This is the story of a working class family
Esta es la historia de una familia de clase obrera

The following recordings were made in Santiago of Chile in January 2006 by the English ethno-musicologist Jan Fairley.

Click here to listen in Spanish the testimony of Alberto Rodriguez Gallardo, the son of Catalina Gallardo Moreno and Rolando Rodriguez. Cordero.

Click here to listen in Spanish the testimony of Señora Ofelia Moreno de Gallardo, grand mother of Alberto. (1, 2)

Click here to read in Spanish "A la memoria de la familia Gallardo" (In memoriam1)

One of my songs, which I sing very often, is based on a sad story I read in 1975 in the Mercurio when I was living in Glasgow. (The Mercurio is a Chilean newspaper with CIA connections during the Salvador Allende period). Click to listen to the song.

Mercurio, Domingo 23rd of November, 1975
La noticia la recibí
cuando vivía en Glasgow,
de un periódico chileno bajo el titulo:
"gobierno"
segundo cuerpo,
columna
"extremismo".
Decía la información, que en los cerros de Maipú.
Un comando militar se enfrento "heroicamente",
con un grupo,
de extremistas,
todos jóvenes varones y mujeres.
Termina la información con la muerte
de los insurrectos,
Pero no como dice el diario - el día antes
me lo contaron:
los detuvieron, los torturaron y los llevaron al mentado
enfrentamiento.
Todos eran cristianos, socialistas obreros
que con la palabra en mano combatían la violencia
de los tanques, los aviones,
la dictadura entera.

This is me at the Edinburgh French Institute many years later.

Fete de la Musique
L'Institut Francais d'Ecosse, Edinburgh
Evening News, MUSIC REVIEW, GARY FLOCKHART, Tue 22 June 2004

Allez le blues, le jazz, le techno, le classical

"…Similarly, another of the evening's big triumphs was made not in France, but Chile. Singer Carlos Arredondo, who started and ended his set with rants about Bush and Blair brought the house down during a programme of political songs covering the protest movement in Chile during the Pinochet years. Dark times, they say, have the power to bring out the poets, and Arredondo, who arrived in Scotland 30 years ago after being exiled from Chile, certainly has lived through some of those. The standout from his set was a truly awesome number called Mercurio Domingo 23 of Nov 1975 - a song depicting the day he picked up a Chilean newspaper in Glasgow, only to read that a number of his closest fiends had been killed by Pinochet's army. Granted, the majority of live performances didn't quite match those highlighted, but the festival was worth it for the aforementioned alone".

I was living in Glasgow when I learned something terrible. A friend sent me from Paris the pro-Pinochet newspaper El Mercurio. I began to read it eagerly and in one of its pages I found something that interested me very much. I read that a group of "extremists" had been killed by the Army at Maipu in the periphery of Santiago. In the group mentioned, to my astonishment, there were a number of people from our barrios and members of La JOC. (Juventud Obrera Católica) The group mentioned included my good friend Catalina Gallardo, her father Alberto Recaredo and her brother's wife, Monica Pacheco (in centre with skirt) who was three months pregnant. Their detention took place on the 18th of November of 1975 and their assassination took place the day after. In a separate incident, Catalina's brother Roberto Gallardo and husband of Monica had been killed by the Army on the 17th of November of 1975. I found it bizarre that my friends were called "extremists" by The Mercurio. In any case if the new was true the so called "extremists" were fighting for freedom suppressed by the Armed Forces led by Augusto Pinochet who showed to have little respect for human dignity, our democratic tradition and our constitution. Soon I learned the truth about their death: A Chilean refugee living in Edinburgh, who had been held prisoner at the notorious Villa Grimaldi, told me that my friends had been taken, by force, to the area of Maipu but not before they had been tortured and killed at Villa Grimaldi. My friends, therefore, never had any armed encounter with the Army Forces at Maipu. Everything had been fabricated and the Mercurio, a CIA backed newspaper, was at hand to distortion reality. This horrendous news makes me feel sick and fills me with anxiety and anger for El Mercurio, the Chilean Army, the police and Pinochet. The National Truth and Reconciliation Commission known as the Rettig Commission in Chile: "came to the conclusion that all these people listed above were executed by DINA agents in violation of their human rights".

Dr Sheila Cassidy, the English doctor detained and tortured at Villa Grimaldi in 1975 for assisting an injured opponent of the Pinochet regime, speaks about this horrendous crime in her book Audacity to Believe. (There is available a statement, submitted in evidence by Dr Cassidy to the United Nations, 20 January 1976, in which she relates in detail her experiences at the hands of Pinochet's agents from -DINA). On the 20th of October of 1976 Rolando Rodriguez Cordero and Mauricio Jean Carrasco were also killed by Pinochet's men. Rolando, a friend of mine since my childhood, was the husband of Catalina Gallardo, killed in 1975. I also knew Mauricio as a gentle person. According to the Rettig Commission, Mauricio and Rolando were sitting on a bench on the sidewalk when a convoy of vehicles stopped in front of them and a man got out of a car and without saying a word opened fire on them. One was killed instantly, and the other was left wounded and died later…"the commission has drawn enough evidence to come to the conviction that these two men were executed by government agents in violation of their human rights". I have fond memories of all these people as wonderful and generous human beings who gave me a lot in terms of friendship and political awareness. When I left Chile in 1974, I took with me a bunch of photographs showing my JOC friends among them Rolando, Catalina, and Monica with happy smiles on their faces as if to say, we are all enjoying life.

History unfolding before my eyes
But Chile's recent past history still continued to unfold in front of my eyes. As the 30th anniversary of the killing of my friends approaches trough the internet I found out, to my surprise, that Rolando and Catalina had had a son called Alberto and I did not know about it. Alberto was a University student. I have recently (December, 2004) been in touch with Alberto in Chile to say how happy I was to know he was the son of my friends Rolando and Catalina. It was an emotional experience to introduce myself on the phone and able to say to him that his parents had been very good friends of mine. I told him that like his parents, I had been a member of JOC and that his parents, as the other relatives killed by the Pinochet regime, were extraordinary people preoccupied with social issues affecting young people, society and the world. I told Alberto that I had in my home photographs of his parents and Mónica which he had most probably never seen. I told Alberto that I have the book "Audacity to Believe" by Sheila Cassidy in which his family's story is mentioned. I told him that I had written a song about the circumstances of his parents' death and The Mercurio's lies about the case. I also told Alberto that an Edinburgh's newspaper, the Edinburgh Evening News, of November 1998, had published a long article, accompanied by photographs, about the circumstance of his parents' death at the hand of the Dictatorship. The article in the Evening News came about the time when General Pinochet was being detained in London. I also told Alberto that the tragic death of his parents and of other friends had served me as a driving force to become, in Scotland, a committed cultural worker helping to expose the evil of the Pinochet's regime. I told Alberto that I was going to send to him all the material mentioned above. (I did so at Christmas, 2004 and he was very pleased to have them) Alberto was delighted to know about me, as a friend of his parents. He said that my telephone call came just at a time when he was very much in search of his parent's cultural roots and that he was pursuing his solitary personal quest to respond to the everyday challenge of confronting his situation as a victim, like his parents, of the Pinochet regime. Then I learned the story of his family from him:

His parents had been in the resistance against the Pinochet's terror regime as part of a splinter group from the MIR a Revolutionary Left movement. On the early hours of the 18th of November 1975, Alberto was only 9 months old, he and all the members of his mother's family, which included his grandparents, and uncle, his uncle's small daughter, and Mónica Pacheco Sánchez, wife of his uncle Roberto Gallardo, were all taken by Pinochet agents to a detention centre located in the centre of Santiago in a street called General Mackenna. (This was very near from where I used to live). Here, after a terrible humiliating ordeal at this Police headquarter detention centre, the Gallardo family were split up for ever: Alberto said:

"I was in my mother's arms and before she was taken away to the Villa Grimaldi, she gave me away to my grandmother Ofelia who was being released. I never understood why my grand-dad was killed as he did not take any part in the resistance as my parents had".

Don Alberto Recaredo Gallardo, alberto's grandfather, had been a communist exiled to Argentina in the 1940s by Gonzalez Videla, regarded in Chile as a President-traitor. We can assume that Don Alberto was killed because he was a communist.

Alberto, his grandmother Ofelia, his aunt Isabel, his uncle Guillermo and his daughter Viviana were all released at Five O'clock of the morning of the 19th of November, while Alberto's grandfather (Alberto Gallardo Pacheco), his mother Catalina Gallardo Moreno and Mónica Pacheco Sánchez were taken from General Mackenna Street to the notorious Villa Grimaldi detention centre where they were tortured killed and taken to the Area of Maipu. Here the army put a show about an armed confrontation between them and my friends. Maipu is famous for historical reasons and because there is here a huge Catholic temple.

Alberto's uncle Roberto Gallardo already had been killed by the Armed Forces on the 17th of November of 1975. Señora Ofelia, Alberto's grandmother, lost at the hand of the Pinochet's regime: her husband, a daughter, a son, a daughter and a son in law, Rolando Rodriguez Cordero. The Rodriguez-Cordero family, who I knew very well from my childhood, thought it proper that Señora Ofelia could take care of Alberto and this generous gesture was very important for Señora Ofelia because: "the prospective to raise my grandson brought my life back. Something worth to live for, as I am able to see in Alberto the faces and the attitudes of those who are not longer alive in my family".

Señora Ofelia is a devoted catholic person and today she is a popular and a well respected "Abuela" in the working class area of Renca in Santiago. She is well-liked because she has done a lot of work for the restoration of human rights and the poor people of the area. When we hear Señora Ofelia telling her story in a very articulate way, we do not fail to notice that this lady displays not a hint of hatred in her voice when telling her story. In her dignity and humanity she expresses an immense sorrow at what had happened to her, her family and to so many Chileans families. Señora Ofelia said that when she was detained at the General Mackenna police's headquarter in 1975, she was forced to listen to a recording of her son Roberto being tortured: "Roberto demanded his captors, whom he called cowards, to kill him" said Señora Ofelia.

When I learned about the fate of my friends in the Mercurio newspaper, Glasgow become a distant place in the midst of my sorrow for the cold and unnecessary killing of these beautiful young people, who had taken the difficult decision to remain in Chile to fight against the dictatorship. I know that they were honest freedom fighters, tormented by the ferocity of the Pinochet's regime which in an act of lunacy decided to turn its weaponry against the working class people supporters of the Allende's socialist government. Alberto told me that after the killing of his mother in 1975 his father Rolando Rodriguez, was offered the opportunity to leave the country by a friendly priest who told him: "You should think of Alberto". Rolando is said to have responded: "I have to think of all the Albertos of Chile". Rolando decided to stay in the country. But Alberto explained to me that there was a pact between his mother and his father: If one of them was killed, the other had to continue with the struggle against the dictatorship. "My father was faithful to this pact" said Alberto. I also learned about Carmen one of Rolando's sisters. She has also been a friend of mine during my childhood. She had been detained for nine months in a concentration camp called Los Cuatro Alamos. Carmen was in the concentration camp because she was Rolando's sister. She survived the ordeal and was very lucky as many people taken there, were never seen again. Who can blame these people for using firearms against the Army or their angry words of disapproval against the regime? Today, as I write their story and knowing some of the circumstances of Alberto's existence, I ask myself the vile question: was it at all necessary for these young people to resist the dictatorship and give their precious lives to defend the principles of democracy and freedom in our country?

At the end of the 1980s a sort of "democracy" returned to Chile and my thoughts are with people like Alberto left submerged for ever in deep thoughts about what had happened to him and his family, a bunch of generous people, who become freedom fighters prepared to give their precious life to get rid of a bloody dictatorship led by General Pinochet. Many Chileans in a position of power today cruelly suggests that democracy in their country owed nothing to people like as the Alberto's family. I believe the opposite. I believe Democracy in Chile today owes a lot to people like my friends who gave their life for the restoration of democracy in Chile. People like my friends are in today's Chile the forgotten one and they should not be. The following is letter send by Isabel Gallardo, a member of the Gallardo family, to Ricardo Núñez Socialist parliamentarian in the Concertación Government. Isabel points out how certain people in Chile, in a position of power, are trying hard to defend the bloody coup in 1973 and putting the blame about the horror of the Chile of the 70s and 80s on people like her family.

Letter from Isabel Gallardo to Sr. Ricardo Núñez:
A raíz de las consecuencias de conocer el mensaje de Ricardo Lagos anunciando que el Informe de la Comisión de Prisión Política y Tortura ya se encuentra en la Internet y a raíz de todo lo que ha ocurrido después de eso hasta hoy, deseo manifestar mi opinión como familiar directo de 5 ejecutados políticos de la dictadura de Pinochet. Respondiendo de alguna manera al soéz postulado de algunos de que el Golpe de Estado de 1973 fue inevitable y que en definitiva deberíamos hacer un mea culpa por la conducta anti ética de los militares con sus prisioneros, yo insisto en que las víctimas no son los culpables; no pueden ser los culpables, de otra manera, no serían víctimas. Nadie se buscó ser maltrado como lo hicieron, tampoco. Creo que los hechos hablan por sí sólos, como en el caso de mi propia familia, asesinada entre el 18 y el 19 de Noviembre de 1975: la Familia Gallardo con 5 y 1/2 miembros del grupo familiar muertos en horrorosas torturas en Villa Grimaldi (contando con el bebé de mi hermano que venía en camino y fue muerto por tortura en el útero de mi cuñada).

Ellos fueron tomados presos repentinamente con extrema violencia; sacados de su casa; llevados a Investigaciones donde su jefe era Ernesto Baeza Michelsen, y en pocas horas secuestrados. Después de mucho se supo que habían sido trasladados al centro de torturas del ejército llamado Comando Terranova (Villa Grimaldi) donde fueron vistos por testigos sobrevivientes del horror.

Sin embargo al día siguiente de su detención aparecen muertos en un enfrentamiento. Según algunos medios de comunicación a través del periodista Julio López Blanco, estos "subversivos" se habían enfrentado a muerte con las "fuerzas del orden" parapetados en los Cerros de Rinconada de Maipú. (Lugar que en esos días también pasó a pertenecer al ejército). Cabe preguntarse de dónde habrán sacado estos "subversivos" las fuerzas, las armas y las capacidades para enfrentarse a los super entrenados, bien organizados, bien premunidos y cuantiosos agentes de la DINA, para librarse de las fauces de sus aprehensores desde la Villa Grimaldi para llegar a los cerros de Rinconada de Maipú. Cualquiera que conoce la geografía de nuestro Gran Santiago, se da cuenta que ese desplazamiento, incluso hoy con todos los adelantos en materia de carreteras, no es tan fácil. Más aún tomando en cuenta quienes eran los "subversivos" en cuestión. Ellos eran los siguientes:

Mi padre: Alberto Gallardo Pacheco, 62 años de edad, tornero de profesión. Sufría de escoliosis severa, lo que le impedía respirar bien, le venían ahogos constantes porque no podía mantener su columna derecha mucho rato, a raíz de daños laborales sobre su espalda.

-Mi hermana, Catalina Gallardo Moreno, 29 años. Secretaria de Manpower. Con un bebé de 6 meses al que todavía amamantaba. Una joven mujer con hermosos ojos de color oscuro profundo con miles de sueños y utopías por realizar.

-Mi cuñada: Mónica Pacheco Sánchez, 25 años, profesora de inglés en un colegio municipal. Embarazada de tres meses (segundo intento -alcanzó a gestar un bebé que nace a los 8 meses de gestación pero muere a los pocos días precisamente a pocos días del golpe militar, al parecer no soportó la tensión emocional).

-Mi hermano: Roberto Gallardo Moreno, 25 años. Recién egresado del servicio militar. Servicio que tuvo que hacer atrasado porque el régimen militar obligó a hacer el servicio a los reservistas que por algún motivo no lo habían podido hacer en su momento. Como mi hermano era sano fue obligado a hacerlo. Ahí fue testigo de muchos hechos reñidos con la moral, pero no se quedó sin hacer nada.

Y al año siguiente, el 20 de Octubre de 1976, también mi cuñado: Juan Rolando Rodríguez Cordero, fue herido en un falso enfrentamiento en la calle; llevado a un hospital por agentes de la DINA de donde salió muerto.

Hoy a 29 años de su asesinato en torturas, todavía estamos esperando la acción de la Justicia en este caso que tiene múltiples testigos. Y que generosamente nos han dado testimonios del martirologio sufrido por mi familia.

¿Acusados de qué?. No se les hizo ningún tipo de procedimiento judicial ni siquiera uno falso antes de matarlos. Fueron sometidos a toda clase de torturas, como consta en el Informe Rettig, y ni siquiera pudieron contar con un entierro digno. Los cadáveres registraban evidentes muestras de tortura. En particular me duele que a mi hermana le hayan arrancado los ojos y le dejaron las cuencas vacías porque sus ojos eran llamativamente brillantes.

Nosotros hemos denunciado reiteradas veces quienes fueron sus torturados; nombres que casualmente se repiten: Marcelo Moren Brito Francisco Ferrer Lima Miguel Krassnoff Marchenko Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda Ernesto Baeza Michelsen y otros agentes de menor rango que los anteriores. Nunca ninguno de los involucrados han dado siquiera un gesto de arrepentimiento por lo que hicieron, ni menos se nos ha explicado qué delitos cometieron las víctimas para merecer tales castigos. Por el contrario, en un careo de mi madre con Baeza, hace algunos años, éste le dio a entender que ella estaba loca y que tal vez sus hijos y su esposo nunca existieron. O sea, burla y más burla.

Ahora me pregunto si con todos estos antecedentes todavía se atreven a decir que "las víctimas se lo buscaron..." y que lo que los familiares buscamos después de 29 años ¿es venganza? ¿Pedir Justicia es buscar venganza, Sr, Vidal?

Yo nunca he escuchado a mi madre -hoy de 79 años, con ánimo vengativo. Nunca, durante su larga lucha por Verdad y Justicia; nunca la he escuchado pedir que a los torturadores de mi familia los cuelguen de los testículos como lo hicieron con mi padre. Sólo le he escuchado decir: ¡Ay! Ojalá algún día se reconozca que mi viejo y mis hijos no fueron delincuentes ni gente de mal vivir y se limpien sus nombres. Así podré ir y mostrarlo a quienes me apuntaban con el dedo y se mofaban.