[ARCHIVO] President of Chile: “As long as the light of memory lives on, nobody will be defeated and nobody will be forgotten”

In the Audience Room at La Moneda Palace, President Michelle Bachelet met with Senator Isabel Allende, Deputy Maya Fernández, as well as Carmen Paz Allende and Carmencita Sepúlveda Allende, family members of former President Salvador Allende who died on September 11, 1973, while La Moneda Palace was occupied by the military dictatorship.

President Bachelet then went to the Los Cañones Patio in the Government Palace, and led the commemoration ceremony together with her Cabinet of Ministers.

After an interfaith prayer, the President of Chile and family members of former President Allende placed flowers on the Memorial Plaques commemorating the events of 43 years ago. They also visited the Blanco Salon, where President Allende of the Unidad Popular Government spent his last moments. In this room, the daughters and granddaughters of the former President left white carnations on the desk of their father and grandfather. President Bachelet left a white rose on the chair in memoriam of the specific spot where Allende passed away.

“These walls evoke a history of the crudest side of humanity, but also of the most poignant acts that we have been capable of. Histories that today intertwine and that we cannot and, above all, don’t want to forget”, said the President in the opening lines of her speech.

She added, “it is precisely because we need to pass on the memory of what we experienced to the younger generations, as well as the way in which we have been able to resolve it as adults. Because it is this past, and no other, that has led up to this moment. Because we can’t hand down a fractured nation to our children and grandchildren; a nation that doesn’t recognize its history or take responsibility for its past”.

During the ceremony, the President announced the person who will take on leadership of the recently created Undersecretariat of Human Rights, whose duties begin in December this year: “I have asked Lorena Fries to take responsibility for this task, to give continuity and momentum from the Government to what has already been done in this area, and to generate fluid interaction with organisms such as the National Institute of Human Rights and the different groups of victims of human rights violations and families of victims of the dictatorship”.

Finally she made mention of the detention and torture center known as “El Hoyo,” which operated in the underground level of the Government Palace, which will be declared a Site of Remembrance because, “along with other sites of which little mention is made, but which hold such painful experiences, such as the underground levels of Banco Estado, of the former Congress or of the Ministry of National Assets, center of operations for the Joint Command, these all form part of this memory that we must safeguard”, she said. She added, “we have an unwavering certainty: as long as the light of memory lives on, nobody will be defeated and nobody will be forgotten”.