Underrated Evil: Pinochet

"No", terrorism, Venda Sexy

When Augusto Pinochet left office after agreeing to an election in 1990 it marked the end of institutionalized terrorism of the Chilean people. His opponents ran with the simplest slogan: “No.”

Simplicity, with its accompanying lack of accoutrements, often obscures the truth. Even when couched in a rainbow, “No,” one of the shortest words in either English or Spanish, contained a multitude of horror.

Helicopter rides

Almost everyone is familiar with the story of “Helicopter rides for commies” the colloquial version for those unfamiliar was that whenever the junta got a hold of an actual communist, they’d put them in a helicopter and kick them out at altitude.

Pinochet’s own personal pilot admitted to performing the act on numerous occasions. In the present day certain right-wing ideologues profess an admiration of the practice through memes

Garish? Certainly. Though in keeping with the modern era of communication through deliberately evoking outrage. As you are supposed to see, this is the funny part. This is the great truth unspoken: that people actually want to throw communists out of helicopters. A macabre ghoulishness meant to be a political Halloween.

It should come as a shock to most, but, the real horror of the story isn’t just the following stories about brutal torture, and even more brutal rape. It’s the active and ongoing suppression of those truths:

This used to house information gleaned from torture reports

A little older news article that used to link to the Valech report

Thankfully there’s archive.org and they’re worthwhile project.

A wayback engine production for those without some spanish “Names of political prisoners and tortured”

Here is an English translation, and here is the report in original Spanish .