Chile closed Monday with a candlelight vigil in a former torture center the ceremonies of the 50th anniversary of Augusto Pinochet’s military coup and the fall of Salvador Allende’s government, against a backdrop of social and political divisions over heritage of its own history.
From the Palace of La Moneda, bombed by the Chilean Air Force on September 11, 1973, Gabriel Boric presided over the commemorations, under the slogan “Democracy Always”, in the presence of current or former heads of state of Latin America.
“Whatever the color of the regime that violates human rights, whether it is red, blue or black, human rights must always be respected and their violation condemned without any nuance,” launched the president Boric.
“The coup d’état” by General Pinochet “is inseparable from what followed, human rights were violated from the start,” added the 37-year-old left-wing leader, first president of Chile to have been born after the military coup.
With a sobbing voice, socialist senator Isabel Allende, daughter of the late president who committed suicide that day, moved the audience by recounting her day of September 11, 1973. Facing her, in the front row, Maya Fernandez, minister of Defense and granddaughter of Salvador Allende.
“Today, as democracy around the world faces new authoritarian threats, it is more necessary than ever to renew the commitment of each of us to democracy,” she said. .
A minute of silence was observed at 11:52 a.m., the time La Moneda was bombed, paving the way for 17 years of dictatorship during which 1,747 people were killed and 1,469 disappeared.
But half a century later, Chile is still divided on the meaning to give to this commemoration.
According to a recent survey by the Activa Research institute, 40% of Chileans believe that Allende is responsible for leading Chile towards a coup, while 50% abhor the regime imposed by the general.
Furthermore, in a country where 79% of the 20 million inhabitants were born after 1973 and where the main concern remains the economy and insecurity, these commemorations arouse little interest.
The political heirs of President Allende govern today, but the Republican Party, a far-right party openly nostalgic for Pinochet, came first in May in the election of the Council responsible for drafting a new Constitution, supposed to amend the one written under the dictatorship (1973-1990).
The UDI, another far-right party, issued a statement earlier today saying that Allende’s overthrow had “become inevitable” due to the “extreme situation” in which the country found itself.
“Of course there was another alternative,” replied Mr. Boric during his speech, drawing applause from the relatives of the missing and the personalities present.
No representatives of the right-wing opposition attended the ceremony in La Moneda or joined the pledge to “defend democracy against authoritarian threats” promoted by the president.
“It’s very painful. History will judge”, reacted Isabel Allende, deploring the “setbacks” observed according to her during these commemorations.
In Washington, pressed to know if the United States would present an official apology for having supported the coup d’état in 1973, the spokesperson for the State Department, Matthew Miller, replied that he did not want to “speak with this level of specificity of events that occurred under a previous administration 50 years ago.”
He stressed that the Biden administration “has strived to be transparent about the role of the United States in this chapter of Chilean history by recently declassifying documents dating from 1973, as the Chilean government had asked us to do “.
On Monday night, a candlelight vigil drew thousands of people to the Santiago stadium which had been converted into a detention and torture center during the dictatorship. At the city gates, demonstrators also prevented the passage of vehicles.
Without ever having set foot in a prison, let alone a court, Augusto Pinochet died of a heart attack in 2006 at the age of 91.
12/09/2023 04:46:06 – Santiago du Chili (AFP) – © 2023 AFP