Dirty Wars and Democracy

The Economist, Jan. 7, 2010

IT IS 25 years since Brazil moved from dictatorship to democracy, but its army remains surprisingly unreformed. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was rudely reminded of this just before Christmas when he signed a decree calling for a truth commission to investigate torture, killings and disappearances during military rule between 1964 and 1985. Within 24 hours the heads of the three armed forces threatened to resign along with Nelson Jobim, the defence minister. Lula seemed quick to retreat. He was reported as saying the government would think again.

Argentina and Chile have not only had such commissions, but have jailed many former military officers. Brazil’s dictators were less bloodthirsty. Even so, 300-400 leftist opponents were killed or disappeared under the military regime and several thousand were tortured. But before gradually handing power back to civilians, the generals passed a blanket amnesty for “political crimes” by the government and by armed leftist groups. Their successors have allowed only limited civilian control over military affairs.

Read the rest of this entry »

New York Times, December 11, 2009 (AP)

BUENOS AIRES (AP) — A former navy spy goes on trial Friday in the torture deaths of two French nuns, a journalist and three founders of a human rights group that he infiltrated during Argentina’s military dictatorship.

Known as the blond “Angel of Death” for his choirboy looks and reputed ruthlessness, Alfredo Astiz, a former captain, is accused of playing a crucial role in the efforts of the 1976-83 military junta to eliminate leftist dissidents and suspected sympathizers.

To infiltrate the rights groups, a youthful Mr. Astiz posed as the brother of one of the thousands of Argentines who were abducted and presumably killed by security forces at clandestine torture centers.

Read the rest of this entry »

New York Times, Dec. 8, 2009

ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

RIO DE JANEIRO — A judge in Santiago ruled Monday that a former Chilean president, Eduardo Frei Montalva, had been poisoned and charged three people connected with the Pinochet dictatorship with murder in the 28-year-old case.

The former Chilean president Eduardo Frei Montalva, in an undated photograph.

Alejandro Madrid, a judge with the Court of Appeals, said there was evidence that Mr. Frei, who was president of Chile from 1964 to 1970, was poisoned with low doses of mustard gas and thallium in the months before his death on Jan. 22, 1982.

The poisoning at the Santa María Clinic in Chile’s capital compromised Mr. Frei’s immune system, the indictment said, and made him too weak to survive surgery for a stomach ailment, which the original autopsy had ruled as the cause of death.

The indictment charged six people in connection with the killing. A doctor connected to Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s army, a former intelligence agent under the general and Mr. Frei’s driver were charged with murder. Two doctors who were alleged to have falsified the autopsy report were charged with covering up the killing, and a third was charged as an accomplice. Read the rest of this entry »

Many people sang songs that made Victor Jara a national icon

Thousands of people have attended the funeral of Chilean singer Victor Jara, who has been reburied 36 years after his death in a military coup.

Well-wishers scattered flowers as his cortege made its way to a cemetery.

Jara was one of the most prominent victims of the 1973 coup that brought Gen Augusto Pinochet to power.

His body was exhumed in June so that a court could clarify the circumstances of his death. It was established that he had been shot more than 30 times.

‘Advancing in justice’

Jara’s British-born widow Joan, now in her 80s, led the funeral procession as it wound through the streets of the capital, Santiago.

Finally, after 36 years, Victor can rest in peace President Michelle Bachelet In pictures: Jara reburial

The coffin was draped in the singer’s trademark red-and-black woollen poncho.

The BBC’s Gideon Long, in Santiago, said it was an emotional morning, not only for Victor Jara’s family, but for hundreds of Chileans who lost loved ones during the years of military rule.

Some well-wishers brought guitars, and many sang the songs that made Victor Jara a national icon, our correspondent says.

Jara’s remains were reburied in Santiago’s general cemetery.

Earlier, thousands of people paid their last respects to the singer during a three-day wake in the capital.

Victor Jara: one of more than 3,000 victims of the 1973-1990 military rule

“Finally, after 36 years, Victor can rest in peace,” said Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, who was herself persecuted under the Pinochet regime.

“But there are also lots of other families that want to rest in peace, and that is why its important that we keep pressing forward in the search for truth and justice, so that Chile can rest in peace. Victor Jara is with us!”

Victor Jara was admired as a theatre director as well as for his folk songs and was a member of the Chilean Communist Party.

New evidence

The singer was among thousands of people rounded up in the early days of Gen Pinochet’s right-wing military coup, which ousted the elected leftist President Salvador Allende.

He was taken to the Chile Stadium in Santiago where he was tortured and killed. His broken body was found a few days later.

Authorities reopened the investigation into his death last year, after new evidence was presented by his family.

Earlier this year a former army conscript, Jose Adolfo Paredes Marquez, was charged over the killing. He denies responsibility for Jara’s death.

The officer or officers who ordered his killing have never been formally identified.

More than 3,000 people were killed or disappeared during military rule in Chile from 1973 to 1990.

AP, Nov. 5, 2009

SAN SALVADOR — El Salvador’s president says the country will award its highest honor to six Jesuit priests murdered by the army in 1989.

President Mauricio Funes says the National Order of Jose Matias Delgado awards are a “public act of atonement” for mistakes by past governments.

They will be presented on Nov. 16 to mark the date 20 years ago when soldiers killed Spanish-born university rector Ignacio Ellacuria, five other Jesuits, a housekeeper and her daughter.

The killings sparked international outrage and tarnished the image of U.S. anti-communism efforts after it was found that some of the soldiers involved received training at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Funes made the announcement on Tuesday.

In Chile, “moment has come” for ex-soldiers to reveal secrets of Pinochet dictatorship

By EVA VERGARA, The Associated Press

SANTIAGO, Chile

Hundreds of former military draftees rallying outside Chile’s presidential palace were asked Sunday to come forward and reveal crimes they committed and witnessed during Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.

The draftees have long feared that if they name names and reveal where bodies are buried, they will face prosecution by the courts or retaliation by those who ordered them to torture and kill.

But now the information they once promised to carry to their graves has become both a heavy psychological burden and a bargaining chip. By offering confessions, some of these now-aging men believe they can improve their chances of getting government pensions and mental health care.

“Perhaps today is the day when the moment has come, for us to describe what we saw and what we suffered inside the military bases, the things that we witnessed and that we did,” said Fernando Mellado, who leads the Santiago chapter of the Former Soldiers of 1973.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Jan Roch, BBC, Sao Paulo, Oct. 27, 2009

Twenty four years after the military left power in Brazil, the government is to create a Truth Commission to investigate crimes committed by the security forces between 1964 and 1985.

Brazil is the only country in Latin America which has not investigated deaths, disappearances and torture which took place during its dictatorship, or put alleged perpetrators on trial.

Although the number of victims is far smaller than those who died during military rule in neighbouring Argentina and Chile, nearly 500 people were killed or disappeared in Brazil. Thousands more were tortured, exiled or deprived of their political rights.

All attempts to bring people to justice have foundered on the blanket provisions of the 1979 Amnesty Law.

This not only authorised the release of political prisoners and the return of exiled opponents, but amnestied all political crimes and “connected crimes”, which was understood to mean torture.

Now, just a year before he leaves office, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has decided to set up a commission to investigate crimes committed during the dictatorship. Several of his ministers were themselves arrested and tortured by the military.

Read the rest of this entry »

Latin American Herald (Caracas), Oct. 17, 2009

SANTIAGO – The Chilean government said it will invoke a controversial Pinochet-era anti-terrorism law to prosecute acts of violence in the southern region of Araucania, where armed Mapuche Indian militants have set two trucks on fire over the past 48 hours.

“We’ve taken the decision to invoke the Anti-Terrorist Law to prosecute these groups of people who only want to cause disorder, commit crimes and stir up trouble in a region that wants a peaceful path” to resolving land disputes, Deputy Interior Minister Patricio Rosende said.

“We’re not going to allow or tolerate actions of this type again by these groups,” Rosende said, referring to the protesters’ burning of two trucks and other acts of violence in recent days.

Read the rest of this entry »

NPR, September 2, 2009:

Listen to the Story

A judge in Chile has issued arrest warrants for more than 100 former security officials. They are accused of the worst killings and other human rights violations during the rule of General Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990. Peter Kornbluh, director of the Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archives in Washington, talks with Ari Shapiro about the crimes committed during the so-called “dirty war.”