Chilean President Gabriel Boric announced today a National Search Plan for more than a thousand persons who disappeared during the dictatorship (1973-1990) and whose whereabouts are still unknown.

Santiago de Chile.- “There are 1,192 disappeared detainees who still we do not know where they are, it is not acceptable, it is not tolerable, we cannot naturalize them,” said the president during a ceremony at the La Moneda palace to commemorate the 49th anniversary of the coup against Salvador Allende.

On September 11, 1973, the Chilean army carried out a military coup to depose the Popular Unity government and installed General Augusto Pinochet in power.

During the 17 years of military dictatorship, more than 3,200 people were murdered or disappeared, and to date, hundreds of families still do not know what became of their loved ones.

The National Search Plan will work closely with the organizations of relatives of the victims, assured the president.

Before a group of guests at La Moneda, Boric recalled that “49 years ago these walls witnessed a serene firmness with which a group of Chilean men and women tried to defend democratic institutions while being overwhelmed by the force of arms.”

Today we remember Allende, but not only him -added the head of state- and referred to those who suffered humiliation, persecution, or exile, the victims of repression, and those who fought to recover democracy.

Memory, he said, is not a purely intellectual activity, an object from the past, but a mobilizing exercise. (PL)