colonia sexidad

this morning my spunky friend andrew sent me this link.

and i almost fell off my chair while reading it.

while studying in chile in 2003 (yes, to remind you again cause i know you love it, i'm very worldly and well-traveled), i was required by my university to write a report on an aspect of cultural, political or socio-economic life within that country. for example one of my friends wrote about youth alcoholism, another about the employment market, and another about hip hop graffiti. ya dig?

i chose to write about this bizarre german cult i had heard whispers about, known to civilians alternately as "colonia dignidad", "villa bavaria", "las alemanas" ("the germans"). this crazy sect is suspected of harbouring escaped nazis (including eichmann and goebbels), producing sarin gas for the german government, acting as a torture chamber for war criminals during the pinochet regime, kidnapping jewish foreigners, and mass sexual abuse. oh yeah, and incest. LOTS OF INCEST.

anyway the weirdo nazi-pedo cult allegedly exists within a secret enclosure, apparently surrounded by electric fences and armed guards, about 2 hours drive from the town i was living in. noone is allowed in, and noone ever comes out. the closest you can get is a german restaurant/funland run by the members, where everyone is dressed like 1940s german peasants, all food is german, and german is the most audible language. there are bizarre german games and a statue honouring those who 'faught the good fight against those evil allied jew-lovers' in WWII. in the middle of fucking chile.

throughout my research i was priveleged enough to correspond and score interviews with some fascinating people involved in the fight to bring down the cult. namely a chilean newspaper editor who has published 2 books on this very topic, the senator trying to pass a bill to officially dismantle the cult, and the elderly sister of a russian-american scientist who disappeared near the cult's grounds in the 80s, and is believed to have been kidnapped and tortured to death by its members (she has become my adopted grandma, and still emails me regularly to make sure i'm still alive and haven't been kidnapped too by evil cultists).

but most intriguingly was my clandestine meeting in a bus station with chile's top human rights lawyer, who is defending some of the children claiming to have been abused by the cult's leaders. as we hid in a dark corner of the dingy station cafe, he showed me photos on his laptop of the cult's secret underground tunnel system, marvel-comic style security lair, and torture chambers. but he refused to tell me how he got his hands on these, whispering the chilean equivalent of 'if i told you, i'd have to kill you' (i.e "no").

i began to feel like the protagonist in a bad midday movie:

the feisty (and breathtakingly sexy) young student who gets drawn into a web of intrigue and nazi conspiracy, and then falls in love with an abused cult member and has to battle her own demons about a past filled with sexual abuse at the hands of her uncle who liked to dress like hitler and play...

oh dear, got a bit carried away there.

anyway, my point here is...oh fuck what is my point? um, fucked-up-nazi-cousin-cousin-marrying-kiddy-fiddling cultists in the chilean countryside. noone believed me. well, hah ha! i showed them! take that unbelievers! feel my wrath.

deep breaths. in. out. in. out.