The Human Rights Archive of Chile is a documentary archive containing information on human rights violations during the Chilean military dictatorship. It was included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in August 2003. [1] The archive has been used as evidence in human rights cases. [2]
The archive contains information about 3,877 human rights violation cases that were heard by Chile's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. [3] [4] This includes around a thousand photographs of missing detainees, as well as audiovisual and press material published between 1973 and 1995 on human rights violations committed during the regime of Augusto Pinochet. It also includes editions of the news program Teleanálisis.
The records that make up the archive belong to eight institutions: [1]
In 2002 the archive was nominated for the UNESCO Memory of the World register, to which it was accepted in 2003. The nomination statement argued that protecting the archive was important for maintaining wider discussion about democracy: "To understand the raison d’être of democracy and respect for human rights, it is necessary to know and remember how the dictatorships functioned." [1]
In the following years, the families and organisations who had contributed to the archive campaigned for the government to give it a permanent home. [5] When the Museum of Memory and Human Rights was opened in January 2010, the archive became one of its collections. [6]
Patricio Aylwin Azócar was a Chilean politician from the Christian Democratic Party, lawyer, author, professor and former senator. He was the 30th president of Chile and the first president to be elected after the absolute rule of dictator Augusto Pinochet, and his election marked the Chilean transition to democracy in 1990.
An authoritarian military dictatorship ruled Chile for seventeen years, between 11 September 1973 and 11 March 1990. The dictatorship was established after the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup d'état backed by the United States on 11 September 1973. During this time, the country was ruled by a military junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet. The military used the breakdown of democracy and the economic crisis that took place during Allende's presidency to justify its seizure of power. The dictatorship presented its mission as a "national reconstruction". The coup was the result of multiple forces, including pressure from conservative groups, certain political parties, union strikes and other domestic unrest, as well as international factors.
Raúl Silva Henríquez SDB was a Chilean prelate of the Catholic Church, a cardinal from 1962. He served as Archbishop of Santiago de Chile from 1961 to 1983 and as Bishop of Valparaíso from 1959 to 1961. Both as Archbishop and in retirement, he was an advocate for social justice and democracy and a forthright vocal critic of the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet—"a constant thorn in the Government's side".
The Archives of Terror are a collection of documents chronicling the repression undertaken by Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner's secret police force during his rule from 1954 to 1989. The documents also proved the existence of Operation Condor, a US-backed campaign of state terror and political repression in South America, founded by the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, with Brazil, Peru and Ecuador joining later. The documents were originally found on December 22, 1992, by lawyer and human-rights activist Dr. Martín Almada, and judge José Agustín Fernández, in a police station in Lambaré, a suburb of Paraguayan capital Asunción. The documents have since been used in attempts to prosecute Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and in several human rights cases in Argentina and Chile.
The Catholic Church in Chile is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope, the curia in Rome, and the Episcopal Conference of Chile.
The military regime in Chile led by General Augusto Pinochet ended on 11 March 1990 and was replaced by a democratically elected government. The transition period lasted roughly two years, although some aspects of the process lasted significantly longer. Unlike most democratic transitions, led by either the elite or the people, Chile's democratic transition process is known as an intermediate transition – a transition involving both the regime and the civil society. Throughout the transition, though the regime increased repressive violence, it simultaneously supported liberalization – progressively strengthening democratic institutions and gradually weakening those of the military.
The first inscriptions on the UNESCO Memory of the World International Register were made in 1997. By creating a compendium of the world’s documentary heritage—manuscripts, oral traditions, audio-visual materials, library and archive holdings – the program aims to tap on its networks of experts to exchange information and raise resources for the preservation, digitization, and dissemination of documentary materials. As of 2018, 432 documentary heritages have been included in the Register, among them recordings of folk music, ancient languages and phonetics, aged remnants of religious and secular manuscripts, collective lifetime works of renowned giants of literature, science and music, copies of landmark motion pictures and short films, and accounts documenting changes in the world’s political, economic and social stage. Of these, 93 properties were nominated by countries from the region of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Museum of Memory and Human Rights is a museum in Santiago, Chile, which commemorates the victims of human rights violations during the military dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet between 1973 and 1990. It was inaugurated by then-president Michelle Bachelet on January 11, 2010, as part of government's commemoration of the bicentennial of Chile.
The Vicariate of Solidarity was a human rights organization in Chile during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. A Catholic organisation, it was created by Pope Paul VI at the request of cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez to replace the Committee of Cooperation for Peace in Chile. The Vicariate of Solidarity aimed to provide assistance to the victims of the Pinochet dictatorship and their families.
Memória Abierta is an alliance of Argentine human rights organizations that promotes the memory of recent human rights violations, actions of resistance and struggles for truth and justice. It contributes to the promotion of human rights and seeks to promote reflection on the present.
Patio 29 is a common grave site in Santiago General Cemetery in Chile, where political prisoners, especially those who "disappeared" during the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, were buried anonymously. The mass grave, the largest of Augusto Pinochet's military government, was used for unannounced and unmarked burials in the 1970s until an anonymous tip alerted the public to its usage. With the return of democracy to Chile in 1990, an exhumation effort through 2006 recovered 126 bodies in 105 graves and identified three-quarters of the victims. A 2005 DNA test later reported widespread identification errors and a new identification database began in 2007. Exhumation authorities report that the site has been fully exhumed, a claim contested by which families of the victims.
The Documentation and Archive Foundation of the Vicariate of Solidarity is a non-governmental organization whose main goal is to preserve and manage the documents, publications, images, and media clippings collected by the former and by the organization that replaced it, the Vicariate of Solidarity. These files are considered part of the history and heritage both of Chile and the Church of Santiago. They are available to the public as instruments of reconciliation and cooperation, with the aim of building a society based on truth, justice and the respect for human rights. The organization also collaborates with the judiciary and the information contained in its files has been used to prosecute crimes against human rights in Chile's recent history.
An arpillera, which means burlap in Spanish, is a brightly colored patchwork picture made predominantly by groups of women. The construction of arpilleras became popular in Chile during the military dictatorship (1973–90) of Augusto Pinochet. Arpilleras were made in workshops organized by a committee of the Chilean Catholic Church and then secretly distributed abroad through the church's human rights group, the Vicariate of Solidarity. The production of arpilleras provided a vital source of income for the arpilleristas, many of whom had been left in a state of financial insecurity due to widespread unemployment and forced disappearances of their husbands and children, who became known as desaparecidos.
Los archivos del cardenal is a Chilean TV series that premiered on 21 July 2011 on Televisión Nacional de Chile (TVN) and was based on the human rights defense work carried out by the Vicariate of Solidarity during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990). The first season had 12 episodes, achieving an audience rating of 17.5 points for its first chapter. The last episode of the season got 8.0 points, and was broadcast live at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights before more than 2,000 people in a giant screen projection.
The Committee of Cooperation for Peace in Chile was a Chilean peace organization founded in October 1973 by an inter-religious group led by the Archdiocese of Santiago in order to support human rights of those persecuted by the regime of General Augusto Pinochet.
The Association of Families of the Detained-Disappeared (AFDD), is a Chilean human rights group that formed in Santiago in 1974 in the wake of detentions and disappearances of thousands of people by the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.
Fabiola Alicia Letelier del Solar was a Chilean lawyer, noted for her activism and defense of human rights in Chile and Latin America. She was the founder and president of CODEPU (1980–1998), and a plaintiff lawyer in the case surrounding her brother Orlando Letelier's assassination in 1976. On 23 July 2018, she was awarded the National Human Rights Prize, awarded by the National Institute of Human Rights.
Carmen Hertz Cádiz is a Chilean Communist Party politician and lawyer who participated in various institutions for the protection of human rights that arose as a result of the systematic violations committed during the dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990. She worked with the Vicariate of Solidarity, the Social Aid Foundation of Christian Churches (FASIC), the National Corporation for Reparation and Reconciliation, and the Ministry of the Interior's Human Rights Program. She became the human rights director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after Chile's transition to democracy, and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 2018.
María Paulina Saball Astaburuaga is a Chilean politician and social worker. She was a minister during the second government of Michelle Bachelet.
The Museum of Solidarity Salvador Allende (MSSA) (Spanish: Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende) is a contemporary art museum located in Santiago, Chile, named after Salvador Allende, president of Chile between 1970 and 1973.