Above: Valparaiso’s Cultural Park, once known as Cerro Prison, served as a public jail. From the early part of the 20th Century through to the end of the Pinochet regime, common criminals were housed alongside political dissidents here, many of them tortured, some killed, others disappeared. (Credit: Alex Sierra)
VALPARAISO, Chile—Daniel Leyva is busy frying sopapillas for a group of activists gathered in the garden of Valparaiso’s Cultural Park, a former prison turned community center in this coastal Chilean city. The afternoon light gleams off the dark glass that was once his left eye.
Leyva, one of hundreds of victims of ocular trauma committed by Chilean police during protests in 2019 and 2020, fears what the return of Chile’s far right portends.
“I’m worried my own neighbors will start to see me as a threat,” says Leyva, 36, a self-described anti-fascist. “They sew division,” he adds, pointing to president-elect José Antonio Kast, whose Dec. 14 electoral win over the progressive Jeanette Jara has for many brought back memories of one of the darkest chapters in Chilean history.
Kast, the ultra-conservative head of Chile’s Republican Party, has championed the regime of Augusto Pinochet, the military ruler who governed the South American nation from 1973 until 1990, leaving behind a legacy of mass torture, corruption and political suppression that Chileans have worked for decades to leave behind.
His campaign offered a version of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” promising to expel immigrants en masse, linking them to rising concerns about crime and security, while reimposing “traditional family” values – further curtailing access to abortion, for example, while attacking gains made by members of the LGBTQ community. Kast’s “iron fist” platform promises to build 100,000 new prison spaces within four years.
Chile remains among the safest countries in Latin America, with crime rates far below that of neighboring countries in the region. Yet an influx of migrants primarily from Venezuela, Colombia and Haiti in recent years coincided with a shift from petty crime to more violent forms of criminal behavior. Security and immigration were key factors driving Kast’s electoral win.
“There are a lot of people who bought into his propaganda, and because of that we stand to lose many of the rights we fought for and won,” says Leyva, part of a group of activists who help run the cultural center, situated on a hilltop overlooking the Pacific.
On a grassy field in the center of the complex children run and play as couples take in the mid-day sun. A group of young teens practices dance moves outside the main entrance. Members of the collective that run the center say it is a standing symbol of the progress Chile has made in building a more just society.
“I am a survivor of the dictatorship. My father was killed by the dictatorship. I have relatives who were tortured, imprisoned, disappeared,” says Isolda Soledad, who alongside a group of activists took over the site of the former prison in the 1990s, eventually negotiating a deal with city authorities to turn it into what it is today. “We know the darkest things that come out of the far right. Kast’s rhetoric of hate is a form of re-victimization.”
Inside, an exhibit recalls the horrors of past decades, when the site, then known simply as Cerro Carcel, or Hill Prison, served as a public jail. From the early part of the 20th Century through to the end of the Pinochet regime, common criminals were housed alongside political dissidents here, many of them tortured, some killed, others disappeared.
“When they caught you, they tortured you until you gave up all the information you had,” recalls Victor Maluk, a resident of Viña del Mar, about 13 miles outside of Valparaiso, who in the final years of the Pinochet government spent two months as a prisoner here. “You had two options: disappear or go to jail.”
Maluk sees Kast’s win as a nail in the coffin of efforts to build a Chilean society based on progressive ideals of social justice and equity. Such were the promises that formed the basis of the outgoing administration of Gabriel Boric, the tattooed socialist whose failure half-way into his term to reform Chile’s constitution, drafted during the Pinochet years, marked a breaking point for his government.
“It is painful, because you feel it is a collective failure,” says Maluk. “We have become a society totally opposite from the one we tried to build; one defined by elitism and individualism.”
For this young generation, he adds, the Spanish word pueblo, a term that in English defies direct translation but implies the collective struggle for justice and democracy in Latin America, has been replaced by “gente, the person, the individual.”
Boric’s rise to power came on the heels of social protests that erupted in 2019 after the government of Sebastián Piñera attempted to raise fees for the local metro. Known as the Estallido Social, or Social Outburst, what began as localized rumblings over cost-of-living issues turned into a nationwide movement focused on inequality.
It was during one of these protests, on Oct. 18 of 2019, that a police officer in Santiago, Chile’s capital, fired on Leyva, destroying his left eye. Leyva says the police have records of which officer fired when, but “I don’t even know whether my own case has advanced.”
Chile’s Public Ministry registered close to 500 cases of ocular trauma during the protests, with close to 50% of victims suffering severe injury or blindness. Few of the cases have gone to trial.
For Leyva and others, that lack of accountability raises serious questions around the state’s respect for human rights and, under a Kast presidency, its willingness to fall back on repressive tactics to quell unrest.
Alex Sierra is with the Center for Latin American Socio-Legal Studies (Spanish acronym CESJUL), a Colombia based non-profit focusing on human rights. He says Chile initially masterminded the strategy of firing on protestors’ eyes to “silence the youth.” Other countries have since followed suit.
“By far, the highest number of people mutilated in this way during a single protest is in Chile,” notes Sierra, adding the hardline often taken by far-right governments opens the door to further unrest. “These governments on the right are not open to negotiate. They want to impose an agenda. What worries me about Chile is… what will the state do when people come out to exercise their right to protest?”
It’s a question Chilean Senator Fabiola Campillai is quick to answer. Campillai, who represents the Santiago Metropolitan Region, was among those attacked by police in 2019. She lost sight in both her eyes, as well as her sense of smell as a result. The shooting left her face severely scarred. It also launched her political career.
Speaking at an event at the University of Santiago two days before the election, Campillai sounded a note of defiance. “We will continue to fight for all our rights, for social rights and for all the people that have fallen.”
Back at the cultural center in Valparaiso, Soledad echoes that sentiment. “Having survived violence by the state, we cannot negotiate the pain that caused,” she says. “We will continue to organize, and we will continue to defend those they attack.”
Manuel Ortiz contributed reporting for this story. It was produced with support from Global Exchange and Social Focus.
