Dignity in Chile

I walked up to the young lady at the bar and asked her name; ” mi nombre es Dignidad“, she said, cheerfully. My name is Dignity!

Her response unsettled me. At first, I didn’t believe her, or thought that maybe she was just joking. I had just walked in the main building of the Villa Baviera, once named Colonia Dignidad, a place with a dark, disturbing history… and Dignidad was this young lady’s name; what a curious coincidence.

Dignidad served me a stein of one of Chile’s best beers, a cold Kuntzman Torobayo, and, as I was hoping, she hung around to chat. There was no one else in the cold, damp restaurant except Norm, my traveling companion and long-time friend from our Peace Corps days, who was busy inspecting some old oil lamps hanging from the rafters over a dozen wooden tables set for customers who apparently would not to be arriving that day.

Dignidad made a point to tell me she was not now, nor had ever been, a resident of the Colonia; residents were for the most part German, or of German descent. She belonged to a Chilean family which lived outside of the Colonia, but nearby. She was born in the hospital at the Colonia, which is why her parents named her Dignidad, grateful for the event and the place. She also told me she had attended the school built at the Colonia for resident children and Chilean children who lived on nearby farms. At the time it was the best school in the area.

 I never saw Dignidad again during my visit, but I have thought a lot since then about the coincidence of her name with that of a beautiful but dreadfully sinister place sheltered in the foothills of the Andes Mountains in southern Chile. 

This was actually my second visit to Villa Baviera; the first was a year earlier, in 2017, when I went there simply on a whim, no, more like a gut impulse. That day I was driving solo down the Pan-American Highway, destination Parral, a small town about two hundred miles south of Santiago, where I planned to spend the night. I had arranged to meet up with two young Chilean enologists the following morning in Cauquenes, the provincial capital of Maule, an hour west of Parral on the road that eventually leads to the Pacific coastal vacation towns of Curanipe and Pelluhue. My winemaking friends, Maria Jose and Natalia, had agreed to show me the vineyards just outside of Cauquenes where, along with the farmer who owns the property, they nurture the grapes that magically turn into the wine of their boutique winery, a favorite of mine, Moretta Wines.

As I drove south through Maule, the most rural of central Chile’s regions, I was deep in thought about the winemakers I was going to see the following day.  But as I approached Parral, I saw a large roadside sign looming ahead that broke my Moretta Wines trance: “Villa Baviera: Centro Turistico“, the sign beckoned.

Over the years I had been intrigued by rumors of a place in this part of Chile named Colonia Dignidad where, since the early 1960s, a sect of German immigrants lived and worked the land in almost total isolation from the Chile and Chileans that surrounded them. I knew very little about La Colonia, except that I had heard whispered stories about the oppressive way the new settlers treated each other, operating very much as an authoritarian cult. There were purported links in the 1970/80s between the leader of the Colonia, Paul Schafer, a Nazi immigrant, and Manuel Contreras, the head of the nefarious secret intelligence service of the Pinochet dictatorship, the DINA. 

More recently though, I had seen reports that as soon as Chile returned to democratic rule in 1990, the fenced-off, cultist Colonia Dignidad had been opened up and transformed into some sort of touristic mountain resort. So, when I saw the sign inviting passersby to visit “Lovely Villa Baviera”, my mind quickly switched from the ladies of Moretta Wines, to my image of dark, mysterious Colonia Dignidad; my interest was piqued. I decided I had to see this place, now. No more putting it off, as I had done so many times before. But first, I needed a room somewhere in Parral for the night.

Driving around the not very large town of Parral, birthplace of Chile’s Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda, I came upon what was apparently the only decent hotel in town, the Brescia, a neat looking place which housed an Italian restaurant named Avanti, that made it especially attractive. I checked into my small single room and, since it was mid-afternoon, much too early to have dinner, I decided to search out Neruda’s birthplace home, maybe take a photograph, and then, ultimately, visit Villa Baviera.

The lady who checked me in at the Brescia told me there was to be a big celebration in the town square later that evening, with live music. I had seen signs announcing a Chilean rock and roll group named “The Ramblers”, who I knew nothing about. I have always enjoyed the civil events small Chilean towns organize around their central square, and the local musical groups who perform in these small-town events, so I would have to get back from Villa Baviera in time to catch at least some of the show.

I looked for Neruda’s home. Not finding any signs of it, I began to suspect there was no Neruda birthplace site to visit. Time was short, so my interest in finally seeing the notorious Colonia Dignidad prevailed. I dropped the search for Neruda’s birthplace home and instead, after filling the gas tank on my loyal 2007 Hyundai Sonata, valiant survivor of traumas suffered in the epicenter of the massive 2010 earthquake, under a collapsed adobe wall in a hotel garage in the Coastal city of Concepcion, I took off up the road leading out of Parral to the East, heading towards the majestic Andes Mountain range.

[Recently, with the assistance of one of my spies in Chile, I learned that in Parral there is only a meeting room named after Neruda in the Municipal library, no birthplace museum of any type.  Neruda, although he was born in Parral as Naftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, spent most of his youth in Temuco, a town further south. As a teen, he adopted his writer’s name of Pablo Neruda, and ultimately lived out his years in Santiago, Isla Negra, and Valparaiso, where his homes are now fascinating, well-visited museums reflecting his life style and literary works.]

The hourlong drive from Parral to Villa Baviera crossed small farms with orchards, vegetable gardens, and small animals, typical of rural central Chile, then rose slightly to premontane wooded areas mixed with pastures, until reaching mostly forested lands, some second-growth native forest, pine and eucalyptus plantations, many being harvested. Much of the area had been burned over in wild fires that erased hundreds of thousands of acres of vegetation recently in this part of Chile. It did appear that a good amount of lumber had been salvaged from the affected areas and that vegetation was returning due to replanting and natural regeneration. It was a beautiful drive, and it reminded me of so many of my excursions decades ago into the Chilean forests with my colleagues at the National Forestry Institute with whom I worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Lost for a moment in these fond memories, I turned through a blind bend in the road and was surprised by a huge wooden arch over the road, a firmly closed iron gate, and a solid gatehouse. The whole display shouted: Achtung!! Stay out!! But, in spite of the unsettling first impression, I was determined to enter. After all, I had driven this far. The feeling of the place, at least in my mind, morphed from bad to better when a very lovely dark-haired custodian-of-the-gate opened a sliding window in the gatehouse and, dressed in her colorful white, frilled Bavarian  blouse, greeted me with a disarmingly friendly smile. After a bit of small talk, you can imagine, she decided to let me through, although the hotel was full and she would be closing the gate to visitors soon. She waived the tourist entrance fee for me since I was “such a nice guy” (read harmless Gringo), so I proceeded, a bit more cautiously now, down the road towards Villa Baviera.

I was quite excited as I passed a large stone marker engraved with its new name, Villa Baviera, a small school, and eventually could see in the distance, across a large field of what must have been corn, the complex of buildings that was, in my mind, Colonia Dignidad. It was like other large farms characteristic of the central valley of Chile, entrance roads lined with tall, straight Alamo trees, a type of Poplar, a couple of central buildings, several out buildings, barns, sheds, and small adobe walled homes for workers, all against the backdrop of forested Andes Mountains. 

It was a busy place, with activity swirling around a large L-shaped three-storied building that clearly was now the grand hotel advertised in the tourist literature for Villa Baviera.  A circus-type tent was clearly a recent addition in front, probably for large events. There was a pond with children zinging around in paddle boats, and small groups of vacationers, mostly families with young children, being driven around in horse-drawn carriages; I also noticed there was a busy restaurant and bakery store.

I immediately entered the hotel, thinking that maybe there would be a room available, although the nice lady at the gate had said the hotel was full. I was thinking that maybe I could come back here the next day, after visiting the Moretta Wine vineyards in Cauquenes, and spend the night so I could explore this mysterious place in more detail before returning to Santiago. The idea of that possibility was exciting.

The receptionist at the hotel, also a very friendly, young, Germanic woman, confirmed that the hotel was full, but encouraged me to come back to stay the next night, there was a room available but it would be best to reserve right then, to be sure. I resisted, I don’t know why (actually I do now remember why), but promised I would call the next day to make sure the room was still available, in which case I would come back for a longer stay and spend the night.

I did not have much time to explore, the place was spread all over the valley and I could tell I would need much more time to really know this Colonia Dignidad turned Villa Bavaria. As I left the hotel, I noticed an innocuous one-story block building sitting on a rise overlooking the hotel-restaurant complex. I paid little attention to this building at that time but, as I learned later, it is precisely here, where the odious leader, Paul Shafer, lived and carried out many of his heinous crimes.

I got back in the car to take a quick drive around the extensive grounds before heading back to Parral. I found the hospital, La Posta, many sheds and old barns housing rundown farm machinery, a nursery I actually walked around in for a bit, and then headed for the exit. I was thrilled to have found Colonia Dignidad; that was my objective, and I reassured myself I would come back the next day for a longer visit.

As I drove slowly back through the main area of the Colonia, I noticed a woman watering plants along the fence of what appeared to be the front yard of her home. As I am wont to do, I stopped the car to talk to her through the open car window. During a bit of idle banter that she seemed not too comfortable with, I mentioned I was from the USA. She curtly told me to hang on while she called to her husband in the house, who came out to talk. He had lived in North Carolina, he told me, while attending University, was not an original resident of the Colonia but rather had arrived there via his marriage to the woman I had spoken to, who was, in fact, a daughter of two original German residents, herself born in the Colonia.

We didn’t talk for long, but he was clearly happy to have found someone to speak English with. I mentioned I might like to come back to get to know the Villa Baviera better, and with that he explained that because of all the recent interest in the history of the Villa (and the Colonia before), he was leading an effort to collect memorabilia for a museum on the site. He would show me around if I returned. We said our goodbyes, and I left, quite proud of myself. I had found and entered the actual Colonia, and if I wanted to return the next day, I had a resident contact who seemed willing to facilitate my visit. 

Upon returning to Parral, I had a wonderfully Italian dinner, cannelloni I believe, with a glass or two of a locally produced red wine, Carignan. I wandered over to the plaza, listened to half an hour or so of the Ramblers best songs (including their famous Rock del Mundial) and the next day visited the vineyards of Moretta Wines with Maria Jose and Natalia.

I did not return to  Villa Baviera that day. I did not call to see if the room was still available for the night. The night before, after listening to the Ramblers in the town square, I had spent several hours lying in bed in the Brescia, surfing the internet on my phone, going over years of articles written about the atrocities committed at the Colonia dignidad. Unnerved by much of what I read, I put off my next visit to the site of Colonia Dignidad to another day.

As I was driving up the Pan-American Highway, back towards home in Santiago, the radio was reporting that late the night before, after the concert in the Parral, while I was immersed in Colonia history, the bus carrying the Ramblers back to their hotel had a tragic accident. The leader of the group, the main singer, was killed. A sad ending to my visit to the Moretta Wines vineyards, a festive evening in Parral, and my initial venture into the Colonia Dignidad.

It was not until a year later, when I finally returned and met the Colonia’s namesake, Dignidad.

[To be continued.]

Posted on December 28, 2023, in Leesburg, Virginia.