Chilean Navy’s La Esmeralda, the second largest sail ship in the world and a relic of Augusto Pinochet’s repressive regime in the 1970s, sailed into the port of Kochi on Friday morning as part of its 45,000-km world training cruise, touching 13 ports.
Currently a sail training ship in the Chilean Navy and a marine architectural wonder, the Esmeralda arrived from Alexandria in Egypt after 21 days’ voyage. It will set sail for Cape Town in South Africa on September 9. Even as it set out on its 53rd voyage from the port of Valparaiso on May 4, there were widespread protests over its role in the Operation Condor, a plan to annihilate political rivals, carried out by Pinochet after the military coup in Chile in 1973. The infamous condor insignia still adorns its side. Amnesty International and many other human rights organizations had earlier alleged that the ship had been used during that period as a floating prison and a torture cell, but that was never officially recognized. That, however, has not helped the skeletons from tumbling out of the ship’s board.
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