numbers

A couple of weeks ago, R and I went to see the recently inaugurated "Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos", the Museum of Memory and Human Rights. This is what it looks like

from outside

inside

This is a wall full of pictures of disappeared and openly executed people, 3185 in total.

In September 1973 alone, there were 600 deaths, 270 “disappeared persons” and 12,800 kidnapped and tortured.

Altogether, almost 28,5000 Chileans were victims of torture and imprisonment by the military regime. Of these, 3600 were women. According to one of the Truth Commissions, 150 persons younger than 18 were executed, 39 disappeared, 1244 children were kept in prison and tortured.

Another topic is the Remembering in itself. When, where, who, and how?

Inside the museum, there is an exhibition of a guy: An artist, who was taken and tortured for decades by the regime (no political affiliation whatsoever), among other things he was locked up in isolation, in a tiny dark cell, for years. Not surprisingly, his exhibition focusses on cages. He explicitly tells you to "put on" one cage, which is dangling from the ceiling. When we did this - here's proof:

- a lady scoffed at us, saying How Dare We, and when R tried to tell her that it is the artist who wants you to "try the perspective of a bird" (true citation) she snapped Don't Talk To Me (you scum, editorial edit)

I hate shouting laughing tourists around the holocaust museum as well. Unfortunately, it's an invitation to hypocrisy. All very Feel-Deep-Now and Show-Stricken-Face, and Busy-Thyself-With-Thy-Neighbors.

The stories you can read are heartbreaking, the numbers jarring. Now they have a museum, apart from the many smaller, more or less incomprehensible/ random /pompous memorials around town (mostly Santiago).

In my totally unscientific and supremely subjective point of view, the country is still very much in the Get-over-it, Let's-not-talk-too-much-lest-we-step-on-somebody's-toes, Still-afraid-of-everything, and mostly in a Get-well-soon - phase ("well" in the sense of developed, rich, economically healthy). Or to put it another way: In German terms, it is 1965, and things should flare up soon. Maybe electing Piñera helps for that. Call me Cassandra, Moby.