The P Word (Chile)

I haven´t been here long and my lack of Spanish makes it difficult to get under the skin of the place, so I could be wrong, but still I´m struck by the absence of any mention of Pinochet here (favourable or otherwise). There are no statues (one way or the other), no memorials to the disappeared, no exhibitions in the national history museum on the dictatorship. In the bookshops a good few volumes on new, smart, 21st century President Michelle Bachelet, and at the back, maybe gathering a little bit of dust, something on Salvadore Allende, but on Pinochet, just nothing. It´s as if the whole time didn´t exist - that the man wasn´t President for 17 years, commander in chief of the army for 25 years until 1998. I go down to the Moneda Palace, scene of that other 11th September, 1973, and find nothing much. No plaques, no history/geography of the coup, nothing really. In a corner at the back of the palace, across the road from the Ministry of Justice (possibly appropriate) there is a statue of Allende amongst various other Presidents, with some enigmatic words from his final radio address from the Palace as the coup was happening around him - "I have faith in Chile and its destiny", but no mention that the elected President of the Republic either committed suicide or was murdered not more than 100m away. And Pinochet - he doesn´t get a statue (though that seems fairly reasonable in the circumstances).

It´s all a big contrast to South Africa. Maybe it´s true that not so many died here, but thousands did, many just ´disappearing´, and it seems all just forgotten, best glossed over. Chile seems happy to be the western liberal state it now is, and we´re all happy to see it that too, but I wonder how people feel who were caught up in the Pinochet repression because there seems remarkably little public acknowledgement of it now - I guess you´re left to deal with it largely alone. That was my impression anyway.