Memories Of Bloody Coup Still Haunt National Soccer Stadium by David Wood
Memories Of Bloody Coup Still Haunt National Soccer Stadium
by David Wood
January 16, 2017
A decade after General Augusto Pinochet died, Chileans still feel the legacy of his regime and its horrific actions on a daily basis—and perhaps nowhere more tangibly than in soccer. Despite the celebrations that marked Chile’s victory in the Copa América Centenario in June 2016, soccer is still a highly sensitive area of Chilean culture. At the heart of it all is the country’s national stadium, the Estadio Nacional, in Santiago.
The morning after the bloody 1973 coup that brought Pinochet to power and left democratically elected president Salvador Allende dead, tens of thousands of Allende’s supporters were detained by the military, first in another sports stadium, the Estadio Chile, and other centers in the capital. (Among those held was singer-songwriter Víctor Jara, after whom the venue was eventually renamed.)
Within days, thousands of these detainees were transferred to the Estadio Nacional. It is estimated that a week later there were 7,000 prisoners being held there, including around 250 non-Chilean nationals. Over the course of the next three months, some 40,000 men and women were imprisoned. Some of them were tortured and executed.
When democracy returned to Chile in 1990, the government launched a commission to investigate the human rights abuses of the Pinochet era. Its report published details of more than 2,500 deaths and disappearances that resulted from political violence under the regime and described the Estadio Nacional and the Estadio Chile as “the most notorious detention centers in the capital.”
More:
https://sports.good.is/articles/chile-reclaims-soccer-stadium-pinochet
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Estadio Nacional, in Santiago, with fascist Pinochet's prisoners
