Ex-Soldier Arrested for Víctor Jara Murder (famous Chilean folk/protest singer)

Source: IPS News

RIGHTS-CHILE:
Ex-Soldier Arrested for Víctor Jara Murder
By Daniela Estrada

SANTIAGO, May 27 (IPS) - A judge in Chile has charged a former soldier in the 1973 murder of internationally renowned Chilean folk singer Víctor Jara. Up to now, the only person prosecuted in the case was the commanding officer at the temporary prison camp where the songwriter was killed shortly after the Sept. 11, 1973 coup led by General Augusto Pinochet.

On Tuesday, Judge Juan Fuentes indicted 54-year-old José Paredes, who is now in preventive detention in the Santiago High Security Prison, where he and another former army conscript had been held incommunicado since May 22 on the judge’s orders.

Fuentes charged Paredes but released the other former soldier, Francisco Quiroz – also 54 years old – for lack of evidence on Tuesday.

Both men, who were 18-year-olds doing their compulsory military service in 1973, were reportedly guarding Jara in the Estadio Chile, the stadium in Santiago where more than 5,000 political prisoners were held and tortured after the coup that toppled the democratically elected government of socialist President Salvador Allende (1970-1973).



Read more: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46998

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http://www.kpfk.org.nyud.net:8090/pledge/catalog/images/VictorJara_A260.jpg http://library.stanford.edu.nyud.net:8090/depts/hasrg/german/exhibit/GDRposters/vjara.jpg http://api.ning.com.nyud.net:8090/files/Re7GTQlS7RwK0iG7ndf28p5b72V7e8RECnL93fZ2uQeqqo4I-qTzA-CNunFOJOspEPsNKMRCtP6AIzWL-bKQDM84HUEDUaZC/wqy35kuxcc1.jpg
Video: Te Recuerdo Amanda
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRmre8ggkcY

Wikipedia:

~snip~
On the morning of September 12, Jara was taken, along with thousands of others, as a prisoner to the Chile Stadium (renamed the Estadio Víctor Jara in September 2003). In the hours and days that followed, many of those detained in the stadium were tortured and killed there by the military forces. Jara was repeatedly beaten and tortured; the bones in his hands were broken as were his ribs. Reports that one of Jara's hands, or both of his hands, had been cut off, are, however, erroneous<5>. Fellow political prisoners have testified that his captors mockingly suggested that he play guitar for them as he lay on the ground. Defiantly, he sang part of Venceremos, a song supporting the Popular Unity coalition<6>. After further beatings, he was machine-gunned on September 15 and his body dumped on a road on the outskirts of Santiago, and then taken to a city morgue.

Jara's wife, Joan, was allowed to come and retrieve his body from the site and was able to confirm the physical damage he had endured. After holding a funeral for her husband, Joan Jara fled the country in secret.

Joan Turner Jara currently lives in Chile and runs the Victor Jara Foundation. The Chile Stadium, also known as the Victor Jara Stadium, is often confused with the Estadio Nacional (National Stadium).

Before his death, Victor Jara wrote a poem about the conditions of the prisoners in the stadium, the poem was written on a paper that was hidden inside a shoe of a friend. The poem was never named, but is commonly known as Estadio Chile

More:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Jara

Please remember Victor Jara, in the Santiago Stadium...es verdad, those Washington bullets again....(Washington Bullets, by the Clash) And please remember what was done by our government...no matter how long ago..... and if you have not read the Shock Doctrine, please do, and try your best to share it with those who do not know, and those who don't want to. Sorry if I'm rambling; I still get very very angry at what my government has done to innocents around the world, and how relatively few Americans know, or would even believe it no matter what kind of evidence they saw.

in Chile during Nixon's Presidency, and with DEEP involvement by our own government, covertly, using millions and millions of our tax dollars, involving control of the media, control of their labor forces to use against Allende, and, as Nixon told Richard Helms, to "make the economy scream" in Chile in order to turn the huge base of support against Allende before destroying him personally.

They had to do this covertly because it was so filthy that upright, moral Americans would have been sick.

It's because of this profound ignorance we still see absolute drooling idiots among us claiming the divine right of the US to use any tactic available to keep the people of Latin America from electing the leaders they want, and instead get them killed and replace them with fascist monsters who serve US business interests.

to eat the horses.

One of my all-time favorite songs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBv49PrR_nY

Somos cinco mil aquí
en esta pequeña parte la ciudad.
Somos cinco mil.
¿Cuántos somos en total
en las ciudades y en todo el país?
Sólo aquí,
diez mil manos que siembran
y hacen andar las fábricas.
Cuánta humanidad
con hambre, frío, pánico, dolor,
presión moral, terror y locura.

Seis de los nuestros se perdieron
en el espacio de las estrellas.
Uno muerto, un golpeado como jamás creí
se podría golpear a un ser humano.
Los otros cuatro quisieron quitarse
todos los temores,
uno saltando al vacío,
otro golpeándose la cabeza contra un muro
pero todos con la mirada fija en la muerte.
¡Qué espanto produce el rostro del fascismo!
Llevan a cabo sus planes con precisión artera
sin importarles nada.
La sangre para ellos son medallas.
La matanza es un acto de heroísmo.
¿Es este el mundo que creaste, Dios mío?
¿Para esto tus siete días de asombro y de trabajo?
En estas cuatro murallas sólo existe un número
que no progresa.
Que lentamente querrá más la muerte.

Pero de pronto me golpea la consciencia
y veo esta marea sin latido
y veo el pulso de las máquinas
y los militares mostrando su rostro de matrona
llena de dulzura.
¿Y México, Cuba y el mundo?
¡Qué griten esta ignominia!
Somos diez mil manos
menos que no producen.
¿Cuántos somos en toda la patria?
La sangre del compañero Presidente
golpea más fuerte que bombas y metrallas.
Así golpeará nuestro puño nuevamente.

Canto, qué mal me sales*
cuando tengo que cantar espanto.
Espanto como el que vivo
como el que muero, espanto.
De verme entre tantos y tantos
momentos de infinito
en que el silencio y el grito
son las metas de este canto.
Lo que veo nunca vi.
Lo que he sentido y lo que siento
harán brotar el momento...

http://www.peteseeger.net/estadiochile.htm

Seeger's partial translation:
http://www.peteseeger.net/estadiochile.htm

It was released, by Universal, in the Reagan 80's. That was before they were a division of GE. I wonder if they consent to releasing -- and advertising -- such a film now?

Here is a wikipedia link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_(film)

and I believe an scheduled showing at the Kennedy Center was cancelled. I'll have to check on that.

First, people should be aware it is based on a real life person, Dan Mitrione who instructed and conducted torture in both Brazil and Uruguay. He was hired by Eisenhower's State Department in the 1960, having worked earlier as a police chief in an Indiana town.

He was murdered, but not tortured first, a courtesy he didn't extend to everyone he killed. Nixon hailed him as a national hero, sent one of his officials, and his nephew, David Eisenhower to attend his funeral, while Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis held a benefit to raise money for his many, many children and his wife.

Here's a rundown on the man, followed by a small summary of Costa-Gavras' film:

Daniel Mitrione was born in Italy on 4th August, 1920. The family emigrated to the United States and in 1945 Mitrione became a police officer in Richmond, Indiana.

Mitrione joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1959. The following year he was assigned to the State Department's International Cooperation Administration. He was then sent to South America to teach "advanced counterinsurgency techniques." His speciality was in teaching the police how to torture political prisoners without killing them.

According to A.J. Langguth of the New York Times, Mitrione was working for the CIA via the International Development's Office of Public Safety (OPS). We know he was in several foreign countries but between 1960 and 1967 he spent a lot of time in Brazil and was involved in trying to undermine the left-wing president João Goulart, who had taken power after President Juscelino Kubitschek resigned from office in 1961.

João Goulart was a wealthy landowner who was opposed to communism. However, he was in favour of the redistribution of wealth in Brazil. As minister of labour he had increased the minimum wage by 100%. Colonel Vernon Walters, the US military attaché in Brazil, described Goulart as “basically a good man with a guilty conscience for being rich.”

The CIA began to make plans for overthrowing Goulart. A psychological warfare program approved by Henry Kissinger, at the request of telecom giant ITT during his chair of the 40 Committee, sent U.S. PSYOPS disinformation teams to spread fabricated rumors concerning Goulart. John McCloy was asked to set up a channel of communication between the CIA and Jack W. Burford, one of the senior executives of the Hanna Mining Company. In February, 1964, McCloy went to Brazil to hold secret negotiations with Goulart. However, Goulart rejected the deal offered by Hanna Mining.

The following month Lyndon B. Johnson gave the go-ahead for the overthrow of João Goulart (Operation Brother Sam). Colonel Vernon Walters arranged for General Castello Branco to lead the coup. A US naval-carrier task force was ordered to station itself off the Brazilian coast. As it happens, the Brazilian generals did not need the help of the task force. Goulart’s forces were unwilling to defend the democratically elected government and he was forced to go into exile. This action ended democracy in Brazil for more than twenty years. According to David Kaiser (American Tragedy) this event marks the change in the foreign policy developed by John F. Kennedy. Once again, Johnson showed that his policy was to support non-democratic but anti-communist, military dictatorships, and that he had fully abandoned Kennedy’s neutralization policy.

Mitrione remained in Brazil to help the new government deal with the supporters of João Goulart. According to Franco Solinas, Mitrione was also in the Dominican Republic after the 1965 US intervention.

In 1967 Mitrione returned to the United States to share his experiences and expertise on "counterguerilla warfare" at the Agency for International Development (AID), in Washington. In 1969, Mitrione moved to Uruguay, again under the AID, to oversee the Office of Public Safety. At this time the Uruguayan government was led by the very unpopular Colorado Party. Richard Nixon and the CIA feared a possible victory during the elections of the Frente Amplio, a left-wing coalition, on the model of the victory of the Unidad Popular government in Chile, led by Salvador Allende.

The OPS had been helping the local police since 1965, providing them with weapons and training. It is claimed that torture had already been practiced since the 1960s, but Dan Mitrione was reportedly the man who made it routine. He is quoted as having said: "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect." It has been alleged that he used homeless people for training purposes, who were allegedly executed once they had served their purpose.

More:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmitrione.htm

~~~~~~~~~

THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, JUNE 11, 1979 A19

Torture’s Teachers
By A.J. Langguth

LOS ANGELES – A few months ago, I received some clippings of interviews with a former Federal Intelligence agency official. That operative, Jesse Leaf, had been involved with the agency’s activities in Iran, and well into the stories Mr. Leaf made some damning accusations.

He said that the C.I.A. sent an operative to teach interrogation methods to SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, that the training included instructions in torture, and the techniques were copied from the Nazis.

Reading through the clippings, I could think of several reasons why the accusations had not been featured prominently. Mr. Leaf could not, or did not, supply the name of the instructor, his victims would be hard to locate; and the testimony from opponents of the Shah would be suspect.

But there is still another reason that I take to be the truest one: We – and I mean we as Americans – don’t believe it. We can read the accusations, even examine the evidence and find it irrefutable. But, in our hearts, we cannot believe that Americans have gone abroad to spread the use of torture.

We can believe that public officials with reputations for brilliance can be arrogant, blind or stupid. Anything but evil. And when the cumulative proof becomes overwhelming that our representatives in the C.I.A. or the Agency for International Development police program did in fact teach torture, we excuse ourselves by vilifying the individual men.

This has been on my mind since I returned from Cuba recently. In Havana, I had tried to hunt down a former double agent, a Cuban named Manuel, who was said to have information about United States involvement with torture in Latin America. Manuel had revealed his true sympathies by leaving his job with the C.I.A. in Montevideo and returning to his homeland. But from his editor I learned that Manuel, whose full name turned out to be Manuel Hevia Conculluela, would be out of the country the entire time I was in Cuba. I could, however, get a copy of the book he had published six months earlier, "Pasaporte 11333, Eight Years With the C.I.A."

Mr. Hevia had served the C.I.A. in Uruguay’s police program. In 1970, his duties brought him in contact with Dan Mitrione, the United States policy adviser who was kidnapped by the Tupamaro revolutionaries later that year and shot to death when the Uruguayan Government refused to save him by yielding up politician prisoners.

Mr. Mitrione has become notorious throughout Latin America. But few men ever had the chance to sit with him and discuss his rationale for torture. Mr. Hevia had once.

Now, reading Mr. Hevia’s version, which I believe to be accurate, I see that I too had resisted acknowledging how drastically a man’s career can deform him. I was aware that Mr. Mitrione knew of the tortures and condoned them. That was bad enough. I could not believe even worse of a family man. A Midwesterner. An American.

Thanks to Mr. Hevia, I was finally hearing Mr. Mitrione’s true voice:

"When you receive a subject, the first thing to do is to determine his physical state, his degree of resistance, through a medical examination. A premature death means a failure by the technician.

"Another important thing to know is exactly how far you can go given the political situation and the personality of the prisoner. It is very important to know beforehand whether we have the luxury of letting the subject die...

More:
http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/langguthleaf.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~

State Of Siege - Yves Montand, Renato Salvatori, Costa Gavras - 1973 $28.99US
DVD or VHS

In Uruguay in the early 1970s, an official of the US Agency for International Development (a group used as a front for training foreign police in counterinsurgency methods) is kidnapped by a group of urban guerillas. Using his interrogation as a backdrop, the film explores the often brutal consequences of the struggle between Uruguay's government and the leftist Tupamaro guerillas.

This is a film of historical importance.

State of Siege shows how the U.S. aided and abetted right-wing dictatorships in Latin America during the Cold War. Yves Montand plays an American sent by our government to teach torture techniques to police in Uruguay. He is kidnapped by Tupamaro guerillas, interrogated and presented with proof of his activities. We witness how the military, the diplomats, and the press deal with the crisis. State of Siege generates a great deal of tension and suspense, even though we know the outcome. Director Costa-Gavras tends to romanticize the Left, but what is presented here is now widely acknowledged as fact. State of Siege is a film of historical importance that deserves your attention.

http://www.learmedia.ca/product_info.php/products_id/879

Yup -- that one's even more "seldom seen" than "Missing," "Z," or his other political work...!

Ex-Pinochet army conscript charged with folk singer Victor Jara's murder
José Adolfo Paredes Márquez tracked down to Chilean capital almost 36 years later
Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 28 May 2009 10.22 BST

It was the atrocity which symbolised Chile's descent into dictatorship: soldiers used rifle butts to smash the hands of Victor Jara, a political activist and folk singer, so he could not play guitar. Then they shot him 44 times.

Yesterday, almost 36 years later, justice caught up with one of killers. José Adolfo Paredes Márquez, a former conscript in Augusto Pinochet's army, was charged with murder.

The burly 54-year-old was tracked down in San Sebastian, a spa town outside the capital Santiago, where he was working as a waiter and gardener.

Activists who have campaigned for the case to be reopened welcomed the announcement but urged authorities to focus on arresting commanding officers. "There are other people responsible – those who ordered the torture and the execution," said Joan Turner Jara, the singer's English-born widow.

Jara, a political songwriter and poet and high-profile supporter of socialist President Salvador Allende, was among thousands swept up in the aftermath of Pinochet's CIA-backed coup in September 1973. The author of El cigarrito and Manifiesto was herded into Santiago's football stadium which was used as a mass jail.

Soldiers broke the musician's hands before shooting him in the head and riddling his body with bullets, one of 3,100 murders committed by Pinochet's forces during military rule which lasted until 1990, when democracy returned to the South American country.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/28/chile-regime-murder-charge-victor-jara