Looking over her daughter’s homework, Lucy Camacho was shocked when the teacher asked for her daughter’s opinion. Not saying anything, Camacho was not prepared for a middle schooler to express herself. Even 40 years later, Camacho is still affected from growing up under a dictatorship.

After overthrowing the Unidad Popular government in 1973 with a military coup, Augusto Pinochet rose to power. In 1981, the lives of Chilean citizens changed when Pinochet officially became president, bringing Chile under dictatorship.

Camacho and Christian Bertolotto shared their life under a dictatorship during the 80s and 90s. A turbulent era for Chile, they recounted what it was like to have limited expression and voice. For daughter Valeria Bertolotto, a junior in global resource systems, it was the first time she heard her parents speak out.

“When this happened, I was probably six or seven years old,” Camacho said. “My house was kind of close to the government house, I remember when the military plane flew up from my house and everyone was wondering what was going on. The coup happened without any notice and no one knew about this. Sadly, only military were on the streets when they attacked the government house.

“Since then, everything changed dramatically. They started to place the curfew, and you couldn’t be out of your house at night. The first one I think was at 7 p.m. then, 9 p.m. and then 10 p.m. and it continued for several years. If you wanted to go to a party with some friends, you had to stay in the house all night until the next day.”

At first, Bertolotto’s family supported the military coup, as his family did not have enough food and other basic items under the previous government.

“I was raised in a family that was against the socialist, communist party that was developing,” Christian Bertolotto said. “Chile was becoming socialist, like Cuba, before the military coup, and they suffered because at that time, like Venezuela today, they didn’t have enough food, they couldn’t find milk and basic things. They were in favor of the military interrupting democracy because they were in a difficult situation.

“I remember seeing tanks on the street and feeling scared, I had never seen that before. Everywhere you went you saw soldiers and the military guarding and telling people where to go. It was restrictive, and you couldn’t be on the streets. I thought it was a decision that was going to last a few days and then everything would become normal again.”

After the coup, however, life in Chile changed for all citizens. The political climate disintegrated and Pinochet took control of Chile. Without political diversity, anyone against the government could be persecuted. Citizens were split between being in favor of Pinochet or against him. Camacho recalled how it changed her family.

“My mom talked to me sometimes, she didn’t believe what she heard was true about the human rights violations in Chile, she didn’t want to believe it. She didn’t get involved with anything,” Camacho said. “My dad, on the other hand, was an emergency doctor. He worked with an organization that could rescue some people who were tortured. A lady who worked in the Red Cross organization got into contact with him and they worked together. He was in the first step in giving them medical support.

“These people were in a situation where they didn’t have any rights or considered citizens. He never talked about this with us, I think he was afraid that if he was discovered by his boss, he would be fired or maybe captured and sent to jail. That was the level of fear at that time. From my parents, I didn’t receive any formal information. We didn’t get involved in any political action. I remember you didn’t talk to anyone you didn’t know, my parents were against us to attend human rights protests.”

Pinochet was suspected of violating human rights during this time and, at the same time, numerous disappearances plagued politically active families. 

“A son of a nanny that we had, she was working at our house, one day she came crying and said that the night before a military group assaulted her house and took her child, and he was missing,” Christian Bertolotto said. “She was so desperate and effected that she had to quit. I was 10 or 11 years old, I remember that image of her crying and saying that these soldiers came to her house and took her child.”

Recalling a frightening memory, Camacho shared an intimate detail about daily life in Chile.

“I was in class, I was in a demonstration against the military government. There was a fight against the police and students. The police started to throw tear gas, suddenly the teacher said we had to go and run. I was on the street and I couldn’t breathe, people pushed me, and I didn’t know where to go. The police shot strong water to push people down, I was so scared and thinking, ‘Why am I here?’”

Christian Bertolotto also recalled a frightening moment during college.

“In college, there were riots every day. People would throw stones and fight because it was very divided. One day we had class and a big fight started among the students,” he said. “The police are outside trying to come into the building. The building got shut down, then you can hear glass breaking, stones flying over and rubber bullets. Police started shooting towards the building, people inside the building were fighting, it was chaos.

“I remember just hiding in one of the desks and I couldn’t breathe, I was in there for eight hours. I was worried people would get injured. I came in at 9 a.m. and left at 10 p.m., both my parents were desperate. That was probably one of the scariest moments.”

Christian Bertolotto said there were some days citizens couldn’t go out due to dangerous riots everywhere. It was best if citizens stayed in a safe place. But for Christian, it was part of daily life.

For Camacho, it wasn’t unusual for the power to go out for a few days. It also wasn’t unusual to hear shootings at night. Even going to bed at night was a risk, Camacho couldn’t walk too close to a window or else she would risk being shot by a random bullet.

It wasn’t until both came to the United States that they realized the profound effect the dictatorship had on their lives. Camacho recalled the moment she stepped foot into a library.

“I came here and went to the University of Minnesota to learn English. I came into the library and I was shocked — everything was available. To me, it was an experience I didn’t have. At that time, I wasn’t a student anymore, so I didn’t have that experience as a student. It was so hard to realize that some information was restricted, I didn’t do anything to reach it,” Camacho said.

Even now, Christian Bertolotto shared that there is still a political divide in Chile. He said there is still tension and it isn’t something you talk about. Coming to the United States was to escape the troubled political climate, but Christian said it wasn’t an easy decision.

“Every time we go to Chile we still feel that division and tension, that some things you don’t talk about. I don’t know when that is going to change, maybe in the next 30 years. I think that for us, we wish that it changes, and we envy the people that tell us how it was. We live here in the states, I always think that there was something here that attracted us to leave the country,” he said. “It isn’t easy leaving a country that you were raised in, you must adapt to a new language and culture, you’ll always feel like a foreigner. You’re never going to feel native to a country. All that change you go through is not easy to do, you become disengaged from the people, culture and roots from your country.

“We didn’t want our kids to live in that environment, sometimes I ask myself if we had lived like our parents or even before. If the dictatorship would not have happened, maybe we would’ve been in Chile and not here.”

Raised in the United States, Valeria had access to basic freedoms like books, internet and expression. After listening to her parents’ experience, it changed her perspective.

“I feel surprised, I feel informed because there is a lot of information I had no idea about. It changed my perspective on a lot of things,” Valeria Bertolotto said. “They always say to not take things for granted, but now I look at it differently, they say it because they didn’t get the privilege that I had. They were my age when they were in college, which is what I’m doing, they didn’t have all the resources and all the books. Now I understand why they insisted upon it.”

Camacho and Christian Bertolotto want their children take advantage of being in a place of freedom. They want nothing more than to live with respect and express themselves however they’d like. Sacrificing and fighting so that Valeria Bertolotto and her siblings don’t have to be in awe of expression.

Editor’s note: The original version of this article incorrectly credited a quote to the wrong individual. The article has since been updated.