Memories Of Latino Dictators

Still Shape Today's Latin America
Updated: Sunday, August 2nd, 2015

        Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic candidate for President, this week {July 31st} made a key political speech at Florida International University in Miami. Reading cogently from a teleprompter, she made statements like this to a receptive audience: "The Cuban embargo needs to go once and for all."

        Mrs. Clinton, a prototypical politician, was not being very brave with such a strong Cuban speech in the heart of Miami's Little Havana power-base. She reads the polls, which show that even Cuban-Americans want an end to the embargo, which was codified into law by powerful anti-Castro Miami stalwarts led by Jorge Mas Canosa and his easily acquired supporters in the U. S. Congress -- such as Robert Torricelli, Jesse Helms, and Dan Burton. While politicians such as Mrs. Clinton read the tea leaves, pro-democracy advocates have grown tired of the harm the U. S. Cuban policy heaps upon the United States, merely to appease a handful of what now is a second generation of revengeful Cuban exiles.

         Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio {Photo: LatinoFoxNews.com}, two prime Republican presidential candidates, were quick to denounce Hillary Clinton's audacity to make an anti-embargo speech in their front-and-back yards. Both men have mansions almost within sight of Florida International University, and Rubio teaches there. Bush and Rubio also read tea leaves and polls. But, like most of their other political stances, their Cuban views during this presidential campaign are largely predicated by their big-money billionaire donors. When it comes to Cuba, neither Bush nor his protege Rubio care a whit about public opinion or about the deleterious effect the cruel and archaic embargo has on America's and democracy's image. But they do care about billionaire donors. Meanwhile, throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, the embargo backed by Bush and Rubio is mostly a reminder of America's past relations with Cuba -- such as teaming with the Mafia to support the vile Batista dictatorship and terrorist attacks such as the bombing of Cubana Flight 455 that was hailed in Miami as "the biggest blow yet against Castro." Although the Castros have remained in power in Cuba since January 1, 1959, Bush and Rubio seem to still rely on that 1976 chant about the downing of the civilian Cubana Flight 455 being "the biggest blow yet against Castro" while less biased observers believe such things helped entrench, not remove, the Castros. That's what President Obama meant when he said, "After fifty years, if something doesn't work, maybe it's time to try something different." And that's what President Michelle Bachelet meant this week when she said, "More Americans need to care about wiping away reminders of the bloody imprint their past leaders left on Latin America."     

        This photo of Michelle Bachelet was taken this week and is used courtesy of Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images. She is the President of Chile. I'll explain the tortured look on her face in a moment. She was born 63 years ago in Santiago, Chile. She served as Chile's President from 2006 till 2010. Chile does not allow consecutive terms so she then did humanitarian work for organizations such as the UN. Then, after being reelected to a second term, she returned as Chile's President in March. Her countenance in this week's photo reflects the fact that she has been tormented all of her adult life by the U.S.-installed and U.S.-backed Pinochet dictatorship, which from 1973 till 1990 was one of history's most brutal. Compounding the pain etched on her face this week is the memory that Pinochet replaced the decent, democratically elected President Salvador Allende. Allende died defending his presidential palace from a Richard Nixon/Henry Kissinger-inspired coup that replaced Mr. Allende with the U.S.-friendly criminal Pinochet. From 1973 till 1990 Pinochet's agents murdered people around the world, including the 1976 car-bombing within sound of the White House in Washington that killed beautiful 25-year-old Ronni Moffitt. In all, Chile now registers 40,018 Chileans known to have been murdered or tortured by Pinochet's killers. One of those imprisoned and murdered was President Bachelet's father; one of those imprisoned and tortured was President Bachelet herself. In this hot summer of 2015, led by President Bachelet, perpetrators of Pinochet's "crimes against humanity" are still being brought to justice in Chilean courtrooms. This week for one of those trials Carmen Quintana flew from her home in Canada. At age 18 she was disfigured in a gasoline attack in which Pinochet soldiers set fire to and killed young photographer Rodrigo Rojas. In Chile this week seven former Pinochet henchmen are finally being tried after decades of exhaustive investigations. And so, now you know that the taunting memories of the murderous Pinochet regime accounts for the pain etched this week on the countenance of a truly great woman, Michelle Bachelet, the two-term President of Chile.

         This photo is courtesy of The Associated Press's Patricio Guzman. It shows Victor Jara in the 1970s when he was the most popular singer/musician in Chile. Pinochet considered him a dissident. It has been historically documented how Victor Jara died. Pinochet's goons took him to a basement and shot him forty times, allegedly to see how many gunshots he could endure before he died. Of the 40,018 known Chilean victims of Pinochet's crimes against nature, the fate of Victor Jara still looms very large in many memories.

        This is a beautiful photo of Ronni Moffitt. In high school, she cherished the U. S. democracy so much she wrote a term paper in which she lamented America's "flirtations with regional dictators." She specifically referenced Batista in Cuba, Somoza in Nicaragua, and Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.

         This is Ronni Moffitt at age 25 in 1976, the year she died. Her passion for democracy found her working for Orlando Letelier, who had been Chile's Ambassador to the U. S. and then Defense Minister in the administration of Salvador Allende, who had been democratically elected President of Chile in 1970. That election didn't sit well with U. S. President Richard Nixon and his top adviser Henry Kissinger because President Allende wanted Chile's resources to benefit Chileans, not rich Americans. Nixon and Kissinger preferred "U.S. friendly" dictators -- not patriotic and democratically elected Presidents. President Salvador Allende famously fought to the end from a palace window with an engraved AK-47 rifle that his friend Fidel Castro had given him as an inauguration gift. Allende's death in the U.S.-backed coup that installed dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1973 is something not only Chile but all of Latin America is still trying to come to grips with, as evidenced by President Bachelet's ongoing investigations and trials as July turns into August in the year 2015. Letelier, a key associate of Salvador Allende, ended up in Washington as a democracy advocate. Ronni Moffitt worked for him. They both died within a mile of the White House on September 21, 1976, after a terrorist bomb exploded beneath their car. Chile and Latin America are still to this day trying to investigate the murders of Letelier and Moffitt, still without much assistance from the United States.

        Notable journalists such as John Dinges and Saul Landau quickly surmised that Pinochet's dreaded DINA security assassins had carried out the attack. So did the FBI, but the FBI would soon complain that their investigations were being "stalled" or "misdirected" by the CIA. The year 1976 was the only year George H. W. Bush was CIA Director. A mere three weeks later -- on October 6, 1976 -- a terrorist bomb blew Cubana Flight 455, a civilian airplane, into the ocean killing all 73 on board, including two dozen young Cuban athletes. Declassified FBI documents confirm that the two most infamous Cuban-exile/CIA terrorists -- Luis Posada Carriles and Orlanto Bosch -- were masterminds of the Cubana Flight 455 bombing. Bosch, after being pardoned by President George H. W. Bush at the request of Jeb Bush, lived out his long life a free man in Miami; Carriles to this day is a controversial but heralded citizen of Miami. John Dinges, who wrote the above article about the Letelier-Moffit murders, also wrote a definitive book entitled "Assassination On Embassy Row." Such Pinochet-related murders are known to history and to Hollywood as "Condor Operations." John Dinges, Peter Kornbluh, and other respected authors have pointed out that Pinochet often used Cuban exiles in Operation Condor attacks because they had been expertly trained in explosives by the CIA and U. S. Army since 1959. And yes, Cuban exiles were tied to the Letelier-Moffitt car-bombing in Washington. In the last week of July, 2015, President Bachelet of Chile is still grim-faced and distraught over the thousands of murders during the Pinochet reign from 1973 till 1990.

        The car-bombing that murdered Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt within a mile of the White House in 1976, as well as the airplane bombing of Cubana Flight 455 three weeks later, haunt Michelle Bachelet to this day. They should also haunt Americans who, at long last, need to hold the perpetrators responsible.

          For example, the photo above was one of the last ever taken of 22-year-old Rosetta Pallini. She was a university student in Santiago, Chile, when Pinochet's goons labeled her a dissident. She escaped to Mexico City but the long reach of Operation Condor found her. She was then brutally murdered merely on the assumption she still opposed Pinochet's murderous rule back in her beloved country of Chile.

 Pinochet is shown in this Wikipedia photo with his key supporter, Henry Kissinger.

        Because Americans are not supposed to know much about Latin American history, they understandably have trouble comprehending the two modern-day photos depicted above. On the left showing deep affection for Cuba's Fidel Castro is Cristina Fernandez Kirchner. She has been President of Argentina since 2007. On the right is Michelle Bachelet showing deep affection for Cuba's Fidel Castro. She is the two-term President of Chile. President Kirchner and President Bachelet, in their younger days, both felt the wrath of vile U.S.-backed dictators, dictators who were Fidel Castro's bitter enemies too.

         The other current two-term female President of a very important Latin American country is Dilma Rousseff of Brazil. Yes, in this photo that is President Rousseff showing deep affection for Cuba's Fidel Castro. In her youth Dilma Rousseff paid a severe price for opposing a U.S.-backed dictatorship: She was unmercifully tortured for three years in that dictator's prison. Fidel Castro strongly opposed the U.S.-backed dictatorships that so harshly maligned today's three female Latin American Presidents in their youths -- Cristina Kirchner, Michelle Bachelet, and Dilma Rousseff. To understand Latin America today, Americans need to understand Latin American history -- and I don't mean the classified and sanitized versions that Americans have been spoon-fed for decades. {Note: As a passionate, democracy-loving American, I am not pleased that Presidents Kirchner, Bachelet and Rousseff -- as well as many other democratically elected Presidents throughout Latin America -- love Fidel Castro a lot more than they love the United States of America. Anyone who is pleased with that, I believe, is someone who cares little about democracy or the U. S. and, further, such a self-serving lack of admission or knowledge about Latin America perpetuates the power of Henry Kissinger clones. Ask President Bachelet of Chile while she tries to hold people in her country accountable for the crimes against nature perpetuated during the 1973 till 1990 terror orchestrated by one of Kissinger's favorite dictators, Augusto Pinochet. PRESIDENTS BACHELET, KIRCHNER, AND ROUSSEFF ARE TRUE EXPERTS ON LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY SIMPLY BECAUSE...THEY LIVED IT.}

        This, by the way, is an historic Latin American photo. It shows Cuba's Fidel Castro with Chile's beloved, democratically elected President Salvador Allende. According to information unearthed by President Bachelet's diligent researchers, on the above trip Castro warned Allende "that Nixon and Kissinger will target you as they are targeting me." It is assumed Castro meant that any leader of any country would be targeted if that leader tried to restrict how much U. S. business interests could extract from that country. Shortly after the above meeting, in September of 1973, President Allende died in his presidential palace trying to fight off a U.S.-backed coup as he used the engraved rifle Castro had given him upon his inauguration. Allende's relationship with Castro...starkly in contrast to his relationships with Nixon, Kissinger, and Pinochet...to this day resonates across Latin America, as President Bachelet and other Latin American leaders will readily attest. If you disbelieve that, go back and study the photo at the top of this essay. It was taken this week and it shows intense pain on the face of President Bachelet...pain caused by the U.S. penchant for supporting vile dictators from the 1950s till the 1990s...from Batista in the 1950s till Pinochet into the 1990s. Democracy lovers believe U.S. politicians -- either elected or appointed and either living or deceased -- should be held accountable if they aided or made such dictatorships possible.

Today the largest hospital complex in Cuba is named for Salvador Allende.

          In between her two stints as President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet campaigned tirelessly in quest of justice for victims of the Pinochet dictatorship. The photo above is courtesy of Martin Burnett/AFP. It was taken on September 10, 2013, when Michelle had served one term as President but could not run for consecutive terms. That's her on the right in this photo. Her mother, Angela Jeria, is in the center. They and the lady on the left are holding photographic memories of Pinochet victims as they demonstrate in front of the infamous prison at Villa Grimaldi where Michelle and her mother were tortured and where Michelle's father died. Now in her second term as President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet is still reminding the world of the U.S.-installed and U.S.-backed Pinochet dictatorship. Such reminders should also resonate with Americans, especially those who should be aware of American leaders whose actions besmirched democracy and...still torment President Bachelet, a great lady Americans should know and support.

        Michelle Bachelet, in her second term as President of Chile, is an expert on Latin American history, especially the period from 1952 till 1990 when she admits she still "has trouble believing" the world's greatest democracy "spread" vicious dictators "across" the Caribbean and Latin America. She believes it would not have been so "terrible" if Americans had "objected" to the U. S. support of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship beginning in 1952. And she openly suggests that Americans should know Latin American history so they can "learn from it." The Latin American dictatorships essentially ended in 1990 with the end of the Pinochet reign in Chile, a 17-year-old rule that was so brutal it still brings tears to President Bachelet's 63-year-old eyes. This week, in the summer of 2015, she said, "We must never stop."  By that, she means that Latin America must never stop seeking justice for the victims and from those responsible.

  

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