49th anniversary of Pinochet’s coup ends in riots in Chile

First modification: 09/12/2022 – 04:53

The traditional anniversary dedicated to the victims of the dictatorship was marked by violent clashes between protesters and police in Santiago, events that were condemned by President Gabriel Boric.

“Democracy is built with dialogue, respecting those who think differently and never with violence and I hope that all those who claim this day would understand it,” Boric declared in a video posted on his Twitter account.

“Because if we want to get ahead, which I have no doubt is the will of the great and overwhelming majority of Chileans, to meet again, it has to be in peace and without violence. And that is what we are going to do from the government,” he added.

The tributes led by left-wing groups and relatives of the victims, gathered next to the statue of Allende, at the entrance of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights to march to the Recoleta cemetery, where his remains rest.

During the tour, isolated groups of hooded men clashed with riot police officers. Looting of commercial premises, launching of Molotov cocktails and the burning of a municipal vehicle were reported. The disturbances continued even near the tombs in the cemetery, while the tributes to the victims of the dictatorship continued amid tear gas.

Search for missing persons launched

The president, Gabriel Boric, announced the start of a search plan for detainees who disappeared during the dictatorship. The initiative, which was advanced in June during the annual accountability speech, will be carried out with organizations of relatives of disappeared detainees and executed for political reasons.

“Our commitment is (…) to tirelessly continue searching for the disappeared detainees, 1,192 disappeared detainees who still do not know where they are. It is not acceptable, it is not tolerable, we cannot naturalize them,” Boric commented.

“That commitment is never again, to advance in truth, justice, reparation for all victims of violence perpetrated by state agents, because that is the only and main guarantee of non-repetition that we can offer,” Boric said.

The Chilean dictatorship resulted in 40,175 victims, including those executed, detained-disappeared, political prisoners and tortured, according to figures from the official commission.

Allende committed suicide in his own office in the Palacio de La Moneda, from which he sought to contain the coup and where he had to give in after the Army bombed.

During the following hours, the coup plotters arrested tens of thousands of people, hundreds of whom they shot immediately, without trial, and began a wave of repression that lasted almost a decade and that had as its main objective the Socialist and Communist parties, and the Revolutionary Left Movement.

“We are here to remember a name that was worthy to the end. But also so that we do not forget the memory of all those who were killed, who were disappeared and not repeated,” a relative of a disappeared person told Efe on 11 of September.

official acts

The tributes began with an institutional act inside the Palacio de la Moneda in which the president, Gabriel Boric, an admirer of Allende, praised his figure.

“Faced with the divisions, with the problems of society, we are going to respond with more democracy and never with less. And that is precisely the teaching that President Salvador Allende left us”, added the president, who promised to continue with the constituent process, despite the recent defeat of the “Approval” in the plebiscite on the new Constitution.

The commemoration will end at night with a wake at the National Stadium in Santiago, which during the first weeks of the dictatorship became the largest concentration camp for political detainees.

With EFE and AFP