National Search Plan for the Disappeared During Chile's Military Rule to Be Announced

On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the coup that led to the disappearance and killing of thousands in Chile, Gabriel Boric, the country's president, will announce a new national search plan. The plan to trace and find the disappeared individuals during General Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship is set to be announced on Wednesday. According to The New York Times, the leftist government's plan comes just days before the fiftieth anniversary of 'the coup that toppled one of Latin America's most stable democracies' and 'ushered in a 17-year dictatorship that imprisoned, tortured, and killed thousands of its opponents.' During the military regime in Chile, from September 1973 to 1990, 1,469 people went missing. The New York Times reports that only 307 of them have been found and identified. This is the first time since the end of General Pinochet's rule that the Chilean government is making a national effort to find the disappeared. Previously, efforts to identify the missing were mainly carried out by the families of the victims. Additionally, the burial sites of the deceased were identified only through judicial files. Gabriel Boric's plan in Chile will centralize and digitize a vast amount of judicial files and other scattered archives from government agencies and human rights organizations using special software. The plan will also fund the exploration of sites where victims may be buried or places where excavation work has been halted for years due to budget shortages.