Officers Arrested in 1986 Burning Death of U.S. Student in Chile
Source: New York Times
Officers Arrested in 1986 Burning Death of U.S. Student in Chile
By PASCALE BONNEFOY
JULY 21, 2015
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Photographers raised their cameras in honor of Rodrigo Rojas during a 2003 ceremony in Santiago for victims of the Chilean
dictatorship. Mr. Rojas was set on fire during a protest in 1986. Credit Victor Rojas/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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SANTIAGO, Chile — A judge on Tuesday ordered the arrest of two former army officers and five former noncommissioned officers accused in the 1986 killing of Rodrigo Rojas, a United States resident, and the serious injury of a young woman. The two were set on fire by members of three military patrols during a protest in Santiago.
The warrants are part of a continuing investigation by Judge Mario Carroza into the burning, one of the heinous crimes committed during the 17-year dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The case was reopened in 2013 when a human rights organization filed a criminal complaint in Chile on behalf of Mr. Rojas’s family. By Tuesday evening, all seven of the accused had been taken into custody.
Last year, a former soldier testified and identified an official who he said had set the two on fire. The former officers were the commanders of two military patrols involved: Lt. Julio Castañer and Iván Figueroa. The commander of the third patrol, Lt. Pedro Fernández, was exempted because he had already been sentenced by a military court in 1991. The judge did not issue arrest warrants for the 17 soldiers said to have obeyed their orders.
Mr. Rojas, a 19-year-old photographer and student at Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, had returned to Chile in May 1986 to rediscover his birth country and take photographs along the way. He grew up in the Chilean exile community in Washington, the son of Verónica De Negri, a political exile and supporter of Salvador Allende, the socialist president.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/world/americas/officers-ordered-arrested-in-1986-burning-death-of-us-student-in-chile.html?_r=0
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and the astonishing suffering endured due to the fascist, US-supported bloody dictatorship violently forced upon the Chilean people due to Republicqan President Nixon's and Sec. of State Kissinger's schemes to deprive the Chilean people of their elected President, Salvador Allende's presence as their leader.
Truly sad, isn't it, that it has taken so long for this level of justice to be administered?
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Carmen Gloria Quintana and Rodrigo Rojas
Carmen Gloria Quintana, still living, after 40+ operations.
Pinochet with U.S. Sec. of State, and Nobel Prize Winner, Henry Kissinger[/center]
Deadly Alliance
New evidence shows how far Jesse Helms went to support Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet
By Jon Elliston
. . .
Marches and rallies took place throughout Santiago, the capital. In poor neighborhoods, which had recently been subjected to army sweeps and mass arrests, people built barricades of burning tires and debris--a defensive measure that became a common fixture in mid-1980s Santiago.
The regime reacted violently. During the upheaval, eight people were killed and 600 arrested. In a top secret intelligence summary for President Reagan, the CIA described the crackdown: "Although the government did not overreact by closing down the center of Santiago, as it did twice recently, the security forces' heavy-handed methods in slum and middle-class districts, along with press censorship and other forms of harassment, demonstrate that Pinochet is determined to crush all protests."
Some of the "heavy-handed" action was meted out against two teenagers, one of whom had spent the previous 10 years in the United States. Rodrigo Rojas, 19, whose mother had been tortured at length in Chilean prisons, had left the country in 1975. But he never felt completely at home in Washington, D.C., where his family had permanent resident status, and he yearned to return to Chile. Most of all, he wanted to pursue his passion--photographing protest movements. When he stepped off a bus in Santiago in May 1986, surrounded by broiling unrest against the Pinochet regime, he seemed to be in the right place at the right time.
Among Rojas's new friends was Carmen Gloria Quintana, 18, a University of Santiago student active in pro-democracy protests and community organizing in the slums. Around 7:30 on the morning of July 2, 1986, Rojas and Quintana met up with several young people on their way to build a barricade and stage a rally in a shantytown called Nogales. An army patrol of about 25 soldiers swooped in before they got there. Several young people got away, but Rojas and Quintana were apprehended.
Members of the army squad, dressed in fatigues and wearing black face paint, beat the pair with rifle butts until they were immobile. At one point, a soldier pulled Quintana's pants down and sodomized her with a rifle barrel. The soldiers then doused Rojas and Quintana in a flammable liquid, probably gasoline, stepped back and tossed a Molotov cocktail to set them afire.
Jorge Sanhuesa, a factory worker who witnessed the attack and later fled Chile after he was kidnapped and threatened with death if he testified, remembered: "The young people both tried to put out the fire on them but the girl was hit in the mouth with a gun by one of the soldiers, and the boy on the back of the head until he lost consciousness. After a while, the soldiers wrapped up the bodies in blankets and threw them on the back of the truck like parcels."
The soldiers drove Rojas and Quintana to the outskirts of Santiago and dumped them in a ditch. Miraculously, they were still alive, though both had numerous broken bones and severe burns on more than 60 percent of their bodies. They staggered to a street and eventually flagged down help.
More:
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A15917
The Chilean muralists who defied Pinochet
By Gideon Long
BBC News, Santiago
6 September 2013
Walk around the side of the GAM, the main cultural centre in the Chilean capital Santiago, and you come across a striking mural, 25m (80ft) wide and 3m high, covering an entire wall.
In bold, bright colours, it shows a copper miner, a student, a fisherman and a member of Chile's largest indigenous community, the Mapuche.
Wander down the road to the headquarters of the CUT, the country's main trade union federation, and you find another mural overlooking a courtyard. This one tells the history of the country's workers.
Both walls are painted in the same distinctive style. The colours are primary and the faces - often indigenous in their features - are outlined in thick black lines.
BRP murals can be found all over Santiago and often feature the Chilean working class.
Fishermen, copper miners and teachers all feature prominently on the mural next to
Santiago's cultural centre.
The demand for free and inclusive education which has led to mass student demonstrations
over the past years in Chile is shared by the collective.
Other murals honour opponents of the Pinochet regime. Jecar Nehgme, a left-wing activist, was
shot dead by Pinochet's forces in 1989. He was one of the last victims of the military regime.
More:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-23970034
Chile soldiers charged in 1986 burning death of U.S. resident
AP/ July 24, 2015, 5:42 PM
. . .
President Michelle Bachelet, who was held and tortured during the dictatorship, said it's important for the truth to finally come out so that these crimes are never again repeated and go unpunished in Chile.
"The latest developments encourage us by making us feel that it's always good for the truth to arrive and justice to be served, even if it takes 29 years," Bachelet said during a public event this week.
A judge in 1999 ordered the Chilean government to pay Quintana $470,000. This week, she thanked the former soldier identified as Fernando Guzman for testifying. Speaking from Canada, where she now lives, she told a local radio station that the soldiers involved in the attack were teenagers like her at the time and were also victims of the dictatorship because they received death threats to keep silent.
. . .
Castaner was arrested this week, and was beaten up by a group of protesters, who shouted "murderer!" and kicked him on the floor at the airport of the southern city of Punta Arenas, on his way to face a judge in Santiago. He is now being held with the other accused former soldiers at a military barracks while they wait for trial.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chile-soldiers-charged-in-1986-burning-death-of-u-s-resident/
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Former Chilean military officer Julio Castaner lies on the ground as protesters kick and insult him, as he tries to catch a flight at the airport in Punta Arenas, Chile, Thursday, July 23, 2015, on his way to face a judge in Santiago. On Friday, the judge charged Castaner and six other former members of the military in the burning death of a 19-year-old U.S. resident Rodrigo Rojas, who was killed in a 1986 protest against the military dictatorship then in power. They were also charged with the attempted homicide of 18-year-old Carmen Quintana. Former solider Fernando Guzman testified that Castaner ordered a soldier to douse Rojas and Quintana in gasoline, spraying the woman from head to toe and the man on his back. (Andres Poblete, Agencia Uno via AP) CHILE OUT - NO USAR EN CHILE (Associated Press)
Castaner, on the right.
Lt. Julio Castaner[/center]
