Rusty rail a gruesome reminder of Chile ‘death flights’
In a museum in Chile, a piece of rusty railroad serves as a gruesome reminder of the long-gone military dictatorship’s practice of dumping dissidents into the ocean.
On display since last week at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, the exhibit, encrusted with molluscs, is believed to have been used to sink the body of one of the hundreds of victims of the Augusto Pinochet regime of 1973 to 1990.
Just over a meter long, it was recovered from the seabed ten years ago by police divers following up on information from an ex-soldier.
“It is a piece of tangible and emotional evidence of a policy of extermination... of making all traces of a crime disappear,” the museum’s head of collections and research, Maria Luisa Ortiz, told AFP.
The dictatorship of Pinochet, who took power in a coup, left more than 3,200 victims, according to authorities, many assassinated or forcibly “disappeared.”
The whereabouts of 1,162 people remain unknown to this day.
The piece of rail is displayed in a glass case in the museum’s “Discoveries” section, along with a piece of rust-stained rope and a bolt found with it.
‘Speaks for itself’
The discovery formed part of an investigation into the so-called Caravan of Death, a dictatorship-era death squad that traveled around the country by helicopter to execute supporters of socialist president Salvador Allende, who Pinochet ousted.
The operation in September and October 1973 resulted in the murder or disappearance of 93 political prisoners.
Forty-eight members of the military have since been tried in the case and 27 convicted.
Pinochet and general Sergio Arellano, whom the president had put in charge of the operation, were not tried due to ill health.
Pinochet died of a heart attack in 2006 aged 91, without ever being brought to account for his crimes.
“A piece of rail does not find its way into the sea on its own. Someone put it there for a purpose. The item speaks for itself,” said Ortiz of the exhibit.
Death flights
It is not known which particular part of the gruesome Caravan of Death chapter the rail is connected to.
In one incident, Arellano’s men executed 16 prisoners in a city called Copiapo in the Atacama desert, burying 13 in the local cemetery. The whereabouts of the remains of three is still unknown.
In the northern city of Calama, the soldiers killed 16 people whose bodies were buried in the desert.
But more than a year later, when relatives started asking about the detainees, they were unearthed by the military and taken elsewhere for reburial.
Two weeks later, the remains of five victims were dug up once again.
This time they were wrapped in sacks, loaded into a plane, and thrown into the sea, according to investigators, in one of the many so-called “death flights,” dumping victims dead or alive.
The piece of rail, rope and bolt were handed over to the museum at the order of human rights judge Mario Carroza.
And while their exact origins are unknown, the items are “something historical, something significant... as a symbol, and that is why they were given” to the museum, the judge told AFP.
It is a piece of tangible and emotional evidence of a policy of extermination... of making all traces of a crime disappear.
Maria Luisa Ortiz