Victor Jara killing: Nine Chilean ex-soldiers sentenced
Source: BBC News
4 July 2018
REUTERS
Victor Jara was killed when he was just 40 years old
A judge in Chile has found eight retired soldiers guilty of the 1973 murder of popular folk singer Victor Jara.
A ninth suspect was sentenced for his role as an accessory to Jara's murder.
Victor Jara was arrested the day after the military coup led by Gen Augusto Pinochet and taken to a sports stadium in Santiago, where he was tortured in front of other prisoners.
. . .
Soldiers had crushed his fingers, telling him he would never be able to play his guitar again. The 40-year-old singer became famous in the 1960s and 70s for his protest and pacifist songs such as The Right to Live in Peace.
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44709924
Victor Jara, wife, two daughters.
= new reply since forum marked as read
With Mercedes Sosa, a wonderful indigenous singer
the "voice of the voiceless ones" of Argentina
also despised and marked for assassination by the
dictatorship.
. . .
Jorge Antonio Cafrune (n. Jujuy , Argentina , 8 of August of 1937 - † Tigre , Argentina, 1 of February of 1978 ), nicknamed "the Turk", was one of the singers folkloric Argentine most popular of his time, plus a tireless researcher, collector and diffuser of the native culture . Father of Yamila Cafrune .
Jorge Cafrune was born into a family of Arab origin , in which his paternal and maternal grandparents were immigrants from Syria and Lebanon . For that reason he received the nickname of "El Turco", a common nickname in Argentina applied to the descendants of Arabs.
. . .
In 1967 he presented the tour "De a caballo por mi Patria", in homage to Chacho Peñaloza . On this tour, Cafrune toured the country in the style of the old gauchos , taking his art and his message to all corners. Its objectives also included capturing landscapes through photography and the filming of television short films, as well as collecting data on the ways of life, customs, culture and tradition of the different regions. The tour was ruinous for its economy, but it was a great success if the true objectives that had been proposed were taken into account.
Cafrune during a presentation, at the beginning of the 1970s .
At the end of this tour, Cafrune was summoned to integrate some Argentine artistic comitivas that visited the United States and Spain . The success in the Iberian Peninsula was fabulous, and Cafrune came to settle there for several years, forming a family with Lourdes López Garzón. His return to the country was in 1977 , when his father died. These were difficult times for Argentina , since the government was in the hands of the military dictatorship led by Jorge Rafael Videla . Unlike other committed artists, who went into exile When threats and prohibitions began, Cafrune decided to stay and continue doing what he did best: sing and give his opinion by singing and doing. It was so in the festival of Cosquín of January 1978 when his audience asked him for a song that was forbidden, Zamba of my hope , Cafrune agreed arguing that "although it is not in the authorized repertoire, if my people ask me, I'll go to sing". According to a testimony of Teresa Celia Meschiati 1 that was too much for the military, and in the famously secret Cordovan concentration center of La Perla , the then first lieutenant Carlos Enrique Villanueva thought that "you had to kill him to prevent the others".
More:
http://eljuglardelalibertad.blogspot.com/2015/04/la-jorge-cafrune-de-la-tendencia.html
It just ocurred to me that his appeal to the purely Argentinian-born style of music was probably viewed as unacceptable, as it had the ability to unify sentiment, and identity of the population. Remember Jean Sibelius' creation of the Finnish anthem, "Finlandia?" Likewise, there have been encouragements from other Latin personalities to the populations to focus, and keep alive, and appreciate the native, or original styles of people's music, etc. from their own histories, which always enrages the hard righters, who want to rally and unify the people with militaristic, "patriotic" music.
Argentina, Chile, etc. all had musicians, singers, poets who promoted "Nuevo Cancion" and so many of them were hated, right? I have read that at least one, Violetta Parra, committed suicide, and others fled the country after learning they were on the hit lists of the right-wing dictatorships. Obviously, as with nationally beloved singers like Cafrune, and Jara, the dictatorship was delighted in murdering them.
It's so good to learn of this beloved troubador, Jorge Cafrune, and sorry I didn't know earlier. Clearly he was very important to the people, and because of that he was despised by the murderous, power mad right-wing dictatorship.
As revealed in biographical material, Jorge Cafrune and both his parents were born in Jujuy, controlled completely by hard right interests, and the realm controlled currently by the Governor Gerardo Morales and the hard right Trump-like President Mauricio Macri, and their indigenous Quechua (Inca) political prisoner, Milagro Sala:
Milagro Sala, Yet Another Chapter of Humans Rights Violations in Argentina
October 2, 2017
. . .
According to Eugenio Zaffaroni, a former member of the Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina, the arrest of Sala represents “the exploitation of racial prejudice, class and gender” by Jujuy’s Governor Gerardo Morales, who took office in the province under the Macri’s political coalition Cambiemos (Let’s Change). In public statements, the governor said: “I will not let this woman go[ii]“. According to Zaffaroni, “what actually terrifies those people who want a society which is 30 percent included and 70 percent excluded, it is that a poor woman, who is militant, indigenous and dark skinned, organized the excluded people and challenged the rich ones[iii].”
The Túpac Amaru organization, founded in 1999, manages financial resources in order to help those in need with housing construction and services such as health, education and jobs[iv]. The organization experienced its biggest growth under the governments of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner during what was known as the Argentina of recuperation.
Since she was arrested the provincial justice system, which is strongly influenced by the governor Morales, prompted many new charges to keep her incarcerated despite international orders that demanded her release. The Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions at the UN and the CIDH have maintained that she is a political prisoner from the very first moment.
After 578 days of her detention, on last August 16, the CIDH finally issued to the Argentine government an order to release the activist as had been called for by the UN and to “give her house arrest or freedom with electronic control due to the urgent matter and the, serious and irreparable damage jail was causing her[v]”. President of the CIDH, Francisco José Eguiguren Praeli claimed that Sala was “emotionally annihilated” in prison because she was subject to “harassment and excessive vigilance” and also maintained that he has, “no doubt that she is a political social leader against the government of his province”.
More:
http://www.coha.org/milagro-sala-yet-another-chapter-of-humans-rights-violations-in-argentina/
Two good people of Argentina!
Younger Milagro Sala.
("Macri's first political prisoner." )
It's clear there are deep, deep feelings, and identification with Argentina's Jujuy region. It appears the right-wing insists upon controlling it, doesn't it? Argentina's remote North-West.
Unbelievable landscape in the Jujuy region Jorge Cafrune loved. It is stunning:
https://tinyurl.com/ydxetkfo
and realized how serious it was, and what it meant.
A lot of people apparently paid no attention to it whatsoever, and didn't "waste time" taking it seriously, if it registered with them at all.
Here's a great article from the Washington Post:
‘This was not an accident. This was a bomb.’
Secret police, hired killers and a former Chilean diplomat’s brazen murder in the streets of D.C.:
The assassination of Orlando Letelier, as told by those who knew him and found his killers
On a muggy autumn morning four decades ago, a car exploded in Washington. It had motored along Massachusetts Avenue NW, rounding the bend at Sheridan Circle, when a remote-controlled bomb taped beneath the vehicle was triggered.
A driver in a car nearby would later describe the fiery impact of the blast: “I saw an automobile actually coming down out of the air.”
The smoldering wreck lurched to a halt in front of the Romanian Embassy, its windows blown open and entire floor panel gone. A police officer who arrived on the scene remembered welling up with nausea. There was blood and debris everywhere and a human foot in the roadway. A fatally wounded man lay on the pavement; his legs were missing from above the knees.
This was Orlando Letelier, a 44-year-old former Chilean diplomat who had been driving to work at a D.C. think tank along with his colleague, Ronni Moffitt, 25, and her husband, Michael.
Letelier died within minutes. Shrapnel had pierced Ronni Moffitt’s throat, and she drowned in her own blood a half-hour later. Michael, who had been sitting in the back seat, tumbled out largely unscathed. He was beside himself in grief and shock.
LEFT: Ronni Moffitt, who was a development associate at the Institute for Policy Studies at the time of her death in the 1976 car bombing. (Family photo) MIDDLE: Isabel Letelier, right, and Michael Moffitt embrace after placing roses at the site where Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt were killed in 1976. (UPI) RIGHT: Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean ambassador to the U.S., is pictured in April 1975. (Associated Press/AS)
Letelier was a prominent opponent of the military rule of Chile’s Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who rose to power in a 1973 army coup that ousted and led to the death of the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende. Letelier had served as Chile’s ambassador to the United States in Allende’s socialist government, which the CIA spent millions of dollars undermining through covert operations. On the day of the coup, Letelier was arrested and sent, with other ministers of Allende’s government, to a string of concentration camps. For months, he was kept at Dawson Island in the extreme south of Chile near the South Pole. He was released only after concerted international diplomatic pressure.
. . .
These regimes were complicit in the murder and disappearance of tens of thousands of people. In the case of Letelier, the Pinochet government had used an American expatriate and a shadowy network of anti-communist Cuban exiles to carry out the strike. These men would eventually be arrested in the United States and Chile, and some were jailed. Manuel Contreras, the head of the secret police known as DINA, was indicted by a U.S. grand jury, but Chile refused to extradite him. Pinochet, who stepped down from power in 1990, died in 2006 without facing trial.
More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2016/09/20/this-was-not-an-accident-this-was-a-bomb/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a79f38bff833
~ ~ ~
You may recall, Richard Nixon used some other Cuban "exile" right-wing mercenaries as operatives in the Watergate burlary of the Democratic Party headquarters not that long after.
Any politician who would do the things Richard Nixon did fully deserves all the jaundiced eyes he provokes. The evil he did will surely live so very long after this, as the world awakens, ultimately, to how much damage to the human race he inflicted.
Virgilio Paz Romero, was released from prison during the first term of George W. Bush's presidency. You may recall George W Bush, and his father, former President, Vice-President, and CIA director, George H W Bush, as well as JEB Bush all were completely connected to the Cuban "exile" right-wing reactionary community in the U.S.
Virgilio Paz Romero served only 10 years for that assassination before being turned loose, to return to Miami, New Jersey, etc.
From his Wikipedia:
Sentencing and imprisonment
In July 1991, Paz Romero pleaded guilty in the conspiracy to assassinate Letelier, and on September 13, 1991, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison.[2] He was paroled after serving half of his sentence, and an immigration judge ordered him deported.[5] Given that the United States did not have a deportation agreement with Cuba, he was placed into indefinite custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.[5] In July 2001 after the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that indefinite detentions were unconstitutional, Paul Huck of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida ordered Paz Romero released.[5]
Murder of Carmelo Soria
In May 2016, the Supreme Court of Chile voted unanimously to request that the United States extradite Paz, Chilean Armando Fernandez Larios, and American Michael Townley who were wanted for the July 1976 detention, torture, and murder of Carmelo Soria, a Spanish-Chilean citizen and United Nations diplomat.[6] The three men were former agents of Augusto Pinochet's secret police Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional.[2][7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgilio_Paz_Romero
Alvin Ross Diaz, Guillermo Novo, Virgilio Paz, 2012
All three assassins, free and happy as clams in 2012.
Seven Indicted In U.S. Murder Of Chilean Aide
By NICHOLAS HOR ROCK AUG. 2, 1978
WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 — The former chief of the Chilean secret police and six other persons, including four members of a Cuban nationalist group, were indicted today on charges of murdering Orlando Letelier, a strong critic of the Chilean military Government, who was killed in 1976 when his car was blown up on a public street here.
. . .
Cubans Were Anti‐Communist
The grand jury also brought charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder against Guillermo Novo Sampol, Alvin Ross Diaz, Virgilio Paz Romero and Jose Dionisio Suarez Esquivel, former Cuban citizens now living in New Jersey, who are the leaders of a group of militantly anti‐Communist Cubans. It charged a fifth Cuban‐American, Ignacio Novo, with having lied to a grand jury and failed to report a felony.
Earlier, Michael V. Townley, an American who had lived in Chile for more than two decades, was charged in connection with the killing. Both he and Ignacio Novo were reported to be in custody and cooperating with American authorities.
. . .
AsAgned to Stalk Letelier
On Aug. 26, Captain Fernandez, the grand jury said, was assigned to stalk the movements of Mr. Letelier in Washington, accompanied by Liliana Walker Martinez, described as “another DINA agent.” This was the first time that her name has come up in the case.
Twelve days later, Mr. Townley was sent to the United States to recruit and organize the assassination team, the indictment said. He and Captain Fernandez met at Kennedy Airport on Sept. 9, and’ Mr. Townley received the inforMation about Mr. Letelier's movements.
On Sept. 13, the jury charged, Mr. Townley met with four Cuban‐Americans and discussed the plot. Two days later, on Sept. ‐15, two of the Cubans gave Mr. Townley and Mr. Paz explosives and a remote‐controlled electronic detonating device,which the two carried by car to Washington. On Sept. 19, the indictment continued,two Cuban‐Americans and Mr. Townley, using parts purchased from a. Sears Roebuck store, constructed a bomb in a downtown Washington motel room.
The following day, Sept. 20, Mr. Townley placed the charge underneath Mr.. Letelier's car at his home in the nearby suburb of Bethesda, the grand jury said.
“On or about Sept. 19, 1976, Michael Townley telephoned Chile and told his wife, Mariana Ines Callejas de Townley, who was also an agent of DINA, to advise DINA that a bomb had been placed in Orlando Letelier's car, which she did,” the indictment said.
Mr. Townley, the jury charged, left Washington and was in Miami on Sept. 21 when the bomb was detonated, “killing Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt.” Three day's later,’ the jury said, he “advised Pedro Espinoza that the DINA mission to assassinate Orlando Letelier had been carried out.”
The investigation into Mr. Letelier's murder has been complicated by international and domestic pressures. The Chilean intelligence service was trained and supported by the Central Intelligence Agency, and the C.I.A. had undermined the administration of former President Salvador Allende Gossens, a Marxist, thus paving the way for the Pinochet regiume to take power.
Mr. Letelier, who had served in Dr. Allende's Cabinet and also as Ambassador in Washington, was regarded by many in American intelligence services as a Communist agent. Mrs. Letelier, and her husband's associates at the radical Institute for Policy Studies here, said early in the case that they felt the United States would make no serious attempt to place the real blame for the murder.
. . .
https://www.nytimes.com/1978/08/02/archives/new-jersey-pages-seven-indicted-in-us-murder-of-chilean-aide-former.html
It should also have caused more attention nationally that due to right-wing CIA-connected assassins, a US American citizen just happened to be executed in the street in Washington, D.C., for being an associate of a Chilean diplomat.
