Chile Forum

This is the post for Chilean history...not really the grade school stuff but the funky, quirky...maybe even "stare at the car wreck " kinda stuff...if you are in doubt post it anyway....for instance...

In La Serena, near the colegio de sacrado corazon de ninas, there is a palm tree that has a petrified arrow through it from when the town was attacked by the indians about 1600 or so....the palm is still growing today and as it is about 80 feet up you can't really see it unless you know where to look.....

puelche out

...... last foto of allende...
http://www.chilevive.cl/iframe.php?file ... je/allende

Its in Spanish and.... seems to be accurate for everything that I have read about it

Good idea. My Chilean history is a bit spotty also.

In National geographics' october 1973 issue, the magazine led with an article on Chile. The writer had been in CHile from jan to march 73 and submitted everything for the october issue unknowing that just as the issue was in the press the coup that took out allende would take place. THe cover was of a cute Chilean girl holding the flag...no one ever knew what happened to her...and in fact she had no idea for several months that she was on the cover...here is an artlcle on where she is now...

http://www.elperiodista.cl:80/newtenber ... 75966.html

ciaopo, puelche out

It is still used as a national symbol of sorts. Every so often they republish the cover in local media. Chile has come a long way from 1973.

I've always found it interesting that any yacht club I have been to in Chile has a small framed case with a small piece of Arturo Pratt's shirt....I guess he had alot of shirts....al bordaje muchachos!!!!.....


p out.

The latest on Neruda...the last photos...and some interesting commentary...


http://www.theclinic.cl/c_reportajes/rep_04.php


p out,


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Is this the cover?

you got it...


p out


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Interesting article with an interview of author Michael Hudson:

"The Chilean experiment originated in an exchange program of economists between the University of Chicago and Chile's Catholic University in Santiago. In August 1972, more than a year before the military coup, the CIA funded a 300-page economic blueprint which it supplied to the country's military and some of the most ambitious business families in an effort to hasten the overthrow of Salvador Allende's socialist government, which had been elected by a small plurality in 1970."

The article and full interview can be found on the counterpunch.org website:

http://www.counterpunch.org/schaefer10202003.html

I haven't taken time to read the entire article, but will do so when I have some time.
Vicki

history... there a national or whatever museum in santiago. with exposure of precolumbian history. but history... there is/was a nice side exhibition of some rituals connected to the death of the ruler. in that show there were needed same skeletons for playing death. They got an idea, take all of POW, cut them of or out their noses, eyes, ears and lips so they really looked like skeletons. And that was just the beginning of a very long party with skeletons as guests of honor.

Once i started "an indian question" in chile... is it a history?

So, 35 years after the Pinochet coup, people who lost family members, Chileans who lost friends, are still waiting for justice for the "disappeared", and for the tortured and jailed leftists. Protest singer songwriter Victor Jara, for example, whose hands were allegedly smashed to prevent him from ever playing his guitar again, but then was murdered, and so many more people like him of different opinions (socialists, communists, left-leaning, and the not well-connected or protected) may find justice (?) posthumously. As an outsider, it is interesting to me to find that Bachelet has taken a seemingly judicious and hands-off approach to justice for those people with whom she shared a similar experience.

The investigation into Victor Jara's torture and death has apparently been reopened and it's thought that the investigative path to El Principe has opened up. The report in the following link indicates that there are still many former army members being investigated and sought, and at least 100 are soon to be arrested and brought to trial. Thirty-five years is a long time, but hey, they are still hunting a few Nazi's. Some people think it's better to let things be, but in my opinion that is a bad precedent. Sets a bad precedent. The pardons, the "turning the page" shit administration after administration, is for the birds. Accountability is important for the integrity of a society. There are still many gaping wounds in Chile as a result of conflict (as in other countries) and it will be interesting to see how this all comes out.

I include a large part of the article from this site because it seems to be an RSS feed link and changes:

http://www.spiderednews.com/xml/SouthAmerica


Justice the victor for Jara

The net is finally closing on El Principe, the Pinochet henchman who brutally killed Chile's most famous musician


It would have strained credulity to imagine during the orgy of terror unleashed by the US-backed coup on the other 9/11, in 1973. But 35 years after Richard Nixon gave the green light to the Chilean military to drown Salvador Allende's elected socialist government in blood, the net is finally closing on the man who personally machine-gunned to death one of the outstanding political songwriters of the 20th century.

This week, Judge Juan Eduardo Fuentes agreed to re-open the investigation into the murder of Victor Jara, Chile's most famous musician, killed by an army officer in the Estadio Chile stadium in Santiago, where he had been interned, beaten and tortured with 5,000 other "subversives" in the wake of General Pinochet's fascist takeover.

Last month, Fuentes closed the Jara case after finding a retired army colonel, Mario Manriquez, guilty of the murder as commanding officer at the stadium after the 1973 coup, while accepting that Manriquez had not pulled the trigger.

Within days, a concert was held in the same stadium where Jara was killed, now renamed Estadio Victor Jara, to protest at what is widely regarded as a military cover-up of those guilty of the atrocity. Among those taking part were the radical folk group Inti Illimani, who played with Jara, and the singer's widow, English-born choreographer Joan Turner Jara, who appealed to witnesses to come forward with information about the killer. Now the judge has reversed his earlier decision and agreed to look at 40 pieces of new evidence provided by the family and lawyers.

Jara famously had both his hands broken with soldiers' rifle butts so he could never play guitar again. "Sing now, if you can, you bastard," an officer spat at him. Despite four days of beatings, torture and food and sleep deprivation, Jara managed to sing a verse of the revolutionary anthem Venceremos to his fellow prisoners before being dragged away to be shot. His body, riddled with 44 bullets, was dumped in the street.

The youtube link below is interesting for two reasons. It is a recording of Jara's famous song, Manifesto, with the words in the "more info" window, and, the visual is news footage of the coup...tanks, airplanes, protests in the streets. All around interesting.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en8yqVxuT-U

Not sure this is the most appropriate thread for this tidbit, but it's history, and wildly interesting, at least to me:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/46070.html

The article starts out like this:

SANTIAGO, Chile — During the darkest years of this country's military dictatorship, Mariana Callejas was an up-and-coming writer and the hostess of the era's most glamorous literary salon.

Chile's leading authors trekked up to Callejas' hillside mansion every Thursday night to talk literature, have a few drinks and sometimes dance until the next morning. The salon offered a respite from the fear and violence of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's Chile, in which nearly 3,200 dissidents died or disappeared at the hands of government agents.

Writer Carlos Iturra, who attended the meetings, said in an e-mail that he'd always remember those nights for "the good writers who were formed there" amid the "dances, drinks, laughs and debates."

Horror lay just below the glittering surface, however, as it often did during the 1973-90 military dictatorship.

Callejas was more than just a writer; she was an agent of the DINA,