On October 20, Cuban Culture Day, while we celebrated with songs and poems, a young street artist, 36 years of age, appeared hanging on the iron fence bars in a plaza, on the south side of Santiago de Chile.
She had last been seen hours before, arrested by the police. According to dozens of news outlets of all stripes, blogs, Facebook pages, twitter accounts, and other media. She been abused, tortured, her wrists broken, and killed.
More than a month after her death was denounced by many organizations that defend the rights of women and all human beings, it is disconcerting to read the opinions of those who cast doubt on the crime, in Chile and other Latin American countries that cause us pain,. They claim it was a suicide, although the photos and videos of her being found make this version hard to believe.
The same argument is presented to explain the death of journalist Albertina Martínez, 38, found in her apartment, with signs of beating and knife wounds. For certain people, accomplices of the media reporting that everything is fine, thousands of photos that speak for themselves, published by those who suffer, are not enough.
Savage repression, rapes, and beatings, expulsion of investigative media – including teleSUR and those from other countries not particularly sympathetic to our causes – cessation of all social projects. Absolute freedom to shoot, to kill, and then swear on the Bible, while making the Nazi gesture saluting the flag.
It is impossible to differentiate repressive forces in these countries; they seem (and are) the same: a torrent of water aimed at the face of an elderly man; a youth thrown to the ground with a knee to the chest; an indigenous woman, whose only weapon is her flag, attacked; other women are kicked, their clothes ripped off; a disabled person is dragged from his chair; a funeral procession dispersed with gas, leaving coffins on the ground; attacks on doctors, nurses, and members of the Red Cross treating the injured. Dozens of Chileans who will never see life again because they have lost an eye to a pellet gun, the list of horror and hate is endless.
What shame for humanity, and what shame for the hypocrites, shielded in their selfish lives, accomplices in silence, comfortable detractors using empty words, the domesticated who see this aggression as a soap opera, insensitive beings who believe themselves untouchable.
There is no forgiveness, no forgetting.
Not one woman or man more, not one less.
(Granma)