Miguel Lawner, an architect and civil servant under Salvador Allende’s government, was arrested following the 1973 coup and confined on Dawson Island. There, together with other prisoners, he restored an abandoned church before going into exile and then returning to Chile in 1985.
Carmen Esquivel
In that area of the Magallanes Region, characterised by strong winds and sub-zero temperatures, Augusto Pinochet’s regime created a concentration camp for political prisoners where the convicts were subjected to forced labour.
“After a few days at the national stadium and the military academy they drove us to an air force base, we landed at Punta Arenas with a huge military contingent, they took us to a port and we set sail without knowing where we were going, and the next day we arrived at a place where there was snow. “We couldn’t talk to each other. They made us walk to a military installation and the commander said to us, ‘You are here as prisoners of war. You are on Dawson Island’”.
This was the architect and communist leader’s recollection expressed in an extensive interview given to Prensa Latina. The son of Jewish migrants, Miguel Lawner graduated from the University of Chile’s faculty of architecture in 1954. After gaining his degree he taught there and, along with his wife Ana María Barrenechea, created the professional firm BEL Arquitectos.
When Allende took over the presidency in 1970, he designated Lawner executive director of the Urban Improvement Corporation (Cormu).
“I had already accompanied Allende in his four presidential campaigns: 1952, 1958, 1964 and 1970”, Lawner noted.
His works from this period include the design and building of several residential developments in Santiago such as the Villa San Luis (Las Condes) and the Cormuval development between Santiago and Valparaíso.
He also participated in the planning for the building for the Third United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), now the Gabriela Mistral Cultural Centre. “We got rid of the practice of urban regeneration without compensation as, under the previous government led by Eduardo Frei Montalva, just the regeneration experience in San Borja had meant the expulsion of 300 families”.
Lawner said that the Cormu, in contrast, paid owners for the acquisition of land where there was housing in a poor condition and repaired it, all for the benefit of the resident population and not to their detriment.
The Allende government
Salvador Allende became president of Chile in 1970 and during his three years in power he adopted a programme of government to favour the majority. In Miguel Lawner’s opinion, “it is difficult to find a better known political figure than Allende.
In many countries around the world there are streets, squares, schools, hospitals and ships that carry his name. He is a unique phenomenon in the history of humanity”.
Lawner believes the idea of building socialism in a peaceful way was first thought of by the Communist Party of Chile and taken on fully by Allende who made it his own and really embraced it the moment he took power.
It was humanity’s first experience of such a substantial change, a revolution, by peaceful means, he recalled. Allende’s government, Lawner said, always acted as he used to say for pluralism, democracy and freedom. The measure in Allende’s legacy that had the most impact was the nationalisation of copper, the country’s principal resource and the central plank of the economy.
Another measure with widespread effects was the half litre of milk for every child. It must be recognised that this was a colossal effort because the country lacked milk production capacity and imports were necessary despite currency-related difficulties.
To this should be added the conclusion of the agrarian reform, the universalisation of health, the creation of public spas for workers and improvements to salaries and pensions.
On 11th September 1973 the armed forces, with the support of the oligarchy and right-wing political parties and backed by the United States, enacted a coup d’etat against the Popular Unity government. This is how a 17-year dictatorship began, headed by Augusto Pinochet, which saw over 40,000 people arrested, tortured and the subjects of extra-judicial killings, in addition to some 200,000 people exiled.
In the concentration camp
“On Dawson Island we were like prisoners of war and made to carry out forced labour. The first job we had to do was to plant some posts which were six metres tall on the banks of the Magellan Strait because an electricity line was going to be put there”, Lawner continued.
“We thought the island was uninhabited but as we progressed with the task of planting the posts we saw a settlement and the unmistakable silhouette of a church that had been abandoned for decades and was a historic monument”.
When he returned to the prison, Lawner mentioned the discovery to his fellow inmates and from there came the idea of restoring the church. The architect managed to convince the commander, Jorge Fellay, to let him repair the church. He allowed Lawner to go there to do a survey and then he provided him with pencil and paper, a couple of page protectors and a little school set square with which to do the plan.
“Unfortunately, even now the military refuses to return the original to me, despite all the governments there have been”, he said.
On 8th December, the day of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, the church was inaugurated in an unnecessarily tense atmosphere since the master restorers were invited to attend the ceremony from on high under close armed guard and with strict instructions to remain in silence.
In that remote location there were between five and six hundred prisoners from Punta Arenas but they were always kept away from the thirty or so government workers.
Exile and return
“They took us off Dawson Island after eight months. We were in different bases belonging to the armed forces. Then they confined us for a year in an old popular spa converted into a detention centre before sending us to Tres Álamos, the place where the dictatorship assembled us before expelling us from the country. “I managed to be offered asylum in Denmark and I was lucky that, two months after arriving, my wife and I were employed as teachers by the university because that same year they had created the Department of Foreign Students, which offered a course about housing and urban development in developing countries. “In 1985 the dictatorship published a big list of people authorised to return to Chile. We were on the list and we returned, so we had to spend five years under the dictatorship here in Chile”.
On his return Lawner, together with two colleagues, decided to found the Alejandro Lipschutz Institute of Science, a centre for thought and social and political research that still exists today. “It was a spectacular initiative at that time because we were in the middle of the dictatorship. We managed to acquire a building in the centre of Santiago and it became a platform for intellectual opposition to the regime that had far-reaching effects”.
In 2020 Miguel Lawner received the National Architecture Prize for his constant contributions to the discipline and for his numerous and emblematic architectural and residential projects, with a strong social element. PL
(Translated by Philip Walker- Email: philipwalkertranslation@gmail.com) – Photos: Pixabay
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