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CHRONOLOGY - 1987
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FEBRUARY 25, 1987
Voter registration rolls open for
the first time since 1973, in preparation for the national plebiscite
on the future of the Pinochet regime, scheduled for the following year.
Organizers of the "No" campaign launch a massive voter registration drive
which, overcoming apathy and incredulity, helps motivate nearly seven
million people to register.
FEBRUARY 3, 1987
Chile turns over Armando Fernandez
Larios to United States. Larios is wanted in the assassination of
Orlando Letelier.
MARCH 24, 1987
Four former Popular Unity (UP) leaders
are sent to internal exile after defying a ban on the return of
exiles. Former UP Foreign Affairs Minister Clodomiro Almeyda and Communist
Party leaders Mireya Baltra and Julieta Campusano secretly enter the
country and present themselves to the court. They are promptly arrested
and sent into internal exile to remote parts of the country, a punishment
known as "relegacion." The order is lifted for Baltra and Campusano two
months later but Almeyda is imprisoned for illegally entering to the
country. Many exiles are allowed to return by this time but hundreds more
are still banned from entering Chile.
APRIL 10, 1987
Pope John Paul II visits Chile.
During the two previous years, the Catholic church had focused its efforts
on ensuring that the Pope's future visit would not be used by the regime
for political ends. The Pope begins his Chilean tour with a protocol visit
to La Moneda. His itinerary includes a youth convocation at the National
Stadium, a rally in the economically depressed neighborhood of La Bandera,
as well as meeting with politicians of all leanings. At O'Higgins Park,
where the Pope gives an outdoor mass, Carabineros police release tear gas
upon the crowd of 600,000 but the Pope insists on continuing with the
mass. On three occasions the Pope meets with Carmen Gloria Quintana, who
the year before had been set on fire by a military patrol. A tense moment
arises when the regime insists that the Pope return to Santiago to
formally bid farewell to Pinochet. With intervention from the Vatican
representative, Pinochet conceded - traveling instead to Antofagasta to
meet with the Pope before he moved on to the next leg of his Latin
American tour.
JUNE 11, 1987
The CNI is required by law to hold
detained individuals either in their homes or in prisons, as opposed
to secret detention centers where the use of torture was prevalent. The
regime's Decree Law 18623, however, failed to achieve its aim of stemming
the practice of torture. At times, CNI agents themselves subjected
detainees to torture in Investigations police headquarters, while others
were tortured in the same CNI detention centers banned from use.
JUNE 15-16, 1987
The CNI kills twelve members of the
FPMR in what the CNI code-named "Operacion Albania." The twelve men
and women are gunned down in several different Santiago locations between
late night June 15 and the early hours of June 16. Regime spokesperson
Francisco Javier Cuadra justifies the attacks, also known as the Corpus
Cristi Massacre, as the government's "legal obligation to stamp out places
"where extremists gather."
JUNE 26, 1987
The United Left coalition is founded on
the anniversary of Salvador Allende's birthday. Clodomiro Almeyda, who
is still in jail at the time, is named titular head of the alliance
comprised of members of the Communist Party, Socialist Party, Christian
Left, Radical Party, the United People's Action Movement (MAPU) and the
Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). Its first major activity is the
creation of the Comando for Free and Democratic Elections and Popular
Demands.
AUGUST 13, 1987
Sergio Buschmann and three other FPMR
members escape from the Valparaiso public prison, allegedly abandoning
the area on a Cuban boat. This is the first major escape of political
prisoners. The prison warden and three guards are dismissed from their
jobs.
SEPTEMBER 1, 1987
The FPMR kidnaps Colonel Carlos
Carreno. Carreno, the assistant director of the Army's arms
manufacturing division (Famae) is abducted by the FPMR, which releases him
three months later in Brazil.
SEPTEMBER 2, 1987
Political prisoners begin a series
of hunger strikes to protest restrictions on the right to a proper
defense, the practice of extracting confessions under torture and long
delays in trials. By the end of 1987, there remain 450 political
prisoners, of whom only one quarter had been sentenced.
SEPTEMBER 4, 1987
Former deputies Luis Gustavino and
Eric Schnake are sent into internal exile. Both had been members of
the Parliamentary Assembly for Democracy. These "relegaciones" had been
most common from 1983 to 1985 and even in early 1982 when 13 people were
sent into internal exile. In 1983, there were a total of 35.
NOVEMBER 7, 1987
Judge Rene Garcia Villegas is granted
police protection after receiving death threats during his investigation
of alleged torture. Villegas, investigating 40 torture complaints
traced to the CNI's Borgoño detention center in Santiago, had received
death threats since August 1986.
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