MISSING

MISSING

Spoiler Alert

After the national election ended in a three-way tie, the Chilean Congress recognized Salvador Allende Gossens as president on November 3, 1970.  This decision, which ushered in the country’s first elected Marxist leadership, would result in a military coup d'état three years later that replaced Allende with dictator General Augusto Pinochet who would remain in power for the next seventeen years.  Some believed the usurpation was brought about through a collaboration between the Chilean military, primarily the navy, and the United States Government.  America’s support of the coup was blamed on President Nixon’s fear of a communist country so close to the United States and the interests of American-owned businesses that operated out of Chile. Although the U.S. Government denied any involvement at the time, documents released under the Clinton Administration in 1999 strongly imply American culpability.  The coup which culminated in the tortures, imprisonments, disappearances, and deaths of thousands of Chilean citizens sympathetic to leftist-leaning politics, also occasioned the assassinations of two young American journalists living in Chile, Frank Teruggi and Charles Harmon. The 1982 movie Missing portrays the struggles Charles Horman’s wife, Beth (whose real name is Joyce) and father, Edmund, encountered while trying to discover what happened to him.

The film opens with a young man sitting in the back seat of a car in Chile’s capital city of Santiago watching poor children play soccer in a dusty field littered with trash.  This scene recalls the poverty that Allende’s socialist policies caused when he transferred the country’s industries from private to national ownership.  Rather than bettering the lives of workers, as the president had promised, governmental takeover led to double digit unemployment and outrageous interest rates, greatly increasing the number of people living below the poverty line.  The front passenger seat is occupied by a young woman and the driver is a man wearing a military uniform.  A jeep filled with Chilean soldiers approaches the car; one of them checks the driver’s identification, then waves him on.    The driver speaks to his passengers in English, his accent unmistakably American.  This is Captain Ray Tower (Charles Cioffi), a character based on Ray Davis, an American naval captain who was sent to Chile to unearth communist revolutionaries; the young man is Charles Harmon (John Shea), an American free-lance journalist who lives in the city with his wife, Beth (Sissy Spacek); and the young woman is Terry Simon (Melanie Mayron), a long-time family friend that has been visiting and is scheduled to leave the country the next day.

Ray asks Terry where she lives, but before she can answer, Charles speaks up and asks to be dropped off at a hotel.  The two have just returned from Vina Del Mar, an oceanside resort town that is popular among vacationers, where American warships floated in the harbor and American military officers filled the hotels.  During their stay, President Salvador Allende was overthrown by the military and the entire country has been put under martial law with a strict curfew.  Allende, who at first tried to resist takeover of the presidential palace, has committed suicide and the whole country is at the mercy of ungoverned armed forces.  Charles and Terry cannot make it to Charles’ house before curfew begins, nor can they call Beth because the phones aren’t working.  Instead, they spend the night in a hotel watching wealthy couples in the bar next door dancing to the song “My Ding-a-Ling” while Charles fills the notebook he always carries with his observations of Vina.   

The next morning, serenaded by a chorus of gunfire and greeted by the inert bodies of bloody corpses from the search and destroy missions the military has been carrying out against civilians on the city’s streets, Terry and Charles make their way to his house.    When they get there, they find Beth frightened but unharmed.  The chatter of gunfire erupts, and she begs Charles to take her back to the states.  He does his best to calm her, promising they’ll go home as soon as they can sell their stuff.  He is concerned about fellow journalists, David Holloway (Keith Szarabajka) and Frank Teruggi (Joe Regalbuto), but since Terry needs someone to take her to the airport, Beth volunteers to see about David and Frank so Charles can accompany their friend.  This is the last time the young couple will be together.  

Terry needs to stop at the hotel to get her things, so she and Charles climb on a bus going in that direction.  While riding, they see soldiers everywhere carrying arms and arresting women for wearing pants.  Close to the hotel, Terry and Charles get off the bus and he walks over to a newsstand to purchase a paper; while he is doing that, two soldiers grab Terry and begin marching her away.  Charles follows them into a building where Terry is interrogated.  Since she doesn’t speak Spanish, he translates.  The officer asks where she is going and when she answers that she’s going home, the man states that the airport is closed and no planes are flying out, then dismisses her.  Deeply concerned, Charles insists on going to the U.S. embassy for help, but when they get there, the operator (Gary Richardson) tells them to go to the consulate, instead.  On the way out, Charles and Terry run into reporter Kate Newman (Janice Rule), who invites them to lunch.  While they are eating, Charles scours the newspaper for information about the coup, but cannot find any articles describing the search and destroy missions he was told about while in Vina or explain the role that the American military played in the action.  Kate tells him to forget what he saw in Vina and hole up someplace public until he can get out of the country.  Finding her advice sound, Charles takes Terry to the nearest hotel then goes back to the house for his wife.  

Beth is on the other side of town visiting Maria (Tina Romero), David, and Frank, who share a house.  Maria, who is heavily pregnant, is in tears over the disappearance of her husband Carlos (John Fenton).  Beth tells her everything will be okay, then goes outside to ask David and Frank what could have happened to Maria’s husband.  They say there is no way to know because some of the people who are missing are in hiding, but others have just disappeared. Like Beth and Charles, they are also planning to go home as soon as possible.  It is getting close to curfew, so Beth leaves and rushes to catch the bus, which pulls away before she can get to the stop.  In a panic, she tries to hail a taxi, but the driver ignores her.  When the siren announcing curfew sounds, she runs down the street trying to find shelter, but everything is closed; the best she can do is hide behind some foliage in a doorway.  All around her there are soldiers chasing horses, shooting at people, and burning books.  In the morning, the siren ending curfew goes off and she walks home expecting to find Charles waiting for her, but he isn’t there.  The house has been ransacked, possessions strewn about or taken, and the windows are broken.  One of Beth’s neighbors comes by to tell her that the soldiers were there while she was out and warns her to leave before they come back.

In New York, Charles’ father Edmund Harmon, a successful and well-respected businessman, attempts to get help locating his son by appealing to various government officials.  He is told repeatedly that no one can find any trace of Charles which probably means he is in hiding.  Frank and David, Ed is told, were arrested, but they have been released and sent back to the states.  After getting the run-around for two weeks, Ed realizes that no one is going to help him and flies to Santiago.  As soon as he deplanes, soldiers approach and start to arrest him.  Fortunately, Phil Putnam (David Clennon), the U.S. Consul, shows up and the officers immediately back off; he escorts Ed to the hotel where Beth is staying.  She apologizes for not being at the airport, explaining that she is trying to meet with someone who can tell her what happened to her husband.  Ed, who clearly thinks Beth is as disrespectful toward authority as his son is, brushes her off.  

After Ed unpacks and freshens up, Beth takes him to her house so he can see what the soldiers did to it.  The cottage, which is in a shambles, is small and modestly furnished, nothing like the sumptuous home Charles grew up in, and Ed criticizes her, insinuating that she and Charles are hypocrites who pretend to be poor when they can return to comfort in the Unites States any time they want.  Beth counters by defending their way of life and pointing out that her husband is a gifted man who is currently turning the children’s book he wrote into a film.  She next takes Ed to talk to neighbors who claim to have witnessed Charles’ arrest.  One woman gives a particularly concise account of seeing soldiers put Charles in a truck and drive him into the National Stadium.  Suspicious of the woman’s motivations, however, Ed doesn’t put much credence in her story.   After they are done talking to the witnesses, Beth and Ed head to the American Consulate, where the U.S. Ambassador (Richard Venture), Consul Putnam, and Captain Ray Tower spout the same story Ed heard in New York; Charles has been associating with radicals and is in hiding.  They ask Beth for a list of all Charles’ contacts.  Ed, a conservative who believes in the sanctity of government, is infuriated when she refuses, even though she explains that every person she names will undoubtedly be picked up for questioning.

To convince her father-in-law that Americans are being arrested, Beth escorts him to David’s house to hear a recount of the night David and Frank were taken into custody.  He describes the soldiers breaking in, grabbing them, loading them into a truck with other detainees, and driving them to the National Stadium where they see people being beaten, tortured, and shot. He states that late in the night Frank was taken away for questioning and hasn’t been seen or heard from since.   Although Ed is trying hard to cling to his trust in the American officials, he can’t help feeling doubtful.  His convictions erode further when he catches someone bugging the phone in his hotel room.  Meanwhile, to prove that Charles is not in custody, the Ambassador arranges for Ed and Beth to visit local hospitals.  They are taken to the all the facilities in the vicinity where they see patients who are seriously injured and are told that hundreds of people come to look for missing family members daily.  The experience is so upsetting for Ed that he decides to walk back to the hotel; even though it isn’t safe, Beth goes with him.  She wants the chance to speak privately with her father-in-law because he is beginning to see her side of things.  

Ed and Beth go to back to David’s house and learn that Maria’s husband, Carlos, who apparently was in hiding, has returned.  David plays a video that he shot at Terry’s going away party where Charles offers to take her to Vina Del Mar before she leaves the country.  They agree to go the next day even though Beth, who has to renew her visa, can’t accompany them.  After leaving there, Beth and Ed go to the stadium where officials show them slips of paper that were filled out for every person taken into custody during the coup and point out there is not one for Charles.  Ed states that there isn’t one for Frank, either, even though he knows the young journalist was arrested.  Rather than acknowledging his suggestion that they are lying, the Chileans offer to let Ed and Beth go into the arena, where hundreds of prisoners are still being held, to look for Charles.  

Their search is unsuccessful, so they leave the stadium and meet up with Kate, the reporter Charles and Terry lunched with on the day he disappeared.  She escorts them to the Italian embassy to speak with a man named Paris (Martin LaSalle), a former Santiago police officer and one of over eight hundred refugees that have sought asylum there.  Paris tells them that he knows a man who saw Charles in the custody of General Lutz, head of the local version of the C.I.A., and an unnamed American diplomat.  The man told Paris that Charles had been “roughed up” and that Lutz wanted him to disappear because he knew too much.  Visibly shaken, Ed asks the former police officer if the Chilean military would kill an American without approval from the United States Government; Paris’ response is that they wouldn’t dare.  

Figuring that what Charles knew has something to do with Vina, the three head back to the hotel to consult his notebook which he had given to Beth to read on the bus when she went to see David and Frank.  In it, Charles describes meeting a Naval officer named Andrew Babcock (Richard Bradford) who expresses delight that the coup went smoothly and a Colonel by the name of Sean Patrick who invites Charles and Terry to his home for a barbecue.  There they meet Captain Ray Tower who offers to drive them back to Santiago.  When Ed expresses confusion over what all this has to do with his son’s disappearance, Kate explains that the coup was likely planned in Vina which meant the people Charles met there and the things they told him, made him a witness to America’s illegal involvement in the coup.  Finally comprehending, Ed realizes that his son probably is dead, and why.

The last place that Ed and Beth are taken to search for Charles is the morgue.  There are bodies lying everywhere, even on the stairs, which is not surprising considering that approximately 3000 people either disappeared or were killed during the coup.  Even though they don’t find Charles, they do see the bullet riddled corpse of Frank Teruggi and immediately go to the American Embassy to ask why his death was not reported; they are told that he was released from custody alive and well, but later his body was found on the street.  Realizing they are never going to get straight answers to their questions, Ed and Beth return to the hotel.  While Ed is resting in his room, his wife calls and suggests that he speak with the Ford Foundation.  Unable to face another letdown, Beth begs off and lets him go alone.  At the foundation, Ed is met by Peter Chernin (Robert Hitt) who says that he was told by a reliable source that Charles was assassinated on Sept 19, three days after he was arrested. 

Even though he can’t question Peter’s contact, Ed sadly accepts that his son is dead and heads to the embassy to confront the U.S. Ambassador and his cronies.  At first, they pretend to be glad to see him and introduce him to a witness who swears Charles is alive and expected to be back in New York before Ed gets home.  Enraged, Ed turns the tables on them, stating the he knows his son is dead; he accuses Ray Tower, specifically, of signing the kill order because Charles learned of America’s involvement in the coup.  Instead of showing remorse, however, the ambassador casually replies that their job in Chile is to protect American interests.  Tower goes on to coldly insinuate that Charles asked nosy questions about things that weren’t any of his business.  Disgusted, Ed leaves; later Consul Putnam calls and confirms that Charles was killed in the stadium and buried in a wall.  

Having no further reasons to stay in Chile, Ed and Beth salvage what they can from the house and go to the airport.   As they are getting ready to board the plane, Beth is told that Charles’ body will be sent home in a few days and that she owes $900 in shipping fees.  Knowing that she doesn’t have that kind of money, Ed says he’ll take care of it.  As his final statement, he threatens to sue the American officials who let his son die.  Contrary to their promise, Chilean officials wait seven months before sending Charles’ body home rendering his cause of death indeterminable.  Ed sues 11 American officials, including Henry Kissinger, in the death of his son, but he is unable to get the evidence needed to prove his case and the lawsuit is dismissed.

In 1999 the Clinton administration released documents which clearly demonstrated that American officials were complicit in the deaths of both Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi.  Although the United States never acted on that evidence, the Chilean courts investigated the matter and in 2014 judge Jorge Zepeda found Colonel Pedro Espinoza and Rafael Gonzalez of Chile and Naval Captain Ray Davis of the United States complicit in the murders of both journalists.  Chile indicted Espinoza and Gonzalez in 2011 and attempted to extradite Davis from the United States but couldn’t locate him.  It turned out he had been hiding right under their noses in Chile all along; he died in 2013 of natural causes.

Although most of the information in this post was taken from the movie, I used Emile Scheper’s article, “Judicial finding in Chile says U.S. complicit in death of young Americans” from the July 25, 2014 issue of People’s World which  can be found at peoplesworld.org and “The Allende Years and the Pinochet Coup, 1969-1973” published online by Office of the Historian at history.state.gov/ milestones/1969-1973/allen as well.  I also consulted articles in Wikipedia regarding Charles and Joyce Horman and his parents Edmund and Elizabeth Horman.   What I learned was that rather than being some crazy left wing radical, as the American officials implied, Charles Horman was a highly intelligent man who graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University.  Along with being an excellent investigative journalist, he was also an accomplished cellist and award-winning filmmaker.

In two weeks, I look at the 1983 movie Silkwood based on the life of Karen Silkwood who attempted to expose Kerr-McGee’s mishandling of radioactive materials at a plutonium processing plant in Crescent, Oklahoma. Until then, enjoy a bunch of flicks.