SANTIAGO: Silvia Munoz has searched for decades for the remains of her father, who was executed during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Thirty-six years later, she hopes her DNA will help solve the mystery.
Munoz and hundreds of others have given blood samples to a government DNA database in a renewed attempt to identify loved ones who disappeared under Pinochet.
“I still have my doubts,” Munoz said, “but I’m hoping to finally have a definitive answer.”
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, who was imprisoned and tortured during the 1973-1990 dictatorship, has launched a nationwide media campaign to encourage family members of “the disappeared” to contribute to the DNA database.
According to the Chilean government, 3,195 people disappeared or were killed during Pinochet’s iron-fisted regime, and 1,183 people remain unaccounted for, leaving many victims’ families waiting for justice.
In August, Chilean courts ordered arrest warrants for 129 people accused of helping Pinochet stamp out critics of his military rule. A museum to honor the victims is scheduled to open later this year.
Previous attempts to use DNA to locate remains faltered. Government forensic experts mistakenly identified at least 48 bodies buried in unmarked graves at a Santiago cemetery between 1991 and 1996.
The error triggered a widespread backlash and protests by groups representing the families of the disappeared.
In response to the public outcry, Bachelet called for a genetic database to help identify hundreds of remains unearthed over the years. The new database produced encouraging results when the body of Nelson Araneda Loaiza, a leftist political activist, was identified earlier this year.
That discovery and the possibility of finding others previously unaccounted for prompted the government to take steps to re-open the report first published in 1991 that recognized the victims of human rights abuses.
Congress is expected to pass a law this month that will create a national human rights institute and re-open a truth commission for six months.
“This will give people that didn’t want to, or couldn’t, or didn’t know about the original commission the opportunity to register their families,” said Maria Luisa Sepulveda Edwards, head of a presidentially appointed commission on human rights.
Fewer than 400 people have come forward to register, far below the thousands the government had envisioned when it created the database.
Some families may be trying to avoid reliving the pain of losing loved ones, said Ariel Dorfman, a Chilean-American playwright and human-rights activist.
“The loss is not something that happens once, but happens over and over again, especially if the person is disappeared,” Dorfman said.
