The Right to Live in Peace, a documentary film on the life of Victor Jara, above, will be shown at 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 14 in the Vitali Lounge, King’s University College. Opening the day prior, an exhibit at the Medium Gallery, 870 Dundas Street, will accompany the film by showing rare historic materials from Colectivo Alas (Toronto), documenting Chilean resistance against the military dictatorship.
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Aerial bombings, tanks in the streets, widespread terrorizing of civilians by soldiers and police: this was the horror unleashed on Sept. 11, 1973, by the military coup d’état in Chile. Led by Augusto Pinochet and other generals with U.S. backing, the coup overthrew President Salvador Allende’s democratically elected Popular Unity government, and brought in a brutal military dictatorship that lasted 17 years.
Canada’s official attitude toward the coup was ambivalent. Some businesses supported the military take-over as good for investment. Our ambassador to Chile was initially reluctant to offer asylum for those he called leftist ‘riff-raff’, but junior Canadian officials Mark Dolgin and David Adam forced the issue by allowing refuge for a couple of dozen asylum-seekers at our embassy. Their brave initiative eventually opened the doors for thousands of Chilean refugees to find safety in Canada.
That incident underscores the enduring importance of conscientious dissent. Whether high-profile whistle-blowers like Manning and Snowden or rank-and-file war resisters who refuse to participate in war-crimes, conscientious dissenters deserve honour and protection, not vilification and prosecution. Though their individual circumstances may be less dramatic, similar lessons apply to scientists and civil servants whose conscientious research is threatened or suppressed by the Harper governments’ ideological preference for evidence-free policy-making.
With the Conservatives’ increasing political interference in our asylum adjudication system, it is now unclear whether those 1970s Chilean refugees would even be permitted to enter Canada under current rules.
Some victims of repression never escape, but there is no statute of limitation for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Renowned Chilean folk-singer Victor Jara was among those tortured and killed in the early days of the coup, and this year eight military officers finally face trials for his death. Four of the accused trained at the infamous School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga., where human rights vigils continue to call for closure every year.
Whatever the outcome of these belated trials, let’s recall Pinochet was fond of lecturing about the health benefits of ‘just forgetting.’ Historical memory matters. Remembering can be an act of resistance in itself. Not only those officially sanctioned memorials that prescribe just which atrocities ‘we must never forget,’ but also grassroots initiatives that remind us of crimes our governments would prefer us to forget.
Henry Kissinger infamously explained why the United States set about to destabilize and then overthrow Allende’s democratically elected government: “The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”
Then, as now, democracy doesn’t count when voters “irresponsibly” elect a government Washington doesn’t like.
A recent Wall Street Journal editorial about a more recent military coup stated Egyptians would be “lucky” if their new ruling generals turn out like Pinochet, who “hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy.” Pinochet’s rule was a “transition to democracy” like bacon is a transition to vegetarianism. He savagely opposed the return to democracy in Chile, relinquishing power only when forced to by international and national pressure and after decreeing immunity for himself and his henchmen.
But don’t let the WSJ’s historical revisionism mask their underlying cynicism. Often those who worship the ‘invisible hand of the market’ also like to rely on its all-too-visible fist.
The poignant title of one of Jara’s songs (El derecho de vivir en paz, 1971) is still relevant today. Next week, Londoners can see a film about his life and an exhibit about resistance against Pinochet’s regime.
Come remember with us, and reflect on living those same ideals for today and tomorrow. The film and the exhibit are both named for his song: The right to live in peace.
French and Linguistics professor David Heap is a member of the Latin American-Canadian Solidarity Association and People for Peace London.