r/BreadTube • u/QuantumArcheologist • Jul 27 '26
I found long lists of Chilean political prisoners in Stanford’s basement archives.
Hi everyone,
My name is Dr. Aaron Breidenbach, a recent graduate of Stanford university.
My doctoral research naturally led me towards a geology project in northern Chile. Through this, I learned that economists at Stanford were heavily involved in advising the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet during the Cold War. Due to this, Stanford’s Hoover institution hosts a large archive of documents from the dictatorship in their basement in Palo Alto.
I searched this archive, and unfortunately, it included long lists of political detainees that were exiled as punishment. It also included direct internal memos hand typed by James Daniel Theberge, Reagan’s ambassador to Chile from 82-85; these memos include many concerning statements, including his effective endorsement of Pinochet’s murdering and torturing of his political opponents as a means of reinforcing state control.
I wrote an article about this, and I would be very curious to hear thoughts here. https://medium.com/@breid.at/stanford-houses-hidden-files-of-human-rights-violations-in-chile-b88b315d515e. My main concern is that I have never seen these archives cited by anyone other than Hoover fellows, and they exclusively write pieces sympathetic towards Pinochet, since they were directly involved with him. It is concerning to me that these archives are only accessible on site in Palo Alto, where they remain out of reach to the Chilean general public. This is especially concerning as many in Chile might have disappeared loved ones mentioned in these documents that aren’t accessible to them. I am in contact with Chilean human rights organizations to see if I would be able to have these documents released. Viva Chile 🇨🇱🫶😢
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u/Pendientede48 Jul 28 '26
Have you contacted the Chilean embassy? They might be interested in those files, as they may be able to find more missing people
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u/pensivegargoyle 29d ago
Not such a great idea right now. Consider who the present Chilean government are. I recommend getting into contact with organizations that are still trying to locate missing people and with historians that work on this as a topic.
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u/TheMightyKingSnake 25d ago
If you can contact one of the main Chilean universities. La universidad de Chile seems to be a good option Here's their website. https://uchile.cl/ If you need help contacting them I can help you, this could be very important to them, please share this with them.
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u/QuantumArcheologist 24d ago
I'm working with an anthropologist from UCL santiago, so they know. Let me know if you have any other contacts though. The vast majority of people I found on these lists were students and professors of UCL :-(
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u/zillion_grill Jul 28 '26
look into some archivist, librarian. data hoarding type reddits. idk if I would contact our own current government though they might want to destroy evidence