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Patio 29, Chile

Category: Attraction

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México 706-884
Recoleta
Región Metropolitana
Chile

Santiago, Chile Print route » S33° 24' 30.6" W70° 38' 54.6"   (-33.4085, -70.6485) Start navigation »

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Patio 29 is a common grave 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 1991, 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, which families of the victims contest.
The burial grounds became Chile's first cemetery to be designated a protected national monument in 2006. The site serves as a symbol for the human rights movement and the 1973 coup's disappeared. As such, Patio 29 became part of the Bachelet government's "symbolic reparation" program. Annual marches against the coup end at the site.

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