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Ordeal by FireCo-author Eva Neisser EchenbergThe Toronto Star, September 12, 1987 Feature, 2200 words From the moment she stepped off the plane onto
Chilean soil on
June 7, 1987, Carmen Gloria
Quintana felt an intoxicating rush of excitement and apprehension.
This was the second trip home
for the former University of Santiago engineering student since her
family had fled to Montreal, Que., last September. Though she was
grateful to her newly adopted country for offering her refuge and
medical care, Canada was more like a good friend than a member of
the family: Her heart still belonged to Chile, despite the constant
presence of soldiers and hungry children in the streets.
Her return in April had been
a triumph. Pope John Paul had wrapped his arms around her like a
father and urged her to work for justice in Chile. Thousands of
young people had chanted her name at a rally in the National Stadium.
She had really become a symbol of hope for democracy in her country.
Surrounded by family and
friends for one short week, the 19 year old hadn't even minded that
her small cousins had been frightened of her face—a grafted patchwork
of browns, pinks and whites punctuated by angry red scars—a legacy
of when she had been set on fire July 2 last year on her way to
a demonstration against General Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship.
(Her companion, Rodrigo Rojas de Negri, also 19, who had just returned
to Chile after 10 years in Canada and the United States, died as
a result of his burns four days later.)
But this visit promised to
be much more traumatic. Instead of the Pope, she would be facing
a military tribunal. Instead of attending a rally, she would be
taking part in a dramatic re-enactment of the horrible moments of
July 2. She might even face Lieutenant Pedro Fernandez Dittus, the
leader of the military patrol that had burned her, who stood accused
of negligence resulting in death and bodily harm, a relatively minor
charge but the only one that the government had brought in Carmen's
and Rodrigo's case.
Because Fernandez Dittus
was a soldier, the case fell under military jurisdiction. The military
judge would reach a verdict on the basis of a file now being prepared
for him by Commander Erwin Blanco, the ad hoc inquiry judge.
It was Carmen who had demanded
this confrontation. The military had presented its version of events
in a re-enactment of the scene in January. According to them, she
and Rodrigo had set themselves alight by kicking over a bottle of
benzine that they had been carrying. Now Carmen was determined to
tell her side of the story.
Telling her story is what
gives meaning to her life these days.
She had cried all night the
first time she saw her face in the mirror in the burn unit of Hotel-Dieu
Hospital in Montreal. But her mother, Audelina, had pulled her back
from self-pity by reminding her of her own words. On the day before
the July demonstration, Carmen had shrugged off her mother's warnings
and insisted on standing up for her beliefs. She had even said she
was willing to die to aid the hungry children she helped each weekend
at the student-run soup kitchens.
Now it was even more important
to speak out. Her sister Emilia, 21, and Emilia's husband, Luis Fuentes,
23, witnesses to the burning, were returning to Chile to give evidence
with her. Her mother went with them to ensure that Carmen ate, slept
and received the medical attention she still needed to recover from
the second- and third-degree burns that had covered 62 per cent of
her body. Her father, Carlos, three younger sisters and a brother
had stayed behind in Montreal.
A large crowd greeted the
Quintanas at the airport but they did not linger. Because several
witnesses and lawyers associated with the case had already been
arrested, kidnapped or threatened, a human rights organization run
by the church, the Vicarate of Solidarity, had arranged cars to
whisk them directly to sanctuary, a convent run by Belgian nuns.
There the family remained,
receiving no phone calls or visitors and checking with the nuns
each time they entered or left the building. They moved around the
city only by taxi and only in a phalanx of six—Carmen, Emilia, Luis,
Audelina, Audelina's sister Ana Arancibia Armijo and a young Vicarate
of Solidarity volunteer, Jorge Aguirre.
The first official encounter
was scheduled for June 10. Her mother's silver crucifix around her
neck, her heart thudding, Carmen made her way through the troops around
the military court house with her family, Canadian lawyer Denis Racicot,
and Chilean lawyers Luis Toro and Hector Salazar. When the guards
directed the others to a large, filthy waiting room without a single
chair, Carmen went to the tiny ad hoc courtroom alone.
In 14½ hours of questioning
over two days, she related the facts as she knew them in a low,
soft voice, trying to control both her anger and her anguish.
At 7.30 a.m. on July 2, she
said, she had set out from her home in the working class suburb
of Los Nogales with Emilia, Luis and some friends to take part in
a nationwide day of protest against the government. As they reached
streets where a fogata—a barricade of burning tires, a common
form of protest in Chile—had been planned, a military patrol, their
faces painted black, had stopped her and Rodrigo. The soldiers had
searched and questioned them, beaten them, poured benzine over them
from head to foot and set them on fire. Then they dumped them in
a ditch beside a road near the airport, some 20 kilometres away.
"If the soldiers hadn't
beaten Rodrigo in the kidneys and broken his ribs, he would be alive,
like me," she told the judge before she finally emerged from
the courtroom in tears.
Emilia and Luis each also
endured two full days of questioning and Carmen underwent a court-ordered
medical and psychological exam to determine her fitness to take
part in the re-enactment of the scene.
Although these days of testimony
were rattling, she felt herself growing stronger. She yearned to move
freely in the city, to savor it while she could. Like the rest of
her family, she wanted to leave the convent. They postponed their
departure when 12 people were killed "resisting arrest"
in a 20-hour period on June 15 and 16, but on June 20 they moved into
their own house in Los Nogales and embarked on a dizzying round of
visits and appointments.
Out each day from 9 a.m.
to midnight, visiting university, churches, soup kitchens, Rodrigo's
grave, they received guests and phone calls before they left and
after they returned. Audelina, Emilia and Luis were exhausted, but
Carmen, running on adrenalin, stayed up to entertain until 2 or
3 a.m. People mobbed her in the streets, running into the nearest
shop to buy small gifts—ash trays, ceramic animals, dolls—that they
pressed into her hands along with hastily scribbled notes.
But the excitement took its
toll: Carmen lost 5 kilograms and without physiotherapy the flexibility
of her hands scarcely progressed. (Writing is still hard for her.)
Luckily the lycra pressure suit that encased her body from neck
to toes—made at Hotel-Dieu to soften and atrophy her scar tissue—felt
like a second skin in the cold winter weather.
Dr. Jorge Villegas, who had
cared for her at El Trabajador Hospital during the crucial first
weeks after the burning, made Carmen some new masks: a skin-colored
latex one for day that covered her entire head except for her eyes,
nose and mouth, and a reinforced latex night mask with a hard pink
acrylic undermask for the area around her mouth. Despite their zippers,
the masks fit so tightly that she needs help to pull them on. "And,"
Carmen adds, "they make me look like Spiderman."
On the first anniversary
of the burning, Carmen awoke with a feeling of intense sadness.
She was no longer the beautiful, carefree young woman she had been.
She hated feeling so helpless, hated seeing the men who had burned
her and Rodrigo free on the streets of Chile. But her suffering
had matured her and given her self-control and unusual clarity of
vision. The timidness she sometimes used to feel was gone—she had
a purpose, a reason to survive. She was glad to be in Chile speaking
for those who could not speak for themselves.
All over the country people
remembered her and Rodrigo by lighting candles. They had scheduled
a full day, culminating in a ceremony on Calle Yunque, the site
of the burning, where Carmen helped repaint the mural dedicated
to her and Rodrigo. As soon as their permit to demonstrate expired,
the police moved in with tear gas to disperse the crowd. The shock
they felt after eight peaceful months in Canada was even more profound
than the burning.
When a date for the re-enactment
was finally set, Carmen was ready. At the line-up on June 25, she
had found it hard to identify Fernandez Dittus among the soldiers
with black-painted faces who had filed before her between 7.30 p.m.
and 1 a.m., and because she had been only 90 per cent sure that
she had selected the right man, the judge had instructed her not
to sign the identification paper. But she knew that when she stood
on Calle Yunque surrounded by soldiers she would remember his face
clearly.
On July 12, the first day
of the re-enactment, the police cordoned off an eight-block area
and searched houses to prevent the press from watching the proceedings.
Carmen's mother, carrying antibiotic Carmen needed for her bronchitis,
had great difficulty getting through the lines.
The rain came down in sheets
all day. From 7 a.m. the judge and his clerks stood beneath umbrellas
in the middle of the street, but Carmen was not permitted to have
one. A tall young man from the state security police played the
part of Rodrigo, while Carmen, Emilia, Luis and several other witnesses
who had not testified in January retraced the steps they had taken
on July 2, 1986.
When the men with rifles
and black-painted faces circled her this time, Carmen, her long
poncho dripping, her short black hair plastered to her face, studied
them carefully. The leader wasn't among them. Then she spotted him
in a nearby car. "That's him," she said, pointing.
Ordered from the car by the
judge, Fernandez Dittus reluctantly took his place. Carmen looked
him in the eye. "When will you tell the truth?" she asked.
Fernandez Dittus laughed.
Because the official record
of the re-enactment did not tally with what she had said, she refused
to sign it. "Basta, mierda," ("That's enough, you
s. . ."), the judge shouted, hitting his desk and threatening
her with solitary confinement. “You're not in a North American court."
Carmen's answer was loud
and clear. "I'm not afraid. You've already done the worst you
can do to me.”
The final confrontation with
Fernandez Dittus was an anticlimax by comparison. The two days of
the re-enactment were Carmen's real calvary. Though she had stood
firm against intimidation, she could not forget the judge's bullying
and insults and the soldiers' laughter and vulgar remarks.
The verdict of the military
court is not expected for at least a year. Although the media managed
to cover the entire legal process, including the re-enactment, Carmen
has little confidence that justice will be done. Fernandez Dittus,
freed on $35 bail in January, was promoted to captain in June. Carmen
is putting her faith in another judge: The Chilean people.
On July 30, she returned to
the humid Montreal summer. Claiming that she had forgotten how to
speak French, she eluded journalists and ran through Dorval Airport
to embrace the family she hadn't seen for seven weeks. It was one
of the rare moments in the last 13 months that she had allowed herself
to be a private citizen.
She now faces a series of
operations at Hotel-Dieu and a parade of speaking engagements, including
an appearance at the human rights commission of the Organization
of American States in Washington, D.C. She and her family are also
setting up the Carmen Gloria Foundation to help the poor in Chile.
Now the Quintana family must
grapple with the realities of the second year of refugee life in
Canada. Carmen's father, a skilled electrician, has not found enough
hours of work to support his family. Emilia and Lidia, 18, who would
be attending university in Chile and who want to continue their
studies, must pay foreign student fees that the family cannot afford.
They are currently cleaning offices.
As soon as Carmen has completed
her medical treatment, in one or two years, she plans to return
to her homeland. In spite of everything, she wants to raise her
children there. "I want to keep fighting to end the dictatorship
so that the children of the future can live in freedom."
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