CHILE REMEMBERS 9/11 MILITARY COUP

Protesters Clash With Police In Santiago

(Sept. 12, 2005) Thousands of people took to the streets of Santiago on Sunday in remembrance of the military coup of Sept. 11, 1973. Many demonstrators carried flags and held photos of loved ones disappeared during the 17 years of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s military regime. September 11 has been a polemical date ever since the coup: it was celebrated throughout the 17-year Pinochet dictatorship as a national holiday. The holiday was eliminated in 1998, but a sense of unease pervades the nation each year, most especially Santiago, when the coup anniversary date comes due. On Sunday, protestors clashed violently with police forces at some of the 13 commemorative events approved by government authorities. Demonstrators at the General Cemetery and the Plaza de Armas were the most combative. Thirteen protesters were arrested and three policemen were hurt after protesters hurled rocks at them. The violence first broke out in front of a McDonald’s restaurant on Recoleta Avenue in a march destined to the National Cemetery.City officials prepared themselves for anticipated trouble by taking a number of steps to curb violence. An additional 10,000 police forces were stationed around the city, empowered by new laws increasing penalties for violent crimes, including the use of Molotov cocktails.Sunday’s traditional march to the General Cemetery started from the Plaza Los Heroes, with an estimated 3,000 people joining the National Assembly of Human Rights to commemorate ex-president Salvador Allende, the democratically elected Marxist president who lost his life during the military bombardment of the government palace, La Moneda, on the day of the coup. Composed of family members of the disappeared, political action groups, and crowds of university students, the demonstrators called for the end of impunity for human rights violators and protested a recent government move to grant pardons to imprisoned human rights violators for acts committed during the military regime (ST, Sept. 9). Hortensia Bussi, the widow of former President Allende, spoke at a ceremony in the presidential palace, saying that the ideals her husband gave the country “lived on in the hearts and minds of the Chilean people.” Chile’s President Ricardo Lagos stood with the former first lady as participants visited the La Moneda entrance on Morandé Street, the site where Allende’s body was removed from the palace and later dedicated as a memorial in his honor. Lagos later commemorated the day by attending a service at the Evangelical Cathedral along with presidential candidates Michelle Bachelet, Joaquín Lavín, and Sebastián Piñera. Calling for national unity the president said, “We are not trying to forget the past, we are trying to learn from these experiences so that they will never happen again.” He continued by quoting from former president Salvador Allende’s last radio address to the nation: “´there will come a time when other men will overcome this dark moment,’ I believe we are arriving at the moment when we will overcome those dark times.” Lagos has recently been criticized for his support of proposed legislation pardoning human rights violators, as well as for a controversial pardon he granted to Manuel Contreras Donaire, a jailed military official involved in the 1982 murder of former trade union leader Tucapel Jiménez (ST, Sept. 8). Tomás Hirsch, the presidential candidate for Juntos Podemos Más, speaking from the National Assembly of Human Rights march, disagreed with the president’s actions saying, “To grant pardons to those who committed these crimes opens the door for these acts to be repeated in the future.” Survivors of the Villa Grimaldi torture center in Peñalolen hosted acts throughout the day to commemorate those who passed through the torture center – one of the most vicious of the Pinochet era. Villa Grimaldi in now planning the creation of a museum to document the nation’s past human rights abuses (ST, Aug. 9).Other officially sanctioned demonstrations included a commemorative ceremony of the Socialist party (PS) at the General Cemetery.A vigil was organized by the Collective “Profesor Manuel Guerrero” at the Plaza 28 de Octubre in Huechuraba, and numerous commemoratives were held elsewhere in Santiago and around the country.