It is clear that former state-employed torturers have become emboldened since the electoral triumph of Chilean President Sebastian Pinera. While last year’s presidential election illustrated the Chilean left’s disillusion with the center-left coalitions — resulting in a low voter turnout and a right-wing victory — for Chilean memory groups, the events now unfolding in the…
Tag: CNI
BOOK REVIEW: Ingrid Olderock. La Mujer de los Perros
“In this type of investigation, objectivity is non-existent.” Alejandro Solís Muñoz’s statement in his prologue to “Ingrid Olderock: la mujer de los perros” necessitates reflection. Objectivity, in the wrong hands, is a weapon of normalising violence and human rights violations. The end result would be normalising the dictatorship and its atrocities. It would also be…
Human Remains May Stir Memories Of Chile’s Dictatorship Past
Chile’s struggle for memory against a dictatorship-imposed oblivion has braced itself for another sliver of discovery. On July 28, water works-related excavations in Las Brisas led to the discovery of human bone fragments. Buried just 10 kilometers south of the town of Santo Domingo, the location corresponds to the vicinities of the first dictatorship era torture…
UN’s dubious human rights appointment
As Chile continues to grapple with the struggle between memory and oblivion, the UN’s nomination of former president Michelle Bachelet as Human Rights Commissioner has evoked different opinions. For many victims of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, Bachelet had represented a link between politics and justice, in particular due to her own family’s history as victims of Pinochet’s National…
A temporary suspension of exile: interview with former MIR militant Hugo Marchant
Chile’s supreme court of appeals has temporarily suspended the exile sentence imposed upon an ex-militant of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR). Hugo Marchant was detained in 1973 for distributing leaflets containing anti-Pinochet propaganda and later became a member of the (MIR) while in exile. Marchant entered Chile clandestinely in 1980 as part of a…
RAMONA WADI 