Chile faces its dark history by tracking down torture centers

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Miami Herald

Posted on Wed, Jul. 30, 2008
Chile faces its dark history by tracking down torture centers
By JACK CHANG

This quiet town nestled in the hills of central Chile has a horrifying history.
In 1978, in a stone oven on the town's outskirts, the Roman Catholic Church found the bodies of 11 poor farmers and four youths who were executed by Chile's military dictatorship. Police had accused the victims of being leftist subversives and arrested them five years earlier, but no charges were ever filed.

~snip~
As Chile and other countries wrestle with whether it's better to exhume their dark pasts or to leave them buried and try to move on, the current, elected government of President Michelle Bachelet, who herself was detained and tortured by the U.S.-backed regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, has moved to make that black period in Chile's history part of the country's national heritage.

Official estimates have found that the Pinochet regime, which ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, carried out the political executions or was involved in the disappearances of nearly 3,200 people in its campaign to root out opposition leaders and left-wing dissidents. Tens of thousands more were tortured but survived.

Now Chilean officials and human rights activists are working to find more than 800 sites where the country's military government committed its gravest crimes.


Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/v-print/story/623651.html

[ck4829]

1. K&R for the victims of Pinochet

[Judi Lynn]

2. The US ambassador during those dark days was David Popper:

Obituaries
David H. Popper, 95; Ambassador to Chile During Pinochet Era
By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2008; Page B07

David H. Popper, 95, a career Foreign Service officer who became U.S. ambassador to Chile months after Gen. Augusto Pinochet overthrew socialist President Salvador Allende, died July 24 at Georgetown University Hospital of complications from a fall last week.

Mr. Popper had experience in politically volatile countries, having completed a tour as ambassador in embattled Cyprus before arriving in Chile in 1974.

Mr. Popper spent the next three years balancing U.S. policy to support anti-Communist military regimes, against public demands from Congress and humanitarian groups that the Chilean junta stop killing, jailing and torturing its political opponents.

The New York Times reported in 1974 that Mr. Popper was warned by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to separate the issues of human rights and military aid.

When the ambassador is said to have ignored Kissinger's warning by challenging high-level Chilean defense officials on their human-rights record, Kissinger cabled the embassy in Santiago: "Tell Popper to cut the political science lectures" to the Chileans.

John Dinges, author of "The Condor Years," on the Pinochet era, said Mr. Popper's staff members "universally said he had tried to walk a fine line between promoting the Kissinger policy of 'defend, defend, defend' Pinochet -- that's a quote from the Chile desk officer -- and letting the officers report to Washington on the human rights violations."

Dinges said Mr. Popper "presided over the delivery of such an ambiguous message on human rights that the Pinochet government heard what they wanted to hear -- that the U.S. supported the dictatorship, including the repression."

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/30/AR2008073003069.html



He must have laughed his head off
when they gave him his Nobel Prize.
My God.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Naturally, the Miami Herald thinks there are "two sides" to this story and treats

support for Pinochet as a respectable position.

"Many Chileans continue to support Pinochet, who died in 2006, and the country's still-powerful military has resisted some attempts to turn facilities into human rights monuments."

They do note that Pinochet supporters are fuckwads (indirectly): "Just the creation of the torture sites registry sparked threatening phone calls to the ministry, Schmidt said."

Still, the statement that "Many Chileans continue to support Pinochet" should be treated with the disgust of all civilized human beings that it deserves--comparable to, say, "Many Germans continue to support Hitler." Are Miami Herald editors and journalists civilized human beings? Sometimes it's hard to say.

-----------

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they DID publish this. Imagine the Miami Herald printing the truth about U.S.-backed nazi fuckwads in South America--20 to 30 years too late to save any leftist lives! Wow! They really deserve kudos for that. And what about the extermination of the leftist opposition in the Miami mafia's pet country, Colombia, on-going this year? Not so much.

[Judi Lynn]

4. The more you see from the Miami Herald, the more you wonder HOW McClatchy continues to have its name

connected with it, just as it seemed impossible Knight-Ridder would EVER allow that kind of writing in its newspapers. The Herald caters to the crowd of burned-out, chased out right-wing extremists from all the violent fascist dictatorships, juntas, all over Latin America and the Caribbean.

It's the place everyone heads who has lead death squads, or military squads led by S.O.A. grads doing death squad work, or bloody coups, or who has sold out his fellow countrymen, like "Goni" from Bolivia and his officials. One book I saw said it looks as if the violent, fascist governments in South America have vomited upon the U.S.'s southern shore.

We regularly see countries taking their former gov't, military officials to court after locating them living in Miami.

Ultra-hate radio spews constant fascist hate speech 24/7, even giving out addresses, phone numbers, etc. to people in town they consider political enemies. It's the only town in the world where you're likely to see a day of each year named for a mass-murdering genocidal maniac they adore as one of their own, like airline bomber, Orlando Bosch.

When the Herald used to attempt to write legitimate articles, the publisher, David Lawrence, his staff, and his family started getting death threats to the point Lawrence and wife had to hire people to start their cars for them every day, and newspaper vending machines were jammed with gum, then covered with feces all over town.

A moderate radio news commentator, Francisco Aruca has had his offices bombed, and his staff beaten when a crowd broke into his studio to get him, and, finding him gone, beat the bejesus out of the personel they did find. Miami radio personality, Emilio Milián got in his car after his show, started it, and lost both legs instantly in a bombing which ordinarily would have killed him on the spot. His crime was speaking out against the political violence, calling for moderation!

Miami is the one and only town EVERY single Presidential candidate streaks to visit, and even leftists end up talking like raving Hitlers just to butter up the scum, and get those precious Florida electoral votes lined up.

It's possible within our lifetimes, as more people move into Miami, that deadly fascist block is eventually going to be diluted to the point it loses its punch. Until then, Miami will continue to contribute the vile stench of vicious, racist, murderous right-wing reactionary fascism we've had to share the country with since the 1960's.

The oddest thing to happen journalistically in Miami is the fact that a couple of their Spanish version of The Herald, called El Nuevo Herald have gotten on the bad side of Álvaro Uribe by printing information they've uncovered about Uribe's connections to the right-wing paramilitary narco-traffickers, even interviewing Pablo Escobar's old mistress who confirmed a fast friendship, cooperation between Uribe and Escobar spanning years. They found themselves on Uribe's eternal #### list, and they'll never be free of that again, since he has publicly targeted and excoriated them.

Very un-Herald like developement, to say the least! He's one of THEIRS!

[Peace Patriot]

5. Thanks for history, Judi! I didn't know about these Miami horrors to journalists.

But reading Miami Herald stories I can certainly see the intellectual, moral and spiritual violence being done--in their crapass writing and their egregious lies. I'm not surprised that the Miami mafia--that the Miami Herald serves so slavishly--also blows journalists' legs off. Degradation of language and thought--as Orwell taught us--goes hand in hand with actual killing and repression.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Here's the article I read about it back in 2000. Since then, a LOT of other right-wingers

from Central and South America have also moved into the area, especially more Venezuelans joining the crowd of Venezuelans who have always kept second, third homes in South Florida:

May/June 1992
TRYING TO SET
THE AGENDA IN MIAMI

Bashing the Herald is only part of Jose Mas Canosa's strategy

by Anne-Marie O'Connor
O'Connor, who is based in Miami, is Latin America and Caribbean correspondent for Cox Newspapers.

The Miami Herald usually takes and assumes the same positions as the Cuban government. But we must confess that they were once more discreet about it. Lately the distance between The Miami Herald and Fidel Castro has narrowed considerably. . . . Why must we consent to The Miami Herald and ElNuevo Herald continuing a destructive campaign full of hatred for the Cuban xile, when ultimately they live and eat, economically speaking, on our support?

Jorge Mas Canosa, chairman of the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation, in a local radio broadcast, aired on January 21 and printed in full in El Diario las Americas.

The revelation that The Miami Herald and its Spanish-language counterpart, El Nuevo Herald, were in bed with Cuban leader Fidel Castro must have confounded the editors of the Cuban Communist party organ, Granma, since the Havana daily has repeatedly portrayed them as right-wing tools of the eternal CIA campaign against the thirty-three-year-old revolution.

Anywhere else, Mas Canosa's remarks might have been ignored. In the darker recesses of Miami's exile community, however, his words were clearly a call to arms. Within days Herald publisher David Lawrence, Jr., and two top editors received death threats. Anonymous callers phoned in bomb threats and Herald vending machines were jammed with gum and smeared with feces. Mas Canosa's Cuban American National Foundation quickly denied responsibility and condemned the hijinks, but Mas's words were highly inflammatory in a city where public red-baiting has served as a prelude to bombings and, in past years, murder.

That was in January, but editors at the Herald still feel besieged. Foundations ads saying "I don't believe The Herald" in Spanish are appearing on Dade County buses. Lawrence has heard that foundation people are sounding out advertisers over whether they would support a boycott -- a troubling prospect in a recession.

Coverage of the foundation and Cuba is now carefully scrutinized, Herald reports say. "There has been a watershed in how we operate with Cuban questions," says one staffer, who requested anonymity. "Before the campaign, Cuba issues were dealt with in a routine way."

Executive editor Douglas C. Clifton concedes that he "probably" reads Cuba-related copy more thoroughly now than before. "It's good sense," he says. "When you are the subject of a potential circulation boycott, an advertising boycott, an intense public relations campaign to attack your credibility, I think you'd be foolhardy not to insure that everything you put in the newspaper is something that you don't have to after the fact say, 'Oops, I wish we hadn't done that.'" He goes on to point out that "we have written lots of critical stories, potentially controversial stories and columns about Cuban issues since this began."

More:
http://backissues.cjrarchives.org/year/92/3/miami.asp

~~~~~~~~~
The man metioned in the article above, Jorge Mas Canosa, died a few years ago, which allowed a little breathing room into Miami, as his Cuban American National Foundation had appeared to control the "exile" community with an iron fist, a group which has sponsored terrorism against Cubans and against leftists around the world. They are the employers of various world-"famous" bombers/mass murderers like Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles, etc., according to Luis Posada Carriles in a series he did with New York Times reporters Ann Louise Bardach and Larry Rohter.