Sara Braun Municipal Cemetery

The Unknown Indian

In 1929 a marble works on Diego de Almagro Island was attacked and a guard, David Leal, was killed. According to the researcher Carlos Baeriswyl, an unidentified Indigenous man was found dead nearby soon afterwards. His remains were brought to Punta Arenas and buried beside Leal’s, in a grave with no headstone.

About a decade later a plaque was placed: “The unknown Indian arrived out of the mists of historical and geographic doubt.” In 1967 a local woman, Magdalena Vrsalović, credited the grave with granting her a favour and campaigned for a monument; Edmundo Casanova’s bronze statue was installed on 18 December 1969.

It is now one of the best-loved folk shrines in the city: people come to ask him for help and leave candles, flowers, coins and plaques asking for work, health or a safe journey. The Red Cross collects the money left there for charity.

Source:

• El Cuaderno Digital, «El Indiecito de Punta Arenas», 25 de septiembre de 2018.

The gate that never opens

Sara Braun paid for the cemetery’s grand portico, built between 1918 and 1923, more than thirty years before her death in 1955. The legend says she set one condition: that the central gate never be opened again once her coffin had passed through it. Some add that it will open again only for a president, or a Nobel prize winner, from Magallanes.

No document confirms it. The historian Mateo Martinic, who read her will, found no such request and calls the story a myth. We tell it the same way: as something people here say.

Source:

• Chilevisión, «¿Será cierto? El increíble mito que vincula el cementerio de Punta Arenas con Gabriel Boric», 2021.
• Chile Travel (Sernatur), «Cementerio Municipal de Punta Arenas, uno de los más bellos de Chile», blog, 2024.
• puq.city research brief 05, «Local lore and anecdotes», §5 (cemetery legends).