SEPTEMBER 11 1973, marked the beginnings of one of the darkest periods in our country’s history.

There were widespread human rights violations, political repression, and the systematic elimination of trade unionists, students, teachers, lecturers, peasants, shantytown dwellers, and the assassination of our president Salvador Allende.

With the full support of the armed forces, the dictator, Pinochet, they established a brutal regime, suppressing all civil liberties, and persecuting political opponents.

I was 21 years old and lived in Valparaiso, a major port in the Central Region of Chile, where the navy was the most important military force. The coup started about 4am, and by midday the navy and the army had taken control of all the major cities in the region, imposing a military curfew that lasted for most of Pinochet’s time in power.

By September 14 1973, there was armed resistance on several hills of Valparaiso.

This along with Allende’s fierce resistance in La Moneda, the presidential palace, where he was killed by the military, showed us that resistance was the path to liberate our country.

Allende’s body was secretly moved from Santiago to a cemetery in one of the hills in Vina del Mar, Santa Ines, near Valparaiso on September 12 1973. About 200 people from the surroundings came to Allende’s family tomb to pay their respects, and most of the men were taken prisoners.

From that day on, throughout the 17 years of the dictatorship, those who knew that Allende was there, would return to the cemetery on that day to honour him.

What I want to remark with these facts, is that the people in Chile maintained a relentless resistance from the very first days of the military coup.

One of the most horrifying aspects of Pinochet’s rule was “los desaparecidos,” or “disappeared” political prisoners.

Most were taken to secret detention centres, where they endured severe abuses, tortured and were never seen again. The dictatorship always denied their existence, leaving the family in the dark, never knowing the fate of their loved ones. More than 3,000 people were killed or disappeared during Pinochet’s dictatorship.

We are here to remember them. “Ni perdon ni olvido,” neither forgive nor forget.

The stone and plaque commemorate all the “disappeared” in Chile and name two of them, with whom I shared many experiences and camaraderie before they became part of the “Eight Disappeared” of Valparaiso.

The DINA, often referred to as the Chilean Gestapo, was formed in November 1973, with the support of top instructors from the US, Britain, Australia and France, experts in counter-insurgency and torture, whose best expertise in repression was drawn from the Battle of Algiers. The DINA became instrumental in Chile for repressing, torturing and killing political opponents.

In January 1975, key commanders and operatives of the DINA from Santiago landed in their helicopter at El Maipo military garrison in Valparaiso. Their mission, based on leaks from tortured prisoners who linked both cities, was to form a joint force and capture the regional resistance.

About 30 members of the resistance in Vina and Valparaiso, including me, were captured. To this day eight remain disappeared and one was assassinated.

Abel Vilches was born in Vina del Mar in 1947, his family was from the countryside in the south and immigrated to the city looking for better opportunities.

When I met him in 1972 he was one of the prominent leaders of the shantytown dwellers in a place called Campamento Salvador Allende located in the hills of Vina del Mar. He was married and had five children.

During the time of Allende’s Popular Unity government, when the economic elites and the right-wing parties created havoc in the distribution system using lorry strikes, terror and street protests, using economic disruption and sabotage like hoarding basic materials and food, Abel established and led an organisation to implement a “basic basket of food,” la Canasta Popular, for everyone in the Campamento. He also worked directly with the National Distribution of Food of the Popular Unity government.

Abel was friendly, always with a smile, a great companion, and knowledgeable of all the nooks and crannies of Vina and Valparaiso. By luck, he was not caught at the time when the Navy invaded the “campamento” in the first week after September 11.

He soon rejoined and actively guided the resistance against the dictatorship, using his knowledge of the area and its people. During the worst time of the dictatorship, he managed to move his wooden house to Valparaiso, to a hill called Cerro Mariposa and sought temporary safehouses for many comrades. At night we used to tune in to Radio Moscow to get the news about what was going on in Chile and to plan some activities.

Maria Isabel Gutierrez was born in 1949, a time marked by significant social, cultural and economic inequalities. Her sister Cecilia recalls when she was accepted into the Catholic University of Valparaiso to study geography, in 1968. For a daughter of normal working-class people to enter the university was considered to be a great achievement, and the entire family was very proud of her.

I met her in 1973, she worked within the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) as a liaison with the leaders of the different trade unions aligned with the revolutionary ideas of the MIR. The natural geography, of our country, with its mountains, valleys and rivers was so uneven that she dreamed of changing our equally uneven and unjust human geography.

From the military garrison in Valparaiso, about 20 of us were taken in a van used to transport meat and fish, belonging to a company called Pesquera Arauco, and sent to a centre of torture and interrogation called Cuartel Terranova, now known as Villa Grimaldi in Santiago. In there we stayed for a few days in wooden tiny cells with further interrogation and torture.

After a few days, our group was divided, and some of us were sent to several secret camps like Cuatro Alamos, Rocas de Santo Domingo, and back again to Villa Grimaldi. This strange dance of terror moving to different secret torture and interrogation camps can only be understood as a process of deciding when, who, and how we would become part of the “disappeared.”

We finally were placed in a building called La Torre in Villa Grimaldi, a three-storey building with tiny cells and a torture chamber on the ground floor. I was on the second floor in a small cell with Abel and Horacio. To the left were Maria Isabel, Sonia Rios and Ingrid Zucarrat; and on the right there were three more comrades.

Similarly, on the second floor, there were about 10 more comrades. When they left us alone we shared many stories of our lives, remembering our families, listening to Horacio’s beautiful singing voice and mimicking a radio broadcast with news from “radio La Torre.”

When the final decision was made on February 20, they called us by our numbers. For them we did not have a name, just a number, mine was 915, and so eight of our comrades were taken away.

Thinking that they would probably be sent to an open concentration camp, we asked them to communicate with our families, giving them a big goodbye hug. That was not the case. Now they are the Eight Disappeared from Valparaiso who will never be forgotten, not in Chile, not in the exile.

Fifty-one years have passed and no government in Chile has dared to break the code of silence of the army forces. Maybe it is convenient for them to wait for the “biological impunity,” that is, the death of the families and friends who still stand firm to find them.

Ni perdon ni olvido!