The National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture verified, in the so-called Valech Report (by Monsignor Sergio Valech, who chaired it), that there were a total of 1,132 facilities used as places of detention throughout the country, and 45 are already sites of report, although only five receive funding from the State.
Chile uses this nomination -like other countries in the world- for places where there were arrests, rapes, torture, murders and other atrocities caused during the military dictatorship, several of which were first declared as national monuments in the category of historical monuments, such as Villa Grimaldi and the Hornos de Lonquén.
The particularity of the task in Chile was due to the fact that at first most of the places were in Santiago, until the need to also protect clandestine centers in other regions, even in rural areas, was visualized to leave testimony that the repression was throughout the country.
“It is a task of conserving some spaces, which have special protection. And we add museography tasks. There are guided tours with ex-prisoners who tell about their experiences, which represents an enriching fact and provides important heritage value. And the sites are closely linked with the communities, with the surrounding neighbors, with other sites of memory”, explained the head of the National Stadium Memory Site and coordinator of the Network of Memory Sites, Marcelo Acevedo.
In statements to Télam, Acevedo rescued “this fight that began with the return to democracy” in 1989. Despite being the largest torture center in the country, with nearly 20,000 prisoners, the National Stadium in Santiago recently received this category just in 2003.
“We work with resources from the Ministry of Cultures, and that is what allows us to do this work. But resources are always scarce. You always want to do more. In fact, there are groups that do memory work without having the site itself already declared as a memory site,” explained Acevedo.
For the activist, the “special” work involved in the plan for the 50th anniversary of the coup has to do “of course with the time that has elapsed, which makes it a very particular commemoration, but also because in addition to importing as a symbolic act and contributing to memory, means reinforcing three axes: the declaration, the recovery of that place with civil associations and maintenance” in the future.
As an example, he gave the case of the National Stadium itself, where on September 11 a “Memory Path” will be inaugurated, which will go from the stadium itself to the velodrome, the area of torture, and that the detainees had to cross in groups of two or three, covered with blankets and often tied up.
“Chile continues with the debt of having a Memory Law, a law against denial… Laws that effectively guarantee non-regression or that at least are in line with transitional justice, which by the way was very deficient,” Acevedo assessed.
The leader warned that the Armed Forces “never provided data on the detained-disappeared, not even something as basic as those who went through the concentration camps, and when they did deliver something, it was deliberately erroneous information.” “An evil, perverse gesture. And this year we don’t expect anything from them either, ”he said.
As a sign of the negligence that prevented judicial advances, Acevedo reviewed the finding last February at the University of Chile of boxes with bones that the justice system left in custody in 2001.
“They met now, 22 years later. And now the tests will be done. A revealing fact that justice was slow, but also negligent”, Avecedo evaluated.
Faced with this picture, the specialist claims the need to achieve “an important line of conservation, with suitable personnel for that, even if it represents high expenses.” “Conserving is an arduous and onerous task,” he said.
Acevedo highlighted “all the recovered sites do a very efficient and methodical memory work with schools, high schools, universities, and with the general public that visits them.”
“In Chile there are those who do not want to acknowledge that there was a dictatorship, that people were tortured and executed, that human rights were violated. That marked 30 years of democracy for us, in the sense that the dictatorship was not defeated, but was agreed upon. The worst thing is that society was not ashamed of the dictatorship. Only when society feels ashamed can it effectively take a step forward, look at us, recognize ourselves and say ‘we don’t want to repeat this’”, he stated.
Days ago, the National Monuments Council (CMN) designated another seven places of detention and torture as Historical Monuments Memory Sites.
“These declarations demonstrate the commitment of the Government and the Chilean State to historical memory, and represent an act of reparation and justice for the people who passed through these sites,” the Minister of Culture, Arts and Heritage highlighted on the occasion. Jaime Aguirre.
The new places preserved are the ex-prison of Arica; the regiment number 23 of Copiapó; the El Ala Bridge Memorial, in Ñuble; the premises of the National Information Center (CNI) in Talca; the grave of the La Serena Cemetery and the Pisagua Prison Camp (Tamarugal province).
Lastly, the Ancud Police Station, which was already a Historic Monument, was reclassified as a site of memory.
The Cultural Observatory site, of the Ministry of Cultures, underlines the vitality of the management in a memory site, “beyond institutional temporality and from autonomy against possible political instrumentalizations”.
“Memory sites thus prevent the privatization of suffering and memory, assuming both the difficulty and the need to draw lessons from history that favor coexistence from plurality and respect for democratic values,” the text states.
Source: Ambito
