2023-09-11 01:55:23
Page/12 in Chile
From Santiago
Santiago shuddered on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the coup against Salvador Allende. The march for human rights, in which President Gabriel Boric participated, was disrupted by some incidents caused by groups of infiltrators dressed in black. Six windows of La Moneda were damaged: a more than symbolic fact when one remembers that half a century ago, fighter planes of the Chilean Air Force bombed the presidential palace.
In the morning, Boric and his partner Irina Karamanos joined the march at Morandé 80, the door of La Moneda where the government installed a glass memorial showing the shoes Allende wore on the day of the coup. Through that door the body of the socialist president was removed, after he fought until the last minute leaving his life.
Eduardo Enríquez waving the flag of the Communist Party while standing before the façade of the government palace. This employee in a construction company said that he was marching to honor the leader of the Popular Unity. “Allende was a dignified man, who risked his whole life for our people, for Latin American integration, and who fought against the neo-fascist forces that rose up in our country.”
Boric walked a small section of the march along with leaders from human rights organizations, such as Alicia Lira. The president of the Association of Relatives of Politically Executed was optimistic about the National Plan for the Search for Truth and Justice. The leftist government announced on August 30 the search for 1,100 missing persons.
“For the first time there is a government that sets a precedent as a State by committing to the search for missing people,” Lira told Página/12. And she added: “There were meetings with family groups, with survivors and with memory groups, it was a joint effort.”
The historical facts
September 11, 1973 marked the beginning of a long dictatorship that would cause 3,065 missing and dead and 40,018 imprisoned and tortured. A coup carried out with the connivance of the United States, as confirmed by reports published by Peter Kornbluh, an analyst at the US National Security Archive. This was a covert CIA method that journalist Patricia Verdugo investigated decades ago in her book Salvador Allende. How the White House caused his death.
Since that September 11, the Chicago Boys, as the neoliberal economists who accompanied Augusto Pinochet’s coup d’état were called, led Chile to a situation of greater poverty and inequality. And then the 1980 Constitution laid the foundations for an ultra-neoliberal economic policy.
For Mauricio Godoy this date is a special occasion to mobilize. “Fifty years is to remember the massacre that was perpetrated from 1973: throats were beheaded, burned, detained-disappeared and the terror that lasted 17 years. You have to keep your memory alive. Let it be known where the detained-disappeared are.”
The right does not repudiate
The Chilean opposition has twitched these days. The right-wing parties – National Renewal (RN), Independent Democratic Union (UDI) and Evópoli – refused to sign a document promoted by Boric whose intention was to condemn the coup with all the parties in the country. Former president Sebastián Piñera finally signed his signature, but he will not participate in the commemorative events.
The former conservative president who in 1988 voted “No” to the continuity of the dictator, surprised with his controversial statement in a recent television interview: “The main responsibility (for the coup) lies with the Popular Unity government, which with a minority wanted impose a model of Marxist society”.
With her sign held high that said “We were born to win”, the young Pamela Figueroa, 33, was concerned about the proposals that minimize human rights violations. “We are against the denialism of the right. History cannot be forgotten because history does not advance that way.”
At a time when the ultra-right is growing in several countries in the region, leaders such as the Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the Colombian Gustavo Petro, will be present this Monday at La Moneda. Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou and former president José Pepe Mujica will also participate in the event.
President Alberto Fernández was also scheduled to attend, but the Chilean Foreign Ministry reported this Sunday that he canceled his participation at the last minute because “his agenda was delayed at the G20 meeting,” which is being held in India.
Deputies who justify the coup
Last week, several right-wing legislators left the Chamber of Deputies in the midst of the tribute that the institution paid to three deputies who were arrested and disappeared during the dictatorship. What’s more, Jorge Alessandri, a media politician from the UDI, went so far as to say: “I justify the military coup. We were going down a dangerous path for the country.”
According to the story of sectors of the right, “there is no Pinochet without Allende”, a historical relativism that attempts to justify the coup d’état. In recent times, denialist comments have proliferated, such as that of deputy Gloria Naveillán of the Social Christian party. The legislator called sexual violence during the dictatorship an urban myth.
“Paco, coward, your hands have blood,” shouted a man who was holding up the photo of a missing person under the gaze of the Carabineros who were guarding the road.
Gaby Rivera Sánchez, president of the Group of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees, headed one of the columns together with the Spaniard Baltasar Garzón. For Rivera Sánchez “it is a great emotion to be marching with comrade Baltasar Garzón, with the companions from the family groups, with the deputies.” The former judge became popular in Latin America in 1998 by issuing the international arrest warrant for the Chilean dictator.
Waving the canvas with the phrase “Truth and Justice Now”, Rivera Sánchez affirmed that “the most important thing is the tribute to our fallen on September 11. Today we have more hope to continue looking for our comrades.” His father was assassinated by the dictatorship and his remains were recovered 25 years after the crime.
The memory of Victor Jara
As the march advanced, some groups of black hooded men burst in. The Chilean media made long broadcasts with images of young people breaking windows and attacking militants. Also when they threw objects against the windows of the La Moneda Palace and violated graves in the General Cemetery, among them those of Pinochet’s Jaime Guzmán, creator of the Constitution of 1980.
In the distance, a car was transmitting Víctor Jara’s song “The Right to Live in Peace” through a speaker. The singer-songwriter, tortured and murdered by the Pinochet dictatorship, can rest in peace. Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court ratified the conviction of seven former officers for the Jara crime, which occurred days after the coup d’état. Those who marched visited his grave.
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