by Estephan Wagner, Marianne Hougen-Moraga
In the middle of an idyllic valley at the foot of the Andes in central Chile lies the “Villa Baviera”. But the beauty of this modern tourist resort hides a dark past. Built on the site of the former Colonia Dignidad, a sect with the sadist Paul Schäfer at its centre committed atrocities there for decades. After Schäfer fled and was subsequently sentenced, many inhabitants left the colony to build a future far away from their traumatic experiences. Yet some 120 people across three generations still live in the place where they experienced and carried out physical and psychological violence. They oscillate between reality and extenuation, processing and repression, remembering and forgetting.