FORGETFULNESS AND MEMORIES

Ironically, the remaining Marcoses themselves have recovered quite beautifully since 1989.

In the days and weeks after the Marcoses fled Malacañang Palace and wound up in Hawaii, anti-Marcos leaders had vowed that there could be "no reconciliation without justice." But 21 years after the 1986 'People Power' revolt that ousted Marcos and gave the Philippines a new start, it could be said that not only has there been little justice, a lack of political will has ensured that amnesia would take the place of reconciliation.

A whole generation of Filipinos, born after 1986 and without direct experience of things Marcosian, has reached adulthood. For them Marcos is the odd but elegant woman named Imelda, who has just launched a jewelry and accessories collection, and seems to have a fondness for shoes (which appear in many of her designs). Marcos is also Imee, a member of Congress, and her brother, Ferdinand Jr., the governor of Ilocos Norte. But perhaps the most famous Marcos nowadays — aside from Imelda — is 24-year-old Borgy Marcos Manotoc, Imee's son and the late strongman's oldest grandchild, a ramp and commercial model and TV personality.

The Marcoses grace in glossy lifestyle magazines, many of whose articles do not even describe Imelda as the widow of a dictator, or refer to Ferdinand Marcos as an authoritarian ruler (he is just a "late president"). The sosyal publications cite the Marcoses' "achievements" — such as the Hollywood actors they flew in during the '70s and early '80s — without mentioning the other part of this truth, that this extravagance was done at the height of an economic crisis, or praising the Film Center without mention of the fact that scores of workers died there because of the rush to finish it in time for the coming of foreign visitors.

	CONSTANT REMINDER. Marker expresses the hope that never again would Chile see torture the park has seen. [photo by Johanna Son]

A saying above the list of the names of those disappeared or killed at Parque Por La Paz comes to mind: El olvidó está lleno de Memoria or "Forgetfulness is full of memories."

It was at the Parque, which was declared a national monument in 2004, where 4,500 people were tortured and 226 detainees were executed. Apart from the wall where the names of the missing are listed, the memory of some of the desaparecidos — the disappeared — can be seen in their personal effects still kept here, and in tiny plaques with flowers left probably by relatives or friends. "A Los Caídos (To the fallen)," says a plaque from the Socialist Party of Chile, dated 1997. Another tribute to the disappeared says, "Hijos de Chile, hermanos de tragedia. Que sus vidas, su sacrificio, invadan nuestro recuerdo, nuestro amor y la Memoria História de nuestro pais (Sons of Chile, brothers in tragedy. That your lives, your sacrifice invade our memory, our love and the historical memory of our country.)"

Oval markers, done in mosaic, explain the instruments and methods of torture — where the one-meter-by-one-meter cells were, the metal beds where detainees were electrocuted, the tower where many were tortured one by one and then killed, and the area where prisoners' bodies and hands were run over again and again by the regime's vehicles.

CELEBRATIONS AND MOURNING

An eerie silence reigns in the Parque Por La Paz. But it belies the anger toward Pinochet that was in full show even days before his death. Indeed, while Pinochet was still fighting for his life after he had a heart attack, the tabloid The Clinic put his smiling head on a figure of Jesus Christ in the Sacred Heart pose. "De Todo Corazón," said the caption, "¡Juicio Final Ya! (From the bottom of our heart… the Final Judgment now!)"

Two days after Pinochet died last December 10 — Human Rights Day — some 5,000 people did go to the Escuela Militar (Military Academy) grounds to see his body (the government allowed him a funeral as a military chief instead of a state funeral). Hundreds also gathered around La Moneda — to celebrate his departure.

"¡El tirano murio! ¡Allende vive! (The tyrant died! Allende lives!)" screamed the banners that day, as people gathered near the statue of Allende, on the western side of Plaza de la Constitucion, across the same La Moneda where the late president had shot himself with his own AK-47 rifle rather than be caught by the coup makers. "We don't want revenge," one speaker said, "but we want justice."

The chants in the rally-cum-celebration, organized by leftists and other anti-Pinochet Chileans and victims of the former regime waving red banners and flags, soon became louder (¡Asesino! ¡Asesino!) - and certainly more frank than Philippine protest rallies. "¡Lucia, maraca, devuélvenos la plata!" (Lucia, prostitute, return to us the [stolen] money!) the crowd shouted in rhyme and unison, mocking Pinochet's widow. Some yelled that Pinochet's body ought to be dumped into the Mapocho River, where the bodies of people killed by the regime had been disposed of. (Other corpses had been thrown into the Pacific Ocean.) The Argentinian paper Pagina 12 quipped, "¿Que habra hecho el infierno para merecer esto (What did hell do to deserve this [having Pinochet])?"

At the wake, Francisco Cuadrados Prats, grandson of Chile's ex-military chief, whose assassination Pinochet was accused of having masterminded, spat on the late strongman's coffin. Gen. Carlos Prats, Pinochet's predecessor as army commander, was assassinated in neighboring Argentina in 1974.

Yet elsewhere in Santiago that day were Pinochetistas in deep mourning. On television, one tearfully called Pinochet "my savior." Pinochet's 33-year-old grandson, Captain Augusto Pinochet Molina, would later cut into the funeral ceremonies to extol his grandfather as "a man who defeated Marxism, which attempted to impose its totalitarian model" and to criticize the judges who took action against Pinochet.

Pinochet Molina was subsequently discharged from military service for making the remarks. But he quickly bounced back into the public spotlight by saying he was thinking of going into politics to carry on the ideals of his grandfather's "military government."