Tracing Wild Horse Nine’s Route Through Chile—From Santiago to Rapa Nui

Another afternoon, we visit Villa Grimaldi, a once-notorious detention center on the outskirts of the city that now serves as a memorial. Two of its survivors are Alvaro Ahumada and Ignacio Puelma, smartly dressed and in their early 70s, who meet us under the trees near the entrance for a tour. We pass sobering remnants of the detention center’s structures, but also clusters of fragrant roses, colorful mosaics, and water features. “We didn’t want to have a horror museum,” says Ahumada, who is also the president of the foundation. “Instead, we wanted to wash away what happened here.”

The pair, I realize, would have been around the same age as the character of a young, optimistic left-wing student in the film named Monica, played by Mariana di Girolamo. These two were both members of the student-led Movement of the Revolutionary Left, and at just 19 and 21 at the time, they had been transferred from Villa Grimaldi to the same concentration camp where they connected over music, even forming a band during their imprisonment. “Our bond is very deep,” says Puelma, as a flock of squawking parakeets fly over us. “We were both rockers, so we had a lot to talk about,” adds Ahumada. “Helping each other, and looking after each other, was an act of resistance.”

Their story evokes a poignant scene in Wild Horse Nine, when they later reach Rapa Nui, during which Chris meets up with Monica at a low-lit, moody bar. As the ill-fated folk singer Victor Jara (Aron Hernandez) performs on stage, Chris tells her with disturbing frankness that he is not just a CIA agent, but one who has come down to Chile to “destabilize your democracy,” a direct reference to the United States’ involvement in installing Pinochet.

In one of the film’s scenes, young Chileans are confronted by Chris’s character, who tells them he has come to Chile to “destabilize your democracy.”

Diego Araya Corvalán / Searchlight Pictures