It’s been 47 years, and there’s still thousands of families who, to this day, do not know what happened to their loved ones.
Mothers and fathers who died of elderly age and sadness in the 90s, 00s and 10s, praying for at least a scrap of the clothes their children were wearing the day they disappeared, a lock of hair, a tooth… Something, so they could bury as much as that. So they could at least have a stone to cry on.
There’s records of teenagers as young as 14 among the disappeared.
Children left orphaned, now beyond middle aged, who keep running into the men who tortured and executed their parents, as they walk around their neighborhoods, as if nothing ever happened. Elderly men who get to live in peaceful retirement despite the crimes they committed, while their parents had their lives stolen from them, being thrown in bags, still alive, into the ocean from helicopters, after having been tortured.
Wives, husbands, siblings, friends and lovers with many similar stories to tell, if they have enough strength in them to tell them at all.
People who were arrested and tortured alongside loved ones, who were lucky to be released after weeks, months or more of military torture, but whose loved ones they went with were not, and they never saw them again. People living with an undeserved guilt that they survived, but their loved ones did not.
Children who were never born despite being loved and expected, because their mothers were taken while they still carried them, and suffered the same fate as everyone else. Fathers who lost both their lovers and unborn children at once.
And thousands of bodies crying from the ocean, from the desert, from Los Andes, from military bases. Waiting to be found, waiting to be named.
what is this in reference to?
Yesterday it was Chile’s 9/11. In September 11th of 1973, the democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende was overthrown by a US backed coup from the Chilean military, which started the military dictatorship of Pinochet. It lasted until 1990, and its horrors were constant, with state terrorism and violence, censorship, political persecution, etc. What you’d expect from a fascist dictatorship.
The coup itself started off with plenty of deaths, which was immediately followed by the Caravan of Death (only lasting between September 30th and October 22nd of 1973, counting 97 executions and forced disappearances), and continued with the arrests, horrific tortures and executions of thousands of civilians (confirmed over 40,000 victims).
Among the thousands of people who were victims of the dictatorship, there’s the over 3000 disappeared detainees; people who were taken from out of the blue (taken from their homes at night, taken in their way to work, etc) by the police or military, and whose whereabouts are still not known to this day.
Them being disappeared doesn’t just mean that they’re dead, it means there’s no answers to what exactly happened to them (due in big part to pacts of silence and other forms of corruption), and the bodies are and will probably always be missing, due to how the bodies were deposed of (re-read the last paragraph of the op to get an idea).
The loved ones of those disappeared are, to this day, still searching for answers regarding what happened to their children, parents, spouses, siblings, lovers and friends. Let alone the elusive hope of ever finding a piece of their corpses to bury. It’s been so long, that now there’s new generations of people who didn’t even live through the dictatorship, that are continuing the search of their parents who died without an answer.
Reblogging in 2021.
Complex trauma from abuse can cause chronic exhaustion, and chronic pain. This means the recovery, aside from being filled with guilt, shame and rage, will include long time spent in bed, feeling to exhausted and pained to move, or do anything.
This is happening because trauma is hard on the human body, and your body will spend all energy just trying to fight it, or repress it, or process it. The emotional pain of trauma being processed is enough to cause physical pain, chest pain, pain in all of your joints, headaches; your body will be so tense you can end up in chronic back pain and muscle pain just from all the tension and inability to relax. Your mind will be re-living the past and your body will react accordingly, getting terrified, shocked, tense, and finally showing all the damage you couldn’t feel when the abuse was happening. Even if you felt nothing while it was happening, there was no way to avoid this, your body can’t keep the trauma hidden inside of you forever.
One thing common for recovering victims is to feel intense shame for resting, for spending so much time in bed, feeling sick and worried about their future because they can’t get it together enough, or can’t get their tasks done due to pain and detachment from reality. You’ve all experienced being shamed for resting, being blamed for your own pain, and told you have no value if you’re not productive and hardworking. However, none of this applies to you right now. You need to rest. This rest is for survival. This is comparable to recovery from life-threatening injury, you cannot be expected to function or shamed for being lazy if your body is broken and barely hanging onto life. You are surviving, and you need rehabilitation and care, not feelings of inadequacy or shame for still daring to be alive.
It’s alright for you to exist just to rest only. In rare moments you do manage to get up, it’s okay to just do soothing non-productive stuff. There is no limit to how much care you need right now and you are obliged to give that to yourself. If the chronic exhaustion is caused by trauma, it will get better, not fast, not all at once, but slowly, during months and years, your body will let enough trauma out to allow you to use some of your energy for yourself. It’s vital you rest and let the trauma do its thing, and then eventually you will get your body back.