July 8, 2024 / informativoanarquista
Translated by Act for freedom now!
Sent to The Zarzamora by Puntada con hilo
In a time when people who were once “feminists” and/or defenders of “gender” quotas herald the fight against “organized crime” (designation for everything and nothing, directed – often – at migration), the minister of the interior CAROLINA TOHÁ, dressed in the colors of the chilean gendarmerie, very happy and surrounded by uniforms, praises the police “blow” and warns that they are being “strongly persecuted”… Who?: In the words of Tohá, “those who want to demonstrate points of views or critical postures in an emphatic manner in Chile”, will be “welcome”, but not those with “violent practices and methods”… Tohá makes this kind of “clarification” in order to make the raids ordered by her government in five neighborhoods of the metropolitan Region this Saturday July 6 appear as “an arsenal”. The guarantee judge declared – after the fact – that nine of the arrests were illegal, the supposed evidence is weak. The discourse of the government links those detained with the “placement of a bomb in an automobile in the metropolitan region in late 2023”, but after trying to assert that they had found “bombs ready for use in the future”, Tohá corrects: “we don’t know exactly”. Their objective appears to be to counteract “the agenda” as she calls it, of people to whom she attributes “connections in activities” to “influence in various spaces of society…” (Channel 24 live from Talagante 12:20 Saturday July 6, 2024).
For many activists, this will be a “first repressive action of Boric and his FA-PC-Agreement government”. Even if it were – we’re not aware of it being “the first” -, nothing about this is new in the postdictatorship of which Boric is a simple continuation (albeit with faces that were once youthful). It’s possible that there are those who imagine that with his “peace accord” (or pacification), the performative Constitutional Convention and an ex-student-leader president, the repressive stamp of the postdictatorship would change, but no.
BRIEF RECOUNTING OF MEMORY
In the 90s, while drafting Puntada con hilo, we often heard about massive raids against comrades. Later we heard how the democratic governors regularly – without fail – denounced the existence of supposed arsenals. Their police tortured and killed, their justice incarcerated without evidence beyond what they fabricated, and they ran as the candidates for the next executive or congressional term.
Between 1990 and 1994, Cintras (Mental Health and Human Rights Center 1996) registered at least 130 cases of torture and 96 deaths of lautarista, frentista and mirista militants in police procedures.
The chilean postdictatorship isn’t “democracy” understood as a non-repressive regime. It’s been a design of political dis-articulation and annihilation of dissident and revolutionary movements that endows the civil tribunals with the power to execute high sentences to those who are named – by their governments – “terrorists”. They’ve permitted military cases against civilians, and today we are witnessing – once again – episodes in which the FFAA act as the judge and impart judgment and torture and assassination that they themselves execute against young conscripts. Likewise, those who defraud from their high military ranks, retain impunity and the millions granted to them remain “reserved” while raising the cost of electricity, food, and fuel for civilians.
Like the current BORICISMO, the agreement that preceded his Frente Amplio offshoot, each of their governments gave more and more resources to the repressive forces and established larger powers for the police. They didn’t give up on this, and created sinister monstrosities like “The Office” (Coordinating Council of Public Security CCSP 1991). The bosses and directors of this deplorable division were the very “democrats” of the 1988 plebiscite, that other performance pushed by political parties (former revolutionaries), that furnished the crushing effect of the popular forces like what happened after 2019 with the “work” of the Constitutional Convention.
In the 90s (years of the democratic Alliance and the Agreement of Parties for Democracy), the minister of the Interior of Aylwin was Enrique Krauss and his subsecretary was Belisario Velasco. Both they and their teams were responsible for the raids, tortures and deaths under their command. On the board of The Office were then future president Ricardo Lagos and Marcelo Schilling, both socialists, Mario Fernandez of Christian Democracy, Jorge Burgos as the director, and also people such as ex GAP (Group of Friends of the President in the Popular Unity) Oscar Carpenter, who changed his name to Alejandro Weinstein in 1999 to spy on mapuche organizations in Lleu Lleu. There were also other socialist militants such as Antonio Ramos who, like other socialists, participated in training courses in the former East Germany. It’s important to say that Ramos was in charge of the intelligence analysis work along with Lenin Guardia, who used his political contacts in the left to snitch. The snitches, revolutionaries who had come back after leaving, had already negotiated direct contact with the dictatorship’s security agencies, the Police Intelligence Headquarters (JIPOL 1987) and the Special Police Operations Group (GOPE 1979).
In 1994, those who have governed us for almost 35 years build the High Security prison to lock up their leftist opponents and designed innumerable legal instruments to repress social movements. Among other laws, that of compensated informing (26-OCT-1992), legitimate privileged defence (June 24, 1992), terrorist conduct (May 17 of 83 which was only partially reformed in 1991, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2010 and 2011); that of juvenile responsibility in the second half of 2005 to stop the high school movement of occupations and “pingüinos”, and arrest for suspicion brought forth on October 12, 2000 and passed in 2004… It’s impossible not to compare all this fatal machinary with Boric’s laws: “Anti squat” of November 2023, “trigger happy” of April 2023, and the new antiterrorist law that they call “criminal association” in June of the same year, created specially to persecute mapuche communities in resistance and opponents of the ruling left.
Yesterday’s raids included Estación Central, Santiago, Maipú, La Granja and Cerrillos in the Luisa Toledo popular cafe, gendarmes broke toys and also food that was being saved the days of communal meals and territorial activities for the commemorations of the anniversary of the death of Luisa Toledo, activist and mother of the Vergara Toledo brothers, assassinated in the Dictatorship.
Disidencias en Lucha (IG) informed that 10 people were detained plus one who was taken to the hospital, and that the arrests were expanded to include this last person and also a young woman – arrested in the Yungay neighborhood – that two of those detained remained in partial nocturnal arrest, one in preventative prison and that nine remain “in custody”. Radio Villa Francia tells us that although nine of the arrests were declared illegal by the guarantee judge, the Prosecution and the Minister of the Interior, or rather Carolina Tohá and her government appealed this decision. And it’s not surprising that the governmental figure is determined to appear “firm” and “empowered”, since her “blow” seems to fit perfectly with her presidential aspirations.
- Torture in Chile yesterday and today: the problem with the prevention of Carlo Madariaga 1 Presentation given at the international seminar of Psychosocial Trauma, Impunity and Democracy: the Challenges of the Present, carried out by CINTRAS on May 29, 1996 at the ARCIS University, Santiago de Chile. http://www.cintras.org/textos/reflexion/r25/ttchilehoy.pdf
- How they discovered Oscar Carpenter, Udo João Gonçalves, La Tercera August 16, 1999.
3.Agent of the ANI testified before judge Carroza: “I was tasked with recruiting an informant in the FPMR”, La Tercera November 8, 2010.