Historically, bodies with disabilities have been made invisible. This is how today, 50 years after the coup d’état, we do not know how many people with disabilities were victims of human rights violations or political violence during the dictatorship in Chile perpetrated by state agents, often with the collaboration of civilians.
In this commemoration and to begin to reconstruct this history, as Núcleo DISCA we undertook the mission to collect information that allows us to recognize the place of people with disabilities in this period of the country’s history.
As a first step we have consulted the reports of the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Rettig Report), the reports of the National Commission on Political Prisoners and Torture (Valech I and II) and the interactives archives of the Museum of Memory and Human Rights. How many people with disabilities were victims of political violence? How many of them died at the hands of State agents? How many of them were victims of forced disappearance and are still missing? What are their stories? Is there any record of survivors of torture, exiles and/or returnees who live with disabilities today? But finally, it has also been necessary to ask ourselves why even today these questions become original and the minimum data is not systematized?
In our research, we have found 22 people. We identified their names, the court sentences in their cases, the records of other memory spaces (Museo de la Memoria, Londres 38, Memoria Viva, AFDD, AFEP, among others), as well as their records in the press and social networks, which allowed us – at least partially – to reconstruct their lives and also their outcome. It is urgent to make visible and remember their names, their stories and their faces; it is urgent, because without them, our democracy is incomplete: not all of us are here, not all of us are here.
We are aware that many persons with disabilities may not have been identified in this review, mainly because the available information does not mention their disability. However, this is a first moment, for the reconstruction of a political, social and cultural memory of persons with disabilities in Chile. A memory that has even lost the proper name of the victims, as in the case of “Pepito“, a political executed person from Valdivia of whom we only know his alias. Pepito was a deaf and intellectually disabled person who was shot by a military patrol in the Preciosa Sangre Parish.
Like this one, there are also cases -not yet recorded- of survivors with disabilities acquired as a result of the torture to which they were subjected, whose identity and dignity were taken away, through the practice of blinding, deafening and immobilizing their bodies.
Núcleo Milenio DISCA undertakes this investigation and joins the demands for truth, justice and reparation for the survivors and families of the tortured, executed and disappeared, identifying and recognizing 22 citizens who today are missing from our democracy.
Núcleo Milenio DISCA, September 11, 2023
Detainees Disappeared with Disabilities
Political Executees with Disabilities
Editor’s note: Over the next few days we will be indexing the files of each of the persons with disabilities mentioned above. As well as making them visible in our Social Networks.