Los 3 Grandes de Chile: Investigations after the Dictatorship

 Joan Jara spoke from her heart: " It seems almost impossible that we are back. We have fought for decades and things are now moving. It is very difficult to talk .. There is a time for celebration but a time when we must be calm and know that there is much work ahead to finally achieve true justice. And especially true justice for all victims. "

We spoke on class on the need to hold people/government accountable and responsible for the thousands of death that have occurred in Latin America due to dictatorships etc; recently there has been investigations of  3 Chilean deaths, Victor Jara, Pablo Nureda and Salvador Allende (these are what I call Chilean icon's). Very few of people have be charged for the deaths of thousands.

President Salvador Allende (1970-1973)
   Leftist leader Allende help found Chile's first Socialist Party. He unsuccessfully ran for the presidency in the 1952, 1958, and 1964 elections. In 1970, he won the presidency, and became Chile's first Socialist President. During a military coup in 1973, the presidential palace was attacked and Allende was killed. Allende's death has been debatable for sometime now. Some believe that we has killed  in the palace, while others believe he committed suicide before the attack. History books claim the Allende shot himself ( with a gun Fidel Castro gave him) as Pinochet's army closed in to the palace.

    Since his death had been debatable for decades, in 2011 Allende's body was exhumed and by pathology  experts. An Uruguayan forensic specialist claims that there is a video were you can clearly see that Allende was hit by two bullets.Allende's family believe the original story that Allende committed suicide to prevent humiliation or be put under different circumstances.
News Reports    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/05/salvador-allende-death-investigation-chile
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/chile/8553069/Death-of-Chiles-President-Salvador-Allende-may-not-have-been-suicide.html

Victor Jara 
         Jara  was and is an political figure in Chile. He was a musician, a professor and theater instructor. Jara's music appealed the folk of Chile. He loved his country and the working class of Chile, so because of this he dedicated his time on making and performing songs of the people of Chile. His music attacked the injustices and political scandals that Chile faced. He was a supporter of President Allende. In September 11th 1973 after the overthrow of the presidency and Allende, Jara was abducted from this job by the military and was tortured at Chile's National Stadium for 5 days. He died September 17th 1973; he was shot 44 times.
     Investigation:

     It had be "unknown" who exactly shot and killed Jara. In December 2012, eight retired men were charged with Jara's death in Santiago Chile. "Judge Miguel Vásquez charged two of the former officers, Pedro Barrientos and Hugo Sánchez, with committing the murder and six others as accomplices." It took four decades to finally charge someone with the death of Jara. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/world/americas/eight-charged-with-victor-jaras-1973-murder-in-chile.html?_r=0
http://tomasdinges.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/how-victor-jara-died-last-minutes/
 http://peoplesworld.org/after-four-decades-victor-jara-s-killers-charged/

2 songs by Victor Jara!

         

Pablo Neruda  (Death: September 23rd 1973)

         Neruda has been given by some the greatest writer/poet of all time.  Since we live in a "democratic" country many America's do not give him any credit, since he had a commitment to communism. It was been known that Nureda died of prostate cancer, however his driver claims that this is not so true. "Neruda’s body taken from his tomb in Isla Negra, Chile, in early April 2013, as part of an investigation opened after Neruda’s former driver Manuel Araya said that the real cause of the poet’s death was an unscheduled injection that he received a few hours before dying." Neruda's death is of great controversy, because he died just 24 hours before fleeing the country, that he was given the injection that contained "poised." His friends and family questioned his death and believed that he had been murdered in the hospital. In April a judge ordered that his body be exhumed to prove the cause of his death. However, it has been 40 years since his death so it might be hard to detect any poises and hard to detect if his body was really poisoned. The investigation is said to take few months and it may not clear all the speculation on Neruda's "mysterious" death. Personally, I find it a coincidence that he died 24 years before fleeing the country and a few days after Jara's, and Allende's death and the attack at the Palace Sept 11, 1973. We shall find out the "truth."

Poem by Neruda:

Death Alone

There are lone cemeteries,
tombs full of soundless bones,
the heart threading a tunnel,
a dark, dark tunnel :
like a wreck we die to the very core,
as if drowning at the heart
or collapsing inwards from skin to soul.

There are corpses,
clammy slabs for feet,
there is death in the bones,
like a pure sound,
a bark without its dog,
out of certain bells, certain tombs
swelling in this humidity like lament or rain.

I see, when alone at times,
coffins under sail
setting out with the pale dead, women in their dead braids,
bakers as white as angels,
thoughtful girls married to notaries,
coffins ascending the vertical river of the dead,
the wine-dark river to its source,
with their sails swollen with the sound of death,
filled with the silent noise of death.

Death is drawn to sound
like a slipper without a foot, a suit without its wearer,
comes to knock with a ring, stoneless and fingerless,
comes to shout without a mouth, a tongue, without a throat.
Nevertheless its footsteps sound
and its clothes echo, hushed like a tree.

I do not know, I am ignorant, I hardly see
but it seems to me that its song has the colour of wet violets,
violets well used to the earth,
since the face of death is green,
and the gaze of death green
with the etched moisture of a violet's leaf
and its grave colour of exasperated winter.

But death goes about the earth also, riding a broom
lapping the ground in search of the dead -
death is in the broom,
it is the tongue of death looking for the dead,
the needle of death looking for the thread.

Death lies in our beds :
in the lazy mattresses, the black blankets,
lives a full stretch and then suddenly blows,
blows sound unknown filling out the sheets
and there are beds sailing into a harbour
where death is waiting, dressed as an admiral.

http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/05/tests-cofirm-pablo-neruda-had-terminal-cancer.html
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/world-our-backyard/2013/apr/14/poet-pablo-nerudas-body-exhumed-chile/