Identification of Human Remains (N.N.) at Patio 29 General Cemetery Santiago, Chile, August 2010

One of the Chilean locations where illegal burials took place more systematically between September 1973 and March 1974 was area 29 of the Santiago General Cemetery where crosses with no name (N.N.) marked the burial place of simple coffins containing sometimes more than one body. It is difficult to know why these bodies were brought to the patio 29 and others left on the streets. The striking fact was that the iron crosses with the name N.N. were visible to everybody but nobody was able to request the digging of the graves and identify those human remains until Chile’s return to democracy in 1990. This work outlines the history of this area 29 of the Santiago General Cemetery and the silence that surrounded this piece of Chilean memory, including the confusion within the process of identification of human remains that has to be sorted with the help of forensic experts and scientists from several academic institutions outside Chile.