If you have been following along, you know that we went to the General Cemetery yesterday and that that was quite a long post. However… even with all the information we gave you we apparently missed quite a bit of things in there. So? That means we go back with some locals to help us out! From our times in museums you can probably imagine that my travel partner doesn’t like leaving things half done/seen. Even more so if it is an excuse to walk around and see more of the city! So we set off towards the cemetery again. Yesterday we showed you the below trophy, but didn’t really notice the other part of it. Here you can see more of the mural. You can tell that even if you don’t follow football (soccer), your neighbourhood has been claimed for one team or another.
But in no time we’re back to what we showed you yesterday, the “side entrance” to the General Cemetery of Santiago. Just off to the right is the metro station called Cemeteries. It is plural because there are quite a few cemeteries right around here, but we only entered this one, so this is what we show you.
Now, we bring the map from yesterday to help us out a bit.. but we told you we got some help from locals and they know where they are going. We immediately enter and turn right to get to the huge monument below. It is actually very big, although it doesn’t come across in the below picture.
Along the top of the memorial it says “All of my love is here and it has remained stuck to the rocks, to the ocean, to the mountains.” It is from a poem called “Canto a su amor desaparecido” (Song to their disappeared love”). And that is the introduction you need to this Memorial del Detenido Desaparecido y del Ejecutado Politico (Memorial to the Disappeared and Executed Political Detainees). As the name clearly tells you, this is a memorial to those that were either killed or disappeared during the military dictatorship in Chile (1973-1990). As you can see, the names seem almost endless. A sign at the site explained that there are still processions that come here every 11th of September to commemorate the victims of the dictatorship.
On either side of this larger monument you have these smaller ones. The first is dedicated to executed political detainees.
This second one is dedicated to those who were disappeared.
Now, you can kind of see what this memorial is doing. It has a central monument commemorating everyone with niches on either side for the bodies to be buried here. But, if the monument says that it is to those that were disappeared, you can imagine that not all of the victims can be found here. You may be able to even see that many niches are actually without any decoration and they have a few words written across them. They say “place the body,” and we can only imagine that these are empty waiting for the day that those disappeared are found and given proper burials. We are aware that this has previously happened, and maybe that’s why there are people buried at the end of the monument to those who were disappeared. But, we will let you know that many people will not be able to find their love ones because the military would often fly out over the ocean and throw their detainees there to their death. But, that doesn’t mean that the family members don’t still commemorate their loved ones or hold out hope to one day find them.
(Later while walking around the cemetery our locals told us that there is a “yard” in the cemetery that is where the executed people were thrown during the dictatorship without any markings. Supposedly now they all have little crosses to count the number of people that were found here, but there weren’t any signs and our locals weren’t sure exactly where it was so we didn’t want to post pictures we weren’t sure of. And, none of us were sure as to whether some of those bodies would have been exhumed, identified, and then placed in the above memorial).
With that sombre story, we continue walking through the cemetery and it doesn’t get any better. We arrive at the Memorial for Diversity Daniel Zamudio Vera.
As you may be able to understand from the name and the colours on the memorial, it is a memorial to those who have been killed because of their sexual orientation with small name plates indicating those who have been killed because of homophobia and transphobia. It was dedicated to the memory of Daniel Zamudio Vera who was killed in 2012 in Santiago. It is said to be the second monument for the LGBT (Spanish acronym) in Latin America.
Continuing through the cemetery we come to the burial site of Violeta Parra. She was a singer-songwriter and artist who is extremely famous in Chile. Just like we explained yesterday with Victor Jara, we would be surprised if there were many (if any, really) Chileans that didn’t know her. She died in 1967, but her legacy lived on much longer because of her inspiration in other artists like Victor Jara and the renewed interest in Chilean folk music through the “New Chilean Song” movement.
We continue walking. If we don’t continue we won’t see anything because the cemetery is actually huge, haha. But that’s okay, we know that you know that we like to walk. We eventually run into Poor Christ. You may remember that yesterday we ran into Rich Christ and we hadn’t found Poor Christ, but now we have found both. And remember, this is called Poor Christ because it is in the section of the General Cemetery that is considered more “down to earth” than the huge mausoleums we showed you yesterday where the famous, wealthy, and presidential are buried.
As we keep walking through the cemetery, with a plan to eventually make it back to Victor Jara’s burial site, we keep our eyes open and keep looking this way and that to see what we see. I don’t think you can really understand just how big the cemetery is without coming for yourself… But, that doesn’t mean we don’t spot some things that aren’t on any signs. It also helps to have locals with you, haha.
One such thing we “randomly” spotted is the above burial site of Miguel Enriquez. Our eyes were obviously drawn because of the coloured cloth in front of the niche. Our local guides gave us a bit of information, and we will of course pass it on.
Miguel Enriquez was the founder of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (the Revolutionary Left Movement, MIR). This movement began out of the University of Concepcion in southern Chile in 1965, and it would eventually adopt a model that they believed would lead to a working class revolution in Chile. To try to achieve this they would take up arms against the Chilean government and would urge others to do so as well in 1969. This eventually led to the banning of the group in Chile. The MIR supported the presidency of Salvador Allende, however they continued to work on their own in the background. They are said to have tried to infiltrate the armed forces of Chile because they suspected that a military coup was coming. So, you can imagine that when the coup did come, they were not happy. They took up arms against the military dictatorship and did various operations against them. (One such operation was carried out around Lake Panguipulli where we were earlier in this trip). However, the military dictatorship would hunt them down and is said to have killed many of their leaders and members in extra judicial killings. (Miguel Enriquez would eventually die in a gunfight with the police in 1974). MIR currently continues to exist and is part of the Juntos Podemos Mas (Together we can do more) coalition of left-leaning political parties in Chile.
And just a bit further than that… we find Victor Jara again.
Hmmm… this doesn’t look like what we found yesterday…. But, there’s a plaque here commemorating this spot, something that we didn’t see at yesterday’s burial site. The plaque explains that he was a famous folklorist who was also an actor and musical director. At the bottom of the sign it says that because of his political ideology he was ________ in September 1973. The blank is actually blank on the sign. Very weird, we’re not sure if people have scratched it off or what… But we told you yesterday that he was executed within the National Stadium by the military dictatorship. But now we start to wonder… why is there this place here with an informational plaque, but the other burial site without any information? Very curious. We tried looking and asking around, but no one seems to know for sure. There is only one explanation that we can think of…
As we explained yesterday, after the execution of Victor Jara his body was thrown outside of the National Stadium. At this point there were some people who recognized him and secretly returned the body to the family. Because of what had happened the family secretly buried the body. So, our guess is that this was the location of that secret burial. There may not even have been a name to indicate who was buried here at the time. Eventually, with the return of democracy in 1990, his body may have been exhumed and moved to the burial site we showed you yesterday. Of course, this is entirely speculation as we could not find any actual information… but we do know that he was secretly buried back in 1973 and that there are two burial sites for Victor Jara at the General Cemetery in Santiago.
But with that we’re done our time in the cemetery. Two days walking around a cemetery seems like quite a long time, haha. But we enjoyed it and think we saw/learned a lot while visiting it. And it’s not as if the cemetery is dark and gloomy or anything, there are often colourful walls all over the place, like below.
Although we showed you more murals from within the cemetery yesterday, they can’t compare to those while walking around Santiago. It really seems that everywhere you look you find more and more murals. If only all cities were like this!
We take a little “lunch” break after walking around in Santiago (lunch is not eaten at noon in Chile) to recharge, but it’s not long before we start again. But instead of walking we now head into the subway to reach our next stop. But, that doesn’t mean that the walking is over. We purposefully get off at the stop before our final destination so that we can walk just a little bit more. Within this station there were a few artworks to look at… but we’re not sure how to interpret them, haha.
But that’s fine. We’re quickly back above ground and walking towards the National Stadium. We told you all about it with Victor Jara earlier and yesterday, but it is still used today for most major events (concerts, tournaments), many national team games, and many football (soccer) clubs play their games here as well. However, because of what happened to Victor Jara and thousands of others within the stadium, there is a section that is permanently closed as a memorial. We didn’t try to get inside, but it makes sense to see the National Stadium during our World Cup 2022 trip, hehe.
But, back underground we go. We went to the same subway station as before and make our way back into its depths. But, you can see that there are quite a few things to do within this station.
First thing is to find the Swiss clocks. Apparently these were gifts from Switzerland and they are the same clocks that they have used at their train stations since 1944. And they are on the red pillar because, like the Swiss flag, these pillars are crosses that run the entire six floors of this station and are supportive pillars to the entire structure. Interesting little tidbit of information. You can also go into this virtual library and get books loaned to you physically and digitally for you to enjoy along your commute. And finally, a diorama of what this area of Santiago used to be like. A far cry from the huge city that now sits above us!
But with that we’re done our day in Santiago, time to catch the subway and head back!
We finish our day showing you different subway stations as we had to do a few connections before making it back. We’re a little tired now, and it’s time to sleep because tomorrow will be a long, loooooong day. Good night from Santiago!
[As an aside… haha. We include the map to the Santiago General Cemetery here in case you are interested in doing the same type of visit we did and can’t find the map. We didn’t see it online and had to ask “random” men within the cemetery to get it. Enjoy!]
