News of interest from Latin America by David Morris
Vol. 1, No. 7. Monday, October 15, 2007
Argentina: ending impunity
For the first time in history, a Catholic priest has been sentenced to prison in Latin America for assisting a government in the murder, torture and disappearance of dissidents. As the three-month trial ended on October 9, a court in La Plata, Argentina, sentenced Christian Von Wernich, former chaplain to the Buenos Aires police, to life in prison for his part in seven homicides, 32 cases of torture and 42 illegal imprisonments during the dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. The court is accepting petitions that Von Wernich’s sentence not be changed to house arrest when he turns 70 in less than a year.Von Wernich will spend his time at the same prison as some 40 others convicted for their roles in the repression, including Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz, the first military officer to be sentenced to life in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity during the dictatorship. Etchecolatz was sentenced a year ago by the same court that tried the priest.
The Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, a group of black-clad women who had kept a vigil for the disappeared during the dictatorship cheered and waved white scarves as the verdict was read.
The Argentine Catholic church, long criticized by human rights groups and survivors for failing to speak out against the dictatorship and, specifically, for its silence during the trial, issued a statement once Von Wernich was sentenced saying it had wanted to avoid exerting undue influence on the court. Bishop Martín Elizalde, Von Wernich’s superior, regretted that there had been “so many divisions and so much hatred in our homeland which we, as a church, could not prevent or heal.” He asked for forgiveness. The church has not yet decided whether to excommunicate or defrock Von Wernich.
During the trial, witnesses told how Von Wernich had used the confessional to obtain information for the police and had led dissidents to the authorities by telling them he was arranging for trips out of the country. One witness, Héctor Timerman, currently the Argentine consul in New York, told how his father, the journalist Jacobo Timerman, was imprisoned, tortured and subjected to Von Wernich’s anti-Semitic tirades. Jacobo Timerman wrote of his imprisonment in Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number.
Jorge Julio López, a key witness in the trial of military officer Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz, disappeared shortly before Etchecolatz was sentenced.
(Sources: La Razón, Argentina; El Popular, Argentina; La Jornada, Mexico; InfoBae.com, Argentina; Upside Down World, U.S.)
Bolivia: different democracies
Symbol displaced substance recently in Bolivia as questions of writing a new constitution gave way to questions of how two particular anniversaries should be observed.Some of the country’s retired generals and admirals said they were “shamed and sickened” by President Evo Morales’s participation in ceremonies held on October 8 to honor Ernesto “Che” Guevara on the 40th anniversary of his death at the hands of Bolivian soldiers. And two days later, in observance of 25 years of uninterrupted electoral democracy, officials of the Catholic church warned that the path charted by Venezuela would be the wrong path for Bolivia to follow.
“This kind of event allows us to strengthen our commitment to the struggle for dignity, for equality, just as Che struggled for equality and justice,” Morales told the crowd in Vallegrande, where Guevara was captured by Bolivian soldiers on October 7, 1967. “Latin America cannot be the backyard of United States imperialism, it cannot be subjected to the plundering of its natural resources.”
Morales was joined by guevaristas from a number of countries, including Cuba, which was represented by Leonardo Tamayo Núñez, known as “Urbano,” who had fought alongside Guevara. “If we have to come back here to defend Evo’s revolution,” Urbano said, “and if my government, my president, compañero Fidel, told me to come, I am prepared to come back to struggle against any enemy of Evo’s government.”
The guevaristas later held a vigil at the crumbling adobe schoolhouse in La Higuera where a Bolivian soldier, under orders from a CIA operative, shot Guevara to death the day after he was captured.
“Surely in those times,” Morales said later in a speech to the Constituent Assembly, “it was important to take up arms against the empire. I feel now that it is the empire that is taking up arms against the people, it is the empire that is building military bases in Latin America.” He expressed his opposition to dictatorship and to armed struggle, repeating a plea he had made earlier to the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia to lay down their arms and to seek change within a democratic framework.
Meanwhile, Monsignor Jesús Juárez said in reference to the celebration of Bolivian democracy, “If we imitate democracy in the Venezuelan style, I think we are on the wrong path and we are going to find ourselves facing a wall that perhaps will result in more confrontations than advances.”
Morales and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela were both elected by sizeable majorities of the voters, Morales by the highest percentage of votes for any president in the 25 years of Bolivian electoral democracy being celebrated.
“This new system we have been constructing since January, 2006,” Morales said, “we believe as a country that it is a qualitatively different democracy from the one we have had for 25 years.” Morales and the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) he represents argue for a more directly participatory form of government. The church, they charge, favors an older form of government by “pact and sinecure.” The church also questions the government’s educational policies, in particular a MAS plan to tax Catholic schools.
At a gathering in La Paz on October 11 to celebrate the recent United Nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, Morales declared, “With much respect, I’m sorry to have to say to some members of the Catholic Church that for a time the priesthood too dominated our land. Over the years, the nobility, the priesthood and the oligarchy joined together to hold power over the people.” He added that in Bolivia “we no longer have a democracy of submission, of subordination to the empire, we have a liberating democracy in which we decide the fate of the country.”
At a ceremony to honor Bolivian soldiers killed in combat against guerrillas, one active-duty general, Ricardo Farfán Mansilla, joined the aging retired veterans by calling Che Guevara and his companions a “horde of subversive foreigners” who sought to “vietnamize the continent.”
But the commander of the Bolivian armed forces, General Wilfredo Vargas, remains loyal to the government. “We are fortunate to live in a democracy,” he said, “where different thoughts and beliefs are respected by persons and institutions.” He added that despite the fact that Catholicism is the official religion of the country, there are other religions as well, thanks to the democracy the country lives in.
(Sources: La Patria, Bolivia; Jornada, Bolivia; La Prensa, Bolivia; Agencia Boliviana de Prensa, Bolivia; Correo del Sur, Bolivia)
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