50 years after the military coup in Chile

This year, we painfully remember one of the most tragic events that our country has experienced, the violent breakdown of democracy in Chile on September 11, 1973.

The consequences of this event were a trail of systematic violations of human rights, people detained and made to disappear, tortured, executed and exiled. Men and women who were victims of a policy of extermination only for thinking differently or for fighting for a fairer country.

Fifty years later, memory becomes respect and reverence for our wounded people, for those who gave their lives, for those who were unjustly taken away from them, for the destroyed families, for those who have not yet closed their mourning and are still searching for their loved ones.

In Calama there were 27 people that the Caravan of Death executed, a few days ago we had the fortune to share with Mrs. Violeta Berrios, President of the Association of the executed and disappeared of Calama, she “combed” the desert looking for her husband, she is recognized for her tireless defense of Human Rights and the search for truth and justice in our country.

Fifty years later, we want our land to never again be stained with blood.

This poem by Hernán Rivera Letelier is a tribute to the victims of the dictatorship.

TO THAT SOMEONE…

 That someone, man or woman,

who fell for you in the dungeons.

To that one who put his hands

so that they wouldn’t tear your fingernails

from your hands.

To that one who took your place on the grill

and screamed and writhed,

and did not vomit your name.

The one who was made to disappear

and whose bones that could have been your bones.

Appear from time to time

As a sign of resistance

To that one who was dragged by you to the wall

And prayed and cried and urinated in the face of death,

And then suffered the ignominy of attending a simulacrum.

The one who faced the firing squad

And was shot, now yes, with real bullets.

Bullets that could very well have been embedded in your chest.

To that dead man on whom today you are standing alive.

To that one who with his life gave you life.

To that someone, man or woman.

Take him or her into your heart

Embrace him in your memory

May the cold of oblivion not touch him.

So that never again in Chile.