Former DINA agent Cristian Labbe appointed lecturer of political thought

Instead of facing justice for the atrocities committed during Pinochet's dictatorship, former DINA agent, torture instructor and ex-mayor of Providencia Cristian Labbe has been appointed lecturer of 'Evolution in Political Thought in Chile' at the Santiago Unviersity of Finis Terrae. The university's student federation claimed it was not alerted to Labbe's appointment.

Spontaneous protests eurpted on campus on Labbe's first day at university, with indignation spreading on social media. Tweets exhibiting the hashtag  #EnLasClasesDeLabbé created a parody out of the situation, refusing to wallow in oblivion and constructing a parallel to the colonel's stint in DINA. "Those who copy will be detained for three days." "Physical activity will be conducted in the Estadio Nacional." References to torture, including the parilla, and the omnipresence of DINA were not omitted from tweets. In an interview, Labbe's son declared "It has not been easy for my father to reinvent himself."

Labbe's stint in DINA is highlighted by the following.

Apart from his role in Tejas Verdes, Labbe was also instrumental in instructing and administering torture at Rocas de Santo Domingo, Venda Sexy, Villa Grimaldi and Londres 38. Testimony from torture survivors recall Labbe in his role as torturer, applying electric shocks to detainees.

Labbe was also involved in the repression and murder of fifteen peasants in Valdivia, who are listed as desaparecidos.

Collaborated  with his close friend Miguel Krassnoff  Martchenko and Ingrid Olderock.

Involved in Operacion Colombo, which targeted and annihilated MIR and Communist Party militants. The intention of the dictatorship was to deny these disappearances and attribute their deaths to a fabricated political strife between the socialist factions.

Following the Chilean transition to 'democracy', Labbe held influential positions and benefited from impunity, despite evidence linking him to atrocities committed during Pinochet's reign. As mayor of Providencia, Labbe employed Erasmo Sandoval Arancibia; also known as Pete el Negro, condemned in 2007 of murdering the youngest victim of the dictatorship - a fourteen year old boy who was shot four times and doused with gasoline. Arancibia also formed part of the DINA operation known as Operacion Retiro de Televisores, an encrypted message instructing agents to move the remains of desaparecidos from Cuesta Barriga and dispose of them permanently by incineration or deposed into the sea from helicopters to ensure dispersion.

Reinventing one's self from torture instructor to a 'professor' of political thought is a mere superficial process. If Labbe has encountered any difficulty in his 'reinvention', it would be the futility of reinventing Chilean individual and collective memory which has proved resilient against Pinochet's enforced culture of oblivion.

 

Torture in Tejas Verdes (1)

According to the Rettig Commission report, the concentration camp 'Tejas Verdes' corresponds to Campamento N2 de prisioneros de la Escuela de Ingenieros Militares 'Tejas Verdes', used as a detention and torture centre from September 11, 1973 until mid 1974. Various socialist adherents detained in Tejas Verdes form part of the detenidos desaparecidos, including Miguel Rivas and Rebeca Espinoza.

Under the command of later DINA chief Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, Tejas Verdes was described by torture survivor Hernan Valdes as a centre of macabre violations. "... all I knew about evil until then was only caricature, only literature. Now evil has lost all moral reference.' (Valdes, 1974).

Former political prisoners and torture survivors cite extreme torture tactics as having been consistently applied to detainees, who were subjected to electric shocks, beatings, mock executions, burning of skin with wax and cigarettes, the pulling of nails, exposure to extreme temperatures, immobilisation, nakedness, sexual violence, deprivation of food and water, forced to eat their excrement and to listen to other detainees being tortured. Medical attention was restricted to checking each detainee's resilience, in order to avoid premature death and allow for other bouts of torture. 

A brief look at some of the DINA agents operating at Tejas Verdes reveals the extent of networking amongst other detention and torture centres.

Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko - later transferred to Londres 38 and Villa Grimaldi, also collaborated with Cuartel Simon Bolivar in the detention and torture of MIR militants.

Marcelo Moren Brito - head of Brigada Caupolican and in charge of Villa Grimaldi, also a participant in the murder of MIR secretary general Miguel Enriquez and accused of participating in the detention and disappearance of MIR militant Alfonso Rene Chanfreau Oyarce.

Ingrid Olderock - notoriously renowned for training dogs to violate women and associated with other torture centres, including Villa Grimaldi and Venda Sexy.

Cristian Labbe - personal friend of Krassnoff and later member of Brigada Halcon, instructor in torture methods and former mayor of Providencia.

Vittorio Orvieto Tiplizky: torture consultant. Referred to as 'el medico torturador'. Associated with Tejas Verdes and Villa Grimaldi.

Pedro Espinoza Bravo: associated with the 'Caravan of Death', torture at Villa Grimaldi, as well as the assassination of Orlando Letelier.

Gerardo Urrich Gonzales: tortured detainees at 'La Torre' in Villa Grimaldi and responsible for the disappearance of Rodolfo Valentin Gonzales Perez. 






 

Bail granted to four former officials indicted for the murder of Victor Jara

Following the initial euphoria at Chilean efforts to bring Victor Jara's alleged killers to justice, the Santiago Court of Appeals has granted bail to four of the former DINA officials indicted for the nueva cancion singer's murder. Edwin Dimter Bianchi, Nelson Haase, Luis Bethke Wulf and Raul Jofre Gonzalez, all from the Tejas Verdes contingent under the command of Manuel Contreras have been granted bail against a guarantee of one million pesos each and will be released from jail within a few hours.


A Chilean court request to extradite Pedro Pablo Barrientos Nunez, identified by former conscript Jose Paredes Marquez as the one who killed Victor, has not yielded any positive results so far. Barrientos has been living in Florida ever since Paredes was arrested for his role in the murder and has denied the accusations against him, stating that he was never in the vicinities of Estadio Chile. Paredes, however, has declared that his access to the interrogation rooms during the first days of the dictatorship was facilitated through accompanying Barrientos as his bodyguard. 

The foundation 'Justicia Para Victor Jara' (Justice for Victor Jara) has issued a statement, declaring the sentence as an incentive for further struggle in order to achieve justice for Victor and all the victims of the dictatorship. Previous statements by the foundation and human rights lawyer Nelson Caucoto Pereira have attacked the impunity enshrined in dictatorship laws, as well as the refusal of the Armed Forces of Chile to reveal information which would lead to the conviction of senior DINA officials.

While the provisional release has been defined as standard practice and even expected by Caucoto, public opinion expressed on social media has been replete with outrage at the news, declaring all soldiers serving under the dictatorship as tainted with complicity and expressing little faith in the Chilean justice system.