I like my Chile hot and spicy! (not old and rotten)
From today's (Tues. 12/14) New York Times:
"Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia also ordered that General Pinochet, 89, be placed under house arrest and confined to his mansion on the outskirts of Santiago, the Chilean capital. The former dictator's lawyer, Pablo Rodríguez, accused the judge of trampling on the general's human rights and announced that he would appeal the decision. Later Monday, General Pinochet's defense team filed an injunction with the Santiago Court of Appeals, effectively freezing the house arrest until the court rules on it, The Associated Press reported."
First off, this is a great and exciting time for the Chilean people (I imagine) and a victory for justice in its broadest sense. But it's still so completely relative -- look at the above paragraph: a) being on house arrest in a mansion at age 89 is like... i dunno.. being on coffeeshop arrest when you're our age and in Amsterdam. You're gonna be there anyway, and you're probably having a nice time. But the real travesty is b) the assertion that it violates Pinochet's human rights, as if he knows or gives a shit what that might mean, or deserves anything better than what he did to thousands of (or, in the case of the trial, ten) other people. I say when he dies he should be buried in an unmarked hole in the desert, then we can all say he never existed to begin with. It's a great strategy, employed widely under Pinochet's regime, so doesn't it seem appropriate for him?
Note: This sort of feeds into a theme that I hope to write more on later, about how one of the problems with the US electorate is that we take our rights for granted, and we've been lulled into a state of thinking we don't have to fight for them. It's not true all across the board, but when you compare our post-election atmosphere (dejection) with the Ukraine (mass protest), or our sense of governmental accountability (okay, some of us are on the ball on this one, but BushCo runs in the opposite direction of it, and effectively it doesn't exist... and we're still not massively protesting) compared to that of the Chileans (it's been decades since the coup and Operation Condor, but their persistence has not waivered). This country is closer to a dictatorship than it's ever been, so I guess what it comes down to is, how much worse does it have to get before we can all start making it better? Let's gear up for a fight!
"Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia also ordered that General Pinochet, 89, be placed under house arrest and confined to his mansion on the outskirts of Santiago, the Chilean capital. The former dictator's lawyer, Pablo Rodríguez, accused the judge of trampling on the general's human rights and announced that he would appeal the decision. Later Monday, General Pinochet's defense team filed an injunction with the Santiago Court of Appeals, effectively freezing the house arrest until the court rules on it, The Associated Press reported."
First off, this is a great and exciting time for the Chilean people (I imagine) and a victory for justice in its broadest sense. But it's still so completely relative -- look at the above paragraph: a) being on house arrest in a mansion at age 89 is like... i dunno.. being on coffeeshop arrest when you're our age and in Amsterdam. You're gonna be there anyway, and you're probably having a nice time. But the real travesty is b) the assertion that it violates Pinochet's human rights, as if he knows or gives a shit what that might mean, or deserves anything better than what he did to thousands of (or, in the case of the trial, ten) other people. I say when he dies he should be buried in an unmarked hole in the desert, then we can all say he never existed to begin with. It's a great strategy, employed widely under Pinochet's regime, so doesn't it seem appropriate for him?
Note: This sort of feeds into a theme that I hope to write more on later, about how one of the problems with the US electorate is that we take our rights for granted, and we've been lulled into a state of thinking we don't have to fight for them. It's not true all across the board, but when you compare our post-election atmosphere (dejection) with the Ukraine (mass protest), or our sense of governmental accountability (okay, some of us are on the ball on this one, but BushCo runs in the opposite direction of it, and effectively it doesn't exist... and we're still not massively protesting) compared to that of the Chileans (it's been decades since the coup and Operation Condor, but their persistence has not waivered). This country is closer to a dictatorship than it's ever been, so I guess what it comes down to is, how much worse does it have to get before we can all start making it better? Let's gear up for a fight!
posted by azulita at 11:09 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home