Location: Journalist José Carrasco Tapia n75, University of Chile, or what is now the Center for Advanced Research in Education (CIAE), Santiago, Chile.
Date: December 8, 1993.
Event: Publication of the Rettig Report
Documentation: Paz Errázuriz, Tevo Díaz
Other People/Associations: Tevo Díaz, Luis Alarcón (Zapallo), Carmen Berenguer
Institution: Universidad de Chile
Description: In the years following the dictatorship, the Yeguas del Apocalipsis decided to intervene in the politics of memory as related to the victims of the military regime, recognizing the still-unfulfilled demands of the organizations made up of both survivors and family members of the victims. On December 8, 1993, Pedro Lemebel and Francisco Casas intervened in the basement of a building that, during the dictatorship, functioned as the headquarters of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and later of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE). At the time of the intervention, the building was occupied by the University of Chile’s School of Journalism. They read the names of the victims identified in the report of the National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, better known as the Rettig Report, which aimed chiefly to establish a register of the human rights violations committed during the military regime in Chile. However, the process of establishing an official version of the crimes of the dictatorship evaded the holding of trials for those responsible. Lemebel and Casas gathered the friends and family of victims and read aloud the name of each victim acknowledged in the report. They sat with their backs to the audience, their torsos bare, with a camera transmitting a live feed of their faces to a television monitor. 500 glasses of water had been placed on the floor, along with two glasses filled with dirt on a table. At the same time, Carmen Berenguer handed out the text Tu memoria dice minada (Your Memory Says Mined). The title of Lemebel and Casas piece refers also to Pablo Nedura’s Canto General (General Song). With this intervention, the Yeguas del Apocalipsis expressed solidarity with the demands for justice made by the families of the detained and disappeared.