El Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos in Santiago seeks to tell the story of the military dictatorship in Chile.
A sprawling, modern building near Quinta Normal, the museum displays multimedia exhibitions built on news stories and testimonials, from the golpe de estado to the referendum. It is a beautiful project and makes use of a wide variety of source material. One multilevel wall provides a space for photos of the disappeared and others lost during the dictatorship, a place for reflection where visitors can sit and look at the faces of these people rising up an enormous wall.
The day I visited there were at least three school groups touring the galleries at the same time. Grouped in whispering clusters of ten or twelve teenagers, these visitors moved about the galleries together, identified by their burgundy, dark blue or green school uniforms. Docents, representatives of the museum, briskly explained highlights of the chronological exhibits, always emphasizing the importance of memory. “At this museum we want people to remember these stories, however painful, so that what happened in Chile can never happen again,” I heard the docents repeat. They invited students to crowd around touchscreen video displays to watch news clips of events that happened more than twenty years before they were born. What do these kids think about events that have so shaped their country? Do the black and white videos and seventies mustaches seem like a world away for texting teenagers staring at sleek touchscreens?
The opening of this museum came with much debate about issues that are still fresh and raw in the political, social and economic spheres of Chile. No effort is perfect, and hopefully in the future more perspectives on this painful period can be represented side by side. But for now, it’s a big step towards memory.
As Mark Twain pointed out, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
