He Survived Pinochet's Deadly Coup. Now Chile Is Erasing the Memory of What Happened

In October 1973, just weeks after Augusto Pinochet’s military coup overthrew Chile’s democratically elected government, thousands of people were rounded up and imprisoned in Santiago’s National Stadium. Among them was David Hathaway, a young American living in Chile — and his roommate, Frank Teruggi. Teruggi was tortured and killed. David survived and was released. Watch the video below.

Fifty years later, David returned to Chile as a translator for a Global Justice Ecology Project investigative delegation documenting the ongoing repression of the Mapuche people — a repression with deep roots in the same Pinochet era he witnessed firsthand.

Now, Chile’s newly elected far-right President José Antonio Kast — who served as a Pinochet volunteer in his youth and has expressed open nostalgia for the dictatorship — is expected to defund Chile’s Museum of Memory and Human Rights, which documents the thousands killed, disappeared, and tortured under Pinochet’s rule.

For survivors like David, and for the families of those who never came home, the message is clear: in Chile today, the past is not past.

Find more about the history and current status of state and industry repression in Chile, especially against the Mapuche people there, on this substack and by visiting: https://globaljusticeecology.org/chile/

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