By: La Zarzamora with the collaboration of the comrades of the information medium of subversive and anarchist prisoners @buscandolakalle
With the aim of recovering the stories of those comrades who faced and fought against tyranny implanted by the civic-military dictatorship and its structural continuity, today 50 years after the coup, we wanted to find them, listen to them by making them part of our own history, claiming them far from victims, far from pacifist visions, conciliatory speeches and the patriarchal monopoly of history, which has buried the courage, actions and will to fight of those who preceded us.
Marcela Rodríguez is a subversive woman ex-combatant of the Lautaro Popular Rebel Forces, active participant of the armed resistance against the dictatorship and later against the repressive apparatuses of the false transition. During her life she participated in various actions, some very mediatized in the media of the time, in one of them she is seriously injured leaving irreversible consequences. In this interview, we go through her life told in the first person, we talk about her political position and look at the current context, at 70 years of age. A comrade whose story should not go unnoticed in the reconstruction of the combatant memory…
Milan, Italy (1973-2023) 50 years after the military coup
Marcela was born on March 3, 1953 in Santiago. Her childhood was lived in a working town in the southern sector of Santiago called Villa Sur, her basic education was completed at the Alfonso Matte school located in the town of Dávila and the middle school at the Female Technical School No. 3 located in the commune of San Miguel, where she says she received “the necessary tools to interpret the world”, which, added to the teachings of her home, completed her training. “In family gatherings, my father told us about the history of Chile and the world, especially the history of the labor movement, because he had been a union leader in his youth,” she says.
What was $hile like back then?
Chile lived at the end of the sixties a rich social experience, with a lot of participation of young people. At the end of the sixties, I actively participated in the youth movements of the time, such as Federación Juventud Unidad (F.J.U.), I was part of a folkloric ensemble and also of a theater group. In 1968, I joined the Communist Youth of Chile (J.J.C.C.). Participating in this political party and also in the youth center I had the opportunity to learn much more about the Chilean political reality. Then I began to participate and work for the presidential campaign of the year ’70, in which Salvador Allende, from the left, Jorge Alessandri from the right and the candidate of the center, Radomiro Tomic, were candidates.
This effervescence and popular participation caused the population to divide and begin a rivalry that became in many cases hatred and fights, where nobody listened to anyone, and where blows were reached. For my part, I remember that I went out with my comrades from the jota [informal name for Communist Youth of Chile] to sell the newspaper “El Siglo” every Sunday morning and the young people of the DC [Christian Democratic party] went out to sell the one of their party, and so we met face to face in the street. At first we only looked at each other almost with hatred, then it was the swearing words and in the end we ended up grabbing each other’s hair and tearing our newspapers.
Then came Election Day. I could not vote because I was only 17 years old, but the atmosphere that was lived and that I could perceive, was very tense. On September 4, 1970, Salvador Allende triumphed (36.5%), followed by the right-wing candidate Jorge Alessandri (34.9%) and the center candidate, Radomiro Tomic (27.8%). 16.3% abstained from voting.
Because no candidate reached an absolute majority, it was up to the Plenary National Congress to determine who would be the President between the first two relative majorities. But despite this, we went out to celebrate the triumph in the street, it was very beautiful and exciting, people hugged, cried with joy, I with my comrades danced and sang, embraced in the street, the old people met in the headquarters of their parties to discuss the number of votes, the percentages, etc. No one slept that night. I remember going to bed at dawn, very tired but happy.
Days before the Plenary National Congress met to make its decision, on October 22, 1970, Army Commander in Chief René Schneider was kidnapped. In this attempt he was seriously wounded, dying two days later. From what I understand, what was sought was to kidnap him to produce a situation of political instability and thus the military would take power to prevent in this way the ratification of Allende by the National Congress, which would be temporarily closed, until a new presidential election was called. On October 24, 1970, the National Plenary Congress (Senators and Deputies) ratified the victory of Salvador Allende with 153 votes in favor, 35 votes for Alessandri and 7 blank votes. 5 parliamentarians abstained from voting.
How did you experience the dictatorship and what was your political activity at that time?
From the first day of the coup, I started trying to organize something in the population, but it was almost impossible. People were very scared and so were my comrades from the party. None of them wanted to do anything and when I went to their houses, they didn’t open the door for me or just told me not to look for them anymore. The few of us who tried to do something found ourselves with our hands tied, since we had no comrade from the central committee or the political commission to tell us what to do.
Several comrades arrived at my house who were being sought and had nowhere to go. We had no houses to hide those who were being sought. I and some comrades tried to find houses for them, but people didn’t even want to open the door and many told me to please not talk to them anymore. There were many rumors about President Allende. It was said that they had not killed him and would have him imprisoned somewhere, also that he would have left La Moneda and would be hiding, others said that he had taken refuge. Then, a few days later, the rumor began to spread that Prats [Carlos Prats, commander-in-chief of Chilean army during Allende’s presidency] would come crossing the mountain range from Argentina with some soldiers, to face the coup plotters.
We always walked with fear since the soldiers, almost every night in a helicopter, focused with a very large spotlight on the houses; sometimes at night, we felt that cars arrived that opened and closed their doors, then screams were heard, shots were heard and again cars that left sounding the tires.
The following months were spent trying to find a comrade to start doing something. Soon, I made contact with people from the party of another population and I started working with them, but there was no clear direction to follow or what to do, so we started working on the little we could think of, such as: making pamphlets and going out to distribute them. I made contact with the comrades of the Dávila population and we began to meet once a week in the street and in pairs, because no more than two people could get together since the soldiers considered it a political meeting. We had to be well dressed because if you looked like an artisan they took you prisoner and you also had to take care of the neighbors, because the coup plotters called on the population to denounce any act that attempted against the military junta, and many neighbors took advantage of this to denounce someone they did not like, for revenge or for past political differences.
Without any experience of working clandestinely, we did not know what to do. We did not have much information and as the leaders were hiding, the task was assumed by us; we tried to organize groups and give each other tasks, some as simple as scratching with some slogans on the backs of the seats of the buses, or the bathrooms of restaurants. This simple task terrified us all and I spent whole days getting on and off the buses and sometimes I could not scratch anything because I was very afraid because the soldiers stopped the buses, asked for identification cards, and raided bags and wallets. When I managed to scratch a bus or restaurant bathroom, I left with my heart racing, feeling that everyone was looking at me, my legs were shivering and then I did not sleep, thinking that someone had denounced me.
We also collected money to buy the cheapest paper called roneo and tracing paper, and in a very old typewriter, which my father had, we made pamphlets and put the tracing so that more came out. We spent whole days making pamphlets, and the slogans were very simple, such as: Allende lives, no to the military, organize the people, join the resistance and as a signature we put an R for resistance. Then we distributed the pamphlets and each one had the mission to distribute them in any way they could.
I did it in the buses: I got on one that was full, I ran down the corridor until I got under the window, which at that time was on the roof, I opened it if it was closed and waited for the right moment, then I took out the pamphlets that I had hidden by my stomach. When the bus stopped, I took my hand out of the window and put the papers on top of the ceiling, when the bus started, the wind blew the pamphlets that were falling to the street, after that I got off the bus and ran out with my soul in a thread, but happy with the mission accomplished. Maybe they were things that make us laugh today, but for us back then, it was risking our lives. This was short-lived and I was left alone again.
In ’74 I joined the UTE [Technical State University]. I didn’t know anyone there and no one could be trusted, so I just started scratching slogans in the bathrooms and on the benches of the university. There were many infiltrators and the young people were afraid. They raided us at the entrance and exit of the university, and every so often they raided the classrooms, so anything we tried to do was dangerous. There was a lot of talk about bodies floating in the Mapocho River and people disappearing.
The repression touched us when my older sister was taken to the National Stadium, because they had allegedly found pamphlets calling for subversion on the desk of the office where she worked. They were very difficult and terrible times for the family, it was not known if she would come out alive or dead. Fortunately, my sister was released after being “shot” several times. Hundreds of people detained there did not have the same luck.
As for the food shortages, it ended on the same day as the coup. Little by little, things seemed to have calmed down and people supposedly returned to normal, but there was always a conversation about what was happening with the most trusted people. There was talk of the corpses in the Mapocho River, of the resistance of the students in the UTE, of the bombings of the popular groups, but many residents thought it was not true and were happy that there were no longer lines to buy food.
How was your approach to the most radical and revolutionary positions?
Parties were forbidden, but with my friends we also did them, putting blankets in the windows so that the light could not be seen from outside, playing the music very low and being scared dead waiting for the soldiers to arrive at any time. The parties were “touch by touch”, because you could not walk in the street from nine at night until seven in the morning (I do not remember the hours well). In one of those parties, a comrade of the MIR [Revolutionary Left Movement] invited me to make some scratches in the population.
We left at four in the morning and he passed me a small gun, I was scared to death because it was the first time I had a gun in my hands and I didn’t know how to use it. I went out that day to scratch with the young people of the MIR, with the gun in one of my boots. After going out a few more times, the “parties” with those comrades ended, I never knew why and I was left alone again.
In the year ’74 in the UTE, I continued with my solitary scratches despite the large number of “toads” and infiltrators that there were. I didn’t trust anyone, not even a young man who lived in my town and whom I met in the youth centers, who chased me in the university trying to “to go out with” me to work with him, but I was quite disillusioned and no longer wanted to know anything with political work.
In the year ’76, I got married and then I had a daughter who died a few months after she was born, which caused me a great depression and I left the university for a while. When I wanted to resume my studies, the dictatorship had closed the university, so I dedicated myself to work. Later, a comrade from MAPU [Popular Unitary Action Movement] who also lived in my town, began to approach me and my comrade to do political work together. I started working with them, at first not very convinced because I knew the Catholic roots of this party, but I liked the idea because I had an immense desire to work against the dictatorship. The general secretary was Garretón, who was in exile. Through this party I joined to work in a cultural center where we had a folkloric and theater group, we also worked with children and their parents. In this way, political work was done in the towns, trying to integrate young people so that they could begin to organize themselves through music, singing, dancing, theater and their own needs.
Then there were political discussions, where they could express what the dictatorship meant for them and for the country, and through small dramatized musical works, the rights that workers and the population in general were losing were denounced. At first these activities were done in a place that provided the neighborhood council, but we all knew that these people had been put in those positions because of their affinity with the dictatorship and many people did not participate with us precisely for fear of these people. Soon they took away the premises, leaving us without a place to meet. This is how we talked with the priest of the town and asked him for a place in the church, in which we could do our activities, he accepted as long as “we did not do political activities”.
How and when did you take the armed route?
In 1982, MAPU split and Mapu Lautaro was formed, which I joined. After the Lautaro militias I went on to participate in the FRPL (Lautaro Popular Rebel Forces) where I continued to carry out actions against the dictatorship and later against the “democracy” of the Concertación [coalition of center-left parties that governed Chile after the dictatorship]. We did not believe that the Concertación would solve the problems of poverty, so we continued with the armed struggle.
How did this decision influence your life as a young revolutionary woman?
I could not say if this decision would have influenced me, if my two daughters had not died, one in ’76 and the second in ’78. After this, I was very depressed for a while, then little by little I started to get in touch with my friends and comrades again. I did not get pregnant again, and I dedicated myself only to the struggle against the dictatorship, I even saw little of my family, so as not to put them in danger in case something happened to me.
What was your analysis of the plebiscite and the accommodation of the “Concertación” in power (what you called transition)?
In the plebiscite of 1988, we were all in the street with our few weapons, we thought that Pinochet was going to do something to stay in power and we had to be in the street to face this situation. We went to a town… I remember that people voted and we were there since the polling stations opened in the street, we were there all day, walking in the town, until night came. It was twelve, nothing happened, it was two in the morning and everyone there, and we were walking… in the end, well, when it was known that the NO won, they went out to celebrate and we did not know what to do.
A person said that he was celebrating, that the dictatorship ended, you could not tell him: no, that you were going to continue fighting, that the dictatorship continued, because this person was celebrating that there would no longer be a tyrant, that he would not see more dead… The problem is that I was wrong. Then I wondered if what we thought had happened… if Pinochet had not recognized the triumph of the No, he would have taken all the soldiers to the streets… what would have happened? What would we have done? There were five of us in the town, with five weapons, with an UZI, three pistols and two revolvers, something like that. When these guys take the cops out on the street, they don’t take out three cops, a population is filled with three hundred soldiers armed up to their necks, what would the five of us have done at that time?… I didn’t even know where I was going to sleep at night.
When it was known that the NO won and people began to celebrate, just one person began to see where we were going to sleep……. We couldn’t have fought for more than five minutes, because we didn’t have any more ammunition. We had those weapons and ammunition for those weapons, and one more reload. The will was, everything was there, but from the military point of view, at that time, I do not know if it was correct or not to go out to face the possible disregard of the NO on the part of the soldiers.
Later, the whole apparatus of the coalition came together to stigmatize us, that is, Lautaro were murderers, dedicated to killing cops, robbing banks and that was the idea that they began to throw out by the media. The people who were happy with us, who brought them the chickens, we did so many nice things, they told us what to do if democracy came, we are going to vote next year, democracy came in colors… more than all the media treated us badly, the worst was said about Lautaro. And if people hear every day, that they are bombarding you that the Lautaro kills cops, that the Lautaro were bank robbers, that the Lautaro here, that the Lautaro there, I think it separated us a little from the people, I think it could have been that, that thing influenced a lot in that people no longer seeing us later as before. And from the left to the right, they made an agreement with the military to lie to the people and perpetuate themselves in power.
Considering that there was no politicization of patriarchal practices in the organic ones of that time, how did the comrades or yourself deal with situations of these characteristics?
I, in addition to being a revolutionary and being on the street, was a housewife. Also, of course, my former partner helped me, a lot of importance was given to women, they told us to catch up with men.
We were all important, they told us… all. In the party, importance was given to women: ‘Comrades, you have to participate more in the movement,’ they said. In the conference, we were all supposed to participate, but women did not, I do not know if it was because we got used to men touching on the political issue and spent hours and hours talking about politics, or if we did not assume our role also in that issue or if it was really that the comrades were sexist… If, on the one hand, they told us that women should be here discussing politics, but they didn’t really give us the space to do so… I don’t know. It may be both.
When some action was planned and it was a woman who had to carry it out, we felt it as a triumph, a triumph of ours, because we were telling women: you can do it too, you can command, beyond being the cook of the meetings.
Considering the hierarchical nature of armed groups such as Mapu-Lautaro, have you ever questioned hierarchies or known horizontal forms of political organization?
I did not know another form of organization, but within us, different comrades were always being promoted to the political commission, even I myself was in the political commission several times and participated in the meetings and then discussed them in my group. Our actions, which were military, grew a little politically. We had all the tools for political discussion, because we had a duty to know why you were in Lautaro and why you were fighting.
We know that you participated in the well-known and necessary recovery of trucks with merchandise from Mapu-Lautaro, things that were then distributed in the population. How did you experience those moments and which recoveries were most engraved in your memory?
We did a lot of things. We spent all day on the street looking for information. A comrade arrived who said: ‘you know I saw a bench that is far from the main streets and the cops never walk around there’. So we went to that place, it was another target, which we could look for the next month. But we always had to be looking for targets, a truck of chickens, which we then distributed in some town, on Easter day to see a target of toys. Or for International Women’s Day, we would go to a women’s store and pull out bras, stockings, breeches and then hand them out to women from a marginalized population. Or for the eighteenth of September, too, we said that there were people who did not have to buy meat for the roast, or buy the liter of wine to drink, or beer.
We were thinking about the things that people would like to make that day special. We handed out condoms to young people in schools, lots of condoms… We thought that if a couple loved each other and wanted to have sex, they should be free. Because it was a time when you saw many pregnant girls in schools, who were 12, 14, 15 years old and that’s why they were kicked out of school and not offered to continue, because they had become pregnant. It was at that time, when the church was also opposed to contraceptives, with the power it has in our country, with its moral issues against sex, homosexuality and abortion. So we started talking: ‘Well, how do we tell the kids that they can do it, but take care of themselves’. In addition to that it follows suit that the priests tell them no, the parents tell them no, that the teachers tell them no, at the end of the day, if the kids want to do it, they will do it the same, at school, at home, in the car… They’re going to do it anyway.
We also had to make banks, the rebel money, to be able to pay the compañeros and compañeras who only worked for Lautaro and so many other beautiful actions.
In the current context and considering the increase in poverty in the current $hile, do you consider recovery still a valid option?
At this moment and as things are in Chile, with the delinquency and with the little organization that exists in the revolutionary and subversive groups, I have my doubts… But yes, it will always be a valid option as long as poverty exists, as long as governments steal the people’s money and as long as the people have to go looking for leftovers in the free fairs to go in the pot, at some point this will happen.
Were you qualified as the “Machine Gun Woman”? We know that several comrades nicknamed themselves like that, what do you think of this qualification?
Stupid. But in the end, if what they wanted was to provoke in the people a rejection of us, of women, it became a boomerang and they always put us on the front pages. When we arrived at the towns, they applauded us and shouted “Long live the women!”
Were there mothers in the Mapu-Lautaro, and how did they experience those maternities?
Yes, there were many mothers, some returned home to take care of children who had left their grandparents and then returned to work with us, others stayed to do lighter work, some stayed permanently at home and more than one participated in armed actions while several months pregnant.
On November 14, 1990, you participated in the rescue of political prisoner Marco Ariel Antonioletti from the Sótero del Río Hospital in Santiago, an action in which you were injured?
I faced that with a lot of courage. The truth is that I never thought that they would kill me, that I would be imprisoned or that I would die, I always thought that what I did was the right thing and the moment the bullet hit me, I said ‘I fucked up, but you won’t see me cry’, and so it was.
Did you have support from your comrades?
Yes, the second year they sent me money because I went from hospital to hospital, but then the repression caused all my comrades to be imprisoned little by little. When I was better I started going to see them in prison. They received me with honors and some time later they made me several tributes.
What were the errors that you subsequently identified in that action?
Supposedly everything that happened should not have happened, our actions were always clean; unfortunately, when I fell injured everything changed. I believe that the rescued comrade was taken to a house where he should not have been taken and then the owner of the house named Juan Carvajal, who would later be the Director of Communications of the Bachelet government, betrayed him and there he was killed by cops, ratis [Investigations Police of Chile] and special forces. The comrade was unarmed.
How did you experience the repressive onslaught of “democracy” with la Oficina [Chilean civil intelligence organisation that operated from 1991 to 1993] and the entire Concertación machine?
With all the propaganda against us, with former comrades now working for la Oficina and who knew how we worked, the people in the towns that used to lend us their homes stopped doing so out of fear; there was a lack of safe houses where the comrades could be calm, so little by little, they were being caught and of course tortured. Comrades were murdered, comrades were raped, just like in dictatorship. Then they made the High Security prison, which even in dictatorship they had not done.
How did you experience political imprisonment?
Very bad. The first two years I almost died in the penitentiary of Santiago, where they did not have doctors who could take good care of me. The first two months they did not heal my wounds, which worsened until I had generalized sepsis. They wouldn’t let anyone in to see me, not even my lawyer. My family, friends, some human rights associations were outside the penitentiary all day with signs shouting for them to take me to a hospital, but nothing was achieved.
One day, my lawyer came in and when he saw me he almost died. I was jumping in bed shivering from the fever, I couldn’t speak, I was sweaty completely; he started yelling at the gendarmes that they had to take me to the hospital, that I was dying; the gendarmes laughed and threw him out; when my lawyer came out and told how I was, people decided to take over the headquarters of the Red Cross. A few days later, the gendarmerie gave the order to take me to the Barros Luco hospital.
I do not remember how they took me out, because I had lost consciousness, I only know that the doctors who received me told my family that if they had taken another hour to take me, I would have died. I was in that prison for a year and a half, alone, because all my comrades were in the women’s prison. Then they gave me conditional release, but I had to go to sign every month in the military prosecutor’s office, so that I could not get out of the country. It was 10 years where my family took care of me.
Then I got the sentence, 20 years and one day. Before I was arrested, I took refuge in the Norwegian embassy with my future husband. We spent several days in the embassy, but they denied me asylum; I told them that I would leave there on the condition that I would not go to jail, but to a hospital where there would be doctors who could take care of me. In the end, they took me to the Lucio Córdova hospital, where I spent two years always cared for by eight or ten gendarmes, who did not let me sleep at night, entering and leaving my room, singing or telling filthy jokes. Sometimes, they shot at night and did not let the patients of the other rooms sleep. I was in a room alone, I was never with other comrades. Then in 2001, they gave me the penalty of banishment and in 2002, Italy received me with my husband Julio Araya. It’s been 21 years and we’re still in Italy.
Do you value being part of a political movement today that did not believe in the false transition?
Of course we did, and I think we were right.
50 years after the coup, do you consider that the economic, social and repressive policies of the dictatorship are still present?
Not only are they present, they have perfected them much more.
Women have taken up arms and continue to do so in their different territories and contexts of oppression. What would you say to the compañeras who decide to rebel by armed means or violent direct action?
The decision they make must be respected, if they believe that it is the right thing to do and that there is no other way to change things, to rebel.
These memory exercises allow us to make visible the experience of the comrades who preceded us and who have been made invisible. Do you want to end with a message or reflection?
I believe that we should write, tell, reflect, remember, commemorate each and every one of the women who have fought by armed means or not. I, as well as my comrades, were and are revolutionary and subversive women, at least I still am; some of them gave their lives and only we remember them. LONG LIVE THE SUBVERSIVE WOMEN!
We thank Marcela for agreeing to this interview and helping us to unite new pieces of our combative history with her honest and powerful stories. We also thank Julio, for sending us Marcela’s words and maintaining communication during the construction of this. Finally, we thank the comrades of the counter-information media of the subversive and anarchist prisoners Buscando la Kalle, for contacting us and achieving the coordination of this interview.
Source: La Zarzamora