Chacabuco

I stumbled across a picture postcard of the pearly blue Pacific birthing a sand arc thrust into the water; white, blinding earth. It's called The Portal of Antofagasta.

There were no palm trees. Not much of anything. The port city of Antofogasta, 850 miles north of Santiago de Chile, not much going on there. It's in the Atacama Desert, the dryest piece of land on the planet, parts of which haven't seen a drop of rain since they started recording rain.

North from the port city and inland into the loneliness of the Atacama there's a series of old mining towns, abandoned, relics of Chile's fiesta years, the 1930's nitrate boom. People take tours of them, but many are in serious disrepair. One of them is called Chacabuco.

It's a ghost town right off the PanAmerican Highway 5. Although the town is abandoned, truck drivers who take that route at night talk about seeing the town lit up, thousands of miners at work.

It's surrounded by landmines, many unaccounted for. That's because it used to be a concentration camp. Pinochet used mines to keep the prisoners in from 1973 to 1974.

In the early 1990's, one of the prisoners decided to move back. Roberto Zaldivar says that Chacabuco is the Cross that Chile must bear, and has dedicated his life to preserving its memory.

In its days as a prison camp, Chacabuco housed mostly artists and intellectuals -- those who presented a political or cultural threat to the military dictatorship. Aside from psychological trauma and the militaristic nature of the place, even false executions, the prisoners were left to their own, allowed to make music, write poetry put on plays in the local theater, play soccer with the guards.

As far as life in a concentration camp goes, Chacabuco was palatable. As far as location goes, Chacabuco was perfect. Nobody in his right mind would attempt escape into that desert -- even without the landmines there. Chile had no access to these people.

We're going to Chacabuco at the end of May. Niles is filming a 30-minute documentary entitled Chacabuco: The Desert's Skin. We're going to find this man, then turn the cameras on.

Niles is also filming Chacabuco prison camp survivors here in Santiago, he's got a couple interviews lined up this week. His last interview yielded some pretty interesting stuff. According to one ex-prisoner, Chacabuco was a city of light...compared to the post golpe de estado attrocities in the National Stadium.

Currently, we're $938 short. If all our friends donate five or ten bucks, the big thermometer will fill right up, and we'll head up north to make history.

To donate, you can go straight to The Chacabuco Project Official Website. You can check help us buy inventory or just make a flat donation. Thank You!