Victor Jara's murderers finally indicted -- 30 years after September 11, 1973 coup d'etat against the elected socialist government of Chile began creating the so-called 'free market' military dictatorship in Chile
"The bodes of both men [Victor Jara and Littre Quiroga] and three other victims were later found dumped near a railroad track outside a cemetary; one of the victims remains unidentified. According to the autopsy report, Mr. [Victor] Jara was badly beaten and was shot 44 times." (New York Times, December 12, 2012).
The election of Salvador Allende President of Chile in 1970 led to the organized work under the cooperation of the Nixon administration to overthrow the government and establish a military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet. Above, Allende celebrating his victory in the election which was undone by the U.S. government and Chilean traitors, with the help of cadre from the U.S. labor movement.According to The New York Times and Chilean media, the government of Chile has finally indicted the alleged murderers of Chilean folk singer and revolutionary leader Victor Jara. "Eight retired Army officers were charged on Friday with the murder of a popular songwriter and theater director, Victor Jara, who was tortured and killed days after the 1973 military coup in a stadium that had been turned into a detention center," the Times reported in a December 29, 2012 story.
Despite the work in recent years to expose the murderous onset of the "free market" economy that grew with Chicago help in Chile after the coup d'etat that destroyed the government of Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973, the 30th anniversary of the CIA-organized coup in September 2013 will only allow part of the story to be told.
An untold part of the story will be the role played by American unions, led by AFL-CIO President George Meany, in the anti-communist attacks on truly free unions and socialists around the world. Although it was still in its early stages at the time of the overthrow of the Allende government, the work of the American Federation of Teachers in that project had begun, with at least one AFT staffer in Chile at the time, using access to school and community organizations to create the lists of people who were rounded up by the military in the days following September 11, 1973. Allende himself was dead by then, supposedly a "suicide."
Between 20,000 and 30,000 Chilean citizens, from government officials to leaders of local unions, including teachers, were murdered by the Pinochet dictatorship during the year after the coup. The ability of the military to identify and locate those who led the community in its struggles was facilitated by American unionists who had been working in cooperation with the CIA abroad.
During his time as president of the AFL-CIO, George Meany devoted more organizing energy and resources to working with the American CIA on anti-communist crusades across the planet, while the American unions who whose dollars went to the AFL-CIO national office continued to lose ground. The corporate agenda that was launched during the 1970s and now is hegemonic would have been thwarted at birth if the AFL-CIO were organizing workers both in the USA and across the globe, instead of working to destabilize unions and governments, like the one in Chile. Following the destruction of the socialist infrastructure of Chile and its leadership, the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet brought about what was called a "free market" economy. The Pinochet dictatorship had economic advice from University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman. The students and graduate students who worked with Friedman in Chile became known, infamously around the world, as the "Chicago Boys." Their program, implemented behind bayonets, brought about the privatization of one of the best public school systems in Latin America. Other public programs under attack included social security and health care. Charter schools and other private schooling was promoted by the government.
Some have begun to call the new generation of privatization zealots now working for the federal government in the U.S. Department of Education under Secretary Arne Duncan the "New Chicago Boys," since they are pushing the same programs that their forebears from the same place pushed under the military dictatorship in Chile from 1973 through the early 1990s. Despite enormous pressure to revise the history of Chile by The Wall Street Journal and others, the truth has been coming out more and more in recent years, and many of those responsible for the atrocities have been indicted, including Augusto Pinochet, now deceased.
One of the reasons why the union movement in the USA declined during the final days of the Cold War was that the leaders of the AFL-CIO promoted an anti-communist agenda around the world, spending millions of dollars on activities such as the Chilean coup rather than on organizing workers in the USA.
THE TIMES STORY AS IT APPEARED ON LINE IS BELOW HERE:
Eight Are Charged With Chilean Singer’s 1973 Murder After Military Coup, By PASCALE BONNEFOY. Published: December 28, 2012
SANTIAGO, Chile — Eight retired army officers were charged on Friday with the murder of a popular songwriter and theater director, Víctor Jara, who was tortured and killed days after the 1973 military coup in a stadium that had been turned into a detention center.
Judge Miguel Vásquez charged two of the former officers, Pedro Barrientos and Hugo Sánchez, with committing the murder and six others as accomplices. Mr. Sánchez, a lieutenant colonel, was second in command at the stadium. Mr. Barrientos, a lieutenant from a Tejas Verdes army unit, currently lives in Deltona, a city southwest of Daytona Beach, Fla., and was interrogated by the F.B.I. earlier this year at the request of a Chilean court. Attempts to reach Mr. Barrientos for comment were unsuccessful; his two listed telephone numbers had been disconnected.
Judge Vásquez issued an international arrest warrant against Mr. Barrientos through Interpol Santiago and ordered the arrest of the other seven, who were in Chile. Those charged as accomplices are Roberto Souper, Raúl Jofré, Edwin Dimter, Nelson Hasse, Luis Bethke and Jorge Smith.
Víctor Jara, then 40, was a member of the Communist Party and a leading folk singer in the late 1960s and early ’70s. A day after the American-supported Sept. 11 coup that ousted the socialist president, Salvador Allende, Mr. Jara was arrested by the military at the Santiago Technical University, where he was a professor and researcher, along with hundreds of students, teachers and staff members.
The detainees were bused to Chile Stadium, since then renamed Víctor Jara Stadium, and held in the bleachers for days with thousands of other prisoners, in the custody of army units brought in from various parts of the country.
Chilean songwriter and singer Victor Jara was one of the most famous artists in Chile by the time of the socialist government. Before he was murdered in 1973, the military tortured him, including, reportedly, cutting off his fingers and then mocking him to play his guitar.Judge Vásquez established that Mr. Jara was recognized by military officers, separated from the rest of the detainees and taken to the basement dressing rooms, which were being used to question prisoners. There, he was interrogated, beaten and tortured by several officers, according to the court.
During the Cold War, Irving Brown (above center) was the CIA's labor man in Europe, working against the unions of France and Italy especially. In 1978, Brown was invited by AFT president Albert Shanker to deliver the "International Labor Lecture" to the AFT convention in Boston. Brown died in 1989, and recently American reactionaries have created an "irving Brown Lecture Series" on Wall Street. In 2010, the lecturer was Karl Rove. Brown's work has been well documented in recent years, although it was little know at the time he was invited to address the American Federation of Teachers. On Sept. 16, 1973, when the stadium was evacuated and the prisoners transferred to the larger, open-air National Stadium in the capital, Víctor Jara and a former prison service director, Littré Quiroga, who was also detained there, were taken to the basement and killed. The bodies of both men and three other victims were later found dumped near a railroad track outside a cemetery; one of the victims remains unidentified. According to the autopsy report, Mr. Jara was badly beaten and was shot 44 times.
Mr. Jara’s widow, Joan Turner, a British dancer and a resident of Santiago, was unavailable for comment.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 29, 2012, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Eight Are Charged With Chilean Singer’s 1973 Murder After Military Coup.
By: John Whitfield
! Victor Jara presente !
Much "fear and loathing" was going on here stateside also with the end of the Viet Nam war in sight, to borrow a term Hunter S. Thompson used in Rollingstone Magazine to title a series of articles to expose what was happening to Americans who refused to be part of the war machine. Since communism couldn't be stopped in Viet Nam, the CIA with the support of others, as articulated above, were determined to squash dissent in this hemisphere, this is what seemed to be the mind set. If it weren't for the VVAW, Viet Nam Vets Against the War, and their free speech movement, the peace movement would not have become what it became, as many threw their medals away publicly, as you all know. Some of us dropped out of society and traveled the country penniless, while others led the fight against the war machine by being active in SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, and of course civil rights organizations flourished with SNCC, The Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee, SCLC, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, CORE, Congress on Racial Equality and countless others. Though the Black Panthers had been systemactically targeted with "Cointelpro"
and for example Chicago's "Red Squad" spied on organization after organization, justice seemed to prevail in the end with the SWP, Socialist Workers Party(Militant Newspaper, etc.) effectively filed suit, and winning a court case, etc.
Music, needless to say was part of the movement here, as it was in Victor Jara's Chile. Even after the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in upstate New York, there were enormous outdoor concerts held elsewhere, like the 2nd Atlanta International Pop Festival, in Macon, Georgia. I would like to thank all of you that put up the good fight back then. I was in Santa Barbara, Califronia picking lemons at a migrant fruit picker's camp, when I was informed that I was to report back to the midwest to take a physical, as there was he draft back then.
I told the caller that I had no funds to make it back, and was instructed to go to Salvation Army, who gave me $15. Somehow I made it back to Denver, Colorado, hitch hiking. After washing dishes a while in Golden, selling "Chinook" on the streets, flirting with "Denver Free University", and working on a ranch in Eastern Colorado,I mustered up enough cash to buy a 1960 English Ford. Instead of reporting for my physical however, I decided to drive down to Macon, Georgia. What a beautiful cross-country trip. Upon returning home, I found that the office that the selective service office that housed my papers had been burned down. They kept sending me these papers to fill out to re-classify me, and they made for good practice pitching them into the waste basket. Forgive the ranting, and peace to all you Substance readers. !Victor Jara presente!