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DISAPPEARANCE
We, the relatives, were first overcome by terror and then by a state of permanent grief. In this way, the disappearance of people becomes one of the most deadly techniques; more than the cross, the guillotine, the electric chair and even the gas chambers of the German genocide. There are neither explanations to give, nor corpses to honour or say good bye to, no legal dealings to pursue or even delinquents to prosecute. THERE IS ONLY SILENCE AND UNCERTAINTY.
For this reason, the disappeared did not even have the chance to escape, to become asylum seekers or refugees. Their lives vanished and their disappearance had been used by the military regime as a deterrent to impede any kind of opposition and protest against them. The bodies have been deliberately hidden, evidencing the intention, by the dictatorship, to achieve impunity. The 1978 Amnesty law that prevented any legal proceedings against any of Pinochet's men before that year amounts to the validation of this strategy.
MURIEL DOCKENDORFF NAVARRETE