Friday, September 14, 2007
You know, I always mean to write about the Chilean coup every time 9/11 rolls around but never do. Anyway, amnihilist remembers Víctor Jara, Chilean musician and activist, who was murdered in days following that '73 coup as follows:
The only good thing about the US spreading democracy in the Mideast is that it seems to have distracted it from spreading democracy in Latin America.
On the morning of September 12, Jara was taken, along with thousands 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. 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 a song supporting the Popular Unity coalition. 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.
The only good thing about the US spreading democracy in the Mideast is that it seems to have distracted it from spreading democracy in Latin America.
