Chile welcomed the world with a heart-warming and uplifting ceremony to open the Pan American Games on Friday night.

The festival of sport takes place at an emotional time in the South American country as the people commemorate 50 years since the overthrowing of democratically elected president Salvador Allende by a US-backed coup.

What followed was nearly two decades of torturous reign by General Augusto Pinochet, who ordered the killings of more than 3,000, the internment of 80,000 more and the torture of tens of thousands of Chileans.

And in this country you are never far away from reminders of those dark times. Indeed, in the Estadio Nacional, the site of the opening ceremony, the 50,000 seats are nearly all a vibrant red save for a small section of what at first appears 15 rows of crumbling stone.

On closer inspection, though, it is a national memorial to the 20,000 people imprisoned at the National Stadium in the two months after Pinochet murdered his way to power.

Prisoners were generally tortured beneath the stadium and often beaten against the concrete structures below the stadium’s surface before they were all killed or moved to other torture sites so that Chile could play a football match against the former Soviet Union in November 1973.

The memorial in the stadium reads: “A people without memory is a people without future”, so after a rousing rendition of the Chilean national anthem, and unlike Games past, this opening ceremony begun with painful memories and melancholy music.

Severe, brown, angular structures left not only me with the feeling of tanks. A lone lady in blue danced on the central vehicle before camouflaged dancers, perhaps soldiers, were next to appear.

The mood was sombre and lasted for what seemed hours before it was lifted by a lone birdcall to herald the flight of winged gymnasts dressed as the many-coloured Rush Tyrant bird taking to the skies to welcome dancers wearing the indigenous costumes of the many different Chilean groups to suffer persecution in the last few years.

They danced, the music quickened, the voices of people watching in the stadium began to be heard. The military hardware moved to form a giant line and person by person, group by group, the tanks were engulfed by the movement of Chilean people.

Amid acclaim from the stands the dancers departed and a powerful female voice spoke out about Chile, her resilience, her strength, her beauty and her people.

The speech ended with the words: “Chile is now and is the future. It is where the world begins. Welcome to our house.“

It was then the party truly started as the athletes began their walks into the stadium for an event that would have not been possible even 30 years ago.

First came Argentina, then Antigua and Barbuda were followed by Aruba, but next came a sobering sight.

Into the stadium came a group of about 60 sportsmen and women behind the Pan Am Games flag. It was hard not to feel sorry for athletes unable to wear their country colours or fly their flag on such a momentous occasion, a fate Bermuda came worryingly close to after the World Anti-Doping Agency imposed punishment for not having up-to-date legislation. The issue was resolved just seven days before the Games started.

Back to the stadium and in walked Bahamas, Barbados and Belize, closely followed by yes, our favourites, Bermuda.

Resplendent in pink Bermuda shorts and blue blazer, Emma Harvey and Conor White held the flag to lead our small team into battle against bigger, but certainly not better, nations. The biggest cheers from the stands were reserved for the home athletes, who must have felt taller than the Andes mountains, which provide a stunning backdrop to these Games.

After the teams had all taken their seats in the stand and a mini concert from Los Jaivas (name means “the crabs” and they looked like Chile’s version of the Rolling Stones), the Pan Am flame was walked through the crumbling stone steps of the national memorial by Kristel Kobrich, one of Chile's greatest swimmers.

She handed it to Chilean football great Ivan Zamorano, who passed it to shooter Alfonso de Irraizuaga.

He gave it to tennis players Fernando Gonzales and Nicolas Massu and they teamed up with the final recipient, 93-year-old Lucy Lopez, a medallist at the 1951 Pan American Games in Argentina.

Lopez was the perfect person to light the flame, a metaphor for the previous stunning couple of hours. It’s important to remember the past, but this festival of sport is about celebrating the present and the future.

Let the Games begin.