Some of us don't make distinctions between brutal dictators who call themselves leftist or those who call themselves rightist. I question your commitment to human rights when you applaud Pinochet while harping on dictators of nominally Communist regimes, who may actually be brought to account for their brutality based on the precedent of the ex-General's case. Yes, Paulina's story in the "Death and the Maiden" (a pretty mediocre movie starring Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley by the way) is imaginary. Here are some that are not.
Copyright 1998 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
Chicago Sun-Times
October 20, 1998, TUESDAY, Late Sports Final Edition
SECTION: NWS; NEWS ANALYSIS; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 998 words
HEADLINE: A 25-year wait for justice
SOURCE: ELLEN DOMKE
BYLINE: Carlos Sadovi and Alex Rodriguez
BODY:
Two men pulled Mario Venegas aside as he walked up the steps of a Santiago, Chile, university on an early December morning in 1974.
Five minutes, they said quietly, they just needed five minutes of his time to talk about a fellow student being held at a detention center.
"That was an excuse," said Venegas, then a 26-year-old graduate student. "Those five minutes where they invited me to the nearest police station were converted
into two years."
Two years of terror and suffering, Venegas, now 50 and living in Chicago, recalls. Dressed in civilian clothes, the men who quietly ushered Venegas off those
university steps that morning were henchmen for Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990 and is now being held in London so Spanish
authorities can question him about the murders of Spaniards in Chile during his regime.
At four prison camps, Pinochet's secret police regularly tortured and beat Venegas. They hung him by his wrists. They attached electrodes all over his body and
administered electric shocks.
And all the while, Venegas' wife agonized over his disappearance. "I went crazy trying to find him," said Maria Teresa Pizarro, who is no longer married to Venegas.
Count Venegas is one of thousands who suffered firsthand Pinochet's brutality. Some, like Venegas, survived. More than 3,000 didn't.
Mostly political targets, they were murdered often after unimaginable torture. They were starved and viciously beaten. Many were electrically shocked while their
children watched. Some had their fingernails torn off, others had their hands broken.
Worse, 2,000 of Pinochet's victims were never found, leaving families to agonize for years over the fate of their relatives.
And yet, Pinochet has always had as many Chileans on his side as he has had against him, experts say. Despite his legacy of torture and murder, he stewarded
Chile from the economic chaos and four-digit inflation that characterized predecessor Salvador Allende's regime. Under Pinochet, prices stabilized and the country
prospered.
"The populace was polarized. They either loved him or they hated him," said Larry Sjaastad, a University of Chicago economics professor who visited Chile several
times during the 1970s and 1980s. "There didn't seem to be any middle ground."
To some extent, that gulf in sentiment is mirrored by Chicago's tiny Chilean community, which numbers between 1,500 and 2,000, says Chilean Consul General
Fernando Ayala.
"Some of the people are very happy" about the 82-year-old former dictator's arrest, Ayala said. "Other Chileans, they don't have an opinion or disagree with the
arrest."
Marcello Gaete, a former aide to State Sen. Jesus Garcia, won't be one of them. In 1975, Pinochet's men took Gaete's father, Tomas, from his home and held him
in a concentration camp for months. Gaete's father, a government worker and a member of a moderate left-wing party, was starved and beaten, and suffered
electrical shocks to his eyes, ears and testicles.
"At least this sheds light on this horrible page of our history," Marcello Gaete said of Pinochet's arrest. "The government can't deny the pain that it caused
thousands of people."
Pinochet rose to power in 1973, at a time when Chile's crippled economy made Allende's leftist government ripe for overthrow.
"At the airport in Miami you could recognize Chileans because they were carrying shopping bags full of toothpaste, cooking oil and the like," Sjaastad said. "There
was no such thing as meat (in Chile). Prices were crazy."
In the midst of the Sept. 11 U.S.-backed coup, Allende died, although it is not known if Pinochet's soldiers killed him or if he took his own life. Afterward,
thousands of Chileans deemed "subversives" by Pinochet's regime were taken to National Stadium in Santiago. Some were detained for weeks, tortured and then
murdered; others were summarily executed.
Like Venegas and Gaete, many were taken to prison camps at Villa Grimaldi, Tres Alamos or Ritoque. Venegas was a low-level government employee under Allende
and a member of a leftist political party. He knew people were looking for him, but he thought they were merely right-wing students trying to organize at Catholic
University.
"People didn't know about the secret police," Venegas said. "There was never a trial."
Pizarro, in charge of the university's school of social work, went underground to keep from being arrested herself. When she feared that she was about to be
thrown in jail, she placed their 5-month-old son, Marcelo, in the hands of her mother and father. She fled to Colombia seven months later, but secret police rounded
up her parents and son and detained them in a prison camp for several days.
"(Pinochet) destroyed my life," Pizarro said. "I left a husband who disappeared and a child. We were fighting for justice. (In the eyes of the government) that was
the biggest sin."
Venegas was released after President Jimmy Carter asked Pinochet to release the country's political prisoners. Given 48 hours to leave, he fled to England.
"I think I'm lucky," Venegas said. "The commander of one of the camps said, 'You better leave, otherwise you will be in bad shape and we won't be responsible for
what happens to you.' It's 25 years ago and I still remember those words."
Venegas, who is the coordinator of the Chicago-based Permanent Committee for Chile, and Pizarro say they want Pinochet to pay for his crimes.
"I think he should be tried," Venegas said. "We are not looking for revenge, we are looking for justice."
Venegas and at least 52 other Chilean victims of the Pinochet regime plan to file a criminal complaint today with Attorney General Janet Reno to have Pinochet
brought to the United States to answer for the 1976 deaths in this country of Orlando Letelier, a Chilean foreign affairs ambassador under Allende, and his U.S.
companion Ronnie Moffit, said Carlos Moreno, attorney for the group La Pena.
They were killed in a car bomb explosion. |
