LatinNews Daily Report - 09 February 2012

Chile/Region: On 6 February the Spanish newswire EFE reported that according to declassified documents it had obtained from the US State Department, the current mayor of Providencia, Cristián Labbé, fathered one of Jacqueline Pinochet’s children. The report suggests the extent of US intelligence about South America’s military regimes. Jacqueline is the daughter of Augusto Pinochet, who led Chile’s last military government (1973-1990). According to EFE, a 1987 cable from the US embassy in Santiago addressed to the-then US Secretary of State, George Schultz (1982-1989), reported that one of the reasons for Labbé’s temporary transfer to the US, to attend a “University course in Political Science”  was due to his “relationship with Jacqueline Pinochet”. At the time Labbé was the head of Augusto Pinochet’s personal bodyguard. According to the document, Labbé was dispatched to the US as part of a larger contingent of Pinochet’s secret police service (DINA) on a mission to find the whereabouts of DINA agent, Armando Fernández Larios, suspected to have been involved in the assassination of Chile’s former foreign minister, Orlando Letelier, in Washington D.C. in 1976. Labbé is now a member of the right-wing Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI), the senior party in the ruling coalition. He has been mayor of Providencia since 1996 and he may seek re-election in the October 2012 municipal elections. The EFE report follows the admission by a former US Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs Elliott Abrams (1982-1985) on 28 January that the US government was aware that Argentina’s military government was abducting children from detained and disappeared people to be handed to families “loyal” to the military regime. According to Abrams, he had a conversation with Argentina’s then-ambassador to the US, Lucio García del Solar, in 1983, in which he expressed his concern about this “serious violation of human rights”. He apparently sent a “memorandum of the conversation” to his superior, George Schultz. Abrams’s memo was declassified in 2002.

End of preview - This article contains approximately 710 words.

Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article

Not a Subscriber?

Choose from one of the following options

• Subscribe
• Sign up for a one-time, 14-day trial