Coups d’etat in Chile in the 1970s forced international student Robert Arroyo into hiding three times and eventually inspired him to join a human rights group in which he helped uncover graves to identify the dead.
Arroyo gave his presentation, “Love Against Forgetting: In Solidarity Against Hate,” entirely in Spanish with a translator who spoke English.
“I want to start this presentation by saying that this experience isn’t something that I have studied, but I have lived,” Arroyo said through the translator.
Arroyo was born in Temuco, Chile, and grew up in a neighboring town called Valdivia. Military coups occurred in the 1970s in the wake of foreign investment withdrawals in the Chilean economy. Arroyo lived through a military coup invasion of Chile’s capital, Santiago, on Sept. 11, 1973, when he was 14 years old.
On that day, President Salvador Allende was killed when his palace was bombed during the coup. Communication lines were shut down and many political activists and leaders were made to “disappear” by being sent off to concentration camps and isolated islands.
Many of Arroyo’s family and neighbors were taken to the camps to be tortured or killed, he said.
“My uncle, Anselmo Raguileo, was taken to a concentration camp that was located inside what used to be a soccer stadium,” Arroyo said. “He was tortured there, and he never recovered from the experience.”
Arroyo said he chose to fight the military through social and political activism, collecting food and teaching children in poor communities who had been particularly affected by the violence. He joined a protest music band and traveled around the country raising awareness of the social activist movement. Arroyo received death threats that required him to go into hiding three times, and he was deported to Europe twice, where he stayed with friends in Germany.
In 1978, Arroyo joined a human rights group called Vicarage of Solidarity, which was made up of several churches, and organized aid for people who had been tortured and the families of those who were exiled. Arroyo also worked with a group of archeologists who searched for missing people by digging up unmarked graves to discover the identities of the bodies.
“How could I weigh out the happiness of living with the pain of death?” Arroyo said. “But I was able to find joy and meaning through art and music.”
After his experiences with violence in Chile, Arroyo traveled to Croatia and Bosnia to connect with people who had been exposed to the war in those countries and develop friendships through similar survivor experiences.
During the presentations, Arroyo showed slides of his drawings, which illustrated stories of people he knew during the war in Chile. The drawings also reflected his personal experiences and feelings about the violence of that time.
“It was not easy to be a pacifist,” Arroyo said. “What I believe in is the power of people who are organized.”
Arroyo came to the University through the International Cultural Scholarship Program, which provides support to international students. Each international student supported through the program participates in 80 hours of cultural programming each year by becoming involved with educational and diversity-oriented programs.
Kate Bodane, the International Service Program coordinator, said this was the first time weekly presentations have been held in the Resource Center that focused on international students’ experiences with war in their home countries. The idea is to have students who have lived through wars discuss how it affected them personally, she said.
“This is a unique way for people to understand (the effects) of war on a personal level,” Bodane said. “It gives a personal connection.”
Arroyo, a University Ph.D. candidate, gave the fourth presentation in a series of six being held in the International Resource Center on Wednesdays. The next presentation will feature a speaker who will discuss his personal experiences with the war in Afghanistan.