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In reply to the discussion: Guardian: Chile admits Pablo Neruda might have been murdered by Pinochet regime [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)1. Neruda was one of our time's great minds.
Neruda, Pinochet, and the Iron Lady
BY JON LEE ANDERSON
The New Yorker, APRIL 9, 2013
Its curious, historically speaking, that Margaret Thatcher died on the same day that forensic specialists, in Chile, exhumed the remains of the late, great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. The author of the epic Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair and the winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature, Neruda died at the age of sixty-nine, supposedly of prostate cancer, just twelve days after the violent September 11, 1973, military coup launched by army chief Augusto Pinochet against the countrys elected Socialist President, Salvador Allende. Warplanes had strafed the Presidential palace, and Allende had bravely held out, but committed suicide with a rifle given to him by Cubas President Fidel Castro as Pinochets goons stormed into the Presidential palace. Neruda was a close friend and supporter of Allendes; he was ill, but in the midst of planning to leave the country for Mexico, where he had been invited to go into exile. When he was on his deathbed in a clinic, his home had been broken into by soldiers and trashed.
At his funeral, a large crowd of mourners marched through the streets of Santiagoa grim city that was otherwise empty except for military vehicles. At his gravesite, in one of the only known acts of public defiance in the wake of the coup, the mourners sang the Internationale and saluted Neruda and also Allende. As they did, the regimes men were going around the city, burning the books of authors it didnt like, while hunting down those it could find to torture or kill.
A couple of years ago, Nerudas former driver came forth to express his suspicion that Neruda had been poisoned, saying that hed heard from the poet that doctors gave him an injection and that, immediately afterward, Nerudas condition had worsened drastically. There are other tidbits of evidence that bolster his theory, but nothing conclusive. Forensic science, in the end, may provide the answer to a nagging historic question.
Why bring Maggie Thatcher into it? In a tribute Monday, President Barack Obama said she had been one of the great champions of freedom and liberty. Actually, she hadnt. Thatcher was a fierce Cold Warrior, and when it came to Chile never mustered quite the appropriate amount of compassion for the people Pinochet killed in the name of anti-Communism. She preferred talking about his much-vaunted Chilean economic miracle.
And kill he did. Pinochets soldiers rounded up thousands in the capitals sports stadiums and, then and there, suspects were marched into the locker rooms and corridors and bleachers and tortured and shot dead. Hundreds died in such a fashion. One was the revered Chilean singer Víctor Jara, who was beaten, his hands and ribs broken, and then machine-gunned, his body dumped like trash on a back street of the capitalalong with many others. The killing went on even after Pinochet and his military had a firm hold on power; it was just carried out with greater secrecy, in military barracks, in police buildings, and in the countryside. Critics and opponents of the new regime were murdered in other countries, too. In 1976, Pinochets intelligence agency planned and carried out a car bombing in Washington, D.C., that murdered Allendes exiled former Ambassador to the United States, Orlando Letelier, as well as Ronni Moffitt, his American aide. Britain regarded Pinochets killing spree as unseemly, and sanctioned his regime by refusing to supply it with weaponsthat is, until Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister.
In 1980, the year after Thatcher took office, she lifted the arms embargo against Pinochet; he was soon buying armaments from the United Kingdom. In 1982, during Britains Falklands War against Argentina, Pinochet helped Thatchers government with intelligence on Argentina. Thereafter, the relationship became downright cozy, so much so that the Pinochets and his family began making an annual private pilgrimage to London. During those visits, they and the Thatchers got together for meals and drams of whiskey. In 1998, when I was writing a Profile of Pinochet for The New Yorker, Pinochets daughter Lucia described Mrs. Thatcher in reverential terms, but confided that the Prime Ministers husband, Dennis Thatcher, was something of an embarrassment, and habitually got drunk at their get-togethers. The last time I met with Pinochet himself in London, in October, 1998, he told me he was about to call La Señora Thatcher in the hopes she could find time to meet him for tea. A couple of weeks later, Pinochet, still in London, found himself under arrest, on the orders of Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón. During Pinochets prolonged quasi-detention thereafter, in a comfortable home in the London suburb of Virginia Water, Thatcher showed her solidarity by visiting him. There, and in front of the television cameras, she expressed her sense of Britains debt to his regime: I know how much we owe to youfor your help during the Falklands campaign. She also said, It was you who brought democracy to Chile.
CONTINUED...
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/neruda-pinochet-and-the-iron-lady
BY JON LEE ANDERSON
The New Yorker, APRIL 9, 2013
Its curious, historically speaking, that Margaret Thatcher died on the same day that forensic specialists, in Chile, exhumed the remains of the late, great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. The author of the epic Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair and the winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature, Neruda died at the age of sixty-nine, supposedly of prostate cancer, just twelve days after the violent September 11, 1973, military coup launched by army chief Augusto Pinochet against the countrys elected Socialist President, Salvador Allende. Warplanes had strafed the Presidential palace, and Allende had bravely held out, but committed suicide with a rifle given to him by Cubas President Fidel Castro as Pinochets goons stormed into the Presidential palace. Neruda was a close friend and supporter of Allendes; he was ill, but in the midst of planning to leave the country for Mexico, where he had been invited to go into exile. When he was on his deathbed in a clinic, his home had been broken into by soldiers and trashed.
At his funeral, a large crowd of mourners marched through the streets of Santiagoa grim city that was otherwise empty except for military vehicles. At his gravesite, in one of the only known acts of public defiance in the wake of the coup, the mourners sang the Internationale and saluted Neruda and also Allende. As they did, the regimes men were going around the city, burning the books of authors it didnt like, while hunting down those it could find to torture or kill.
A couple of years ago, Nerudas former driver came forth to express his suspicion that Neruda had been poisoned, saying that hed heard from the poet that doctors gave him an injection and that, immediately afterward, Nerudas condition had worsened drastically. There are other tidbits of evidence that bolster his theory, but nothing conclusive. Forensic science, in the end, may provide the answer to a nagging historic question.
Why bring Maggie Thatcher into it? In a tribute Monday, President Barack Obama said she had been one of the great champions of freedom and liberty. Actually, she hadnt. Thatcher was a fierce Cold Warrior, and when it came to Chile never mustered quite the appropriate amount of compassion for the people Pinochet killed in the name of anti-Communism. She preferred talking about his much-vaunted Chilean economic miracle.
And kill he did. Pinochets soldiers rounded up thousands in the capitals sports stadiums and, then and there, suspects were marched into the locker rooms and corridors and bleachers and tortured and shot dead. Hundreds died in such a fashion. One was the revered Chilean singer Víctor Jara, who was beaten, his hands and ribs broken, and then machine-gunned, his body dumped like trash on a back street of the capitalalong with many others. The killing went on even after Pinochet and his military had a firm hold on power; it was just carried out with greater secrecy, in military barracks, in police buildings, and in the countryside. Critics and opponents of the new regime were murdered in other countries, too. In 1976, Pinochets intelligence agency planned and carried out a car bombing in Washington, D.C., that murdered Allendes exiled former Ambassador to the United States, Orlando Letelier, as well as Ronni Moffitt, his American aide. Britain regarded Pinochets killing spree as unseemly, and sanctioned his regime by refusing to supply it with weaponsthat is, until Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister.
In 1980, the year after Thatcher took office, she lifted the arms embargo against Pinochet; he was soon buying armaments from the United Kingdom. In 1982, during Britains Falklands War against Argentina, Pinochet helped Thatchers government with intelligence on Argentina. Thereafter, the relationship became downright cozy, so much so that the Pinochets and his family began making an annual private pilgrimage to London. During those visits, they and the Thatchers got together for meals and drams of whiskey. In 1998, when I was writing a Profile of Pinochet for The New Yorker, Pinochets daughter Lucia described Mrs. Thatcher in reverential terms, but confided that the Prime Ministers husband, Dennis Thatcher, was something of an embarrassment, and habitually got drunk at their get-togethers. The last time I met with Pinochet himself in London, in October, 1998, he told me he was about to call La Señora Thatcher in the hopes she could find time to meet him for tea. A couple of weeks later, Pinochet, still in London, found himself under arrest, on the orders of Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón. During Pinochets prolonged quasi-detention thereafter, in a comfortable home in the London suburb of Virginia Water, Thatcher showed her solidarity by visiting him. There, and in front of the television cameras, she expressed her sense of Britains debt to his regime: I know how much we owe to youfor your help during the Falklands campaign. She also said, It was you who brought democracy to Chile.
CONTINUED...
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/neruda-pinochet-and-the-iron-lady
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Guardian: Chile admits Pablo Neruda might have been murdered by Pinochet regime [View all]
villager
Nov 2015
OP
Just as Reagan's ascension essentially finished the U.S., so did Thatcher's basically end England
villager
Nov 2015
#2