Two survivors of the Clínica Santa Lucía (a DINA medical torture center) provided their testimonies regarding their time in the building. This Tuesday, the first lawsuit regarding the case was filed, pointing to civilians, doctors, and dentists as responsible for perpetuating state-sponsored torture.

This Tuesday, the first lawsuit was filed in the case of the Clínica Santa Lucía, a space used by the DINA and operated by civilian doctors who, in some cases, will be questioned by the justice system for the first time for their participation in the intelligence agency’s torture apparatus during the dictatorship.

The center, located at Santa Lucía 162, operated between 1974 and 1977 as a clandestine medical center that received political prisoners who were decompensated due to hunger strikes, beatings, or who suffered severe sequelae after torture sessions in which their bodies could no longer endure.

Romina Ampuero, a member of the legal team of the Ex Clínica Santa Lucía Site of Memory Association, explained that “in 2018, we were able to finish the first research dossier, which was part of a project that originally began in 2012.” This work compiled stories and brief mentions pointing to the existence of this clinic in the Rettig and Valech Reports, brought together survivors, and managed to piece together the account of the building, which is now the headquarters of the Chilean Commission for Human Rights and was recently burglarized. “Through this gathering of information, we managed to establish the internal organization of the DINA in these spaces, which allows us to debunk some myths, such as those suggesting that these were spontaneous.”

“This was the DINA’s first clandestine clinic; it is the starting point of how the work of the DINA’s health brigade materialized, which continued throughout the dictatorship, and its essential characteristic is the link with civilians and the participation they had in keeping the dictatorship operating,” explains Romina.

Although the lawsuit is filed “against those who may be responsible,” the investigation identifies cardiologist Werner Zanghellini Martinez as the head of the unit (according to reports, he continues to practice in a private office rented under the name of a relative on Avenida Providencia).

Also mentioned are nurse Eliana Carlota Bolumburú Taboada; dental surgeon Dámaso González Espinoza; dentist Sergio Muñoz Bontá; surgeons Vitorio Orvietto Tiplizky, Jorge Fantini, and Osvaldo Leyton. In addition to otolaryngologist Eugenio Fantuzzi, who to this day continues to see patients at the Clínica Dávila in the otolaryngology department.

“The torture took place with the doctors right there”

Dagoberto Trincado is one of the survivors of this clinic; he believes he was interned for 15 days, tied to the bed. He was detained at Villa Grimaldi in December 1975; after several sessions of electric torture, his heart began to fail, and he was taken to the clinic to be “healed.” “When one hears about a clinic, one associates it with healing, right?

This clinic had the major difference that it healed people so they could withstand other types of torture. I ended up there due to heart problems after being electrocuted so much, and the verdict was: ‘No more electric torture,’ because that could cause my death, so what came next was physical torture, beatings, hangings, etc.,” he recounts.

“I arrived semi-conscious; the first thing they did was throw me on the bed and chain me up. I always heard noises and knew there were detainees in other rooms. I was subjected to IVs and pentothal, which was used to make people talk.

It is a drug that effectively makes you talk, but in incoherencies. That was the environment there; they were preparing us to provide information; the goal was not to heal us or leave us in good health.

After that, they didn’t shock me anymore, but they beat me and tortured me, in a clinic, with medical personnel. The torture took place with the doctors right there; they were simply there to monitor that my heart rate wouldn’t accelerate and cause me to burst.

They were doctors, not apprentices or paramedics; they knew perfectly well how to treat a person and how to administer the medications they had at their disposal. It was the DINA’s clinic; it was a part of the institutionalization of torture in Chile.”

Dagoberto adds that “the only contact I had with a doctor was at a certain moment when I wanted to die, and I told the guy to please let me die. And he told me something that I still remember every day… the doctor told me ‘no, I cannot do that because it is ethically reprehensible,’ so then I said, okay, I’d rather die.

He stressed to me that I was there because of my own fault, it was my fault, because I was not collaborating; I remember that perfectly. But they were there, silent, while the DINA agents interrogated me.”

“If you are a doctor, why are you here?”

Gabriela Salazar was detained on December 31, 1975, and was transferred to Villa Grimaldi. Gabriela was taken to the Clínica Santa Lucía after she began a hunger strike (lasting a week) “because I was determined to die and not have them continue torturing me.” She says that while still at the detention center, someone attended to her, took the blindfold off her eyes, and said, ‘I am a doctor.’ She quickly replied, “And if you are a doctor, why are you here?” He told her that he was part of a medical team that assists prisoners.

I asked him if he didn’t think that was appalling, and he told me yes, that what was happening in Chile was appalling. Gabriela believes that this doctor requested her transfer to the Clínica Santa Lucía.

“I realized I was coming toward the city center because they had thrown me into a van; it had a window and I could see the trees of the Parque Forestal outside. I knew that some ‘thing’ of the military, of the DINA, existed near Santa Lucía, because that had been a center of the Universidad de Chile before.

When they brought me, they carried me by my hands and feet up the stairs, and I realized it was another center like the DINA, because there were military personnel everywhere. I couldn’t see anything but I could feel, because I had a blindfold on.

They took me to the third floor of the Clínica Santa Lucía, because I counted the stairs; I realized, one might be blindfolded but one can hear,” she adds.

Gabriela recounts that “they put me in a bed, chained to the bed, and there, just like Dagoberto, they gave me an IV. It was a quite difficult situation because being chained and blindfolded, one was like a prisoner, it was more than a prisoner.

And yes, there was a person who monitored the IV, who I calculate must have been a nurse, probably a doctor who monitored the IV. And there was a person stationed outside the room… at one point I asked where I was and they told me ‘no, silence, you cannot speak.’”

“I felt that someone was next to me in the other bed; I realized because medical personnel would enter and watch the other person, who I understand was also being given an IV. At one point, I decided to hum a melody that was special to my partner and me, and I hummed that melody even though they had told me I had to be quiet, and I did it to give myself strength, and at that moment I realized that the person next to me, who spoke to me even though we were forbidden, was my husband who was there in the same room.

That gave me strength because before that I didn’t know if he was dead or alive,” she narrates.

For Gabriela, “what happened there, at the Clínica Santa Lucía, was a continuation of the torture. That’s what it was. Because being chained to a place, being unable to see… I had a feeling of great insecurity being in that place, of not knowing what was going to happen.

They had tortured me quite a bit before being there, so I didn’t know if they were going to kill me, I didn’t understand. My feeling is that it was a closed place, a dark place, a hard place, where anything could happen to you.

Just like the comrade, I didn’t know if they were going to start torturing me again there. It was exactly the same as Villa Grimaldi, with the difference that it was a medical center. I realized more or less where I was because it sounded… on the Cerro Santa Lucía they always fire a cannon at 12:00, and every day I heard that, so I more or less located the place because of that, that it was very close to the Cerro Santa Lucía.”

Impunity

“Impunity in Chile was born with the Concertación,” says Dagoberto. “With Patricio Aylwin when he says that justice will be done to the extent possible. That allowed for impunity, because there was never a commitment to conduct a deep investigation and provide reparations.”

Amidst graffiti and slogans on the streets, Dagoberto and Gabriela walk and read them; they smile at some but are worried about what has been experienced in these two months of social mobilization.

“Now with everything that is happening this year, sometimes I think it is the same methodology that the DINA used, it is the same form of repression that the cops used,” says Gabriela. “There is a lot of abuse of the people, the abuses continue.

People who have been left blind, semi-blind, thousands detained, and all of them have been abused. Torture in this country continues just as it always has. Here we need a frontal change. When the movement began, I won’t lie to you that it gave me happiness… that at my age… I am happy that the young people have taken the initiative,” she concludes.

Source: The Clinic, December 18, 2019