The smile of Víctor Jara

12 July 2018, 09:02 By Manuel Cabieses Donoso *

Santiago, Chile (PL) The smile of Víctor Jara, indelible in my memory, has been forgotten. The line of Indian prisoners – hands in the nape of the neck – continued its march

We were heading towards the refrigerated truck of Pesquera Arauco who was waiting at the entrance of the Chile Stadium to move us (we still did not know it) at the National Stadium. It was the night of September 16, 1973.

45 years have pbaded since the crime and finally the conviction of the nine officers of the army who participated in the murder of Víctor Jara Martínez and Littré Quiroga Carvajal , singer-songwriter. , the director of prisons, the two communists

Judge Miguel Vásquez Plaza sentenced to 18 years imprisonment for the crimes of murder and kidnapping of "brave soldiers" of Chile who tortured and killed two helpless prisoners. [19659005] Jara and Quiroga were shot dead in the alley leading to the stadium that today bears the name of Martyr Víctor Jara. Before other prisoners have the same fate at this place.

The murderous officers were allowed to shoot at discretion. Víctor Jara received 44 balls and Littré Quiroga, 23.

All were 9,23 mm projectiles corresponding to the weapons of the "glorious and never-defeated" army officers of Chile. The bullet-ridden bodies of Jara and Quiroga were thrown into a vacant lot in the south of Santiago.

Judge Vásquez carried out extensive work including medical examinations, police investigations and statements of defendants and survivors of Estadio Chile. process has hundreds of pages and has not concluded: the defendants can appeal to the higher courts. However, it is an important step forward to unravel the truth of the horror days that have been experienced at Estadio Chile.

This stadium is a closed campus dedicated to the practice of basketball. It was established as a prison camp during the first days of the coup d'etat.

There we spent 5,400 detainees, according to Lt. Col. Mario Manríquez Bravo, commander of the camp. At the National Stadium we would be something more, about 15,000

With Commander Manríquez, who took a break on September 13 with his senior jailer staff, I had to hold a curious dialogue at Estadio Chile. [19659005WhenthebandwasremovedfromthecourtitwasfoundfacingManriquezandhisofficerswhohadbeensweptanddumped

Then Major Manríquez (whose name I learned) began a respectful dialogue with me. Socialism and the experience of popular unity

According to this official (and others that I heard later in the national stadium) the military coup was not intended to destroy the process of social change initiated in Chile by President Allende. He sought to expel the Communist Party from the government and to prevent Chile from becoming a second Cuba in Latin America. He declared himself an admirer of the government of General Juan Velasco Alvarado in Peru

. However, very little would be enough to hold those offers of nationalism that seemed to share other officers that I heard at the National Stadium and in the Chacabuco camp. The High Command of the Armed Forces, engaged since the beginning of the coup d'etat with another ideology, had taken refuge in the arms of the Grand Vautour Nord.

After the dialogue, the camp commander ordered one of his officers to take me to a cell, a dressing room at Estadio Chile. Today, I know this officer was Lieutenant Edwin Dimter Bianchi, whom they nicknamed "the prince".

A descendant of the Germans, like other officers who were at the stage of Chile, Dimter said that on June 29, 1973 he had participated in the uprising of the No. 2 armored regiment.

The Command of a tank shot down the doors of the Department of National Defense. Young Dimter was courteous and talkative. He told me that he was a descendant of a German family settled in Valdivia.

He had recently traveled to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to meet his parents and declared himself an admirer of the farming techniques that were applied in that country. 19659005] All his talk was made while we were walking through the underground corridors of Estadio Chile. I kept, as befits a prisoner, a respectful and astonished silence.

We saw dozens of people facing the wall with their hands raised. There were cries of pain and horror cries from prisoners tortured by army officers and carabinieri

Lying on the floor, facing the ground, we pbaded Littro Quiroga , sadistically beaten by civilians with colorful armbands. I suppose the fascist group Patria y Libertad who was implicated in the alleged ill-treatment of Gendarmerie General Roberto Viaux (1965). I had never seen (or seen again) a human being so brutally beaten as Littre Quiroga, who I confessed to moaning and almost dying.

Lieutenant Dimter left me in the locker room occupied by Jorge Godoy, Minister of Labor Allende, a communist; He merged me with an official of the new regime. He was bleeding from an injury to the head and he begged me: "Sir, please, look how they had me, do not beat me anymore …" [19659005] In the next three days we shared with Godoy a bread, a cup of coffee and many messages for our families if someone is left alive.

On September 16, they had us form a line of prisoners with an unknown destination. Then, on the way to the refrigerated truck, I was greeted by the smile of Víctor Jara. A light hit him in the face.

He had the whole air and with that attitude of dignity that characterized most of the political prisoners of the dictatorship.

Why did he smile? Perhaps he wanted to encourage us and share with us his exemplary courage. Maybe he challenged those who would be his killers. One to know … but we will never forget that smile.

/ msm / ft / mcd

* Destacado writer and Chilean journalist, director of Punto Final

(*) General Viaux led the coup attempt of October 21, 1969 against the government of President Eduardo Frei Montalva. He also participated in the badbadination of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General René Schneider Chereau, on October 25, 1970, and was imprisoned for this crime.