TEJAS VERDES

«Welcome to Tejas Verdes! We hope you'll enjoy your stay.» No, don't be mistaken, Tejas Verdes is no longer a seaside hotel. It has been transformed into a torture camp of the Pinochet dictatorship.

Through the memories of a young girl who «disappeared» right after the Pinochet coup, the audience is transferred to the horrific reality of Tejas Verdes and is asked to remember, to think and to react.

TEJAS VERDES, a deeply political play approached in a deeply human way, written by the Spanish playwright Fermín Cabal and directed by Yolanda Markopoulou, was presented at  SYNERGY-O and in Lithografeion Theatre in Patras.

The show was accompanied by an art exhibition containing pictures, videos, artifacts and wall paintings documenting past dictatorships.

In Chile in 1973, Tejas Verdes, an old hotel in San Antonio, just outside Santiago, is transformed into one of the most horrific torture centers.

Fermin Cabal, professor at the Academia of Artes Escenicas in Madrid and professor of dramaturgy at the University of Kent, chooses five women from the thousands of tortured people who passed through the old hotel, to record an unforgettable experience and comment on an inhuman event.

It is a true and courageous cry, a protest for human rights that awakens our own memories.

Among the heroines, a girl who was kidnapped and murdered immediately after the coup that overthrew Salvador Allende is the protagonist.

The play confronts the viewer with the blatant injustice of totalitarian regimes, while at the same time questioning administered justice.

The performance was under the auspices of the Embassy of Chile and  with the support of the  National Torture Rehabilitation Program of Chile, commonly known by its Spanish acronym, PRAIS, Amnesty International and the Embassy of Argentina.

Chilean music

A genuine Latin American musician, the famous Chilean songwriter Angel Parra, played his guitar and sang resistance Chilean songs,  at the premiere of the play, on November 3rd, after the performance.

During the dictatorship, Angel Parra wrote songs with anti-regime lyrics, which were widely sung by the Chilean people, while today he harshly criticizes social injustices.

Exhibition

A parallel exhibition on torture then and now was held. Dictatorships and torture of the past, testimonies, personal items, videos and audio testimonies serve as evidence that the events that took place in Chile during the Pinochet years have occurred and are still occurring in various parts of the world.

The National Torture Rehabilitation Program of Chile, commonly known by its Spanish acronym, PRAIS and Amnesty International contributed to the compilation of the information and informative material.