It was all so unexpected. It was November 1995, and I was finalising arrangements to run my second Colonial North Island eight-day cycle race. I’d assembled probably the strongest field for a men’s tour in New Zealand, a considerable feat, and was excited by what lay ahead, though I knew it was going to be stressful.
I’d been invited by the Chilean embassy in Wellington to a function on the Chilean navy’s four-masted barquentine, Esmeralda, a training ship which spends much of the year circumnavigating the world. I had attended cocktail parties on board on previous visits.
This time, though, I said no. My priority was the cycle tour, and making sure all was in order. But before I flew north for the start in the Bay of Islands town of Paihia, a chance meeting with a sailor off the Esmeralda changed everything, and I felt compelled to make an unscheduled visit to the ship to confront a man who had tortured me when I was a schoolboy, fearful that I was going to be among those murdered.
Some Chilean friends were loading the truck with race gear and signage, and when I went to Porirua to check, I was surprised to find four sailors off the Esmeralda providing assistance.
We got chatting and I took a couple of them home to Stokes Valley for drinks and pizza, and soon found out one came from my home town of Tomé, about 540km south of the capital Santiago. He was married to Pocha, a girl I’d known well. She was a girl guide when I was a scout, and we used to go camping together in the summer. It got me thinking about my former home, and reminded me what a small world it can be.
I asked him who the captain was, and he looked at me with a smile when he said “Captain Silva.” Silva is a common name in Chile, but it sounded familiar and got me thinking. I asked whether he had been on Quiriquina Island in the bloody, desperate days of 1973 when I was one of those held captive in the concentration camp there after General Augusto Pinochet’s régime had seized power.
He said the captain’s name was Captain Raúl Silva Gordon, and yes, he believed he had been on the island at that time. I couldn’t believe it, and my whole mood changed. Instead of focusing on the cycling tour I was consumed by memories of those times on the island and the men who tormented us.
I readily recalled the officer, who was then a lieutenant, and one of those inflicting torture at the police station in Tomé. Some of his actions had resulted in death, and I felt dread and revulsion when I saw him after I was transferred to the island. He was a big, solid guy with an intimidating presence, emphasised by the threatening way he spoke. Unusual for a Chilean, he had blond hair. He always wore baggy camouflage fatigues, a pistol at his hip and a large knife strapped to his side.
That night I kept wondering what to do. I was scheduled to fly north the next day but I couldn’t shake off thoughts of Captain Silva, and what had happened on that bleak island more than 20 years ago. After taking the sailors to a Wellington nightclub I was depressed and needed to talk to someone about the presence in the city of a man who had helped make my life so miserable. I even visited my former wife Linda in Lower Hutt, who knew what I had endured. She tried to revive my spirits, and suggested there was little point dwelling on what Silva had done to me all those years before.
I found it impossible, and slept little that night. Next morning I resolved to stop by the Esmeralda unannounced on my way to the airport, on the off-chance I might be able to meet a man still capable of tormenting me. It was a daunting prospect, but I had to confront the captain if I was going to have any peace of mind before the cycle tour began.
The Esmeralda was at Queens Wharf. I parked my car in full view of the magnificent sailing ship and as I walked toward it I saw a group of school children on a guided tour. I asked a sailor if I could speak to Captain Silva.
He inquired if I knew the captain, and when I said yes the sailor startled me when he said “That’s him there.” He was standing next to me in civilian clothes, looking at the children.
Captain Silva appeared relaxed as he turned his gaze to me, but I was shaking. I’d been tense walking to the ship, and when I spoke to him initially about all I could blurt out was “Hello.”
He looked at me and smiled, and I managed to say “I know you.” He asked me if I’d been in the Chilean navy, and I paused before saying no.
Had I been in the naval academy with his son? Again, no. The captain shook his head, and persisted. “Are you one of my son’s friends?”
By then I was feeling quite rattled. The captain was waiting for me to reply when I managed to splutter, “My name is Jorge Sandoval. I’m from Tomé.”
His mood changed. He looked at me searchingly, and I was so nervous one of my legs was shaking uncontrollably.
“I was one of your prisoners on the island. You tortured me at the police station at Tomé, and you had a part in the killing of a number of people, some of them my friends,” I said.
I’d been rehearsing in my mind overnight what I would say and how I’d say it. It hit home. The captain’s assured demeanour vanished. He was shaking too. Looking totally uncomfortable, he invited me to continue our conversation in his cabin.
I replied I did not have the time, that I had a plane to catch, and I knew now I wanted to say what I’d really come to tell the captain.
“I don’t have any hate toward you. You kept me on the island for a year and you tortured me mentally and physically,” I found myself saying.
“When you go back to Chile, tell the other officers who abused me the same thing. I don’t have any hate or bad feelings toward them either.”
The colour drained from his face and he urged me again to go to his cabin. Again I declined, and I could feel the tears running down my face as I stood there.
Captain Silva made no attempt to deny what I’d said had occurred. Instead he tried to explain it away, saying whatever happened, happened, that he was sorry it had, and he hoped Chile would never again witness such goings-on between fellow Chileans.
We stood close without embracing, shook hands, and I walked unsteadily back toward my car. When I reached it I looked back at the ship, and Captain Silva was still standing there staring back at me.
I’m not embarrassed to say I cried all the way to the airport.
That meeting was extraordinary on a couple of fronts, and it was vital in my rehabilitation, bearing in mind I’ve never had any counselling for what I’d been through. If I’d not driven out to Porirua I’d not have met the sailor from Tomé, and if I’d taken Linda’s advice I’d never have had the satisfaction of saying my piece to Captain Silva.
Linda would later say that on the night I’d unexpectedly visited her I was the most depressed she’d ever seen me.
A couple of days after the cycling tour I had a call from the Chilean embassy, inquiring how the tour had gone, and delivering a message that the ambassador wanted to talk to me. The caller said it wasn’t urgent, but could I come by the next time I was in Wellington.
I was immediately curious, and it got the better of me. I was soon on my way to the embassy, in those days in Robert Jones House in Willeston Street. The lift opened straight into the embassy foyer where I was met by the deputy chief of the mission, José Miguel González, who I knew well.
He got straight to the point when he said “Te pasaste huevon” (a mild form of swearing in Spanish, which translates to something like “What the hell have you done?”).
Though it was said with a smile, I was dumbfounded. In no time I’d been ushered into the office of ambassador Demetrio Infante. He closed the door and looked intently at me. He was a man who commanded respect and I wasn’t sure what to expect.
The ambassador was swearing too when he said what I had done was amazing.
“I just want to congratulate you.” I still didn’t know what he was on about.
It wasn’t till he asked “Did you go to the Esmeralda the other day?” that I realised. It transpired Captain Silva had raced to the embassy a few minutes after I’d departed, fearful that I was going to make an incident out of what occurred, and force him to prematurely end the ship’s visit.
The captain had asked to speak urgently to Señor Infante. He wanted to know who I was, and he was soon telling the ambassador what had happened, making it clear my conduct had not been offensive.
Señor Infante told him I was among the best-known Chileans living in New Zealand, and a respected member of the community. He reassured the captain that I wouldn’t create any bad publicity for the ship, and that it would be able to stay in port for another three days as planned.
The conversation went further. The ambassador asked Captain Silva whether he had been a party to what I had alleged. The captain confirmed that he was.
I came away from the embassy walking on air. I had never thought for a moment I’d be in the embassy’s good books for potentially embarrassing Captain Silva, who held a high position in the Chilean navy and fulfilled an important ambassadorial role.
It was good to have Señor González, who has since returned to Chile, later confirm Captain Silva’s conversation at the embassy after I’d met him at the Esmeralda, and say how impressed he was with my attitude.
“He [Jorge] did not use his personal history, painful and shocking, against the officer or the ship’s visit to Wellington,” Señor González wrote in an email.
“Once the Esmeralda had sailed we invited Jorge to our embassy to find out more about his conversation, and the ambassador was present.”
“Jorge briefed us about his conversation and emphasised his feelings during the encounter. For him it had been a strong experience to meet an officer he had previously known as a prisoner at Quiriquina Island. Moreover, he said that he had no hard feelings against the officer, and that the only thing he wanted to prove to him was that having started as nobody in life he now amounted to something, and that he was ‘a man of virtue’; the very contrary to what the officers of that detention centre used to tell them on and on, that because of their political position they would never become people of virtue.”
Ambassador Infante, also now back in Chile, said via email he was happy and emotional that two Chileans, Captain Silva and I, could have a civilised conversation despite being on opposite sides in a conflict that had traumatised the country.
“They showed immense integrity, which I believe augurs well for the future of Chile,” Señor Infante wrote. “The captain would have been perfectly within his rights not to talk to Jorge.” Captain Silva was in his early 20s at the time, and had no control over the duties assigned him, Señor Infante said.
“As a former Chilean ambassador I am proud of what Jorge has achieved in New Zealand. He came from a far-away country not knowing what life was like, and thanks to his dedicated efforts, professionalism in organising his cycling events, and honesty, has earned great respect.”
“To me he was a distinguished Chilean who was always prepared to help any activities organised by the embassy. Chile is proud of Jorge, and his conduct shows him to be a great man.”
Meeting Captain Silva helped me deal with what I’d been subjected to, and I’d have liked a longer conversation with him. I would have questioned why he and other officers were so extreme toward fellow Chileans, many of whom, like me, were largely innocent parties caught up in the coup.
Captain Silva later became commander-in-chief of the Chilean naval academy before illness forced him to retire from the navy in 2004, and he died of cancer the following year. The Esmeralda’s once glowing reputation was tainted by confirmation that while in the port of Valparaíso, it was a place of torture in the Pinochet years, from 1973 to 1990.
The Chilean navy had a special unit to interrogate detainees, and as many as a hundred prisoners were thought to have been on board at any one time. The navy continued to deny evidence of the atrocities presented to the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation.
Amnesty International referred to the Esmeralda as a floating torture chamber. It campaigned to make the world aware of the atrocities, and urged foreign governments when hosting the Esmeralda to publicise the human rights violations that had occurred on board. There have been protests when the ship was in Wellington and Auckland, and in 1993 Chilean president Patricio Aylwin, who succeeded Pinochet, spoke to students of Auckland University, emphasising the bad old days were over and the country had returned to democracy. In the late 1970s the old Federation of Labour insisted on a trade boycott of Chile when much of the world was of similar mind.
Given the Esmeralda’s history, I’ve struggled with the Wellington newspapers’ overwhelmingly positive attitude toward it during its visits to the capital. It’s almost as though the inhumane activities on board following the coup in 1973 never happened.