Carmen Quintana: Set on fire by Pinochet's soldiers

Carmen Quintana before (left) and after the attack (right)

Forty years ago, Gen Augusto Pinochet seized power in Chile - 17 years of military rule followed, during which thousands of people were tortured or killed. One woman who was doused with kerosene and set on fire, survived to tell the tale. Carmen Quintana has one lasting image from the day, 27 years ago, when she and another young Chilean student were attacked, and set alight by soldiers during an anti-government protest.


"I just looked down at my blackened hands and at my burning clothes, and I suddenly saw myself in flames," she says. It was 2 July 1986, the first of two days of nationwide strikes in Chile against Augusto Pinochet's rule. Eighteen-year-old Carmen was a serious young woman with thick bushy hair, from a left-wing family fiercely opposed to the Pinochet regime. From an early age she had gone with her parents on anti-government demonstrations - and had witnessed first-hand the repression meted out by the feared Carabineros, Pinochet's jackbooted police.

"We believed in what we were doing, and we thought we could bring about change," she says.

With the organisers of the July 1986 protests promising to make it the biggest opposition show of force in years, Carmen had helped rally support among other students at her university. Word had gone around that Pinochet had ordered thousands of extra soldiers on to the streets as reinforcements.

But as Carmen and her comrades made their way on foot to join the crowds already gathering in the centre of Santiago early that July morning, no-one had reason to believe that the day's demonstrations would be different from any others.

Speaking to the BBC from her adopted home in Montreal, Canada, where she sought refuge almost three decades ago, Carmen talks slowly, carefully recounting each detail of the events that scarred her mentally and physically.

Now 45 years old and married with three daughters, she is clearly still grappling with the horrors of the past.

Carmen and a small group of students reached the Avenida General Velasquez, one of the main arteries running through central Santiago, just as other protesters were beginning to erect makeshift barricades out of old tyres. I said to the policeman, 'Just shoot me, so the pain stops' ”

"We ran into some guys who asked us if we wanted to help," she says. "Sure, we replied, why not."

Then suddenly an army jeep came around the corner, full of soldiers. Their faces were all painted and they were wearing combat gear.

Tossing the tyres to one side, the youngsters fled in different directions. The soldiers jumped out and gave chase. Only Carmen and another student, 19-year-old Rodrigo Rojas Denegri, were caught. The rest got away.

"They grabbed Rodrigo first and threw him to the ground, kicking him. They put me up against the wall and searched me. I could see Rodrigo lying there, bleeding. They said to me, 'What were you doing, where were you going?' I said, 'Going to the university, to study.' They swore at me and hit me with the butt of their machine guns. I began to cry."

Another group of soldiers then appeared, carrying a couple of tyres and a bottle of kerosene. "So this is what you were up to, right?" one of the soldiers said.