There is no museum yet for the thousands that were disappeared or killed under his 17 year dictatorship, yet Augusto Pinochet has a museum in his honor in Santiago de Chile.

2244 O’Brien Street is one of the Chilean capital’s most controversial addresses: the former home of one of South America’s most notorious dictators, General Augusto Pinochet.

Today, two years after the death of the notorious dictator, the house is opening as a visitor attraction.

Displays include an extensive collection of model soldiers, a throne-like chair used for afternoon breaks, treasured statues of Napoleon, and the uniform Pinochet wore when leading the 1973 coup that overthrew the Marxist president Salvador Allende.

The centrepiece of the museum, in the affluent neighbourhood of Vitacura, will be the general’s fully restored office. The rest of the exhibit comprises display cabinets filled with military awards and gifts received from around the world, including a samurai sword from Japan and – oddly, given famously tense relations – a medal from Cuba.

The permanent exhibition has been is funded by the Pinochet Foundation, which was established in 1995 to promote the former president’s legacy and is now based at the house. Their target markets are, according to the foundation director, Major General Luis Cortes Villa, foreigners and young people.

Young people, meaning those who didn’t grow up under a dictatorship or know what it was like know someone who was disappeared. Seems like the idea is to rewrite history and make Pinochet, just another Chilean President.

Via / The Guardian