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Chile faces its dark history by tracking down torture centers
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Jul 29, 2008 11:06pm |
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| Category | News |
| News Date | Wednesday, July 30, 2008 05:05:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By Jack Chang | McClatchy Newspapers
LONQUEN, Chile — This quiet town nestled in the hills of central Chile has a horrifying history.
In 1978, in a stone oven on the town's outskirts, the Roman Catholic Church found the bodies of 11 poor farmers and four youths who were executed by Chile's military dictatorship. Police had accused the victims of being leftist subversives and arrested them five years earlier, but no charges were ever filed.
After the 15 bodies were discovered, government agents buried them in a common grave, and the site's landlord blew up the oven. However, the oven's ruins, which now are next door to a gated community, have become a memorial for hundreds of people who come every year to honor the victims.
"They sing and pray here, crowds of them," said Eliana Gonzalez, who with her husband runs an almond farm near the oven's ruins. "I think a lot about what happened there. As a mother, I'm pained by everything that's happened."
As Chile and other countries wrestle with whether it's better to exhume their dark pasts or to leave them buried and try to move on, the current, elected government of President Michelle Bachelet, who herself was detained and tortured by the Pinochet regime, has moved to make that black period in Chile's history part of the country's national heritage.
Official estimates have found that the U.S.-backed regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, which ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, carried out the political executions or disappearances of nearly 3,200 people in its campaign to root out opposition leaders and left-wing dissidents. Tens of thousands more were tortured but survived.
Now Chilean officials and human rights activists are working to find more than 800 sites where the country's military government committed its gravest crimes. |
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