Photo: Carmen Esquivel

Havana, September 11 (RHC)-- With tributes to the victims of the dictatorship and calls to search for missing detainees, Chileans remember today the 51st anniversary of the coup against the Popular Unity government.

On September 11, 1973, tanks and military planes attacked the La Moneda Palace and other offices and overthrew the government of President Salvador Allende.  Augusto Pinochet, who was then commander in chief of the army, led the uprising that gave way to a 17-year dictatorship, during which more than 40,000 crimes against humanity were committed, including torture, murders and disappearances.

Fifty-one years after those events, there are still more than 1,100 people whose whereabouts are unknown.

Under the slogan “The years of impunity will not silence our cries for justice,” the Chilean Communist Party and the Young Communists held a march on Wednesday from La Alameda Avenue to the monument to the former president, in the Plaza de la Constitución.

The pilgrimage passed in front of the gate of Morandé 80, the place where Allende's lifeless body was removed on the day of the coup.

A day of commemoration also took place in the Villa Grimaldi Peace Park, which during the dictatorship (1973-1990) functioned as a center for kidnapping, torture and extermination of opponents.  (Source: Prensa Latina)