Last night (Tuesday), I went with some other IES students and some Chileans to the "clasico" U de Chile/U de Catolica futbol game. It was a blast! The best part by far was watching the crowd! From before we even arrived, you could feel the excitement. Everyone was headed to the Estadio Nacional, dressed in their team's jersey and wearing their flags like capes. And of course there were plenty of "flaites" (sketchy people) present, running out in the middle of the road, and smashing micros (city buses) to smithereens. On our way, we also observed the police pulling over a guy and demanding his gun, as well as police motorbikes surrounding some man that had tried to flee after committing some crime. Fascinating stuff.
The atmosphere of the game itself is really hard to describe, but let me just say that Chileans are passionate about their futbol. It's incredible to me that they all know the songs and cheers and scream them in unison while setting off flares and throwing streamers. Some of the things they shout aren't that nice, like calling the goalie a "puta de cabaret" (cabaret whore).
La Chile (Universidad de Chile) won the game, 2 to 1, so we all left content with our futbol experience.
This morning (Wednesday), I went with my human rights class to Villa Grimaldi, one of the torture and exectution sites during the Pinochet dictatorship. Ironically, since its in this blog post too, the National Stadium was used for torture as well, though I certainly wasn't thinking about that at the game. Anyway, Villa Grimaldi (where now president Michelle Bachelet was tortured, along with 4500 others) is now a "Peace park" that seeks to preserve the memory of victims and remind people of the atrocities of history so that it will never be repeated.
Very few original pieces of Villa Grimaldi still exist, but there are many recreations of torture chambers and isolation cells. There is also a beautiful memory garden with the names of all the women tortured here, who often suffered unspeakable sexual torture. The military didn't discriminate, even torturing minors and women up to 5 months pregnant.
All of this done in the name of "protecting" Chile from its "enemy within" i.e. people with differing political views. It seems incredible that one would be capable of such inhumane treatment, but yet torture has been used in almost every part of the globe, including the United States, though we don't like to talk about it.
We finally arrived at the tower, one of the original parts of Villa Grimaldi. If you reached this point, you probably weren't going to come out alive. As we climbed the tower, I was overwhelmed by the atrocities that occurred in that place. We could still lift the doors to the tiny compartmants people were kept in, given just enough to stay on the edge of survival. I believe things like this are difficult to see, but extremely important so that it can be avoided and fought against. It is an important reminder that we are all fallen and capable of atrocious things if left to our own devices. Its for this that we are in desperate need of redemption, and I am so thankful to have found that in Christ.
You can find pictures of both of my experiences this week on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016861&l=d3619&id=54001690
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