Chilean Documentary Reveals the Name of Victor Jara's Alleged Killer

This article was first published in Irish Left Review here.

Earlier this year human rights lawyer Nelson Caucoto Pereira and Joan Jara, wife of nueva canción singer Victor Jara, appealed to the Chilean Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defence to collaborate in the effort to reconstruct the events leading to Victor Jara’s murder, as well as divulging the names of lieutenants responsible for the atrocity. While no affirmative statement was issued following the appeal, a documentary featured on Chilevision in May revealed the name of the lieutenant who allegedly pulled the trigger on Victor Jara.

The documentary entitled ‘Quien Mato a Victor Jara?’ (Who Killed Victor Jara?) created a strong narrative of the events unfolding in Estadio Chile and the circumstances leading up to Victor’s murder and subsequent discovery of his body. Jose Alfonso Paredes Marquez, a former conscript from the Tejas Verdes contingent who had previously been indicted for his participation in the murder, named Pedro Pablo Barrientos Nuñez as Victor’s alleged killer.

Barrientos was the unidentified lieutenant who, according to Paredes, shot Victor in the head after the singer refused to answer his questions. “He shot him at almost point blank range because the man would not answer him.” [1]

Barrientos has been living in Florida since the 1990s, around the time when Paredes was arraigned in court for his participation in Victor’s murder. Barrientos was interrogated by the FBI some weeks before the airing of the documentary, following a request from Chile regarding the murder of Victor Jara. Tracked by journalist Macarena Pizarro from Chilevision, Barrientos denied his involvement in Victor’s murder. When asked whether he would return to face Chilean justice, Barrientos retorted, “It depends. I do not have to face justice because I killed no one. I’ve been to Chile several times but now, loud and clear, I won’t go.”[2]

The Tejas Verdes contingent, under the command of Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, had been ordered to Santiago as part of the support for the military coup in the vicinities of La Moneda. Upon the transfer to Estadio Chile, the lieutenants indulged in the interrogation, torture and murder of those detained in the stadium. The first prisoners to be transferred to the stadium were those barricaded inside the Technical University, including Victor Jara.

Testimony by Osiel Nuñez from the Students’ Federation sheds light upon the treachery and intimidation by the Tejas Verdes contingent at Estadio Chile. Upon the persona of ‘el Principe’ (The Prince), Nuñez states that he had a very powerful voice and did not need a microphone to make himself heard in the stadium. The lieutenant declared “Soy un Principe” – I am a Prince, to the detainees, later addressing each section of detainees, asking them if they were hearing him, with each section having to answer in the affirmative.

The identity of El Principe remains disputed – both Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko from DINA and Edwin Dimter from Tejas Verdes were suspected of having been ‘the Prince’. However during court procedures, Paredes mentioned Lieutenant Nelson Edgardo Haase Mazzei as the alleged ‘Prince’; a statement which has been denied by Haase.

It was the Prince who, upon recognising Victor Jara, separated him from the rest of the detainees together with Litré Quiroga; Chief of the Service of Prison under Salvador Allende’s government. Victor was taken into a room where Lieutenant Nelson Haase was sitting behind the interrogation desk. Another lieutenant – allegedly Pedro Barrientos, played Russian roulette with Victor, eventually shooting him in the skull. Victor fell to the ground, his body convulsing. The order was given to conscripts to open fire on Victor’s body,[3] as well as upon the other fourteen detainees who were with Victor. One of the victims was Quiroga, who was reportedly tortured for three days prior to his assassination.[4] The documentary featured the exact location where Victor’s body was discovered by social activist Monica Salinas – in a field outside the walls of Cemeterio Metropolitano.

The documentary highlights the impunity enjoyed by the ex officials. Implying a range of absurd rhetoric, Pedro Barrientos, Jorge Smith and Luis Ernesto Bethke denied being present at the Estadio Chile in the aftermath of the military coup, although Paredes’ testimony contradicts the lieutenants. When interviewed by Chilevision, Barrientos denied the Tejas Verdes regiment or himself having been present in Estadio Chile. Asked about Paredes, who accompanied Barrientos in his role, more denials ensued. Echoing Jorge Smith, Barrientos insisted he did not remember Paredes and was nowhere near Estadio Chile, claiming instead to be in the vicinities of La Moneda. This contradicts the fact that Paredes stated he had access to the interrogation rooms through accompanying Barrientos. Bethke’s non-committal reply to the same question was “Why wouldn’t I admit I was there?” The epitome of impunity was characterised by Nelson Haase in 2009 during a telephone interview with newspaper La Nacion. Asked whether he was present in Estadio Chile during Victor’s torture and murder, Haase replied that he was not in Estadio Chile. “I was never in Estadio Chile. I don’t know it. I don’t even like football.”[5]

The officials from Tejas Verdes responsible for the atrocities which occurred in Estadio Chile in the aftermath of the coup are Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, who later became Head of DINA (Dirección de Intelligencia Nacional), Jorge Smith, Luis Ernesto Bethke, Nelson Haase, Edwin Dimter, Rodrigo Rodriguez Fuschloger and Pedro Pablo Barrientos Nuñez. The officials specialised in torture and indulged in the violations upon their return to Tejas Verdes, taking over a resort hotel and transforming it into an interrogation and torture center.[6] Hernan Valdes, a survivor of Tejas Verdes stated “… all I knew about evil until then was only caricature, only literature. Now evil has lost all moral reference.”[7]

Reacting to the information revealed in the documentary, Joan Jara expressed shock at the cynicism and arrogance of officers involved in her husband’s murder. “Everyone was lying with impunity. I believe that there was a large official circle in the stadium that was, in one way or another, involved in this cruelty.” Gloria Konig, executive director of the Victor Jara Foundation, declared that justice must allow investigations into the new declarations by conscript Paredes. “I believe yesterday it became clear that the conscripts have fear.” Lawyer Nelson Caucoto Pereira stated he expects Chile to respond to the warrant requested by the Courts in order to indict Barrientos for his alleged role in killing Victor Jara, echoing earlier statements in which he insisted the aim is to hold those officials wielding power responsible for Victor’s death.[8]

Notes

---

[1] http://laradiodelsur.com/?p=92415
[2] http://www.emol.com/noticias/nacional/2012/05/17/540933/acusado-de-asesinato-de-victor-jara-niega-haber-estado-en-el-estadio-chile.html
[3] http://ciperchile.cl/2009/05/26/los-estremecedores-testimonios-de-como-y-quienes-asesinaron-a-victor-jara/#el-principe
[4] http://www.cidh.org/countryrep/Chile74eng/chap.2b.htm
[5] http://tomasdinges.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/how-victor-jara-died-last-minutes/
[6] http://www.remember-chile.org.uk/beginners/contdina.htm
[7] http://memoriaviva.com/English/centros_detencion_lista.htm
[8] http://www.adnradio.cl/noticias/nacional/joan-jara-y-reportaje-de-en-la-mira-todos-los-oficiales-mintieron-con-un-cinismo-demasiado-grande/20120517/nota/1690047.aspx

Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile

This review was first published in Upside Down World here.
Ariel Dorfman was thirty-one years old and working as a cultural advisor to President Salvador Allende when Augusto Pinochet's military coup abruptly destroyed the socialist revolution. The actions of the dictatorship created a reign of macabre realities which would split Chilean narratives into opposing memory camps. Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile (HMH Books, 2011) is an eloquent memoir which fluctuates between reflections on death and exile - the meaning of not having died next to Allende in the presidential palace La Moneda, and Dorfman's own exile, a decision enforced by Allende’s advisors and which very possibly saved his life, yet which has assailed Dorfman with a tenacious need to question his own role and actions within that particular era of Chilean history.

The book moves rapidly from one event to another, disrupting chronology whilst creating an intense discussion of contrasts – death and exile, the revolutionary and the exile, the desaparecidos and the exile, language and exile. Exile becomes a single constant which, as time passes, exudes a certain inevitable detachment from the reality that is Chile. There is no reconciliation with the revolutionary past in exile – an issue which Dorfman struggled against for many years in various countries as he futilely sought to aid the Chilean resistance from abroad during the first years of exile in Paris and Amsterdam.

El pueblo unido – the people united in a socialist revolution under the banner of the Unidad Popular disintegrated in exile. A hierarchy developed within the exiled community, leading to strife within the movement struggling to develop a resistance movement against Pinochet. Dorfman recounts how his family had been promised an apartment in Paris by Carlos Iturra, author of the famous hymn Venceremos, at “solidarity rental rates.” The family moved their belongings to the apartment, only to discover a few days later that Iturra had received threatening phone calls from dictatorship sympathisers. The location was presumably unsafe. However, upon collecting their luggage from the apartment, it became evident to the family that the hierarchy of the Communist Party had negotiated with Iturra to reside in the apartment. Iturra was, at that moment, organising a vacation in the Alps for children of Chilean exiles. The sense of a community united in a revolutionary stance had deteriorated.

“Exile destroys children along with the parents.” Dorfman recounts how his children, Rodrigo and Joaquin struggle with identity and history in exile. Whilst the eldest, Rodrigo, gradually eliminates traces of Chile in his art, Joaquin seemingly fails to absorb the Chilean identity. Dorfman describes how the Andes Mountains feature prominently in Chilean children’s artwork – a characteristic which holds no fascination for Joaquin, born in exile. However, both sons are affected by the consequences of dictatorship and exile. Rodrigo has imbibed a rebellious streak which leads him to a return to Chile and subsequent filming of protests. Joaquin is haunted by the stories of the desaparecidos and the terror inflicted upon Chileans, such as the story of Rodrigo Rojas – a young man who, along with his girlfriend Carmen Gloria Quintana, had been doused with paraffin and torched. Their bodies were dumped in a ditch – at the exact location where three dissidents were discovered with slit throats only a year earlier. Dorfman admits an inconsistency between the lies designed to protect children from the horrors of the dictatorship and the children’s absorption of the truth.

The ramifications of exile flow into metaphorical prose. Dorfman distinguishes between various facets of exile – the actual departure from Chile, and the indefinite aspect – which lead the author to hold on to a library inside their house in Chile which was being used as a safe house for the MAPU, instead of acquiring new books. Exile created contradictions, ambiguity and barriers, as Dorfman realises that the revolutionary who joined the struggle for a socialist revolution, who was present when Allende saluted the people a week prior to the military coup, had distanced himself from his compañeros in Chile. After a long process in which he persisted in identifying with the resistance in exile and aiding the movement, Dorfman’s evolution veers towards the intellectual writer whose memories and stories are festering within an increasingly permanent exile and the still imagery of the revolutionary past.

Dorfman struggles with the truth as the exile commences in Buenos Aires. Narrating the case of Victor Jara, he tells of how a writer described Victor having his hands cut off by the lieutenants – an erroneous statement which portrayed how legends mingled with truth to construct a false reality. Another experience of false memory is Dorfman’s recollection of a photograph of him taken a week before the coup in front of La Moneda. His memory is of him in revolutionary stance, fists in the air. When the photo resurfaces, Dorfman discovers a pensive version of himself next to writer Antonio Skarmeta. The illusion of el pueblo unido had vanquished the actual memory – exile implants images in the mind of the exile and constructs an alternative reality.

It is not only actual memories that abscond from the exile. Pinochet’s reign contaminated language and society by referring to torture as ‘excesses,’ whilst the dictatorship was described as a ‘regime.’ The euphemisms contributed toward the cycle of impunity and infiltrated social circles where new alliances were being forged, with some former socialists seeking to gain elite status by liaising with the right wing – a phenomenon which Dorfman states was blatantly portrayed in the social pages of newspaper El Mercurio.

The book is also replete with stories of people from Chile. Carlos - the carpenter who hid Allende’s poster behind the boards in his workshop until Pinochet was arrested in London. Patricia, the wife of a right wing thug who used her husband’s status as a cover to transport Allende supporters to safety in a car gifted to her husband by DINA. Susana Weiner, who worked as a courier for MAPU, played a role in saving the lives of dissidents, including Dorfman, and was entrusted with transcribing notes describing torture in detention centres and smuggling them out of Chile. Their experiences, combined with the stories of the detenidos desaparecidos and President Patricio Aylwin’s initiative during the transition to establish the Truth and Reconciliation Commission urged Dorfman to contribute towards furthering the struggle, resulting in two particular publications written in exile.

Widows (1978) is a novel which deals with a group of women who refuse to hand over a body which washed ashore. As the novel was published, the first desaparecidos were being discovered in Chile. In the memoirs, Dorfman describes the act of disappearing people as an aberration on existence. “Disappearance was an outrage against the chemistry and structure of life itself. The bodies of the missing were wrenched out of the normal progression of existence ...” The outrage of the discovery contrasts sharply with another discovery of bodies in 1990, where younger Chileans born after the coup were less interested in the process. According to Dorfman, this discovery was a disruption in their lives which necessitated excavation and destruction of a football pitch.

However, in his renowned play entitled Death and the Maiden, Dorfman shows how torture survivors were side-lined by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Paulina – a torture survivor whose husband is a lawyer working on behalf of the Commission, kidnaps the man she believes to be her torturer and subjects him to a trial, appointing her husband as her oppressor’s defence lawyer. Paulina insists she wants the truth – a truth which till now wallows in impunity as torturers and victims walk side by side on Chilean streets, depriving torture survivors of their right to justice and the opportunity to inscribe their testimonies.

Dorfman describes how torture tarnishes universal expression such as music. The last scene features Paulina listening to Schubert in a concert – the music played during her torture session. The reconciliation with her favourite music was brought about after the confession was extracted from her torturer – the right to truth as opposed to sacrificing one’s self for the better of the democratic transition.

In the fragments of Dorfman’s diary of his return to Chile in 1990, the author grapples with the realisation that his experiences and that of the Chilean nation have diverged so greatly, it is impossible to nurture the dream of returning to live in Chile. The fragile transition, which sought to reconcile, rather than call for justice in order to avoid disruptions in the process, differed greatly from Dorfman’s vision of returning to the people united in a collective struggle. Exile further split the left wing memory camp, as those who remained in Chile looked upon exiles with certain resentment, contrasting the suffering they had endured with the relative comfort of escaping the horrors of the dictatorship.

Dorfman, unable to harmonize the experience of different memory camps on the left, decided to seek refuge in the US and later become a citizen of the same country which had conspired with Pinochet to overthrow Allende. He states that the desire to return was vanquished by the necessity to adjust, bringing to an end a previous personal conflict concerning language. Renouncing imperialism during the years of Allende’s presidency and the first years of exile also meant renouncing the English language, which Dorfman was familiar with since childhood, having lived in the US when his father and the family fled from Argentina. Throughout the course of exile and the subsequent return to Chile, Dorfman realises that language as a universal medium holds the power to navigate political borders and memory. Also, in Dorfman’s own words, acquiring US citizenship meant “I will never again go into exile.”

Personified by writers  such as Milan Kundera, who Dorfman describes as “the saddest man I have ever seen,” and Antonio Skarmeta, author of Il Postino, who predicted Dorfman would never return to live in Chile, exile became the ultimate choice of survival, creating a refuge within another complex realm of loyalties.

Whilst the book might have benefited from a more chronological order, and the metaphorical prose might seem daunting for some readers, Dorfman has masterfully created a narrative so intricate and yet simple in its message. He lays bare the complexities of memory, made easier to follow once the reader acknowledges that memory knows no chronology but is rather a series of events that profoundly impacted the rememberer’s life, and the act of remembering is a process of cunningly implanting additional images and obliterating others. Most importantly, Dorfman furthers the split memory narrative by adding the memory of the exile, the desaparecidos and the torture survivors to the usual general divide between the supporters of Allende and those of Pinochet. As compromising as it may seem, Dorfman acknowledges the importance of embracing ambivalence in order to construct a narrative which berates, glorifies and wallows in despondency. The book emanates the turmoil of Dorfman’s complicated yearning to regain Allende’s years, and his unrepentant decision to seek shelter in a nation known for its oppression, in order to avoid repeating his own history.

Tribute to Victor Jara: Venceremos!

The lines fainted, their dilapidated strands
wove bandages for crushed hands,
that strummed strings in the wake
of imminent annihilation. The anthem
defended and defeated, braiding
definitions around treacherous throats

History bequeathed the stadium
with punctured lungs and slain guitars.
In the long, narrow land, a memory writes itself.

Dawn dissolved in dark mines and the victorious voice
banished melancholy below the butchered bodies
allowing the revolution its revival in the blossoms
of an anticipated historical future.

September Narrations

Within a history battling oblivion and fabrication, fences materialise to portray the division between death and desolation. Faces disappear prior to their annihilation. Abbreviations belonging to embodiments of socialist struggle fester underground. The bombing of La Moneda and the voice of companero presidente. Constructing a memory out of narratives, an eloquent testimony which led me to Estadio Chile - the systematic, impeccable horror of military uniforms contrasting with the eyes of detainees, where nueva cancion and Unidad Popular and MIR and street demonstrations and cries of Allende, Allende, el pueblo te defiende! slithered towards me, clamouring for an inscribed testimony. Guitar strings ... Victor ... the first five thousand victims of neoliberal vengeance inscribed in the final poem. More faces etched in black, grey and white shades - memories of resistance tortured, torched, buried or dispersed by helicopters hovering over the ocean. The contamination of treason spread far beyond the narrow land. Enforced exile dispersed unity in contradicting narrations. Parillas, detenidos desaparecidos, ni perdon ni olvido. A solitary banner accompanied by a solitary voice on the island of conformity was hounded by the impeccable spectre in white. An apparition of concentration camps manifested itself between the impeccable spectre and the voice. In the aftermath of the dream, only the white gloves remained - a relic of the dictator's manifestation. Names transformed into a litany of faces and families. Beyond the realm of lacerated justice, language strives to conjure biographies, a memory beyond my years engulfed in ashes, the suspicious death of a poet, a murdered singer, MIR, Unidad Popular ... a flag dissolving into a distant September beyond my consciousness battling justice, oblivion and vengeance.

Chile: The Desaparecidos of Cuartel Simon Bolivar

This article was first published in Upside Down World here.

Investigations into the history of Calle Conferencia I and II - a clandestine operation of Direccion de Intelligencia Nacional (DINA) aimed at eliminating members of the Communist Party and Movimiento Izquierda Revolucionario (MIR), has confirmed the identification of the remains of four detenidos desaparecidos (disappeared). The verification was issued last month, prompting a renewed outrage from relatives with regard to the history of Cuartel Simon Bolivar - an extermination site operated by Brigada Lautaro and Grupo Delfin which remained shrouded in secrecy until exposed by a former DINA agent, Jorgelino Vergara Bravo, in 2007. The investigation’s results, combined with testimonies from former DINA agents, have bequeathed another sliver of dictatorship memory to Chile - the process of dissident extermination and disappearance in a systematic manner ordered directly by Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, head of DINA.

Angel Guerrero, a militant of (MIR), along with three Partido Comunista militants Fernando Ortiz Letelier, Horacio Cepeda and Lincoyán Berríos, were detained by DINA in 1976 and subsequently tortured and murdered. [1] Servicio Medico Legal, a branch of the Ministry of Justice specialising in forensics, released the remains of the victims to their families to conduct memorial services and funerals for the victims during the last days of July. A speech by Guillermo Teillier, current President of the Communist Party, hailed Letelier, Cepeda and Berrios as companeros worthy of Salvador Allende’s memory, describing them as imbued with loyalty and committed to fighting the dictatorship until the very end. Speaking at Guerrero’s memorial service, Washington Guerrero described his brother as motivated to put an end to dictatorship oppression in Chile. Letelier, Cepeda and Berriós were buried in the Memorial del Detenido in the General Cemetery of Santiago, while Angel Guerrero was buried in a cemetery in Puento Alto.[2] In both memorial services, speakers availed themselves of the opportunity to point out certain trends in Chilean history which tend to repeat themselves, notably state violence against students protesting for better education. Closure for the victims’ families was achieved after a 36 year struggle - an achievement in justice somewhat dampened with the reality that other families might never obtain answers to their questions about their disappeared relatives--a fact which was asserted in both memorial services. Relatives called for renewed efforts and a united struggle to trace the rest of the desaparecidos.

Ortiz, a history and geography professor dismissed from his post after the military coup, was ambushed and beaten in Avenida Larrain by hooded people, and driven off in an unregistered vehicle. An unnamed witness later contacted the family to confirm Ortiz’s detention by DINA. [3] Tortured at Villa Grimaldi, a detention and torture facility, and later allegedly transferred to the north of Chile, Ortiz was beaten to death and torched to prevent identification. Horacio Cepeda[4] was out on an errand and meeting another member of the Communist party when he was abducted in a public area in the center of Santiago on December 15, 1976. Reports on Memoria Viva, an archive of human rights abuses committed during the dictatorship, speculate that Cepeda’s arrest coincided with that of other desaparecidos detained on the same date. According to investigations into Calle Conferencia, Cepeda was murdered by electric shocks. Angel Guerrero was imprisoned for several months in Villa Grimaldi and was seen by another MIR militant, Rolando Alarcon. Guerrero met his end at Cuartel Simon Bolivar, with stakes driven though his hands and his torso lacerated and left to bleed, according to reports in Cooperativa.cl and Nuestro Canto, who described Guerrero’s death as “a slow extermination”.[5] Lincoyán Berríos [6] was abducted in a public space and his detention falsified by the dictatorship under claims of fleeing to Argentina – a fabrication which was reiterated with regard to the desaparecidos of Operacion Condor.

A reaction to the news on social networking sites, notably Facebook groups relating to memory in Chile, was whether investigations had yielded any other results; namely the possibility of identifying other detenidos desaparecidos. The possibility of identifying other remains is remote. In January 1979, following the discovery of 15 corpses of peasants killed in Lonquen, dictator Augusto Pinochet announced Operacion Retiro de Televisores; an encrypted order to illegally exhume corpses of detenidos desaparecidos from the mine. The corpses were dumped in the sea or else burned in drums. According to DINA agent Erasmo Sandoval Arancibia’s (also known as Pete el Negro) court statement, the Vicaria de la Solidaridad (an organisation affiliated to the Catholic Church in Chile led by Cardinal Raul Silva Henriquez) was tipped off by a peasant who had discovered the bodies, but Arancibia asserted, “we got there first”. In 2000, around 200 bone fragments later identified as the remains of Guerrero, Letelier, Cepeda and Berríos were discovered in the mine – overlooked relics from Operacion Retiro de Televisores.

Further details about Cuartel Simón Bolivar emerged in 2007 when the case came under the jurisdiction of Judge Victor Montiglio, also in charge of Calle Conferencia I. Among the victims of Calle Conferencia I was Communist Party member Victor Diaz, who was tortured, asphyxiated, injected with toxic substances and burned to prevent identification. [7] One hundred and twenty DINA agents were processed by Montiglio for their participation in Operacion Condor - an intelligence operation carried out by right wing dictatorships in the Southern Cone aimed at eradicating socialist and communist support and dissidents. The same agents were also indicted for their role in Calle Conferencia I & II, however many agents remain sheltered under impunity laws. Until 2007 Arancibia worked in Providencia under the patronage of former DINA agent Cristian Labbe, now mayor of Providencia and to this day benefiting from impunity. Arancibia was charged and condemned for the murder of the youngest victim of the dictatorship – a fourteen-year-old boy shot four times in the head, doused with gasoline and burned. [8]

However, Cuartel Simón Bolivar, described as ‘the place where no one got out alive’, remained a secret extermination site until unveiled by Jorgelino Vergara in 2007. Vergara, also known as El Mocito, came from a poor peasant family who, at the age of 15, ended up working as a servant in the household of Manuel Contreras, later head of DINA. Following the military coup, Vergara was trained by the organisation and sent to work in Cuartel Simón Bolivar. His observations and recollections are the subject of Javier Rebolledo’s recently published book, La Danza de los Cuervos: el destino final de los detenidos desaparecidos (The Dance of the Crows: the final destination of the disappeared detainees).[9] Rebolledo describes the desaparecidos leaving Cuartel Simon Bolivar ‘as a package’ – DINA agents disposed of the desaparecidos with impunity.

Operated by Brigada Lautaro and Grupo Delfin, the center was a place of torture, death and disappearances. Extermination orders came directly from Manuel Contreras and executed by Chief John Morales Salgado, head of Brigada Lautaro, who ordered his agents to “make them suffer” – in reference to the detainees. Various forms of murder were carried out by DINA: asphyxiation, electric shocks, cyanide injections, beatings and sarin gas.[10] DINA biochemist Eugenio Berríos, Colonel Eugenio Huber and CIA agent Michael Vernon Townley, an American citizen recruited by DINA and now living under protection in the US, were responsible for the production of sarin gas. Furthermore, it is estimated by School of the Americas Watch that one out of every seven DINA agents was a School of the Americas graduate, taking on roles of torture in various detention centres in Chile.

In the latest developments, former head of DINA Manuel Contreras stands accused of planning and ordering the detention and disappearance of eight Communist Party militants which occurred between 4th and 12th May, 1976.[11]

Ramona Wadi is a freelance writer living in Malta. Visit her blog here.
Notes:
1. http://www.cooperativa.cl/sml-identifico-a-cuatro-dd-dd-asesinados-por-la-dina-en-1976/prontus_nots/2012-07-20/123408.html
2. http://www.cooperativa.cl/sml-entrego-restos-de-asesinados-en-el-cuartel-simon-bolivar/prontus_nots/2012-07-27/211647.html
3. http://www.memoriaviva.com/Desaparecidos/D-O/juan_fernando_ortiz_letelier.htm
4 http://www.memoriaviva.com/Desaparecidos/D-C/cep-mar.htm
5. http://www.cooperativa.cl/sml-entrego-restos-de-asesinados-en-el-cuartel-simon-bolivar/prontus_nots/2012-07-27/211647.html
6. http://www.memoriaviva.com/Desaparecidos/D-B/ber-cat.htm
7. http://www.salvadorallende-gap.com/categorias/actualidades/noticias/Agosto/sept_2.html
8. http://www.memoriaviva.com/culpables/criminales_s/sandoval_arancibia_enrique.htm
9. http://www.adnradio.cl/noticias/sociedad/autor-de-la-danza-de-los-cuervos-narra-el-episodio-mas-crudo-de-nuestra-historia/20120723/nota/1727143.aspx
10. http://www.lanacion.cl/prontus_noticias/site/artic/20070310/pags/20070310210618.html
11. http://www.eldinamo.cl/2012/08/02/caso-calle-conferencia-procesan-a-manuel-contreras-por-desaparicion-de-dirigentes-del-pc/

Nueva Cancion Research

Soy una escritora freelance que investiga la nueva canción Chilena. Si tienen cualquier narración o memorias del movimiento chileno por favor póngase en contacto conmigo. Gracias. Ramona Wadi (Malta) walzerscent@gmail.com, Ramona Wadi on Facebook or Twitter @walzerscent

I am a freelance writer researching the nueva canción Chilena. If you have any narrations or memories of the Chilean movement, please get in touch! Ramona Wadi (Malta) walzerscent@gmail.com, Facebook Ramona Wadi on Facebook or Twitter @walzerscent