Chile commemorated on Friday the 47th anniversary of the coup against President Salvador Allende, nearly a year after the outbreak of a wave of social protest unprecedented for thirty years and one month from a historic referendum.
About a hundred people, left-wing activists and families of victims of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), gathered to pay homage to the socialist president (1908-1973), overthrown on September 11, 1973 by a coup military state.
Read also: Chile: the body of Salvador Allende soon exhumed
The commemoration takes place every year in memory of the 3,200 dead and missing of the dictatorship, as well as the 38,000 people tortured during this period.
This year, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the number of participants was limited.
"The best tribute we can pay to those who gave their lives for the democratic cause, like President Salvador Allende, is to work together for the victory of the yes vote in the October 25 referendum,"
said to the press the president of the Socialist Party, Alvaro Elizalde.
On that date, more than 14 million Chileans will be called upon to vote for or against the drafting of a new Constitution to replace the current one, voted in 1980, under the military regime of Augusto Pinochet.
"It's a year full of hope, more difficult"
due to the coronavirus pandemic,
"but filled with possibilities for real change.
This is the first time in the history of the country that we have the possibility of putting an end to this Pinochist Constitution ”
, declared to AFP Lorena Pizarro, president of the Association of the families of disappeared detainees.
In a message from the presidential palace of La Moneda, bombed during the coup and where Salvador Allende ended up killing himself, conservative President Sebastian Piñera called for
"unity, peace, dialogue"
and urges Chileans to participate in the referendum.
At the same time, clashes took place between some fifty demonstrators and the police at the entrance to the general cemetery of Santiago, where the memorial to the victims of the dictatorship is located, the point of arrival of the demonstration.
Calls were also made for a Plaza Italia rally in Santiago, the epicenter of the social protest against inequalities that had rocked the Latin American country from October 18, 2019 and led the political parties to a historic agreement in favor of a referendum on the Constitution.
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