CHILE: Finding a Place for Memory

• by Daniela Estrada (santiago)
• Tuesday, December 23, 2008
• Inter Press Service

'The Museum will show the human rights violations committed during the 1973-1990 military dictatorship, based on the two truth reports,' María Luisa Sepúlveda, director of the Presidential Human Rights Commission created by Bachelet in 2006, told IPS.

The truth reports Sepúlveda was referring to are the outcome of the work by the 1991 National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the 2004 National Political Imprisonment and Torture Commission, which resulted in the identification of more than 3,000 dissidents who were killed or forcibly disappeared by the right-wing dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet and more than 35,000 people who were tortured during that period.

The aim of the Museum is 'to bring dignity to the victims, educate society so that this will never again be allowed to happen, enable us to tell the story of what happened and show the different manifestations of solidarity and the efforts to defend human rights' during those years, she said.

In 2007, the government held an international bidding process for the construction of a 5,600-square-metre building to be erected in a western Santiago district, where other museums and cultural centres are located.

The competition was awarded to a team of Brazilian architects from the University of Sao Paulo, headed by Mario Figueroa Rosales.

In addition to the Museum of Memory, the project includes a Memory Plaza and facilities such as an underground parking ramp. In all, some 10,200 square metres will be developed, at a total cost of approximately 11.3 billion pesos (about 17.6 million dollars).

The inauguration is planned for November 2009, four months before the end of Bachelet’s four-year term.

The design of the museum itself will be defined through a bidding process, as well. 'We’re also going to include legal reports, personal accounts, photographs, audiovisual materials, press archives' and objects in the museum’s exhibit, said Sepúlveda.

Besides the permanent exhibit, there will be temporary displays, and spaces for conferences and debates.

The Commission has also requested a study to determine the most appropriate form of management for the Museum. The final decision will be announced no later than June 2009, Sepúlveda reported.

The government has received advice from the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, a worldwide network of historic sites specifically dedicated to remembering past struggles for justice and addressing their contemporary legacies.

Until now, the only Chilean site among the Coalition’s 17 Accredited Sites of Conscience was Corporación Parque por la Paz Villa Grimaldi (Villa Grimaldi Park for Peace Corporation), a memorial founded in 1996 at the site of one of the dictatorship’s most notorious detention, torture and death camps.

In order to put together the Museum’s collection, the government has joined forces with Corporación Casa de la Memoria (House of Memory Corporation), which is made up of three Chilean human rights groups: the Corporation for the Promotion and Defence of People’s Rights (CODEPU), the Social Aid Foundation of Christian Churches (FASIC), and the Programme for the Support of Children Hurt by States of Emergency (PIDEE), in addition to the audiovisual production company Nueva Imagen (formerly Teleanálisis).

In 2003, the historical archives of these four organisations, together with the documents of the Chilean Human Rights Commission, the Group of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared (AFDD), the Justice and Democracy Corporation, and the Solidarity Vicariate Archives Foundation, were incorporated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) to its 'Memory of the World' heritage register.

The head of the AFDD, Lorena Pizarro, told IPS that her group has not participated in the design of the Museum of Memory but will monitor the project as it unfolds and decide whether or not to lend its support.

So far they have met twice with the Commission members, where they discussed what the AFDD thought the museum’s exhibit should include. 'Depending on the contents, we will decide whether we participate or not,' the activist said.

'We are against the kind of memory that ultimately turns into an anti-memory, as it seeks to establish shared responsibilities, and puts the accent on forgiveness and reconciliation,' she said.

'What we need to do is tell the truth about what happened during the dictatorship, how the coup d’etat came about; we need to vindicate the victims and send out a message to future generations telling them how we struggled and resisted,' she said.

Also, according to Pizarro, the museum must be 'just one of the components' of a broader government human rights education policy, something which, she says, does not exist today.

'The truth reports are not texts distributed nationally to social organisations or educational institutions. They don’t even include the names of those responsible for the crimes,' she criticised.

The main reason the project is viewed with mistrust is that, in Pizarro’s opinion, ever since democracy was restored to Chile in 1990, the efforts that have been made in this sense have been 'aimed at simply moving forward, regardless of how we do it, and thus sacrificing the truth of what happened here.'

'Our organisation is not willing to participate in an initiative that contains a history that does not reflect what really happened,' she said.

Although Sepúlveda says the relationship with the groups of victims is 'positive' and 'very collaborative,' she admits that 'we have made more progress with some than with others.' The organisations from outside Santiago, for example, 'are afraid that the Museum will fail to represent what they went through,' she said.

In terms of human rights education, the Commission’s president said they have asked the Ministry of Education to study ways in which the Museum can be used as a learning tool.

The museum is also being criticised by representatives of the other end of the political spectrum, who are concerned about the 'history' that the museum will depict.

Ángel Soto, a professor of history at the private Los Andes University, connected with the ultra-conservative Catholic Opus Dei Prelature, sees this as a valuable initiative, but questions the starting point chosen for the 'reconstruction of memory.'

If the starting point is Sept. 11, 1973, when the democratic government of socialist president Salvador Allende was violently overthrown, 'we could end up with a museum with a very partial memory,' because it would not explain the root causes of the coup d’état, he told IPS.

'How can we be sure that this won’t be an official history used to serve a certain end?' he asked. The dictatorship’s repressive bodies, like the now-defunct National Intelligence Agency (DINA) and its successor, the National Information Centre, 'didn’t come out of nowhere,' he argued.

In this sense, Soto proposes that the Museum’s editorial committee 'be very inclusive, with representatives from all sectors.'

'The causes (of the 1973 military coup) may have been manifold and very serious, but human rights violations can never be justified. That is the basis of our museum. That is where its ‘bias’ lies,' Sepúlveda responded.

'Our slant is in the message we want to give out: that it is inadmissible even to think you can justify torturing or forcibly disappearing another human being just because he or she is against the political system you want to establish. That is the message we want to convey,' she said.

She said it is impossible to make everyone happy. 'On the one hand, there has always been tension between the victims and the responses given by the State. On the other, there’s a sector of society that is afraid to address this issue because they feel that there is some justification for trampling human rights,' she said.

However, she highlighted that 'this will be a museum in progress, a museum that can be expanded, as it will be open to reflection and discussion.'

On Dec. 10, at the ceremony in which the museum’s foundation stone was laid, President Bachelet herself addressed the issue: 'There may be different interpretations of the causes for the breakdown of democracy, there may be different interpretations of the legacy of the authoritarian regime, but there cannot be differences as to the human cost that Chile paid.'

© Inter Press Service (2008) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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