Chile’s Copa America stadiums haunted by dark past

Chile will be in party mode when it hosts the South American football championships, but a dark past lurks in several stadiums used as torture chambers during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. The Copa America, the top international football contest on a continent with renowned passion for the game, will be held in eight cities across Chile from June 11 to July 4. But beyond the bright lights, the cheering crowds and the magical moves of the players’ feet, grisly memories will haunt at least three of the host stadiums, where Pinochet’s troops tortured and killed his left-wing opponents in the wake of his September 11, 1973 coup.

In Chile, there’s a common saying that a man doesn’t cry. But we cried here. We were hungry and cold, we were beaten, we saw people die.

Manuel Mendez, a 66-year-old retiree, who was held for 50 days at the national stadium

The Santiago National Stadium was one of the main detention centers for the 40,000 political prisoners held by the new regime’s security forces. Thousands of others were detained at the stadiums in the host cities of Valparaiso and Concepcion. Many of the prisoners’ families never knew what happened to their loved ones, violently arrested without warning and hauled to the stadiums in large trucks. Among those held at National Stadium was American journalist Charles Horman, whose disappearance in the days after the coup is the subject of the critically acclaimed 1982 film “Missing.” Horman was later executed at an unknown spot in the stadium, which will host the tournament’s opening and final matches.

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