1066563

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SACXXX10.1177/12063312211066563Space and CultureAguilera

Place, Memory & Justice: Critical Perspectives on Sites of Conscience - Original Articles
Space and Culture

Memories of State Terrorism in

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DOI: 10.1177/12063312211066563
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Carolina Aguilera1

Abstract
In this short essay, I explore the recent reassessment of ruined sites haunted by the echoes
of State terrorism across the Southern Cone of Latin America, asking what is at stake in the
conservation of former detention centers and focusing on Villa Grimaldi in Chile. The site was
initially transformed into a green park but has subsequently become a museum in which remains
of the original buildings and artifacts from the repressive past are publicly accessible. I draw on
perspectives that claim that even ruins that portray past acts of inhumanity do not necessarily
need to evoke melancholic or traumatic retrospection; rather, they are sites of alternative pasts
and futures. The transition from the original green park design to a more prominent use of the
ruins speaks of an invitation to reassess the past, addressing marginal aspects of emblematic
memories, including the political conflict that underpinned the repression.

Keywords
ruins, Villa Grimaldi, cultural memory, political violence, sites of conscience

In recent years, there has been widespread revaluation of ruined sites that reflect the impact of
State terrorism across America’s Southern Cone and particularly in Chile. Villa Grimaldi is a
suburban estate in Santiago that was commandeered by the secret police during the Pinochet
dictatorship (1973–1990) for the detention, torture, and disappearance of political prisoners. The
site was transformed into a green park inaugurated in 1998, following the return of democracy,
but since 2007, architecture and artifacts from this period of State terrorism are on public display
(Rebolledo & Sagredo, 2020). Londres 38, another former secret detention center, was left unal-
tered and opened as a public memorial in 2010 (Aguilera, 2019). More recently, a memorial cre-
ated inside Chile’s National Stadium, which was also used as a detention center, preserves
unaltered spaces in which marks scratched on the walls by prisoners have been permanently
protected (Hite & Sturken, 2019). How is it that these material traces have acquired relevance
over time? As Diana Taylor (2009) asks, “What do ruins ask of us as we walk through as tourists,
visitors, or witnesses?” (p. 13).

Bringing the Past to Bear Witness to the Present

Taylor (2009) proposes the act of visiting ruins as a form of performing them—of bringing them
to life. Her perspective belongs to a viewpoint which argues that dark ruins, reflecting events of

1
University of Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile

Corresponding Author:
Carolina Aguilera, Faculty of Social Science and History, University of Diego Portales, Santiago 8370127, Chile.
Email: caaguilera@uc.cl
2 Space and Culture 00(0)

loss inflicted in contexts of harsh political violence, can be employed to sustain cultural projects
that envision alternative pasts and futures. These are ruins that speak of inhumanity, but which
are not necessarily destined to evoke exclusively melancholic or traumatized retrospection. As
Lazzara and Unruh (2009) claim, “the affective and reflective modes that ruins breed can also be
productive, creative, political, or ethical.” However, this does not occur without mediation and
involves a critical process on the part of the visitor.
This short essay takes these insights into consideration, returning to the question of what is at
stake in the act of conserving the ruins of former detention camps by studying Villa Grimaldi, a
case selected for both practical and analytical reasons. I worked at the site between 2009 and
2012, which gives me firsthand knowledge of the debates that took place there. The site is also
relatively well known within academia (Gomez-Barris, 2010; Lazzara, 2003; Taylor, 2009),
making it accessible to readers. More importantly, the significant changes implemented there as
a result of growing appreciation of the value of its material remains make it an exceptional site
through which to gain a deeper understanding of dark ruins. My analysis draws on research
involving historical documentation and interviews with survivors, relatives, workers, and visitors
conducted while working at the site (Aguilera, 2010).

Ruins at Villa Grimaldi

The limited footage of Villa Grimaldi as it was left by the CNI1 shows a derelict property where
grass and a few trees grow among the tumbledown walls and crumbling fountains of the once
elegant house. This recording was made in 1990 during an official visit by the Human Rights
Commission of the Chilean Chamber of Deputies—accompanied by some of the survivors—as
part of a campaign to recover the site. The film records an exercise that continues to this day:
recognition of the place through its mnemonic traces (Corporación Parque por la Paz Villa
Grimaldi [CPPVG], 2011).
By 1990, the property was already in ruins. The main house and outbuildings had been par-
tially demolished by those who inherited the site from the dictatorship—relatives of CNI agents
who planned to construct a condominium on the site. However, a civil society organization that
later (in 1997) become the CPPVG succeeded in halting the development and persuaded the State
to expropriate the site. After intense argument, most people who led the process within the civil
society organization, together with the state actors, decided to convert it into a memory park.
Collaboration between the Corporación and the State culminated in the opening of the park in
1997, and the Corporación has been in charge of its management since then. During the con-
struction process, and despite the significance of the estate’s original buildings, the ruins were
demolished in their entirety to be replaced by a brand new park featuring symbolic architecture.
The landscape of the site completely changed. The rectangular garden paths were replaced
with new ones in the shape of a cross (indicating a marked place), and new vegetation was
planted (Torrealba, 2011). The fountains were returned to working order and integrated into the
new design, which includes a large central mosaic water feature. Only three original pieces—
highly significant for survivors—were left: a mosaic design on a perimeter wall, a small stone
bench where prisoners were sometimes allowed to sit, and part of the iconic street-facing perim-
eter wall. However, the latter is in part a reconstruction necessitated by the Ministry of Public
Works, which required that the wall be set back by a few meters. Initially, only the entrance gate
used by the DINA was rebuilt, using the same materials and following the original design.2 In
2007, a second entrance was also rebuilt.
The initial decision to not preserve the ruins of Villa Grimaldi may have been due to a lack of
historical vision. However, officially, it was based on the project objective of creating a large
symbolic architectural place for reflection on human rights (Arteagabeitía, 1997). This initial
design was opposed by a group of survivors and questioned by others who argued that this was a
Aguilera 3

move to forcibly subdue memories of State terrorism in line with the official government direc-
tive for reconciliation (Lazzara, 2003). Over the years, material remnants have gradually re-
emerged and been museologically incorporated, re-opening the debate.
In 2004, the Corporación received a donation of railway rails recovered from the seabed as
judicial proof of forced disappearance involving the notorious death flights, during which dead
bodies or drugged individuals were weighed down with lengths of rail and thrown into the sea
from helicopters. One of the rails presented at the trial still had a shirt button attached to it and is
now on display in the specially conditioned exhibition chamber at Villa Grimaldi. In 2006, the
remains of the main house’s foundations and entry staircase were discovered by chance and exca-
vated, and since 2011 have been protected from visitor footfall.
Other recent museological work has included the creation of a conservation workspace and
storage facility to preserve a collection of debris left at the site. Around the year 2000, a group of
survivors rebuilt the property’s huge water tower and a cell—spaces used to confine prisoners
and key to the testimonial narratives of ex-detainees. Although these additions and reconstruc-
tions are not ruins, they speak of a need to bring the material past back to bear witness within the
present.

What Do Villa Grimaldi’s Ruins Stand for?

Metaphorically speaking, remains evoke something which is missing. As Eng and Kazanjian
(2003) argue, “what is lost is known only by what remains of it” (p. 2), and as Taylor (2009)
stresses, “ruins are empty of something palpable in its absence” (p. 14). I argue that, besides
mobilizing traumatic affects associated with the unresolved violence of torture and disappear-
ance, ruins contain echoes of the political struggles and anticipated social utopias that such places
were intended to crush. As Eng and Kazanjian (2003) have argued, loss—represented here by
ruins—has the power to animate hopeful politics.
The DINA’s secret premises were spaces in which the dictatorship effected a defeat of left-
wing organizations through torture, denunciation, and forced disappearance. The past and pres-
ent of their ruins represent the tortured and the missing, but also bear traces of the unrealized
socialist projects and utopian visions of a more just society. The latter relate to political memories
that have begun to emerge in recent years, at first somewhat marginally as part of new memory-
inspired activism that questions not only the dictatorship’s human rights violations but also the
neoliberal model installed by the regime and preserved relatively unchanged following the return
of democracy (Badilla, 2019).
During the uprising of October 2019, these historical narratives exploded across society
(Araujo, 2020), reframing the past in political terms and acknowledging repression as part of the
political struggle that had been raging since the late 1960s. As these memories re-emerge in vari-
ous public settings, spaces of memory understood as (alternative) historical sites are gaining
relevance, as are their ruins. Accounts which questioned the political and economic model
imposed by the dictatorship were excluded from the emblematic memories used for retelling the
past during the decade that followed the dictatorship (Stern, 2006)—the period during which the
fight for the recovery of Villa Grimaldi took place. At the time, the prevailing view of the past
among progressive sectors emphasized the considerable feat of peacefully bringing down the
regime. The mission promoted by political leaders of the time was to consolidate this triumph and
rebuild the social ties broken by the dictatorship. Furthermore, militant narratives and stories that
alluded to experiences of left-wing political violence were silenced or indeed erased (Aguilera,
2018). Even very recently, some guided tours of Villa Grimaldi given by survivors avoided allu-
sions to the political militancy of radical left-wing parties. The narrative that prevailed was an
historical account presented within the frame of human rights, and the site itself was officially
considered part of the policy of reparations that the State was obliged to implement for victims.
4 Space and Culture 00(0)

Adoption of this narrative was part of a larger regional trend. As Kelly (2018) argues, during
the struggle against dictatorships in the Southern Cone, the principal organizations ended up
adopting a human rights paradigm that allowed them to distance defense of the persecuted from
the ideological dispute of the Cold War. This move effectively allowed the message to reach a
broader international audience and to gain the support of countries and political sectors whose
ideologies were not necessarily aligned with the most radical leftist groups. However, such a
strategy clouded experiences linked to the underlying struggles of political conflict, reducing
repression to a Manichean logic of victims and victimizers.
As alternative accounts of the past begin to come to light, the re-emergence of dark ruins at
memory sites may constitute the residuals—according to Williams’ (1977) conceptualization—
of the unrealized socialist utopias that haunt our society today.

Author note
Carolina Aguilera is now affiliated to Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD
Carolina Aguilera https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1290-9038

Notes
1. The National Intelligence Agency (Central Nacional de Informaciones in Spanish), one of the perpe-
trators of large-scale illegal detention, torture, and killing.
2. The National Intelligence Directorate (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional in Spanish), Pinochet’s
deadly secret police, later replaced by the CNI.

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Author Biography
Carolina Aguilera is a sociologist and PhD in Architecture and Urban Studies. She researches about the
cultural memory of the Chilean political past. Currently, she is working on the recent changes on collective
memories, enacted by the 2019 social uprising.