TELLS THE FACTS AND NAMES THE NAMES May 2013: VOL. 20 NO.

5 - Digital Exclusive

Venezuela After Chavez

In the Eye of the Storm

By Daniel Kovalik

I just returned from Venezuela this week where I was observing the post-election audit of the vote count at the invitation of the CNE (the National Electoral Council). The audit,
known as the Citizens Verification process, is impressive in
its scope and thoroughness.
From eight in the morning till noon every day, a team of
professors, their students and CNE support staff, operating
out of the CNE warehouse in the Mariches barrio of Caracas,
randomly select 350 boxes containing paper vote receipts
to audit. They then count each receipt in these boxes to
verify whether they match up with the electronic vote count
from the machines linked to each box. Demonstrating the
amazing transparency of this process, this auditing is being
broadcast by live webcam on the CNE website.
By the time I left Caracas, 81 percent of all the paper
receipts had been audited, and this audit has shown the
original vote count to be 99.8% accurate. And, in the next
couple of weeks, the CNE fully intends to audit each and
every box of receipts each box having been brought to
the Mariches center from the thousands of voting locations
throughout Venezuela, some being brought from the Amazon
by canoe.
As the Center for Economic and Policy Research explained
a few weeks ago, the original audit on election day -- in which
witnesses from the various parties, including the opposition
(and ironically named) MUD party, reviewed at least 53%
of the voting receipts right there in the polling places -- was
more than statistically significant to verify the results of the
election. But alas, as one sociology professor who was witnessing the audit told us with an impish grin, the Venezuelan
people are a kind people, and we readily give in to the caprices
of others.
In this case, the CNE is giving into the caprices of the opposition party headed by Henrique Capriles who originally
demanded the audit but who has since boycotted it, and of
the United States as well which has yet to recognize Nicolas
Maduro as the legitimate President of Venezuela.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of Canada just ruled this
week that the 2011 election of Conservative Party candidate
Stephen Harper was fraught with fraud and massive voter
suppression. Yet, there have been no calls from Washington
to withdraw recognition of Harper.
Of course, the stance taking by Capriles in refusing to

concede the election and by the US in refusing to recognize

Maduro has nothing to do with a bona fide doubt in the legitimacy of the Venezuelan electoral process it would be
indeed be harder to find a more fail-safe and transparent
process in the world, and indeed long-time election observer
Jimmy Carter has yet to find one. Instead, this is all about
an attempt by the Venezuelan and international elite to destabilize Venezuela, to unseat Nicolas Maduro by any possible
means and to undo the revolution started by Hugo Chavez
in 1999.
My meeting on my last night in Caracas with my friend
Jacobo Torres and with Carlos Lopez, both leaders of the
Central Socialista Bolivariana de Trabajadores (CSBT), gives
a good glimpse into why the capitalist class is eager to destroy
the Venezuelan revolution.
Jacobo and Carlos explained to me that, through the efforts
of the two-million-member CSBT union in dialogue with
President Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan workers are now receiving the benefit of one of the most far-reaching and progressive labor laws in the world. This labor law, which was
signed into effect on May 1, 2012, was the product of a convention of 4500 worker delegates who made 19,000 proposals
to President Chavez for the new law which, they explained,
had the purpose of overcoming the capitalist weaknesses in
the Venezuela law which had governed labor relations in the
past.
Amongst other things, the new law
forbids employers from firing any worker (including nonunion) without just cause;
requires businesses to share at least 15% of their profits with
the workers;
requires employers to pay workers severance if they lose
their job for any reason;
gives workers the right to continue running factories which
employers may decide to stop operating;
limits the work week to 40 hours and requires that workers
be given two successive days off from work a week;
grants 6 months of parental leave to mothers and 15 days to
fathers, gives mothers who return to work 1.5 hours per day to
breast feed and gives new fathers and mothers absolute protection from discharge for the first 2 years after the birth of
their child;
forbids all sub-contracting beginning in 2017.
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As Jacobo and Carlos explained, the destiny of the

Venezuelan workers and unions are intimately tied to that
of the revolution and Nicolas Maduro -- the first worker
President of Venezuela.
The Venezuelan and US ruling class are quite aware of this
fact as well, and are therefore bent on destroying this revolution which represents, in the words of Noam Chomsky, the
threat of a good example. And, they see the narrow victory
of Maduro as an opportunity to do just that.
For the good of workers everywhere, we must defend
Venezuela and its revolution at this critical juncture in their
history.
Daniel Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer living
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is a member of the National
Lawyers Guild and has been observing the Venezuelan elections
as a Guild member.

To Have His Day in Court

After Forty Years of

Struggle, An Exiled
Torture Survivor from
Pinochets Chile Testifies
at the Inter-American
Court of Human Rights
By Patrick Timmons

More than twenty years after the Cold Wars end, the
victims of its gross human rights violations still search for
justice. Half a lifetimes waiting in exile in the UK for redress
from abuses by Pinochets Chile has taught torture survivor
and former political prisoner Leopoldo Garca Lucero that
dictum. When, in the early 1990s, courts in post-authoritarian Chile failed to address his complaints, don Leopoldo
began inquiries with the British torture charity REDRESS,
which agreed to take his case to the Inter-American Human
Rights System, composed under the aegis of the Organization
of American States of a Commission and a Court of Human
Rights. For twenty years its lawyers doggedly pushed the case
through the systems procedures, overcoming the cases admissibility weaknesses at the Commission, gatekeeper to the
Court, forcing the Chilean state to dialogue over appropriate remedies for the serious abuses of don Leopoldos rights.
Disagreement between Chile and its victim still exists, so two
decades after initiating his complaint, the heavyset 79 year old
took the stand recently at the Inter-American Court to testify
against the states inaction in his torture, exile, and reparations case.
The facts behind don Leopoldos case began in Chile at the
height of the Cold War, two decades before he met REDRESSs
lawyers in London. Beginning the day after his fortieth
birthday, and continuing between 16 September 1973 and 12
June 1975, Pinochets police and army tortured him so that he
became permanently disabled. Eighteen months of physical
and mental torment later Chiles dictatorship forced him, his
wife, and three daughters into permanent exile, poverty and
ignominy in the UK. Forty years have passed before a court
would hear his demands for justice, truth, and reparation. For
reasons associated with Chiles peculiar transition to democracy notably amnesty laws for human rights abusers and
official truth commissions to acknowledge their deeds postauthoritarian Chiles courts have denied access to Pinochets
human rights victims, making the regional human rights
system indispensable to Garca Luceros struggle.
Don Leopoldo spoke to the Inter-American Court for
more than an hour in response to questions from REDRESSs
lawyers, and Chiles representative. He denounced the state
with an electric passion, a forceful eloquence of a long-ig-

nored human rights victim. Since 1990 the Court has decided
one case related to Pinochets Chile that of an extrajudicial
execution whose victim, obviously, is dead. Garca Lucero and
Others v Chile is the regional human rights courts first case
to consider a living victims torture, imprisonment and exile
during Chiles dictatorship, which endured from 1973 to 1990,
when democracy returned. It could be the Courts last case
about one of the darkest periods in twentieth-century Latin
American history. The cases winding route through the InterAmerican System of Human Rights reveals a legacy of tension
over one of the key battlegrounds in the Cold War, a place
that then US President Richard Nixons National Security
Advisor Henry Kissinger termed a dagger pointed at the
heart of Antarctica. The legacy of Chiles Cold War includes
tens of thousands of human rights victims tortured, disappeared, killed, and exiled violated by an unknown number
of unidentified perpetrators. Since 1990, Chile has successfully prosecuted only a small percentage of Pinochets human
rights abusers. In don Leopoldos case, the state does know
the identity of his torturer, but is not actively seeking his
prosecution. Chile only opened an investigation into don
Leopoldos torture several years ago, when the Commission
was eventually persuaded to forward the case to the Court, a
point that REDRESSs lawyers did not fail to mention in the
proceedings in Medelln.
The Court could make a landmark ruling, deepening its
jurisprudence about investigating human rights abuses and
advancing standards for reparation in cases of exile. But the
Americas human rights system processes cases slowly don
Leopoldos case took more than a decade to reach the Court
after it began at the Commission so it has a narrow window
of opportunity. Chiles strategy in the case has been to play a
waiting game, perhaps hoping that the victim would die in
the interim. On 20 March 2013 Garca Lucero had the opportunity to tell its seven judges (all men) how much he and
his family had suffered across almost four decades -- through
torture, disability, and exile. Once on the stand, his overwhelming presence, the booming timbre of his voice, and the
speed of his indignant delivery, made it seem that he knew
he had a unique opportunity to speak to the Court for fellow
Chileans lost to torture, disappearance, imprisonment, and
exile under Pinochet.
Latin Americas human rights victims wait years for
elusive results from national courts (Guatemala offers the
most recent example of a state leaving its Cold War victims
in the lurch, with the vacation of the guilty verdict in former
President General Efran Rios Montts genocide trial). When
domestic courts fail and when victims are able they turn
to the Organization of American States human rights system.
The judicial system is the regions underfunded institutional
backstop for human rights protection. Not all countries in
the OAS are party to the American Convention on Human
Rights (the Convention), so not all victims in the Americas
have the right to petition the system the late Hugo Chvez
withdrew Venezuela in 2012, Ecuadors Rafael Correa continues to threaten withdrawal precisely because its victims
(especially journalists threatened by the state) submit peti-

tions, and the USA, Canada, and some Caribbean countries

have always refused external human rights adjudication. But,
in 1990, when Pinochet left the presidency, Chile ratified the
Convention in an attempt to regain international respectability. Chilean victims should have full access to the regional
human rights system, but for legal and political reasons to
do with the democratic transition many of the dictatorships
victims have limited eligibility to present a petition. Garca
Luceros case began at the Commission in 2002. More than a
decade later the case is concluding at the Court. A final public
audience winds down these proceedings it happens to be
the only public audience in a case. Though not an isolated
victim from Pinochets Chile, in the Inter-American System
of Human Rights don Leopoldos legal case is singular.
Chile may have ratified the Convention in 1990, but for
don Leopoldo the world has not moved on from 1973. Bald,
bespectacled, tall and imposing, Garca Lucero shouted frequently into the microphone, obviously putting some Court
observers on edge. His worn face, mouth clenched, lips over
toothless gums, revealed years of anger. Lorna McGregor, his
lawyer from REDRESS, calmly asked him precise questions in
a clear Spanish, inflected by her Scottish accent. In response,
don Leopoldos pitch surged, his tone vehement, with deafening crescendos in Chilean Spanish. He was never nostalgic
about the life he lost but the traumas evoked by the questions
from his lawyer and Chiles loquacious representative forced
him into flights of lengthy invective-laden outbursts. Pinochet
was the dictator, the toppled Allende mi Presidente, the
Court quaintly became the Latin American Court, and its
judges caballeros (gentlemen) who were finally hearing
the truth. Don Leopoldo repeated himself on occasion but
the Courts president -- a handsome, silver-haired Peruvian
judge named Diego Garca Sayan -- never interrupted him.
The occasionally forlorn, aging victim seemed out of place
in the Courts niceties. At the invitation of the President, the
six other judges had an opportunity to ask questions, though
none did so, perhaps realizing the strain to the victim of the
court appearance. Instead, don Leopoldos delivery of his testimony about his defiant struggle for Chile to recognize his
claims exposed the seven robed judges to four decades of his
family suffering in exile.
Often he could not get his tongue around his words, living
evidence of the cruel tortures and privations that took his
teeth forty years ago. A psychologist sat beside him on the
stand, rubbing his back when he showed signs of stress,
looking with concern at his client as he became caught up
in the moment of cross-examination. Don Leopoldo wore
a neat, checked blue sports shirt under a billowing jacket to
cover his bulky frame. He sometimes raised his arms to point
at parts of his body, permanently wounded by his torturers
cruel blows. At one point he removed the spectacles from his
rheumy eyes to indicate that facial lacerations caused a deep
scar, almost costing him sight in his left eye. He reminded
the Court of irreparable damage to his spine, broken under
torture. He walks slowly, and with a cane and in the courtroom had to be escorted up steps to the elevated stand. One
observer to the special proceedings in Medelln, Colombia
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(the Court normally meets in its home of San Jos, Costa

Rica) said his testimony sensitized the judges to the case.
On a couple of occasions during the parry of the crossexamination don Leopoldo could not voice the answer he
wanted, and said as much, expecting the thought to return.
It never did. When Chiles representative badgered him about
the reasons he gave for choosing not to return to Chile since
Pinochet retired from the presidency in 1990, don Leopoldo
outright accused him of lying about the problems and pitfalls
that waited for returned exiles in Chile. But, still, to stay in the
UK had been his choice, the Chilean representative insisted,
one that he did not take because he wanted a certain standard
of living for his family. To add insult to injury, Chiles ambassador said it wasnt his countrys responsibility to subsidize a
life in the UK. Chafing at the remark, don Leopoldo said that
he thought Chile owed him justice and reparations for the violations he and his family had experienced. Then he clammed
up, refusing to say anything more about why he could not,
and perhaps never would, return to Chile. There is no justice
in Chile, thundered don Leopoldo, hand raised and index
finger extended in denunciation.
Doa Elena, his wife, sees the situation in the same way.
A woman much smaller than her husband, she has been his
companion, caregiver, and family breadwinner throughout
the trajectory that includes raising a family, along with imprisonment, torture, disability, exile, and shared poverty.
Three years older than her husband, she watched stoically
from a front-row seat in the Court. She was not allowed to
testify in the public proceedings. But, in Court filings, Elena
has said that the Chilean state cannot force her return,
thereby experiencing a second exile: their three daughters
have married and have children in England.
The family was a victim of exile in itself a serious
human rights violation. In the years before September 1973,
before Pinochet toppled Allende with the backing of the
United States and using British military equipment, don
Leopoldo and his family enjoyed a regular, modest life in
Santiago raising three daughters. He worked at the Santiago
Racetracks betting department. Doa Elena worked in the
Ministry of Housing. She liked to go out to eat with don
Leopoldo, to dance, and enjoy time spent with her friends.
Her devotion to her faith took her to church every Sunday.
The couple was saving for their own house. Their eldest
daughter, about to enter university, wanted to be an architect.
Their life was normal, perhaps routine, and from where they
lived in a flat part of Chiles capital, they could see the snowcapped cordillera. This reality and their dreams evaporated
in September 1973. One family member irreparably tortured,
made disabled, with the familys life projects forever deviated
by exile, their life savings confiscated, and nerves frayed.
In exile in the UK, the Garca Luceros have always lived in
social housing. The eldest daughter did not go to architecture
school. Garca Lucero told the Court that before these experiences he used to be a nice person. His wife has confirmed that
the torture, prison, disability and exile turned the once happy,
carefree man to a life of brooding and rancor: he is diagnosed
with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and chronic depression.
4

To his credit, don Leopoldo told the Court of the strains upon
his wife, and on their marriage. The extent of the familys suffering may never fully be redressed by the outcome of their
case.
The case finally proceeded from the Commission with
a petition to the Court in 2011 that is after nine years of
review, and lengthy exchanges between the parties about a
friendly settlement that would have avoided Court proceedings. Most cases spend several years at the Commission, but
few take as long as Garcia Lucero and Others v Chile. Even
after all those years, the Commissions petition does not investigate why Chiles paramilitary police force, the carabineros, arrested don Leopoldo five days after the coup. In 2005
one of Chiles two official truth commissions determined
that his detention had been arbitrary, for political reasons,
and that he had been tortured: At the time of his detention,
Mr. Garca Lucero had been actively involved in political
activity in support of Allendes Socialist Party, and in political
events where he appeared together with Minister Hernn de
Canto and President Salvador Allende, the Inter-American
Commission wrote. Many people describe Pinochets treatment of thousands of supposed leftists as a round up. The
police never charged don Leopoldo, the definition of an incommunicado detention.
The Commission did not shy from providing the Court
with the details of his torture, imprisonment, or expulsion.
The torture started with the carabineros who arrested him on
16 September 1973:
every two or three hours he was tied by the
hands and feet, blindfolded, beaten on the head and
forced underwater; also that he was beaten with a
rifle which caused a severe cut in his forehead, as a
result of which he almost lost sight in one eye. It is
alleged that they sat him in a blood-stained chair,
and according to his torturers the blood belonged to
people who had been executed before. He was then
allegedly told that if he did not confess his daughter
would be executed there, in his presence. After two
days of torture and constant abuse, he was taken to
the National Stadium where the torture intensified.
The following were among the most common forms
of torture: tying his hands to a pole and then elevating it in the air with the use of a crane, submerging
him in a barrel of water and then applying electric
shock. The complaint alleges that he was held in
the National Stadium for two months, without
any contact with his family. When his wife finally
discovered his whereabouts and went to visit him,
she was allowed to see him only for half an hour
before he was transferred to Chacabuco, a concentration camp in Antofagasta, two thousand miles
from Santiago. He was held there for approximately
thirteen months

Away from the stand, but in an earlier filing to the InterAmerican Commission, don Leopoldo described his torture
in a less clinical, more immediate way.
they put me in a cell where I could neither sit
down nor even move; they put me in a very narrow
space, with electric wires on me. There were 6 or 7
carabineros pointing their machine guns at me all
night. Psychological torture. They said things like:
were going to get your daughter, the youngest one.
Her name was Francisca. She was about seven years
old. They said were going to kill her first, and then
well kill you. Were going to do it so you can see
how the first bullet will go straight into one of her
eyes.
After those dark experiences of moving through Pinochets
archipelago of concentration camps for leftists -- sometimes
he was tortured three times a day, sometimes every hour -the dictatorship expelled him to the UK. There is no reason
to doubt don Leopoldos story: in its filings, the state of Chile
has never contested the facts of his torture, imprisonment, or
exile, facts the Commission presented to the Court.
Pinochets 1973 coup felled President Allende who had
been elected by a majority of the Chilean people. The ensuing
military regime claimed tens of thousands of victims: many
died, were disappeared, or tortured. Some 200,000 people,
who by some miracle survived torture and political imprisonment, were forced into exile. Pinochet called it the
humanitarian exile. The bulk of the expulsions occurred
between 1973 and 1976: Chiles military government disowned
the exiles, stamping an L in their passports so they could
not return. (The Court has never reviewed these expulsion
decrees although they violate the right to free movement
under the Convention. Some Chileans still refer to them as
legal.) The authoritarian state popularized the myth of the
golden exile, pointing to the richness of opportunities available outside Chile. It is true that some Chilean exiles distinguished themselves, but it is equally true, and the historical
record reflects, that many exiliados experienced dislocation, despair, depression, and alienation in seventy countries
around the world. Many had to learn new languages, and
others could not. Some failed to recover from having been
tortured and imprisoned, and could not adapt to the culture
of exile: don Leopoldo has never been able to learn English.
His British-born grandchildren do not speak Spanish once
he told the Commission, What is it that makes one want to
kill oneself? Well, I dont understand a thing my grandchildren say to me, because they speak English, they are British
I would like to take them to school and pick them up,
to play with them, to do many things, but I cant; I am condemned to this life. In the face of his experience, it would be
facile to suggest that in exile he escaped death in Chile: on the
stand, don Leopoldo said that in exile he was nothing and
that his wife supported him in everything. It was a wrenching
moment: his resounding voice went quiet as he commented

to the judges about becoming nothing. Death, for him, was

ongoing. He was dead in life. He went silent.
Many of Pinochets prisoners did not survive: folksinger Victor Jara perished in the National Stadium, along
with scores of others, including Charlie Horman, a young
American whose case inspired Missing, the 1982 movie
directed by Costa-Gavras, starring Jack Lemmon as Hormans
father, frantically searching for his son in post-coup Santiago,
much like doa Elena searched for don Leopoldo. The prison
camps around Chile destroyed still more lives: those who
survived these camps were often placed on expulsion lists.
Sometimes family members who knew how to access the
foreign diplomat community petitioned the military government to expel a relative as a way to secure their freedom from
prison and insure their survival. Court documents do not
clarify why the UK provided refuge to the Garca Luceros
Britain did accept large numbers, but Sweden is home to the
largest community of Chilean exiles in northern Europe.
Not even exile was safe. Chiles national security agents assassinated several prominent leftwing exiles in a number of
countries in the Americas and Europe, notably in Argentina
and Italy. The list, documented by the National Security
Archives Peter Kornbluh in The Pinochet File, includes assassinations or attempts across national borders and features
the 1976 car bombing of Allendes foreign minister Orlando
Letelier in Washington, DC. That tragedy killed Letelier and
his US aide Ronni Moffitt. Before Pinochet left power, don
Leopoldo refused to let doa Elena return to Chile for her
mothers funeral; she told the Commission she still resents
him for that decision. Don Leopoldo remained fearful
because Pinochet remained Senator-for-Life in 1990, immune
from Chiles courts until just before his death in 2006. For
these reasons, and don Leopoldos knowledgeable obsession
with Chilean politics, he told the court that he has never felt
safe enough to return to Chile for any length of time. Since
1990 the couple have visited Chile three times, returning
to the UK after each occasion. Their visits have become increasingly melancholy: twenty-three years since Pinochet left
office, most of the friends the Garca Luceros once shared
their lives with in Santiago are dead. For victims the exile was
spatial, removing them from their country, their extended
family, and their friends; but it was also temporal, sealing
them from their generation, and the future they expected.
Don Leopoldos situation could have changed in the 1990s,
back when he was reaching conventional retirement age. By
1998 Pinochet had been arrested in a London clinic and faced
prosecution in Spain for serious human rights violations. But
on grounds of ill health his lawyers obtained a waiver against
extradition. While Pinochets immunity from prosecution
for torture as a former head of state evaporated thanks to
the British House of Lords, other things did not change. At a
later stage in the oral proceedings in Garca Luceros case his
lawyers told the Court in detail, using PowerPoint slides, that
he has barely had assistance from the country that wounded
him forty years ago and continues its damage by denying him
justice and adequate reparation.
Don Leopoldo receives a small pension from Chile because
5

a prominent friend in Santiago put him forward for a political exoneration program after 1990. He told the Court of his
infuriation with his exonerations terms: it does not cover his
torture, disability, or exile, and he learned of the recognition only by accident because his friend sent him a Santiago
newspaper clipping with his name listed. He did not receive
the news through official channels, even though the Chilean
consul in London has always known where the Garca
Luceros live. In the mid-2000s he opted for a one-off payment
of about US$5,000 from the truth commission that included
him in its list of survivors of torture and political imprisonment. In Court, Chiles questions about this award provoked
his ire: payments only began in the last five years, and under
the countrys baroque rules about reparations schemes the
politically exonerated receiving monthly pensions cannot
also benefit from other state pensions. Hence don Leopoldos
choice for the truth commissions one-off payment for torture,
which is not considered a pension. Even though Chile recognizes don Leopoldo as a human rights victim, it has barely
offered any assistance proportionate to his suffering. After
years of wrangling, his lawyers managed to secure funds from
the Chilean government for an electronic machine to treat
his spine at home, a procedure he needs weekly and which
Britains National Health Service could only provide at a
hospital, forcing him to reduce the frequency of his visits. His
lawyers and the Commission believe that Chiles inadequate
assistance violates the Conventions provisions for adequate
reparation for victims of human rights violations, an issue for
the Court to decide. He has received nothing else.
For a case to proceed to the Court victims in the region
must go through a lengthy procedure at the Commission,
which restricts access to the Court under rules of admissibility laid down in the Convention. Even so, Chilean human
rights victims, especially those from 1973 to 1990, face an additional hurdle in pursuing their claims. In 1990 when Chile
ratified the Convention and accepted the Courts jurisdiction, the government stated that it would not let the Court
consider Convention violations occurring before its date of
ratification. Its a common principle known as non-retroactivity; it prevents courts from using new laws for old cases. This
provision allowed democratic Chile to ratify the Convention
but the provision insulated the state from the claims of the
dictatorships human rights victims. Crucially, it helps the
state avoid regional human rights scrutiny of the adequacy
and effectiveness of its existing reparations programs. These
programs have never provided reparations for exile.
Chiles attempt to seal the regional human rights system
from Pinochets victims has not been watertight. But don
Leopoldos case provides the only example of a living victim
of the dictatorship making it past Chiles temporal limitation, through the Commission, and on to the Court. The
hearing in Medelln was the penultimate act in a drawn out,
dramatic case that has proceeded at the pace of a glacier. After
the hearing, the Court may deliver final judgment in June, or
it could come as late as August. A date is not set when the
Court delivers judgment: the ruling will just appear. There
is some dispute among lawyers about what other cases from
6

Pinochets Chile are in train at the Commission, but with

the dictators victims moving into old age, chances are that
after Garca Lucero the Court will never again return to their
struggle for justice.
The legal force of Chiles declaration has been questioned
before. But in don Leopoldos case the Inter-American
Commission accepted the temporal limitations Chile placed
on the Conventions jurisdiction when it forwarded the
petition as admissible to the Court. To ensure the case could
proceed, the Commission excluded the facts from 1973 to 1990
(awkwardly, the technique is called segregation those facts
occurring before ratification in 1990 are neutralized for the
proceedings, instead providing just an explanatory backdrop
to the actual claims). That is, his arbitrary arrest, torture, and
exile were dropped from the case to permit its survival. To be
sure, the case is not actually about arbitrary arrest, torture, or
exile: it concerns denial of justice for adequate reparation of a
recognized, Chilean human rights victim after 1990. In Court,
with the facts from 1973 to 1990 excluded from the litigation,
the Commission and REDRESSs lawyers alleged denial of
justice and lack of adequate reparation as a known victim of
torture.
To conform to the Convention, Chile has had since 1990
to investigate, and prosecute and punish the perpetrators. Compliance with Inter-American Human Rights law
demands the state provide adequate and effective reparation
to the victim. Chile hasnt. The post-authoritarian state knows
the identity of don Leopoldos torturer but hasnt prosecuted
him. Chile hasnt provided don Leopoldo with adequate reparations as a disabled torture victim, or considered that he has
to live in the United Kingdom with a cost of living higher
than that of Chile. In England, unlike torture survivors who
live in Chile, don Leopoldo cannot access specialized medical
care as a human rights victim: the electronic machine for his
back is but one example, neither can he access specialized
psychological care on Britains health service. Don Leopoldo
is pursuing reparations for violations that have never been
properly acknowledged, and never fully investigated; and, for
damage never adequately repaired.
Leopoldo Garca Lucero used his presence and voice at
Court to show that he is no longer one of the forgotten in the
forced diaspora of Chiles progressives created by Pinochets
authoritarianism. It is estimated that seventy countries
received Chilean exiles during this period and the highest
estimate is that 1 million people fled in fear of their lives. In
1990 Chile opened a National Office of Return (ONR) for
exiles, a scheme effectively run by non-profits, not the state,
which lasted for four years before it was shuttered, and attracting 56,000 people. The experience of these returnees has
been mixed: exiles refer to their return as a new exile, and
that the ONR did very little to assist them. Don Leopoldo
knew about the ONRs lackluster performance with chagrin
and exasperation he told Chiles representative that its failure
was one of the reasons he did not return home in 1990.
Almost forty years later, still living in the same humble
and marginal place in London, far from the Court and his
moment in the stand, Garca Lucero awaits justice perhaps

the Court will order a thorough investigation into his detention and torture, finally prosecuting his tormentors, or will
it grant financial reparation? He has had some media attention a journalist from The Guardian interviewed him in his
home after the hearings, but Chilean papers have ignored the
family. He and doa Elena are aware that they are too old to
go home, and that their children have British grandchildren,
with lives in the UK. His legal case in the regional human
rights system has allowed his family to tell its story about the
violence of the Cold War and the uncertain, faltering justice
for its victims. When he had his day in Court in Medelln,
Leopoldo Garca Lucero ended his appearance by stating his
motivations over four decades of struggle: I dont want what
happened to me and my family to happen again in any Latin
American country.
Patrick Timmons is finishing a book called Plucking the Plumed
Serpent: A Memoir of Madness and Sensibility in North America.
He calls Mexico City home. He holds a PhD in Latin American
History from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a candidate
for the LL.M. in International Human Rights Law at the University
of Essex, UK, and, with a team of Essex law students, he assisted
REDRESSs lawyers in the final stages of Caso Garca Lucero and
Others v Chile. Any opinions in this piece are those of the author.

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