepúlveda, 119 de Nosotros.

⁶⁹ On the repression of communism in late 1975 and 1976, see Rolando Álvarez, Desde las sombras. Una historia de la clandestinidad comunista (1973–1980) (Santiago: Lom Ediciones, 2003), 119–48; Fernando Villagrán, En el nombre del padre. Historia íntima de una búsqueda. Vida, clandestinidad y muerte de Víctor Díaz, líder obrero comunista (Santiago: Catalonia, 2013), 157–96.

⁷⁰ Vidal, Dar la vida por la vida, 105.

⁷¹ Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos [outside UN building] to Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos [inside UN building], undated [June 1977], FFOR, Colección 23, Ítem 10, CEDOC-MMDH.

⁷² Comisión Nacional de Solidaridad to Comité Exterior, undated [1980], ACE-PCCH, File C050, ICAL.

⁷³ Quoted in Sepúlveda, 119 de nosotros, 348.

⁷⁴ Unidad Popular and Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria, ‘Declaración conjunta U.P. y MIR’, 15 June 1977, FSI, Colección 132, Ítem 9, CEDOC-MMDH.

⁷⁵ Sepúlveda, 119 de nosotros, 347–8, 431.

⁷⁶ Sergio Insunza, ‘Relación del viaje a Chile del Batonnier Pettitit’, undated [early August 1977], FSI, Colección 118, Ítem 3, CEDOC-MMDH.

⁷⁷ Ibid.