Intersects With Kissinger's Legacy
Henry Kissinger was born in 1923 in Furth, Germany. He is now 93-years-old and revered as a great American elder statesman and for his lucrative consultancy firm. He gained his fame as the ultra-powerful National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in the Republican administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford but he has advised every Republican president or candidate since Nixon, including Donald Trump in this presidential election year of 2016. Being revered in the U. S. is one thing; most Latin American nations want him arrested for his alleged complicity in overthrowing democratically elected Latin American presidents to install murderous right-wing, U.S.-friendly dictators. For many decades, Latin American nations have tried to come to grips with those dictators. To this day in Latin America, trials are underway to try to bring to justice the still-living perpetrators or collaborators of historic atrocities. One such gigantic trial began this week -- the 2nd week of June, 2016 -- on U. S. soil in Orlando. Latin American prosecutors have for decades begged the U. S. to made Kissinger available for such a trial. Failing that, they have at least begged the U. S. to provide information regarding those they have already arrested and have on trial. Reluctantly, the U. S. government, trying to sate the decades-old outrage, has provided at least some requested material. That led, amazingly, to the long-awaited trial that got underway this week in Orlando's federal courtroom.
The photo of this 89-year-old, white-haired lady is courtesy of Wikipedia. Her name is Joan Jara. I sincerely believe that Americans should know all about her, and why she is a key witness in a federal trial that has started this week in Orlando. Yes, the trial sheds light on a dark era in America's past, but I believe it is the responsibility of democracy-loving Americans to be pro-American enough to take an interest in the trial in the United States that Joan Jara has tried for 40 years to make happen. It involves one of the CIA-orchestrated coups, this one in Chile, that involved powerful Americans like the late President Richard Nixon and the still-living Henry Kissinger, Nixon's heralded top advisor.
In 1973 Joan was a famous entertainer and artist in Chile and she was married to Victor Jara, Chile's most famous music idol. This photo shows Joan and Victor happy in President Allende's Chile.
Victor Jara, like the vast majority of Chileans in 1973, was a supporter of Mr. Allende, the country's democratically elected President. And like most Chileans, Victor Jara was appalled when a CIA-directed coup resulted in the death of Allende to install, for 17 viciously bloody years, the murderous but U.S.-friendly dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, which lasted from that infamous day in 1973 till 1990.
Joan watching Victor entertain children.
On the very day of the coup that killed the beloved President Allende, Pinochet's thugs, funded by unwitting American taxpayers, began rounding up all notable people who had strongly supported Allende, including Victor Jara {note the chilling photos above}. They were famously taken to a soccer stadium tunnel in Santiago where thousands were murdered. Victor was unmercifully tortured and then shot in the back of the head. His executioner then ordered his underlings to fire multiple shots into Victor's body, which was then dumped outside the stadium for his relatives to find. An autopsy revealed he had been shot 44 times.
From that day until this day, Joan Jara and millions of other Chileans have not let the world forget about what happened to Victor Jara and thousands of others like him in 1973. The Felipe Trueba/European Pressphoto Agency photo above shows Joan leading a recent demonstration as a vivid reminder. Joan now lives in England but she and her loving heart this week are in Florida for the trial of the man who is accused of shooting Victor in the back of the head and then ordering his men to shoot him many times.
The man accused of murdering Victor Jara is Pedro Barrientos Nunez. He is a U. S. citizen and has lived for decades in Daytona Beach, Florida. It is astounding that he will be brought to trial at last in the United States although many similar trials have been and are still being held in Latin American countries still trying to come to grips with U.S.-backed coups and dictators. The U. S. forces that finally made the Barrientos trial possible are extremely pro-American {not anti-American} forces because, for decades, America and its democracy have been shamed by U. S. government officials who perpetrated such deeds and by U. S. laws and individuals who covered such things up in what is supposed to be a transparent democracy. The trials still ongoing in Latin America, and particularly the trial in Florida, should at least discourage U. S. government officials from overthrowing democratically elected governments to install U.S.-friendly dictatorships, such as the brutal Pinochet in Chile for 17 merciless and murderous years.
This EFE photo shows Victor Jara's widow Joan Jara arriving at the Orlando courthouse this week for the trial of Victor's alleged killer, the 67-year-old Barrientos who is now a U. S. citizen. The murder took place in 1973 within hours after the Pinochet coup that resulted in the death of Chile's President Salvador Allende. Joan Jara, who was born in London in 1926, is being escorted above by her two daughters Manuela and Amanda. Since 1973 Joan Jara has sought justice for Victor and other Pinochet victims.
This is Henry Kissinger with Jorge Videla, the notoriously murderous Argentine dictator. A coup in 1976 made Videla Argentina's dictator from 1976 till 1981. In those five years, Videla was judged responsible for thousands of history's most horrendous murders. Even when finally ousted, dictators supported by powerful friends escape justice for decades, often living luxurious lifestyles off their ill-gotten wealth. But, like those responsible for the Holocaust, there are those who pursue them all the way to their graves.
Finally, in July of 2012, Videla was arrested! He was tried and convicted of his dictatorial crimes. He died in prison at age 87 in 2013. As with other similar trials, the U. S. was asked by Argentinian prosecutors for information regarding Videla's 1976 coup and the support he got during his five years of terror. While such modern-day trials and requests of the U. S. are embarrassing, the U. S. media largely ignores them.
Mr. Kissinger's preferences for U.S.-friendly Latin American dictators like Pinochet in Chile, Videla in Argentina, etc., etc., was apparently designed to create a New World Order. Supported by the wealth and might of the U. S., and the apathy of the U. S. citizens, he achieved that goal to a very large degree, cementing his legacy. Apparently Kissinger's disdain for democratically elected Latin American Presidents, such as Allende in Chile, was his belief that, unlike puppet dictators, they would not permit rich Americans from robbing those countries' natural resources at will, resources meant to benefit native people.
After famously directing the foreign policy of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Kissinger has remained a key advisor to all top Republicans and almost all of the world's top "U.S. friendly" governments. The above Wikipedia photo was taken in 1981 as Kissinger chatted with President Ronald Reagan.
His portrayal in the U. S. is still an unfunny joke to some.
Almost all of the most damning statements and actions conducted by Henry Kissinger have been hidden or "classified" by the government and press, at least until great journalists such as Peter Kornbluh at the U. S. National Archives began using the Freedom of Information Act to decipher much of the data. Fred Branfman at AlterNet lists what he now says are "The Top 10 Most Inhuman Henry Kissinger Quotes."
Any montage of the murderous Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet would likely include images of President Salvador Allende and Henry Kissinger to be considered accurate. This particular montage on the left shows Allende between two guards coming down from his palace in Santiago when he heard tanks and saw smoke up the street heralding the start of the CIA-backed coup. Allende went back up to his office and fired his rifle out the window till, down to his last bullet and with the defeated palace on fire, he shot himself. The middle photo shows the traitorous Pinochet standing with President Allende prior to the coup. The photo on the right shows Kissinger at about the time he allegedly advised President Nixon and the CIA that the U. S. needed a right-wing dictator instead of a beloved democratically elected President in Chile.
This photo is courtesy of La Tercera/AP. It shows Pinochet and his wife Lucia Hiriat with their two sons and three daughters in a family photo during the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, 1973-1990. While Pinochet was never brought to trial, his henchmen are still to this day being sought and tried. The key bodyguard for the Pinochet family, Army Colonel Christian Labbe, for example, was arrested in 2015 and charged with 13 kidnappings and murders. And, as noted earlier, another henchman is being tried in Orlando this week.
From 1973 until today there have been street marches like this protesting the thousands of murders committed by Pinochet's military and his DINA intelligence agency. History and movies and brave historians/journalists refer to those 17 years as the Condor era. The aforementioned 1973 torture-murder of Chile's top entertainer Victor Jara, the murder that resulted in the ongoing trial in Orlando in this month of June in 2016, was just one of thousands...not just in Chile but around the world, including the U. S.
This photo shows President Allende with his Ambassador to the United States, Orlando Letelier. After the death of Allende to install dictator Pinochet, Letelier stayed in Washington. But DINA, Pinochet's very skilled assassins, were charged with finding pro-Allende or anti-Pinochet people anywhere worldwide.
Orlando Letelier was assassinated by a car bomb on September 21, 1976, within sound of the White House in Washington. The attempts to protect the now well-known culprits enhanced America's shame.
Great journalists, authors, and historians from Saul Landau to Peter Kornbluh have reported extensively that National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and CIA Director George H. W. Bush {1976 was the only year Bush was CIA Director} tried to hinder the FBI's investigation of the Letelier murder, which -- as with many of the DINA actions -- involved very highly trained Cuban-American explosives experts.
Yes, the Pinochet-DINA connections were international.
Americans should know who Ronni Moffitt was and forever remember her. She was an aide to Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington where they were pro-democracy advocates. She was in the car with him on September 21, 1973, and she died with him. Ronni was 25-years-old and newly married.
While 89-year-old Joan Jara is in an Orlando federal courtroom in this month of June, 2016 seeking some justice at last for the 1973 murder of her famous husband Victor Jara, there are still demonstrations, as shown above, seeking justice for the 1973 U. S. murders of Orlando Letelier and Ronnie Moffitt.
This montage shows Alberto Bachelet at age 50 in 1973 and his daughter Michelle who is now 64. Alberto was a Brigadier General in the Chilean Air Force and he was fiercely loyal to the country's democratically elected President Salvador Allende. Alberto was arrested, tortured and died in 1974 during the Pinochet dictatorship. Such deaths spawned democratically elected Latin American presidents.
Michelle Bachelet, whose father was one of the thousands of innocent Pinochet victims, today is the democratically elected President of Chile. She had served one term but Chile does not allow successive presidential terms, so she sat out 4 years to work for UN-sponsored children's causes and then ran for a second term in 2014, when she easily won re-election. President Bachelet's political career was shaped by what happened to her father in the U.S.-installed and U.S.-backed Pinochet dictatorship. But her present status as President of Chile also reminds us that the unspeakable brutality of U.S.-backed dictators throughout Latin American ended with Pinochet's murderous reign from 1973 till 1990, inspiring democracy throughout the region beginning in the 1970s. In ongoing trials, President Bachelet herself has asked both the U. S. government and Henry Kissinger to at least provide more information about such past atrocities.
Like many of the modern democratically elected Latin American Presidents, Chile's Michelle Bachelet is a dear friend of Fidel Castro. They consider the Cuban a pioneering anti-imperialist revolutionary icon.
In 1970 when this photo was taken -- showing Fidel Castro with his friend Salvador Allende -- Fidel was in Santiago campaigning for Allende's successful bid to become Chile's democratically elected President.
Allende requested & appreciated Fidel Castro's support.
On the above visit to see President Salvador Allende in 1973 in Santiago, Chile, Fidel Castro, according to El Pais and other sources, strongly warned Allende to "please be advised that the CIA is targeting you now as they have targeted me." The dour expressions above supposedly resulted from that dire warning.
President Allende obviously took Fidel Castro's advice seriously. This photo shows President Allende practicing with an AK-47 rifle. It was an engraved rifle given to him as an inauguration present by...Fidel Castro. It is also an historic fact that President Allende used that rifle right up to his death to fire down from a palace window at the coup-perpetrators who replaced him with the vile Pinochet dictatorship.
Peter Kornbluh's great book -- "The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability" -- is the best source for information on the 1973 coup that overthrew and killed the democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende, and replaced him for 17 bloody years with the murderous but U.S.-friendly Augusto Pinochet dictatorship. Kornbluh is the best at using declassified U. S. data to document his findings. He also has published, and continues to publish, much of that material on the U. S. National Archive website. Kornbluh understands how the U. S. involvement in the Allende-Pinochet coup will forever shape Latin America's relationship with the United States, although to this day high-profile Americans and their legacies in the United States will never be held accountable for their significant roles in such events. Yet, the U. S. connections will never be totally erased and proof of that is the ongoing trial this week in Orlando of a Chilean-American who is charged with murdering, on behalf of Dictator Pinochet, Victor Jara way back in 1973 in the early days of the unforgettable Pinochet murders.
And one final Pinochet comment:
In 1982 Hollywood produced a major movie entitled "Missing" and it starred A-list actors Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. Lemmon played Ed Horman whose son Charles was a real-life U. S. journalist who had gone missing in Pinochet's Chilean dictatorship. Spacek played Ruth Horman, the wife of Charles. These two actors later became emotional about the Pinochet atrocities, particularly the involvement of America in the Pinochet terror.
The 1982 movie "Missing" revealed a lot that Americans should already have been told about the Pinochet dictatorship. Charles Horman, the U. S. journalist, had apparently been arrested, tortured and murdered -- the fate of many others who displeased the Pinochet murder machine known as DINA or Condor. In trying desperately to find Charles or at least recover his body, Jack Lemmon, as Charles' father, and Sissy Spacek, as Charles' wife, sought the help of the U. S. embassy in Santiago. They didn't get it. They were stone-walled repeatedly. The U. S. government, you see, was far more concerned with protecting its dictatorship in Chile than helping the father and wife of a U. S. journalist who apparently had written something that Pinochet didn't like.
I read a lot of biographies and memoirs. I pre-ordered and then devoured Sissy Spacek's "My Extraordianry Ordinary Life" and was particularly gripped by what she wrote about the 1982 movie "Missing." Ms. Spacek is a very intelligent and well-educated American. And she is politically astute; her grandfather in Texas was a close friend of Lyndon Johnson's. But in her book Ms. Spacek wrote that she was shocked to learn, for the first time, how deeply her own government, the U. S. government, was involved in overthrowing democratically elected Presidents, like Allende, and replacing them with U.S.-friendly, murderous dictators like Pinochet. And she first learned about the U. S. relationship with Pinochet only by reading the script for her role as Ruth Horman in "Missing." The revelation shocked Ms. Spacek. In her book she wrote: "I have to admit I knew next to nothing about the political turmoil going on in South and Central America during the 1970s. But preparing for the movie was a quick education. I was shocked and disillusioned when I learned of our government's complicity in so much brutality and suffering." All democracy-loving Americans should re-read that exact quote from Sissy Spacek. To this day, Americans are supposed to know next to nothing about what a few rogues high-up in the U. S. government did in installing and/or supporting murderous dictators in helpless countries from the 1950s through the 1970s. And that proselytized ignorance, exacerbated by the liberal use of classifying documents, continues to protect officials who shame America.
As an extremely intelligent, well-educated, and politically-minded American, I believe Sissy Spacek should not have had to read a movie script to find out about her country's unsavory support of murderous right-wing Latin American dictators like Pinochet in Chile, Videla in Argentina, Batista in Cuba, etc., etc. I believe she should have learned about such things, first and foremost, from either the U. S. government or the U. S. media. And to say that is not being anti-America. To not say it is being anti-America. Ask Sissy Spacek, or read her book, which left me wondering how in the world such people as Henry Kissinger are not held accountable for things that adversely affect America and democracy...and will do so for generations to come.
Sissy Spacek, by the way, was born on Christmas day in 1949. Among her many memorable roles, she won an Academy Award for playing Loretta Lynn in "Coal Miner's Daughter." For a couple of decades she and her husband have raised two fine daughters on a quiet farm in central Virginia, near Thomas Jefferson's Monticello home and John Grisham's mansion. After reading her book, I emphasize with her lament, her "shock," about learning about the Pinochet horrors only when she read a movie script.
And speaking of books, Joan Jara wrote this heart-wrenching remembrance of her husband Victor Jara who was gruesomely tortured and murdered in 1973 in the early days of the Pinochet dictatorship.
For all these decades, Joan Jara and Michelle Bachelet, now the President of Chile, have relentlessly sought justice for Victor Jara, who was Chile's top singer in 1973 when he became one of the first murder victims of the Pinochet dictatorship. In the above photo, that's Joan, Victor's widow, and President Bachelet, whose father was also a Pinochet victim, standing beside a coffin at a memorial ceremony honoring Victor. To be sure, both these women will closely monitor the trial of his accused killer, who is now a U. S. citizen who has lived in South Florida for decades. The trial is taking place in Orlando, Florida.
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Pinochet, Chile's Kissinger-friendly dictator 1973-1990.
Pinochet died of old age in 2006.
