Chile's Argentina envoy praises Pinochet, resigns

[Judi Lynn]

Jun 8, 10:48 PM EDT
Chile's Argentina envoy praises Pinochet, resigns
By EVA VERGARA
Associated Press Writer

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) -- Chile's ambassador in Argentina resigned Tuesday after causing an uproar in both nations by praising the Chilean dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Chile's foreign ministry accepted the resignation of Ambassador Miguel Otero, who told Argentina's Clarin newspaper in an introductory interview that "most of Chile didn't notice the dictatorship of Pinochet. On the contrary, they felt relieved."

Otero also claimed that any human rights violations during the 1973-1990 dictatorship didn't reflect official policies, but rather were individual abuses of authority.

Otero is a lawyer and longtime leader of the right-wing National Renovation party, who was among the minority who campaigned to keep Pinochet in power rather than return democracy to Chile. His appointment was seen as a bow by new President Sebastian Pinera to hardliners in the coalition that returned conservatives to power after 20 years.

But Otero's comments prompted demands for his resignation in both countries, despite his public apology to Pinera and to all those whom he offended.

More:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_CHILE_AMBASSADOR_RESIGNS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2010-06-08-22-48-59

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Miguel Otero

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Pinochet's prisoners waiting within Santiago, Chile's National Soccer
Stadium to be interrogated, tortured, and in many cases, murdered.

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Ouique Cruz, a Chilean-born composer, performer
and writer in Oakland, Calif., on September 19,
2008. He was jailed and tortured during the
Pinochet regime. He's made a film about his return
to Chile, "Archeology of Memory: Villa Grimaldi."
Credit: Craig Lee,
Chilean artist finds healing in film, music
Oakland's Quique Cruz, a victim of torture in Chile, revisits horror in new film
October 04, 2008|By Jesse Hamlin, Chronicle Staff Writer

It's the sounds he remembers most.

He can still hear the crickets singing outside the room where he stood bound and blindfolded; the laughter of the men who stripped and beat him; the striking of a match; the trigger-click of the pistol shoved in his mouth as they played Russian roulette.

"Because you're blindfolded, your ears become your eyes," says Quique Cruz, an exiled Chilean musician and writer who's lived in the Bay Area since 1980. Like thousands of others who were "disappeared" - many of them murdered - he was arrested and tortured during the brutal regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the late dictator who led the 1973 CIA-backed coup that toppled the democratically elected Socialist government of Salvador Allende and ruled Chile until 1990.

More:
http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-10-04/entertainment/17135498_1_villa-grimaldi-pinochet-s-secret-police-gen-augusto-pinochet

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Victor Jara, beloved Chilean singer/musician, who didn't make it out of the stadium alive.
His hands were crushed by soldiers' gun butts. He still managed to write his last song and
it was taken out of the stadium and given to his wife.

His album pictured is "The Right to Live in Peace."

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Victor Jara in his last march.