Digging for the past in Santiago

by Andrew Novak (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find Chile

The first overwhelming impression of the Cemeterio General in Santiago is that it is very much a working cemetery, alive with activity from noisy bulldozers, raucous flower vendors, and hushed groups of mourners. This is little wonder. It is one of the largest cemeteries in the world: more than two million people have been interred here over two centuries. How strange that the powerful, the poor, and the entirely anonymous should have to share this hallowed but dusty ground. For the rich, family mausoleums looked like deliberate Greek temples, well-maintained if sterile. The middle class had dozens of rows of blocks piled eight or ten high and hundreds long, with flowers or mementos posted on the slab in varying states of array. The poor were buried in the ground with handwritten letters on crosses. The plots in the soil were supposedly rented for five years, upon which time the remains were disinterred and cremated. The bulldozer, though, was tardy. Ground plots dating as far back as three decades were still visible, though these were in gross disrepair and ready for renewal. Patio 29 was the section of the ground plots that happened to be in use at the cemetery in September 1973 when the army surrounded the Palacio de la Moneda with tanks and installed Augusto Pinochet as dictator. The cemetery had always had an unmarked plot for anonymous or unidentified bodies, typically of indigent persons with no next of kin. But in the months after Pinochet took power, Patio 29 was filled with unidentified graves that seemed more deliberate, of political dissidents, socialist sympathizers, and college students. If graves could produce sound, Patio 29 would be noisy. Today, Patio 29 is not like the other plots. It certainly still looks impermanent with collapsing graves and unidentified markers decorated with matching ribbons. With the use of forensic sciences like odontology (study of dental records), some of the markers had been identified and improved. Most remained anonymous. The feel of impermanence is an illusion: this is a historically protected site, christened by survivors’ groups whose ranks include President Michele Bachelet, herself a victim of torture and trauma under Pinochet. A large stone memorial overlooks Patio 29 on one side, but it is a lonely place. I was the only visitor. The socialist president who was overthrown in 1973, Salvador Allende, is buried in the Cemeterio General, as are nearly all other Chilean presidents. His is a large and artistic mausoleum, decorated with red flowers, the color of workers. Pinochet, however, is not here. He continues to divide families and communities though his supporters have dwindled in number. His 17-year-reign was an interminable time but small for Chilean history. Nonetheless, I came across other scars of his rule during my stay in Santiago. A building at Londres 38 memorializes a clandestine torture center where 2000 people were imprisoned. Ninety-eight of them died here, the overwhelming majority of whom were under age 30. The rooms now are empty. This leaves the scenes of violent interrogation to the imagination, which makes the visit even more somber and real. I was in Santiago in the winter when the air quality is poor and the tourist industry declines. I teach human rights at an American university, where I do a bit on forensic science each semester. I ask the students, do the dead have human rights? Or do we do this instead for the living? In her memoir, Isabel Allende writes that many Chileans, “especially young people who grew up without political dialogue or without a critical spirit, believe that there’s been enough digging through the past, that we must look to the future, but victims and their families cannot forget.” She does not mention those who are not yet born. We cannot know exactly who they will be, but we can confidently accept that someone will follow us. They too have a right to remember what happened in Chile, and that is a good enough motivation for the bulldozer to keep digging.