Fifty years on, the wounds left in Chilean society by the coup of 11 September 1973 are still very much open. Justice is a long way from being served, secrets remain untold, and the bodies of many of the victims are yet to be found.
Last Wednesday, the government announced a new national initiative to find the remains of 1,162 Chileans who vanished under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and remain unaccounted for. In most cases, the best their families can hope for are fragments or traces of DNA.
After ousting a democratically elected socialist, Salvador Allende, Pinochet rounded up opponents, social activists, and students in Santiago’s national stadium and other makeshift detention centers, where nearly 30,000 were tortured and more than 2,200 were executed.
Almost 1,500 others simply disappeared, and since the end of the junta in 1990, only 307 have been identified and their remains returned to their families, and trials are under way in a last-gasp effort at accountability before the perpetrators die of old age.
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