colonia dignidad and 1984

               Colonia dignidad as an example of power abuse as in 1984

In George Orwell's 1984, Winston Smith struggles with oppression in Oceania, a place where the Party scrutinizes human actions with ever-watchful Big Brother. Refusing to obey  rules that are against  individuality, Winston dares to express his thoughts in a diary and stablish a sentimental relationship with Julia. These actions are catalogized as criminal acts bring Winston into the eye of the opposition, who then is tortured until made him abandon his convictions and beliefs. George Orwell's 1984 introduced the watchwords for life without freedom: BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.

As a similar example of abuse of power I wan to mentions one that belongs to our Chilean context: Colonia dignidad was a state inside another located in Parral in the South of Chile.This place was popullated mainly by German citizens who arrived to Chile in 1961.The group was heterogeneous,there were women,adolescents,war orphans,etc.The head of the group was Paul Schaer Scheneider,who was part of the Baptist church and lately he was removed from his charge because of his obsession with children and sexual abuse acussations.In 1952 the German police cataloged  Schäfer as a pederast.He did not abandon German and he started to amass  people for his congreagation and his heinous proyect that took place in the South of Chile.
With his growing economican power and his conving speach was able to kidnap thousands of children in Belgium that bring them to Chile as part of his sect.

In colonia dignidad people were obligated to ingest drugs that decrease their will to act and to make decisions.This drugs made them just think about working hard all day long without criticizing to what they were forced to do. Additionally,children were separeted from their parents, they did not receive formal education and they did have rights over their own bodies. German doctors experimented with their bodies by giving them pills. A recent research carried out showed that woman were operated in order to take away their wombs  to make them esterile women.They were not inform about this situation and this happened without their permission .People in Colonia dignidad were deshumanized,uniformed,rapped,traumatized,corrupted,enslaved, and political prisoners during the dictatorship were reduce to ashes and never find them again.
Recent findings showed that the militars and the DINA used sophisticated systems of communication and vigilance that were unknown for Chile in those decades as a way to arrested people.Also they created undergorund tunnels in which they had arrented and tortured prisioners,they also used these tunnels to hide weapons and documents that belonged to the prisioners.

According to researchers,when colonos were released from this sect, most of them did not  know about the exterior world, the did not speak spanish at all,they did not have families not even one relative.Researchers were shocked by the innocence and ingenuity of colonos, that did not know about trivial things of life as the actual music, who was the president, cultural facts,etc.
 As children were manipulated since their childhood they were trained to obey the rules that the sect imposed them, they were obligated to consume pills that decreases their ability to racionate and criticize things.They wer used as subject of propaganda to spread the word of the sect and their lives were totally control.

The project Colonia Dignidad is just a example of what human beings are able to do  with just a little of power.How it was possible that under our noses such heinous crimes were done against inoccent children? How can be possible that children were rapped,obligated to work until faint,force to consume drugs that prevented them to think clearly,constrained to give their organs and their bodies for human experimentaton, etc .How it was possible that such terrible acts were done without any limit? Why the Chilean government and justice did not do anything about these crimes? Is that they knew about this situation and they did concern about it? or it  was that they were paid in order to keep the secret?

We will never know because justice did not exist.Because we have to take justice into our own hands.
“Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.”  By doing nothing about these crimes we are giving a chance to happen again. Sometimes, we have to empower ourselves and take drastic measures to make a change.Sometimes ,we have to destroy in order to create something new.The important thing is that the power is in our hands and we decide when it is time to use it against our oppresors.

references:http://www.iiee.cl/r_ex_colonia.htmlOrwell.G.(1967).1984.Mondadori,MilanoMoore, Alan, and David Lloyd. "Vfor vendetta." (1989).