In Chile, memory endures without an official ceremony

On the 53rd anniversary of Chile's 1973 coup, President José Antonio Kast's government broke with three decades of tradition and declined to hold the customary official remembrance event at La Moneda palace, where Salvador Allende died as the military took power. Kast, a conservative who took office in March and once praised the coup as a 'liberation,' said in a radio interview he could not ask Chileans to remain 'condemned' by their history.

Without an official gathering, Chileans organized their own: families visited the Memory and Human Rights Museum, candles were lit outside former torture sites, and crowds gathered at the National Stadium once used for detentions. Former President Gabriel Boric, who hosted international leaders for the 50th anniversary three years ago, said Chile 'doesn't need official ceremonies to remember its history' because it cannot be erased.

Kast's government has also defunded human rights programs and scaled back search efforts for the disappeared, a shift that tracks with polling showing roughly a third of Chileans now believe the military 'had reasons' to overthrow Allende. Academics and activists say the retreat from institutional remembrance is more aggressive than in other right-wing governments, even as informal commemoration persists among younger generations.

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