50 years after the coup d’état, the Museum of Memory and Human Rights intends to highlight the unrestricted value of democracy and human rights, over the violence and institutional breakdown represented by September 11, 1973. Thus, the institution aims to underline the importance of democratic coexistence as a way of resolving differences and resolving political crises.
This was announced in a meeting with the press held this morning, in which the newly assumed executive director, María Fernanda García, stressed the “important challenges we face: what society we want to be, and especially how we approach our memory, our heritage and our history”.
The president of the Board of the Museum, Marcia Scantlebury, meanwhile, recalled the origins of the Museum, when President Michelle Bachelet commissioned her to work to build this space.
“The objective of this Museum was to show what had been made invisible, to show it especially to that 50% of people who at that time had not been born when these events occurred, a percentage that today is much higher,” he said.
Congress Performance
To kick off the 2023 program, the anniversary event, this Wednesday, January 11, will offer a staging prepared especially for this occasion by the Congress group, with a story by the actresses Gloria Münchmeyer and María Gracia Omegna.
This morning, Pancho Sazo, leader of Congress, said that “for us it is an honor, a privilege and a duty to be here, in the heart of Chile. To be able to sing, more than to all pains, to tenderness, to love, to sing as a kind of exorcism, of incantation against amnesia. We want to offer a song of great hope.”
Measured visits
Meanwhile, from March, on the 11th of each month, personalities from the world of culture, politics, social movements, among others, with an outstanding career during the dictatorship, will be summoned to accompany mediated visits to the main exhibition of the Museum. The proposal includes incorporating voices from different generations, as a way to encourage transversal dialogue and promote critical reflection on the country’s recent past.
Another of the outstanding activities will be the project of dance and citizen choir “50 years + of 100 voices. The tribute of the people to the victims of the dictatorship”, led by the Hermanxs Ibarra Roa Theater Company.
The proposal implies an open call to participate in a singing, dancing and staging workshop, through which it will seek to investigate the Museum’s archives, and open a dialogue between these archives and the participants of the workshop.
In this regard, Gopal Ibarra said he wishes that “memory and human rights take this country 50 years after the coup. It is time for the people, for citizens to be the ones who make this tribute, to take the stages and for their dreams to be realized.”
September 11
A highlight of this year’s activities will be the commemoration of the day of the coup in September with a large public event, for which the playwright and actress Nona Fernández, together with the playwright Guillermo Calderón, are working on a scenic proposal.
In this regard, during the meeting with the press, Nona Fernández said that “it is an enormous challenge that is posed to us.”
“What we are devising is to have an experience that somehow summons us to that collective exorcism, and that also helps us to think about our democracy. A commemoration that speaks from the present, that occupies our great memory to illuminate our future, and that helps us to think and defend human rights now, to defend our democracy now. Any commemoration we make of the 50th anniversary of the coup has to be thinking about the present and the future,” he said.
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