Mural in Santiago, Chile. A rough translation of the text ¨the struggle advances across the town¨. We saw this mural on the way to the Salvador Allende Museum on September 10, unknown to us, at the same time there was a massive rally in rememberance of the 1973 coup and its thousands of victims. Despite a new government led by Michelle Bacehlet who for a time was in Australia as a refugee from the Pinochet regime, many of those who committed atrocious crimes during the coup and the 15 year Pinochet dictatorship, remain in positions of power in Chile. We saw some grafitti which asked ¨how can we have democracy when we have a constitution from the Pinochet dictatorship?¨. As well as a struggle for recognition and remembrance of past crimes, in our short stay in Chile we also saw two demonstrations for better pay and conditions - one by hospital workers, and another which we couldn´t really understand but seemed to be about social welfare being denied to sacked workers. Now we´re in Bolivia, it´s clear that the struggle is advancing not only across the town but across the continent.


Some artworks in the Salvador Allende Museum, Santiago, Chile. The Salvador Allende Museum is housed in the former headquarters of the secret police, where thousands were killed and tortured. The collection itself contains artworks donated from around the world. The collection was begun by Allende as an effort to build a collection of international modern art that was truly the property of the Chilean masses. The collection was hidden throughout the dictatorship and now contains a range of art some commenting directly on the coup and the US´s role in it.

For an eyewitness account of the Pinochet coup by British writer Mike Gatehouse clickhere