18-04-2015, 09:47 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worl...tatorship/
Federal judge allows lawsuit to proceed in slaying of Chilean folk singer killed after 1973 coup
By Nick Miroff April 17 at 3:19 PM ïƒ
A woman in Santiago waves a flag with a portrait of Chile's slain folk singer Victor Jara in 2009. Florida is set to reopen a trial in Jara's 1973 slaying. (AP)
One of Latin America's darkest Cold War-era crimes is being reopened in Florida, where a U.S. judge has allowed a lawsuit to go forward against a former Chilean officer accused of torturing and murdering folk singer Victor Jara in 1973.
Jara's grisly death in the days following Gen. Augusto Pinochet's U.S.-backed coup d'etat remains an open wound in Chile. The killing became an early symbol of the cruelty of Pinochet's 17-year military rule, in which some 3,000 Chileans were slain or forcefully disappeared.
Scores of murder and torture cases from the Pinochet era remain under investigation, including Jara's. In 2012, several former soldiers implicated in Jara's murder named an ex-lieutenant, Pedro Barrientos, as the commanding officer and triggerman.
Barrientos has been living quietly in central Florida since 1989, according to local media accounts, and had obtained U.S. citizenship.
In January, Chile's Supreme Court approved a judge's request for Barrientos's extradition, and a federal judge in Orlando ruled this week that a separate civil suit against Barrientos filed by Jara's widow, Joan Jara, can proceed.
Jara's burial took place in 2009, 36 years after he was beaten and shot by soldiers in a stadium. (AP)
At the time of the 1973 coup, Victor Jara was a well-known songwriter, theater director and supporter of then-president Salvador Allende, a socialist.
Soldiers occupied the university where Jara worked and rounded up students, professors and other suspected leftist sympathizers, herding them into a soccer field called Chile Stadium.
Jara became one of many who vanished into the underground locker rooms that military officers converted into torture chambers. His body was discovered a few days later near a cemetery on the outskirts of Santiago de Chile. He had been shot 44 times, and his guitar-strumming hands were crushed, apparently by rifle butts.
Jara scrawled out a poem just before his death, which was later passed along to his wife by a survivor. "How hard it is to sing when I must sing of horror," he wrote. "Horror which I am living, horror of which I am dying."
The singer's body was exhumed in 2009 and reburied in a ceremony attended by thousands. Chile Stadium has been renamed Victor Jara stadium in his honor. His image appears on murals and college campus all over Chile and in other parts of Latin America as well.
But obtaining a conviction for Jara's killers has been elusive, even as the government of president Michele Bachelet goes further than any predecessor to investigate the crimes of the Pinochet era.
It is only in recent years that the cloak of silence has begun to lift from incidents like the 1973 stadium killings, as ex-officers are taken into custody and begin testifying against one another.
The lawsuit against Barrientos was filed by the San Francisco-based Center for Accountability and Justice (CJA) on behalf of British-born Joan Jara and their two daughters.
She said in a 2013 interview that she is not seeking monetary damages, and only wants U.S. courts to hold Barrientos accountable.
Federal judge allows lawsuit to proceed in slaying of Chilean folk singer killed after 1973 coup
By Nick Miroff April 17 at 3:19 PM ïƒ
A woman in Santiago waves a flag with a portrait of Chile's slain folk singer Victor Jara in 2009. Florida is set to reopen a trial in Jara's 1973 slaying. (AP)
One of Latin America's darkest Cold War-era crimes is being reopened in Florida, where a U.S. judge has allowed a lawsuit to go forward against a former Chilean officer accused of torturing and murdering folk singer Victor Jara in 1973.
Jara's grisly death in the days following Gen. Augusto Pinochet's U.S.-backed coup d'etat remains an open wound in Chile. The killing became an early symbol of the cruelty of Pinochet's 17-year military rule, in which some 3,000 Chileans were slain or forcefully disappeared.
Scores of murder and torture cases from the Pinochet era remain under investigation, including Jara's. In 2012, several former soldiers implicated in Jara's murder named an ex-lieutenant, Pedro Barrientos, as the commanding officer and triggerman.
Barrientos has been living quietly in central Florida since 1989, according to local media accounts, and had obtained U.S. citizenship.
In January, Chile's Supreme Court approved a judge's request for Barrientos's extradition, and a federal judge in Orlando ruled this week that a separate civil suit against Barrientos filed by Jara's widow, Joan Jara, can proceed.
Jara's burial took place in 2009, 36 years after he was beaten and shot by soldiers in a stadium. (AP)
At the time of the 1973 coup, Victor Jara was a well-known songwriter, theater director and supporter of then-president Salvador Allende, a socialist.
Soldiers occupied the university where Jara worked and rounded up students, professors and other suspected leftist sympathizers, herding them into a soccer field called Chile Stadium.
Jara became one of many who vanished into the underground locker rooms that military officers converted into torture chambers. His body was discovered a few days later near a cemetery on the outskirts of Santiago de Chile. He had been shot 44 times, and his guitar-strumming hands were crushed, apparently by rifle butts.
Jara scrawled out a poem just before his death, which was later passed along to his wife by a survivor. "How hard it is to sing when I must sing of horror," he wrote. "Horror which I am living, horror of which I am dying."
The singer's body was exhumed in 2009 and reburied in a ceremony attended by thousands. Chile Stadium has been renamed Victor Jara stadium in his honor. His image appears on murals and college campus all over Chile and in other parts of Latin America as well.
But obtaining a conviction for Jara's killers has been elusive, even as the government of president Michele Bachelet goes further than any predecessor to investigate the crimes of the Pinochet era.
It is only in recent years that the cloak of silence has begun to lift from incidents like the 1973 stadium killings, as ex-officers are taken into custody and begin testifying against one another.
The lawsuit against Barrientos was filed by the San Francisco-based Center for Accountability and Justice (CJA) on behalf of British-born Joan Jara and their two daughters.
She said in a 2013 interview that she is not seeking monetary damages, and only wants U.S. courts to hold Barrientos accountable.
“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.â€
― Leo Tolstoy,
― Leo Tolstoy,