Música y tortura en centros de detención chilenos: Conversaciones con un ex agente de la policía secreta de Pinochet

On seizing power in 1973, General Augusto Pinochet established over a thousand centres for political detention. Nearly 40,000 people were held in these enclosures, and were subjected to a regime of terror, serious physical and psychological torture, and precarious living conditions. Many were killed and disappeared. This article investigates the musical landscape of some of these centres, evidence of which is fragmented and little known, and has been overlooked by critics. It does so by examining the testimony of an ex-agent of the secret police (DINA) interviewed by the author, who operated in Chacabuco, Tejas Verdes, Villa Grimaldi and Londres 38, among other centres. The article shows how agents employed music to dominate and indoctrinate prisoners, as a form of and background to torture, as a means to hide the screams of inmates and as a pastime, linking some of these uses to the CIA’s no touch torture. It also examines the agent’s memories of detainees’ musical activities developed on their initiative, identifying discrepancies and ambiguities. It concludes that the value of juxtaposing victims’ and perpetrators’ perspectives lays in the possibility of reconstructing the musical landscape in political detention in a more complete way.