Dios no ha hecho la muerte ni se complace en la perdición de los vivientes(Sabiduría 1:13).
Vivía con la tía, María González. Ella dijo que cuando su sobrino entró en la DINA, dejó de usar uniforme. Le dieron terno y zapatos, y le pasaban a buscar en auto. (Chevrolet Opala, color negro, con toda la sutileza característica.) En una ocasión, él mostró a su tía la TIFA que lo identificaba como integrante de la DINA. Era una violación de procedimiento. La primera.
A Rodolfo, le ganó su propia humanidad. Poco a poco, comenzó a aprovechar su acceso privilegiado a los detenidos para comunicarles cosas sobre sus respectivas situaciones, para comunicar a sus familiares dónde estaban y en qué condiciones. Entre otras cosas, hacía de guardia en el Hospital Militar a los detenidos hospitalizados por los balazos y las quebraduras. Los cuidaba con compasión.
Es posible que haya sido por ingenuidad, o por creer que así se hacía. En verdad, así se hace, cuando no se trata de la DINA. Pero Rodolfo ya era testigo de la locura de la DINA. Testigo directo. Testigo peligroso. Ya sabía que la DINA no era cualquier cosa. Creo que fue porque tenía conciencia, y su conciencia no le permitía participar de los acontecimientos así no más.
Tenía, además, un hermano que era militante de izquierda. Estaba asilado en la embajada de Argentina. Nadie sabe por qué Rodolfo vivía con la tía. No se sabe por qué no vivía con sus padres, o bien, si estaban vivos. Pero, de chico, alguien le había enseñado la diferencia entre qué se hace y qué no se hace a otro ser humano.
Un día, le descubrieron comunicando cosas a los incomunicados y haciendo aparecer a los desaparecidos. Al día siguiente, era uno más de ellos. Se lo llevaron el 29 de julio de 1974. Podría haber conocido a los demás detenidos, primero como agente de la DINA y, luego, como compañero. Compañero torturado y desaparecido en Londres 38 y en Villa Grimaldi.
Una militante de izquierda, que fue detenida y después se hizo informante de la DINA, sobrevivió. Ella dice que lo vio en Villa Grimaldi. Estaba con la pierna enyesada, porque se había tirado desde la torre. Pero la torre no tenía altura para matarlo. Quizás, lo tiraron.
Le dieron duro, porque para ellos, era un traidor. Por su hermano, habrán calculado que era militante de izquierda infiltrado. Pero no era cierto. Los mismos detenidos decían que era diferente. No tenía la formación política que ellos tenían.
Otro sobreviviente dice que lo vio por última vez, desnudo y colgado de una viga en la Villa Grimaldi. No se sabe si estaba colgado de las manos o de los pies. O en alguna posición impensablemente dolorosa.
Rodolfo apareció nombrado en las listas de muertos en supuestos enfrentamientos entre subversivos en el exterior. Es del grupo que se conoce simplemente como, los 119.
En 1977, se dieron la molestia de enviar dos integrantes de la FACH al departamento de la tía para retirar todas sus prendas militares. Hicieron un esfuerzo especial para asegurar que Rodolfo no apareciera. La tía militó en la Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos, llevando la pancarta con la foto de su sobrino por las calles de Santiago, hasta su muerte.
Si todos los niños tuvieran a alguien que le enseñara cuando chico la diferencia entre el bien y el mal, si tuvieran quien les enseñara que eso va más allá de que alguna autoridad se haya pronunciado, entonces no podría haber DINA, ni CIA, ni Colonia Dignidad, ni… muchas cosas más.
Me sorprende que, como Rodolfo, hubo tan pocos, pero la verdad es que, en este mundo, por el momento, hay más cobardes que héroes, más oscuridad que luz.
Aún no pierdo la esperanza. Aun vive el Dios de la vida.
Los otros detenidos-desaparecidos se convencieron de una ideología por la cual estaban dispuestos a dar la vida. Rodolfo tomó una opción mucho más primitiva. Sencillamente optó por ser torturado, para no ser torturador. Decidió por la solidaridad. Y le costó todo lo que tenía.
An exceptional case
God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living(Wisdom 1:13).
When great historical calamities occur, it is amazing that so many good people manage to agree on making really bad things happen. It is hard enough to imagine, and even harder to understand, how a child of God could come to participate in the kidnapping, torture and murder of his own kind, as if it were nothing at all.
During the dictatorship in Chile, there is testimony of at least one soldier who refused to play along. There were several, really, most of them heavyweights, captains and colonels who disagreed with the coup. Some resigned, others were exiled, and a few were even executed. But I was thinking of conscripts, those powerless boys fulfilling their civic obligation of military service when the order came down that they were to interrupt institutional procedure; to arrest, torture and kill their compatriots, without recourse to due process of any kind.
Rodolfo Valentín Gonzalez was a conscript, and proud to have gone into the Air Force. He was eighteen. After the coup, because of his distinguished service, he was sent to a special detail called the DINA. There, he was a guard and a messenger. He was the guy who went for coffee when the boss got tired of torturing somebody. Though not a perpetrator, he was an accomplice.
He lived with his aunt, Maria Gonzalez. She said that when her nephew went into the DINA, he stopped wearing a uniform. They gave him a dark suit and shoes, and they would pick him up in a car. (A black Chevy Impala, with all the subtlety of a freight train.) On one occasion, he showed her his military ID, which identified him as a member of the DINA. That was a violation of procedure. Perhaps, his first, but not his last.
Rodolfo was too human for his job. Little by little, he began to take advantage of his privileged access to detainees to communicate with them about their own situations, to communicate with their families about where they were and in what condition. Among other things, he was a guard at the MilitaryHospital, where he watched over the prisoners who were hospitalized because of bullet holes and broken bones. And he watched with compassion.
It could have been because he was naïve, or because he thought that was how it was done. Really, that is how it was done, when it wasn’t the DINA. But Rodolfo was already a witness to the insanity of the DINA. He was an eyewitness. A dangerous witness. And he already knew that the DINA was not fooling around. I think it was because he had a conscience, and his conscience would not allow him to participate in those events as if they were nothing.
Besides that, he had a brother who was a leftist militant. His brother had taken asylum in the embassy of Argentina. No one really knows why Rodolfo lived with his aunt. It is not known why he didn’t live with his parents, or even, if they were alive. But, when he was small, someone taught him very well what one can and cannot do to a fellow human being.
One day, he was caught communicating with the incomunicados and making the disappeared reappear. The next day, he was one of them. He was taken away by the DINA on July 29 of 1974. He probably already knew some of the prisoners who then became his fellow prisoners, and was tortured alongside them in Villa Grimaldi, and never seen again.
One leftist militant survived. She was detained and then later turned, to become an informant of the DINA. She says she saw Rodolfo in Villa Grimaldi. He had his leg in a cast, because he had jumped from the tower. But it wasn’t high enough to kill him. He might have been thrown off. That will never be resolved.
They were especially tough on him, because, for them, he was a traitor. Because of his brother, they figured that he was an infiltrator from the left. But that wasn’t true. The other prisoners even said that he was different. He had no political training at all.
Another survivor says that the last time he saw Rodolfo alive; he was naked and hanging from a rafter in Villa Grimaldi. It is not know if he was hanging by his hands or by his feet. Or in some other unimaginably painful position.
Rodolfo was named on the list of leftists reported killed in an imaginary shoot-out that was supposed to have happened in Brazilor Argentina. He became a member of the group now known as, the 119, because there were one hundred and nineteen names on the list.
In 1977, two Air Force men were sent to the aunt’s apartment to gather up all his military things. They made a special effort to make sure that he really disappeared. His aunt became a member of the Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos. She carried the sign with a picture of her nephew through the streets of Santiagountil her death.
If all children had someone to teach them the difference between right and wrong, if they all had someone to show them that it goes beyond what some self-proclaimed authority has said, then there could be no DINA, no CIA, no Nazi concentration camps, no… lots of other things.
I am surprised that there are so few in this world like Rodolfo. For the moment, I would have to say that there are more cowards than heroes in this world, way more darkness than light.
But I have yet to lose hope. Our God is still the God of life.
The other disappeared detainees were convinced of an ideology for which they were willing to give their lives. Rodolfo made a much more primitive choice. He simply opted to be tortured rather than to torture. He chose solidarity. And it cost him everything he had.
