Museum of Memory: Chile’s record of weeping and forgetting
It was the elegant pipe that finally provoked the tears. The pipe was lying beside a medical card showing a photo of a man in his twenties with thick bushy hair and a full beard. Carlos Lorca Tobar was a surgeon who disappeared on June 25 1975. He was the general secretary of the Socialist Youth Party, and a vocal leftie who opposed the dictatorship in Chile. "He always smoked a pipe," says Patricia Abarzúa wistfully. "Look, there’s a photo of him with his friends and he’s smoking there." Abarzúa leads me to a larger exhibition case containing a suit once worn by Arnoldo Camú. He was wearing it when he was assassinated by the national army. She points out the cluster of bullet holes in the trousers and jacket. Camú was a lawyer and an adviser to president Salvador Allende, who was deposed when General Augusto Pinochet staged a military coup. "He was very good looking," I mumble, for want of something to say. The Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago explains what happened af...
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