Diary of a Chilean Concentration Camp by Hernan Valdes

Whilst the coup in Chile against the socialist Presidency of Salvatore Allende resulted in great bloodshed, Hernan Valdes, a renowned writer, believed he was safe. Valdes expressed support for the Allende Government but was not a member of any political party, perhaps that is why it came as such a shock that he found himself arrested on a February evening in 1974. This was a full 5 months after the coup. Valdes was taken to Tejas Verdes, a concentration camp used by the junta since September 1973 to house dissidents. Valdes account of his time in the camp is both vivid and humbling, the conditions were awful further demonstrated in the diary by the unrelenting and mindless cruelty of the guards . Valdes makes clear that, whilst the cruelty the prisoners experienced at the hands of the guards pained them, it was the uncertainty of their status that troubled him the most. Had anyone noticed he was missing? Were they attempting to have him released? Did the junta plan to have him executed? An excellent portrayal of life in a concentration camp, written with the observation of a writer, taking into account every detail no matter how minor or trivial it might seem. The emotion that Valdes expresses truly shows the distressing life that many Chileans had to suffer under the military junta of Pinochet.