Southern Summer, Argentina, Chile and Y Wladfa Gymreig 31st Jan

The top thing to do in Santiago according to Tripadviser is, by far, the Museum of Memory and Human Rights. This is a museum dedicated to telling the complete truth about what happened during the Military Junta led by General Pinochet between the years of 1973 and 1990. The site is four subway stops down the tunnel from our apartment. Santiago has a very clean and user friendly system and we soon arrive at the museum

This interesting museum is on four levels and makes much use of multimedia presentation. Contemporary video recording and the recorded voice telling of personal experiences is both compelling and shocking. The thing that always strikes me when experiencing this kind of thing is "it happened in my lifetime" Did I realise? What did I do about it? Better renew my membership to Amnesty International.  Of course it's the same old story all over the world. The Right wing dictators doing "what's best for the country" crushing the "communist" opposition with detention, torture, and murder. The people of the country are repressed and denied human rights. Meanwhile the leaders bleed the country for their own ends, nepotism is the order of the day and the only future planning for the country is how to keep the leaders in power. OK rant over. This museum is important because it's very rare to see such openness and honesty in the way a state records its own history, warts especially. To think that the UK offered Pinochet sanctuary from extradition for some time beggars belief. As you know, I am not normally kind to religion but the Catholic Church amongst others were prime movers in the resistance to Pinochet and in trying to restore rights to the people.  Photography is not allowed within the museum  (strange irony?) so I have imported an image from the website which shows the entrance area. 

The symbolic map of the world is made up from images of systematic  human rights abuse from 30 different countries round the world. The room is entitled "Human rights Universal challenge". The museum quickly took up three hours and could easily have been more. Time for a bit of outdoor.  We headed for Santa Lucia Hill another viewpoint with garden and religious paraphernalia. The gardens are themed to countries or personalities, there is for example a Darwin garden. It was hot and slopey but good fun.

 I think the reflections that glass buildings offer now are terrific, they do, of course rely on the sunshine.

Our apartment block is the one above the tree. This little chap was sitting on the wall having a good look at us.

 Back to the flat to eat and to discover two events that could radically affect what happens to us tomorrow. Read tomorrow's blog to find out what they are, and if we survive on plan.