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Part I: Chile's Enduring Rifts

Patio 29, a section of Santiago’s General Cemetery, where political dissidents and supporters of Salvador Allende were buried anonymously in mass graves. To this day, not all of the people have been identified correctly, and many families still aren’t sure what happened to their loved ones. In 2006, the government declared the site a national monument. Image by Jon Lowenstein/NOOR/Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Chile, 2013.

Two pages from the diary of eleven-year-old Francisca Marquez at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, in Santiago. On January 11, 2010, then-President Michelle Bachelet—who, like her mother, was a torture survivor—presided over the museum’s official opening. The site is dedicated to honoring the victims of human-rights violations during Pinochet’s dictatorship. Visitors can listen to the final speech President Salvador Allende delivered from the Presidential palace as bombs dropped, read secret decrees written by Pinochet after the coup, and watch a video of a woman fighting with green-suited Carabineros to place a flower in a park to honor her murdered husband. Image by Jon Lowenstein/NOOR/Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Chile, 2013.

After the coup d’état in 1973, forces loyal to Pinochet were infamous for killing political dissidents and throwing their bodies into the Mapocho River. Hernan Gutierrez, who owns a chocolate shop in the coastal town of Algarrobo, remembers days of walking to school as an eighth grader with his father and watching bodies, some of them decapitated, float down the river. Image by Jon Lowenstein/NOOR/Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Chile, 2013.

A woman watches a performance at Santiago’s Villa Grimaldi, an infamous site used for the detention, interrogation, and torture of political prisoners during Pinochet’s dictatorship by the DINA (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, the secret police). Converted into a peace park in 1994, the site is dedicated to preserving the memory of those who suffered. Nearly all of the buildings on the property were reconstructed from survivors’ memories, as the DINA destroyed all that they could when the facility was closed. Visitors can see some of the rusted railroad spikes that weighed down victims’ bodies as they were tossed into the ocean from a helicopter. Image by Jon Lowenstein/NOOR/Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Chile, 2013.

Ana Gonzalez points to her late husband, Manuel Recabarren, in the only surviving picture of the couple with their six children. Image by Jon Lowenstein/NOOR/Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Chile, 2013.

A man stands near the entrance of the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago. Image by Jon Lowenstein/NOOR/Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Chile, 2013.

A gallery of small black-and-white photographs of the disappeared, which hangs on a wall that spans the second and third floors of the Museum of Memory and Human Rights. Image by Jon Lowenstein/NOOR/Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Chile, 2013.

A woman walks in a rose garden that honors the women who were detained and killed at Villa Grimaldi. Image by Jon Lowenstein/NOOR/Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Chile, 2013.

Ana Gonzalez, pictured in her home in Santiago. Image by Jon Lowenstein/NOOR/Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Chile, 2013.

The Aviation Fountain, which lies in the Providencia neighborhood. Image by Jon Lowenstein/NOOR/Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Chile, 2013.

Hugo Rojas, a professor at the University of Alberto Hurtado in Santiago. Rojas advocates for human rights and studies the memories associated with the Pinochet era. Image by Jon Lowenstein/NOOR/Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Chile, 2013.

A statue of Salvador Allende is guarded by a Carabinero outside La Moneda, Chile’s Presidential palace. Image by Jon Lowenstein/NOOR/Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Chile, 2013.

In the week leading up to Chile’s 2013 Presidential elections, the photographer Jon Lowenstein and his brother, the writer and Fulbright scholar Jeff Kelly Lowenstein, are documenting this unique, historic period. Forty years ago, General Augusto Pinochet and his military overthrew President Salvador Allende; today, even after the Chilean transition to democracy and Pinochet’s death, tensions remain.

The Lowensteins, sponsored by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, are exploring the ways in which the country has recently begun to confront its past more publicly, from the monuments and parks that commemorate the thousands who were murdered during the Pinochet years to the national-television broadcasts of formerly banned footage of the coup d'état. Nevertheless, for many Chileans, the attention now given to these events is still met with raw emotion. Jeff recounts an interview with one Chilean this week:

Ana Gonzalez, a feisty eighty-seven-year-old, survived many detentions and the disappearances of her husband, two of her sons, and a pregnant daughter-in-law. Gonzalez pays tribute to her murdered relatives by continuing to wage a joyful struggle for justice: “When you take this path of liberation … you know that you can die at any moment … but forgetting is death. Because of that, memory is essential.”

Check back in throughout the next two weeks for additional coverage.