Once with a cult, the Chilean tourist village haunted by torture and abuse of children

With sloping red tile roofs, guaranteed lawns and a store selling home -cooked ginger cookies, Villa Baviera looks like a picturesque German -style village, nestled in the hills in central Chile.

But he has a dark past.

Formerly known as Colonia Dignidad, it housed a secret religious sect founded by a manipulative and abusive leader who collaborated with the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Paul Schäfer, who created the colony in 1961, imposed a regime of severe sanctions and humiliation on the Germans who live there.

They were separated from their parents and forced to work from an early age.

Schäfer has also sexually abused many children.

After Gen Pinochet led a coup in 1973, opponents of his military regime were taken to Colonia Dignidad to be tortured in dark basements.

Many of these political prisoners have never been reviewed.

Schäfer died in prison in 2010, but some German residents remained and transformed the old colony into a tourist destination, with a restaurant, a hotel, housing for rent and even a navigation pond.

Now the Chilean government will expropriate some of its land to commemorate the victims of Pinochet. But the plans divided opinions.

Through Chile, more than 3,000 people were killed and more than 40,000 turtles in the Pinochet regime, which was in power until 1990.

Luis Evangelista Aguayo was one of those who “disappeared”.

His sister, Ana Aguayo, is near the fire of her house in Parral, the nearest city of Colonia Dignidad.

“Luis was calm, he liked to swim. He wanted to create a fairer world,” she said.

Aguayo worked as a school inspector, was a member of the teachers’ union and was active in the Socialist Party.

On September 12, 1973, one day after Pinochet overthrew the socialist president elected from Chile, Salvador Allende, the police came to Mr. Aguayo and arrested him.

Two days later, he was sent to local prison, but on September 26, 1973, police arrived and led him to a van. His family has never seen her again.

Ana Aguayo says that a local farmer came home to say that he had seen his brother in the German colony.

“My mother and father went to Colonia Dignidad but were not allowed to enter,” she said.

“They went everywhere to look for it, in the police stations, in the courts, but could not obtain any information. My father died of sorrow because he could not help him. My 96 -year -old mother thinks that she can hear her call ‘` mom, come and get me’ ‘. “

Mr. Aguayo was one of the 27 people of parral who was killed in Colonia Dignidad, according to an ongoing judicial inquiry ordered by the Chilean government.

The total number of people murdered here is not known, but there is evidence that it was the final destination of numerous opponents of the Pinochet regime, notably the member of the Chilean Congress Carlos Lorca and several other leaders of Socialist Party.

The Chilean Ministry of Justice indicates that surveys suggest that hundreds of political detainees have been brought here.

Ana Aguayo supports government plan to create a memory site.

“It was a place of horror and appalling crimes. It should not be a place where tourists can buy or dinner in a restaurant. It should be a place for the memory, reflection and education of future generations, so that it does not happen again.”

But government expropriation plans have divided opinion at Villa Baviera, where less than 100 adults live.

Dorothee Munch was born in 1977 in Colonia Dignidad.

“We lived in unique dormitories like a barracks,” she recalls.

“From an early age, we had to work, clean the dishes for the whole community and collect firewood.”

The government plans to expropriate 117 hectares of the 4,829 hectare site, including buildings where torture took place, and sites where the bodies of the victims were exhumed, then burned and their ashes deposited.

Ms. Munch does not agree with the expropriation plans because they include the center of the village, encompassing the houses of residents and shared businesses, including a restaurant, a hotel, a bakery, butchers and a dairy.

“We lived under a system of fear, we are also victims. We rebuild our lives and that will make us victims once again. Maybe people my age could restart, but for older residents, it would be devastating.”

Erika Tymm arrived at Colonia Dignidad from Germany in 1962, at the age of two.

Separated from her parents, she remembers crying at night for her mother.

Like many other people in the colony, she says she received electric shocks when he was a child.

She also opposes the expropriation plans and wants to stay in the same place. “I want to be with people who understand what I have experienced.”

The Chilean Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Jaime Gajardo Falcón, told the BBC that the government had made the decision to expropriate the area in which the main buildings of the ex-colony are concentrated.

“These were sites of political detention, torture, surveillance and training of state agents to commit crimes against humanity.”

The expropriation decree was published in July. In the coming months, the state will determine the value of expropriated assets, he said.

Sixty-three residents and former residents of Villa Baviera wrote to the Chilean President expressing their concern about expropriation plans and asking them to participate in discussions on this subject.

They hired a public relations company to manage their relations with the media and a representative of this company supported the BBC during its visit to the site.

In addition, the BBC spoke to several other inhabitants and former inhabitants of Colonia Dignidad who support the plan to create a commemorative site.

Georg Klaube lived in the Colonia Dignidad of 1962 – when he arrived from Germany with his parents aged two years – until 2010.

Like many boys at Colonia Dignidad, he said he has received electric shocks, forced to take psychotropic drugs and has been sexually abused by Schäfer.

“Every night, I was taken to a building, I was undressed, they put a black towel on my face and electric shocks were applied here,” he said, pointing his genitals, his throat, his feet and under his arms.

“I think we should have a memorial because so much cruelty have occurred here to the Germans and the Chileans. I cannot believe that there is now a restaurant where so many tears, urine and blood of children have sank.”

Mr. Klaube is part of a legal action – supported by an old and current association of the inhabitants of Colonia Dignidad – who affirms that the leaders of Villa Baviera do not share the revenues of the former colony fairly.

They want the government to ensure that when the expropriation takes place, the payment of compensation is distributed between all residents and former residents.

Among the other victims who support expropriation plans are former political prisoners who have been tortured in Colonia Dignidad, small farmers who were expelled from their land when the German colony was created and the Chileans who lived locally and were sexually abused as children by Schäfer.

Schäfer was arrested in 2005 and 2006, found guilty of having sexually abused 25 children, including five rape chiefs for children. Several of his accomplices were also sentenced.

The Minister of Justice Gajardo says that it is important to ensure that the horrors that have occurred here are not forgotten.

“Atrocious crimes have been committed here. So far, it has been private property. Once taken up by the state, Chileans will be able to enter freely and it will become a space for memory and reflection to guarantee that these crimes are never committed again.”