Santiago, Chile – Part of this capital’s main cemetery where the bodies of hundreds of Chileans who opposed Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship were clandestinely buried was declared a national monument Thursday.
The government decree, drawn up in response to a proposal by several members of the Chilean lower house’s Human Rights Commission, was presented at a ceremony led by Nivia Palma, the national director of Libraries, Archives and Museums.
During the event, which was attended by family members of victims of Pinochet’s 1973-1990 military regime, speakers said it was important for the nation’s collective memory that such emblematic sites are preserved.
The National Council of Monuments, a governmental agency, said in the decree that “Patio 29 of the General Cemetery and its associated history is a clear example of the procedure carried out to hide the bodies and identities of political detainees killed or ‘disappeared’ by the military regime.”
Its designation as a national monument “transforms the site into a symbol of the country’s heritage of pain and into a place for education on human rights and democracy,” the agency said.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the courtyard was used to bury the bodies of slain political prisoners, who were labeled “NN” for unknown. Since 1991, authorities have exhumed many of the remains in an effort to identify these victims.
The dictatorship is blamed for the killing of some 3,000 real or imagined opponents. The bodies of about one-third of the victims never were found.
