September 11, 1973. Santiago, Chile. Chilean army planes bombed the presidential palace, with Salvador Allende inside. Pinochet’s military blew up democracy. In the streets of Santiago, the tanks began the savage repression of the coup d’état.

Erika Araya Ardiles He was 17 years old and can still feel the panic of those moments: “We heard gunshots all night and how they were taking out trucks with dead people. In our house we slept with the mattresses on the floor.”

At that time, Erika was a student and her friend Marcos Suzarte, treasurer of the communist youth of Chile. They arrived in Spain in 1980, exiled from their country.

50 years later, she shows him remains picked up by her husband at the presidential residence. With total discretion, she took them two days after the military uprising, a piece of wood from an interior arch of the Palace and pieces of concrete from the walls of La Moneda.

Both friends heard Allende’s last words: “I will pay with my life for the loyalty of the people”. And they were shocked to learn that the president, who had been democratically elected by Chileans, had sacrificed his life. Erika recalls that “emotionally, Allende’s death was as if a father had died.”

Allende’s biographer, Mario Amoros, highlights the role of the United States in bringing down the Chilean Government. The key is in a world politically divided between the West and the Soviet Union. Great powers with direct influence on the rest of the countries: “If the Chilean experience was successful, the fear that it would be replicated in key countries in the Cold War was an enormous danger for the United States.”

The same day of the coup against Allende, Marcos Suzarte They arrested him and took him to prison. He spent several weeks in Chile Stadium, converted into a macro-prison: “It was a circus of terror. A concentration camp. Very violent for all of us who passed through the Chile stadium.” There he coincided with a Victor Jara fully aware that they were going to kill him.

The singer-songwriter advised him not to approach him to avoid such a tragic fate: “Overnight I became a persecuted guy. Without being able to exercise my right. Not even to speak because they could punch me.”

Suzarte regained his freedom thanks to a twist of fate. While imprisoned, he General Bonilla, Pinochet’s Minister of the Interior, went with a UN delegation to the National Stadium. With the aim of whitewashing the brutal and inhuman image of the regime, he ordered the release of several inmates, after interrogation. Marcos was among them. Days later, the police went to his home to arrest him again, but he had stayed the night at his parents’ house and avoided going back behind bars. They also went to look for him, without success, at his job at one of the banks in Santiago.

He left the capital during Christmas and upon his return, he began the process to leave Chile through the Bulgarian Embassy. In July 1974 he took off from his homeland with a group of companions from the Communist Party. She ended up settling in Budapest, Hungary. Where he carried out integration tasks with youth in exile until 1980 when he landed in Spain with an assignment. The publication of the magazine ‘Araucaria de Chile’a reflection of the representatives of culture forced to leave Chile to save their lives.

Cristina Carreno, Erika’s cousin and communist militant, was murdered after six months of inhuman torture. She was one of the 40,000 direct victims of the Chilean dictatorship. 3,000 corresponded to deaths or disappearances.

On tour through Europe to publicize the harsh reality in Chile in 1978, he ended up in Budapest, together with Marcos Suzarte. He could not return directly to Chile and therefore flew to Uruguay and Argentina. After a failed attempt to achieve protection in UNHCRwas arrested and transferred to the Olimpo prison.

Pinochet extended his tentacles in the neighboring dictatorship of the General Videla. Cristina Carreño was the first victim of the Operation Condor, it was learned 28 years later, when his bones appeared in a mass grave. Her DNA analysis confirmed her identity and she could finally return to her beloved Chile and be bid farewell with honors by her family, friends, fellow communists and even former president Michele Bachelet.