Santiago, Chile

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of going to Santiago for 3 days and 2 nights. Originally, I went to Santiago with my program to visit El Museo de la Memoria y Derechos Humanos, in English the museum of memoria and human rights, for my history of Chile class. However, I stayed in with three friends from the program.

Our day Friday started bright and early with our bus leaving from the university at 7:45am. After our 2 hour bus ride to Santiago, we stared at La Moneda which is the Chilean version of the White House. We got there just in time to see the changing of the guards. There were tons of people surrounding La Moneda taking pictures, drums going, and of course, plenty of carabineros (Chilean police officers) changing position. From there, we went to the museum. The museum was one of the most eye opening places I have ever been to; in my journal, the only relation I could think to give it would be going to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany. The museum is a historical museum about the Golpe de Estado, the coup d'état, on September 11, 1973 in Chile.

For those who don't know much about the history of Chile, from 1970-1973 Chile had a president, Salvador Allende, who identified heavily with communism. Although he did a lot of good things for Chile, because of his ties to the Soviet Union, the U.S. placed a blanket around Chile so that other countries couldn't do trade with them. Because of this, during Allende's reign, there was severe rationing in the country. Eventually, Allende was forced out of office and his successor, Augosto Pinochet, ruled in a dictatorship for the next 17 years. During this dictatorship, Pinochet approved many actions, such as torture, against human rights. Pinochet took hundreds of thousands of Chileans from their homes and tortured them, eventually killing them.

The museum talks about the coup d'état and what happened in Chile during Pinchoet's reign. There were interviews with people who we're tortured and had their families taken by Pinochet, and it was one of the saddest things I've heard. The amount of pain that existed during that period of time is unreal.

I spent Saturday and Sunday exploring Santiago with three of my friends. We went to the central market that sells fruits, vegetables, and fish and had lunch at one of the fish restaurants. I got a salmon and it was the best salmon I've ever had. Considering I didn't start eating fish until five months ago, who would have thought I would have started loving it. We also went to Cerro San Cristóbal which is a big hill in the middle of Santiago that overlooks the entire city. It had amazing views of the city and you could see the Andes behind the city.

Overall, it was a really fun weekend in Santiago and I will definitely be going back soon.