"Gen. Augusto Pinochet's death on Dec. 10 means the Bush Family can breathe a little bit easier, knowing that criminal proceedings against Chile's notorious dictator can no longer implicate his longtime friend and protector, former President George H.W. Bush." For more on this story, click on the hyperlinked title above.
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Gary Moller comments:
I took Raquel to see the movie "Schindler's List" when it first came out. It upset her terribly. That was when I learned for the first time, the terror she experienced the night Pinochet's troops stormed the university compound in Santiago where she was studying and living. Some of her male friends helped her escape over a wall. All through the night until dawn, she listened to the fire of automatic weapons, punctuated now and then by a few moments of deathly slience and then the sound of single shots as her class mates who were still alive were executed one by one.
She escaped to New Zealand. So did another Chilean, Jorge Sandoval, who became a cycling club mate of mine here in Wellington. Jorge spent 14 months in a concentration camp where he was subjected to various forms of torture, including fingernail extraction.
When he won by popular vote, Allende was seen as a threat to exploitive US business practices, its ruling elite and the quest for global US domination. With CIA backing, the Allende government was brutally repressed. The story of Allende and Pinochet has been repeated many times around the world by US administrations that have consistently shown scant regard for democracy, human rights or the alleviation of suffering. What happened to Chile and in other countries of Central and South America and other places like the Palau, the Phillipines and East Timor are a blot on the USA, including members of the current administration and its supporters.
To learn more about how this sorry business fits into US politics, read Naom Chomsky's books on the subject. If you want to support the struggle for Central South American justice and independence, then what better than to support the work of a galant Moller? Go here to learn about the work of photographer, Jonathon Moller and consider buying his book that details the struggle of the people of Guatemala (Proceeds from the sale go to the Guatemalan people)
"With his photographs, Jonathan Moller reminds the present generation of the extreme wave of brutality that engulfed the people of Guatemala twenty years ago. Because of my Latin-American heritage,my blood turns to ice when I see these images. They speak of the horrors faced by my fellow Latin Americans in countries dominated by the externally imposed National Security Doctrine. Moller's photographs should be shown and debated in all schools and universities to teach tolerance and compassion to those who will hold power in the future."
- Sebastião Salgado
More about Jorge here And here is my followup article.
I first met Jorge about 1978 through the PNP Cycling Club and have followed his career as both a cyclist and sports promoter. While I had a number of associations with Chileans who had come to New Zealand to escape the tyranny of the the CIA backed Pinochet thugs, I had no idea of the suffering they had inflicted on Jorge.
