35 years ago, in the early days of the Pinochet regime in Chile, folk singer Victor Jara was murdered. Yesterday, one of the people involved, colonel, Mario Manriquez Bravo was found guilty. It’s really an amazing story, and I recommend that you read the whole thing here.
The dictatorship ultimately banned Jara’s music. They even banned some of the folk instruments often used to play it.
That day is over.
The boxing arena where he was murdered is now called Victor Jara Stadium.
Almost thirty-five years later, and nearly two decades after the end of the dictatorship, a Chilean court has found a retired colonel, Mario Manriquez Bravo, guilty in the murder of Victor Jara.
Unfortunately, they also closed the case, despite the clear involvement of numerous others. The Jara family’s attorneys believe that the court is still protecting the rest for political reasons. Now come appeals.
Being liberals, we’re obliged to be fastidious about due process, rule of law, and all that. There are times, though, when one is tempted to wish that one of South America’s numerous armed leftist bands would track down these cretins and simply take them out. I’m not suggestin’ … not even wishin’ … merely daydreaming, that’s all.
There’s damned little real justice in this world. Ah well, that’s what God created Hell for …
Our Republican dick sucking troll friends will come in here cheering for Jara’s fascist killers, just as the cheered for the Central American nun-killers armed and egged on by Saint Ronnie and his Colonel Ludendorff, Ollie North. Wait and see.
Speaking of Ollie North, isn’t there some country where he’s wanted that we can extradite him to, after Jan. 20 of next year?
“Our Republican dick sucking troll friends will come in here cheering for Jara’s fascist killers”
Why, how did you know? Was just about to do that. There’s about one (1) country in South America that works. Chile is it, thanks to Pinochet. Left things looking so good that not even a socialist mom can screw it up.
Note the word “left.” As in ‘gave up power to a democratic process.’ As in ‘opposite of the Castro/Chavez dynasties.’
Think about it, if you’re able.
St. Ron told the truth. Rigoberta and her amen corner told lies.
There was an evil empire, boys & girls, and it wasn’t us. We were the good guys. We won. You lost. Get used to it.
And how many innocents died?
Go ahead, brag about ‘winning’, if that’s what you want to call it. How many died? I’ve met more than a few Chileans, et al. They’ve all told me the same thing: innocent people died. People with no ties to any ‘rebels’, ‘marxists’, or what have you were tortured and killed by people trained by Nixon’s CIA, both government forces and privately-funded death squads.
Go ahead, celebrate your ‘victory’, you sick fuck. You probably don’t care about the dead, do you? Just so long as your business interests keep making money for you.
@5 Uh, yeah, you think Pinochet was a “democratic process.” Yeah right! That’s exactly your speed. And you probably think a turd is an egg roll. That’s why you’re full of shit all the time — you don’t even know what’s edible and what’s not.
@6 “There was an evil empire, boys & girls, and it wasn’t us.”
For once you’re right. This has nothing to do with “us.” The lies, corruption, and killing are strictly your show, all yours. We have nothing to do with it. You fascist killers are in a (low) class by yourselves.
@8 Our rightwing troll friends don’t give a fuck about the innocents who were killed. Like all fascists, they’re thrill killers. They like to spill blood, period. They don’t need a reason. Machine gunning a half dozen American nuns is nothing to them. And then they try to “justify” their crimes by slapping “leftist” labels on the dead bodies of their victims. They’re a bunch of little Himmlers.
GOP = murderers
Republicans drip with evil — like an alien goo sliming everything it touches.
You can judge the character of a person by the company they keep – you can judge the republicans by the dictators they support:
Sadaam
Pinochet
Pakistan
Vietnam
Saudi Arabia
Now that Ted The Swimmer has had a seizure, he’ll be prohibited from driving a vehicle.
Vulnerable women everywhere can now breathe a sigh of relief.
The choice for moonbat nominee has always been a contest between the sexist and the racist. Both are empty skirt marxists with no qualifications. The racist won.
So will you sexists now join the racists?
16 – Will you ever pay the fucking gambling debt you owe to Goldy, you low-life?
Something to get that other low-life, the HNMT off:
Good guys, huh?
And Roger, y’notice that ‘Rigoberta’ hasn’t had the huevos to defend its benighted opinion.
Typical.
Hate to see all the spittle on Rogers screen after that extended rant.
Interenstin, I am currently living in Chile and there has been very little coverage of this. Pinochet was a pathetci human (kind of like our current Repubs) but he left this coutnry with direction, honesty and a reason to be on guard of those that will try and follow in his footsteps. It is a fantastic country! We have problems…but where in the world can you find ‘perfetion’. As bad as it sounds…he made Chile the strongest, safest and most liberal Latin American country….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBv49PrR_nY
listen
You right wing trash really think the Pinochet regime is responsible for the fact that Chile has some success as a country.
One could say the same thing about Hitler and Germany.
Roger,
Be kind to Mark and don’t distract him. He’s all excited over the prospect of dancing on Ted Kennedy’s grave, so he’s trying really, really hard to remember what his mommy taught him about tying his shoelaces.
I remember back in the 80’s when Father William Treacy (yep, that Father Treacy, Rabbi Levine’s pal) was pastor of Our Lady of the Lake Parish and he shocked the hell out of us with a disturbing Christmas homily about the death squads in El Salvador. (He personally knew a couple of the sisters who were murdered.) It caused quite a stir, and ultimately caused enough people to complain that he was reassigned to another parish.
I personally was quite disturbed by what he was talking about, and was at first puzzled at our government’s apparent support of a regime that tolerated such things. Then a couple of days later at work I realized that a lot of the IC chips we were using were stamped with El Salvador as their country of origin. There was the answer, staring me in the face: Our government was propping up yet another murderous tinhorn oligarchy in a sweaty, God-forsaken patch of Latin America so Texas Instruments could pay some poor sots only a couple bucks a day to run the machines that put silicon chips in little plastic packages.
The “evil empire”? God damn right we were, and are nowadays more than ever. The United States has become the modern day equivalent of ancient Rome, maintaining its status by ruthless, brutal aggression against anyone and anything that stands in our way.
I don’t hate America, but I’m sure as hell embarrassed that it couldn’t be better than it is. The “shining city on the hill” that Reagan talked about has some serious flaws, and woe be on us if we’re too blinded by the light to recognize and fix them.
I wonder…will there be similar trials someday in a free Cuba?
The Piper
@26 “free” Cuba?
And what, praytell, would comprise a “free” Cuba?
How is Cuba less free than Saudi Arabia or China or contemporary Iraq?
Funny thing, it seems to me, about conservatives, is your willingess to tolerate almost anything in the name of capitalism and profit.
Cubans today DO have more freedom, in some sense, than manu other Caribeans or Latihn Americans. They have true equality of education (a higher rate of lieracy than the US), health care, lack of poverty, etc. While these are economic freedoms not political freedoms, the uneducated hoi po9lloi of Columbia or Brazil have little chance that they can govern themselves.
It seems to me that as long as Cuba is not a military threat to us, we ought to normalize rerlations. If their system can out compete us (as the modern Chinese syndicalist state may be doing) we need to rethink how we live.