'Sportswashing'and Condor Dictatorship: Chilean Estadio Nacional and the Cursed 1978 World Cup.

Bettmann / Contributor (1973). Santiago, Chile: An armed guard watches prisoners of the Pinochet regime [Photograph]. Getty Images.

Days after the Chilean coup, detention centres sprung up around country aimed to arrest and dispose of ‘subversives’. One of the most infamous was Estadio Nacional in Santiago. During September and November, a dissection of Chilean society was held there: teachers, students, workers, artists, peasants, journalists, priests, civil servants, political activists, housewives, settlers, traders, and foreigners.[i] There is no concrete figure of those detained in the stadium, some estimates are as low as 5,000 and others indicate up to 20,000 prisoners, foreign prisoners numbered in the hundreds.[ii]  The conditions were appalling, prisoners were brought in by vans, some with injuries sustained from their arrest and no medical aid was given. Piles of bodies met them at the gates where they entered. They were separated into groups and by gender, the men in the stadium stands while the women were held in an underground swimming pool area. Beatings were common and after a random selection process prisoners were tortured in the velodrome. Shootings happened on the football pitch. American survivor, Adam Schesch, described seeing a line of people who:

“seemed stunned, stolid faced. We never saw those people again… Just before they led the one line out into the stadium, they would start the extractor fans in the changing rooms just to make some noise”.[iii]

There was little food instead military music was blared over the loudspeakers accompanied by the rantings of military officers.

Bizarrely the press was invited to inspect the stadium, which displayed a horrifying spectacle to the world rather than ease worries. More strangely amidst all this the FIFA World Cup in which Chile was qualifying against the Soviet Union was played out, in Moscow players were ordered not to make any political comments, some had family held in the camps. When the Soviets had to play in Santiago they refused and demanded FIFA investigate the stadium. FIFA officials toured the grounds while prisoners were held at gunpoint in concrete rooms beneath the stadium and crowds stood in the stands but, as survivor Felipe Agüero recalls:

“they seemed only interested in the condition of the grass”.[iv]

The stadium was approved to be used. The Soviets refused to play in a stadium ‘stained with blood’ and so the Chileans won a 1-0 victory, yet FIFA wanted the game to be played. The stadium was cleared, and many prisoners sent onwards to other concentration camps while executions and burials increased in preparation for the ‘match’. [v]

On the 21st of November 1973, a macabre spectacle played out, the Chilean national team stood alone on the pitch with 15,000 supporters in the stands and scored in an empty goal. Carlos Caszely the top striker decades later called the broadcast ‘a worldwide embarrassment.’ 

An unrepentant critic he faced the ire of General Pinochet when Carlos refused to shake his hand during a visit, Carlos recalled:

“A cold shiver went down my back from seeing this Hitler-like looking thing, with five guys behind him …When he started coming closer, I put my hand behind me and didn’t give it to him.”

[vi] This small act had consequences, his mother was later arrested and tortured. Caszely became a symbol of defiance, and in 1985 his final match was held in the stadium and filled with 80,000 supporters but no television station broadcast the match fearing it could devolve into a political event.[vii]

In 1990 Patricio Aylwin the first democratically elected President since 1973 held a massive event at the stadium. As part of the celebration, a widow of one of the many victims of the regime danced La Cueca Sola, a transformed version of the national dance. Traditionally danced as a courting dance, widows and mothers danced this version alone as a tribute and symbol of those they lost from the regime.[viii]

The stadium is renovated with modern seats except for one section of concrete seats that no one touches or sits. Inscribed above them is written:

‘A people without memory is a people without future’.

Years later, the 1978 World Cup was played in Argentina all the while prisoners lay rotting in the stinking cells of the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA). Prisoners and players alike share their story.

[i] The Contested Histories Initiative. The Stands of Dignity and Escotilla 8 in Chile, Contested Histories Case Study #29 (November 2021), https://contestedhistories.org/wp-content/uploads/Chile_-The-Stands-of-Dignity-and-Escotilla-8-in-Santiago.pdf P. 2

[ii] Corporación Estadio Nacional Memoria Nacional. Un Pueblo Sin Memoria Es Un Pueblo Sin Futuro. Estadio Nacional Memoria Nacional ex Prisioneros/as Políticos/as, n.d. https://www.memoriaestadionacional.cl/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/ENMN_Cuadernillo-Final.pdf .P. 16

[iii] Andrew Buncombe. The Pinochet Affair: `I Saw Them Herded to Their Death. I Heard the Gunfire as They Died. The Independent, October 20, 1998. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/the-pinochet-affair-i-saw-them-herded-to-their-death-i-heard-the-gunfire-as-they-died-1179543.html. 

[iv] David Waldstein. In Chile’s National Stadium, Dark Past Shadows Copa América Matches. The New York Times, June 17, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/sports/soccer/in-chiles-national-stadium-dark-past-shadows-copa-america-matches.html 

[v] Adam Leventhal. Chile’s walkover against the USSR, 50 years on – ‘The military junta used us’. The Athletic, November 21, 2023, https://theathletic.com/5073149/2023/11/21/chile-ussr-fifa-pinochet-50/ 

[vi] Debojyoti Chakraborty. I Said No to Dictatorship on Every Level: Carlos Caszely. Goalden Times, August 2, 2016. http://www.goaldentimes.org/carlos-caszely/.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Nathan Stone. La Cueca Sola. University of Notre Dame. Notre Dame Magazine. 2017. https://magazine.nd.edu/stories/la-cueca-sola/. And Mary. The Stadium Stained with Blood. Medium, Apr 9, 2021. https://mzahra.medium.com/the-stadium-stained-with-blood-db5103b0392f 

The Cursed Fifa World Cup of 1978

Wilson, Jonathan. "1978: The World Cup That Changed Argentina Forever." The Guardian, July 5, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/football/in-bed-with-maradona/2017/jul/05/1978-world-cup-argentina-political-protest-goalposts.

Waddell, Kadeem. "The 1978 World Cup Was a Global Stage for Argentina’s Human Rights Abuses." Jacobin, November 2022. https://jacobin.com/2022/11/fifa-world-cup-1978-argentina-human-rights-violations-qatar.

Shoichet, Catherine E. "While the World Watched." ESPN, June 3, 2014. https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/11036214/while-world-watched-world-cup-brings-back-memories-argentina-dirty-war.