Sunday 8 December 2013

Places of memory in Chile: Memorial in Valparaíso

This is the monument for the detained-disappeared and persons executed for political reasons of the region of Valparaíso (Monumento a los Detenidos Desaparecidos y Ejecutados políticos de la Dictadura Militar de la Región de Valparaíso), Chile's second city and major port. And, as you can see here, it also acts as a convenient seat for students of the nearby university.

The memorial was designed by a team formed of sculptor Eliana Herrera, architect Hernán Bustamante and anthropologist Javiera Bustamante, who won a public competition. 


The stone base of the memorial contains the names of 177 victims of the dictatorship between 11 September 1973 and 10 March 1990.



The top part of the memoria resembles a wave and is formed of 86 iron sheets of varying heights. The designers said that it represented the sea as a source of life and symbolised a fragment of the history of Chile. The names of the men and women were "engraved there forever to defeat forgetting". 


Memorial por desaparecidos y ejecutados (El Mercurio de Valparaíso)
Emplazado en Avda. Brasil y Rodríguez:VALPARAÍSO INAUGURA MEMORIAL EN HOMENAJE A SUS 177 VÍCTIMAS DE DERECHOS HUMANOS (ddhh.gov.cl)

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