Chapter 34: Tea Together

140      had planned a large demonstration  Carmen Sesin, “Cuban Government Quashes Planned March by Protesters,” NBC News, November 15, 2021, www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/cuban-government-quashes-planned-march-protesters-rcna5615.

140      surrounded the homes of organizers to . . .  Sesin, “Cuban Government Quashes Planned March by Protesters,” www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/cuban-government-quashes-planned-march-protesters-rcna5615.

140      tightened U.S. sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic  Sesin, “Cuban Government Quashes Planned March by Protesters,” www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/cuban-government-quashes-planned-march-protesters-rcna5615; and “Cuba’s Tourism Workers Reinvent Themselves as Lockdown Lingers,” Reuters, April 1, 2021, www.reuters.com/article/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/cubas-tourism-workers-reinvent-themselves-as-lockdown-lingers-idUSKBN2BO64E/.

140      enduring food scarcity, waiting in hours-long lines for food . . . not guaranteed  Sesin, “Cuban Government Quashes Planned March by Protesters,” www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/cuban-government-quashes-planned-march-protesters-rcna5615; and German Quintero, “Food Has Become Inaccessible in Cuba for Many,” Havana Times, February 9, 2022, havanatimes.org/opinion/food-has-become-inaccessible-in-cuba-for-many/.

140      “I want to show this flag and tell all the Cuban people . . .”  CNN Chile, “Debate presidencial Anatel 2021,” www.youtube.com/live/hF-H0sIK_gU?si=oOYqVCftlItaQNL3, 14:32–14:42.

141       “If he were alive, he would have voted for me”  José Antonio Kast quoted in Jordans and Goodman, “Father’s Nazi Past Haunts Chilean Presidential Frontrunner,” apnews.com/article/europe-media-caribbean-social-media-chile-44564195379055c3ca0bcb04e7589216.

141       “We would have had tea together” Kast quoted in Jordans and Goodman, “Father’s Nazi Past Haunts Chilean Presidential Frontrunner,” apnews.com/article/europe-media-caribbean-social-media-chile-44564195379055c3ca0bcb04e7589216.

141       participated in a military operation that kidnapped and murdered . . .  “Operation Independence,” which began in February 1975, “resulted in the kidnapping and murder of thousands of workers, students, teachers, social and political activists, and family members searching for their loved ones. Because of the methods used, ‘Operation Independence’ is considered the beginning of the clandestine repression that would be systematically carried out in Argentina after the coup d'état of March 24, 1976.” Ximena Tordini, “Victoria Villarruel, the Other Daughter,” Buenos Aires Herald, December 11, 2023, buenosairesherald.com/politics/victoria-villarruel-the-other-daughter; and “47 years of Operation Independence,” Argentina.gob.ar, February 8, 2022, www.argentina.gob.ar/noticias/47-anos-del-operativo-independencia-espacio-para-la-memoria-ex-ccdtye-la-escuelita-de, via Google Translate.

141       detained, tortured, and killed dissidents  Tordini, “Victoria Villarruel, the Other Daughter,” buenosairesherald.com/politics/victoria-villarruel-the-other-daughter; “Campo de Mayo," Argentina.gob.ar, accessed January 29, 2025, www.argentina.gob.ar/derechoshumanos/sitiosdememoria/espacios-de-memoria/campo-de-mayo, via Google Translate; and “New Dictatorship Memorial Site to be Built at Campo de Mayo Military Garrison,” Buenos Aires Times, March 23, 2023, www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/new-dictatorship-memorial-site-to-be-built-at-campo-de-mayo-military-garrison.phtml.

141       founded a “center for legal studies on terrorism and its victims”  Victor Swezey, “Victims of Argentina’s Dictatorship See Step Backward in Milei’s Presidency,” Al Jazeera, December 10, 2023, www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/10/victims-of-argentinas-dictatorship-see-step-backward-in-mileis-presidency.

141       “uses human-rights rhetoric to shift attention . . .” Swezey, “Victims of Argentina’s Dictatorship See Step Backward in Milei’s Presidency,” www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/10/victims-of-argentinas-dictatorship-see-step-backward-in-mileis-presidency.

141       visited in prison Jorge Rafael Videla . . . before he died in 2013  Swezey, “Victims of Argentina’s Dictatorship See Step Backward in Milei’s Presidency”; and “Argentine Military Leader Videla Dies at 87,” Al Jazeera, May 17, 2013, www.aljazeera.com/news/2013/5/17/argentine-military-leader-videla-dies-at-87.

141       staged a coup and established a conventional dictatorship Leila Miller, “A Dictator’s Daughter Runs for President, Unleashing Memories of Guatemala’s Dark Past,” Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2023, updated June 19, 2023, www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-06-12/guatemala-civil-war-genocide-dictators-daughter.

141       massacred Indigenous Maya . . . pretext that they were supporting the guerillas  Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), Guatemala: Memory of Silence, Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification Conclusions and Recommendations, 1999, hrdag.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/CEHreport-english.pdf, 23–24; and Miller, “A Dictator’s Daughter Runs for President, Unleashing Memories of Guatemala’s Dark Past,” www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-06-12/guatemala-civil-war-genocide-dictators-daughter.

141       convicted Ríos Montt . . . only for his conviction to be overturned  Tracy Wilkinson, “Guatemalan Court Overturns Rios Montt Conviction,” May 20, 2013, www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-may-20-la-fg-wn-guatemala-dictator-rios-montt-retrial-20130520-story.html.

141       died during a retrial  Stephen Kinzer, “Efraín Ríos Montt, Guatemalan Dictator Convicted of Genocide, Dies at 91,” New York Times, April 1, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/obituaries/efrain-rios-montt-guatemala-dead.html.

141       pushed for amnesty “to end the persecution of our war veterans" Ricardo Méndez Ruiz quoted in Miller, “A Dictator’s Daughter Runs for President, Unleashing Memories of Guatemala’s Dark Past,” www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-06-12/guatemala-civil-war-genocide-dictators-daughter.

141       threw their support behind Ríos and her new Valor party Ríos seems to have support from much of the country’s economic elite, and is beloved by the military old guard.” Claudia Méndez Arriaza, “Zury Ríos Campaigns to Lead Guatemala’s Faltering Democracy,” Americas Quarterly, January 11, 2023, americasquarterly.org/article/zury-rios-campaigns-to-lead-guatemalas-faltering-democracy/. “Her candidacy is largely supported by the Guatemalan economic and military elite.” Jeff Abbott, “Guatemala Elections: Campaigning Begins Amid Public Distrust,” Al Jazeera, April 10, 2023, www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/10/guatemala-elections-campaigning-begins-amid-public-distrust.

141       repeatedly running for president  Miller, “A Dictator’s Daughter Runs for President, Unleashing Memories of Guatemala’s Dark Past,” www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-06-12/guatemala-civil-war-genocide-dictators-daughter. In 2023, Ríos lost to progressive anti-corruption candidate Bernardo Arévalo. Nicole Narea and Ellen Ioanes, “Why a Progressive’s Victory in Guatemala Matters,” Vox, August 21, 2023, www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/8/20/23838763/guatemala-elections-alvarez-torres-democracy-corruption.

141       teaching less and less about the genocidal violence . . . In 2011, investigative journalist Marielos Monzón, who had investigated the military dictatorship’s human rights abuses, was named alongside other journalists and human rights activists in lawsuits brought by allies of the dictatorship as having committed acts of guerilla “terror” during the civil war. Monzón denied the charges and told the Committee to Protect Journalists “that many of the events cited in the document occurred in the late 1970s or early 1980s, when she was just a few years old or before she was even born.” The Committee to Protect Journalists reported, “Political polarization and increasingly powerful organized crime groups have left many Guatemalan journalists fearful for their safety and afraid to report on sensitive issues.” On Guatemala’s Education Ministry, see   Miller, “A Dictator’s Daughter Runs for President, Unleashing Memories of Guatemala’s Dark Past,” www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-06-12/guatemala-civil-war-genocide-dictators-daughter. On Marielos Monzón’s journalism and the lawsuits brought against her, see “Marielos Monzon,” International Women’s Media Foundation, www.iwmf.org/community/marielos-monzon/; Danilo Valladares, “Military Allies Take Ex-Guerrillas, Journalists to Court,” Truthout, December 28, 2011, truthout.org/articles/military-allies-take-exguerrillas-journalists-to-court/; and Committee to Protect Journalists, “Guatemalan Journalist Faces Threats, Intimidation,” RefWorld, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), June 30, 2017, webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20230518200112/https://www.refworld.org/docid/596f4bf30.html.

142      third attempt . . . baselessly claimed election fraud  “Third Peru Presidential Defeat Is Least of Keiko Fujimori’s Problems,” Buenos Aires Times, July 20, 2021, www.batimes.com.ar/news/latin-america/third-peru-presidential-defeat-is-least-of-keiko-fujimoris-problems.phtml; and Dan Collyns, “Peru Elections: Fujimori’s Fraud Claims Criticised as Rival’s Narrow Lead Widens,” The Guardian, June 8, 2021, www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/08/keiko-fujimori-claims-irregularities-peru-presidential-election-pedro-castillo.

142      the son of immigrants from Japan, was Peru’s military dictator  Franklin Briceño and Regina Garcia Cano, “Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori Is Freed from Prison on Humanitarian Grounds,” Associated Press (AP) News, December 7, 2023, apnews.com/article/peru-alberto-fujimori-release-prison-death-squads-d277d1615e7aeb40e1211ea4472d0bf6; and “Alberto Fujimori Profile: Deeply Divisive Peruvian Leader,” BBC News, February 20, 2018, www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-16097439.

142      “Why did you want to govern with people . . .”  CNN Chile, “Debate presidencial Anatel 2021,” www.youtube.com/live/hF-H0sIK_gU?si=oOYqVCftlItaQNL3, 15:08–15:14.

142      “los crímenes de Paine” . . .  Ryan Grim and Maia Hibbett, “Marco Rubio Met with Far-Right Chilean Candidate Tied to Military Dictatorship,” The Intercept, December 1, 2021, accessed via Wayback Machine, December 1, 2021 capture, web.archive.org/web/20211201170903/https://theintercept.com/2021/12/01/marco-rubio-chile-pinochet-jose-antonio-kast/.

142      in trucks owned by Michael Kast to a police . . . tortured . . . shot and killed “According to [Chilean journalist Javier] Rebolledo, leftist agitators and peasants had threatened to expropriate the [Kast] family’s business during the socialist administration of Salvador Allende. The day after Pinochet’s coup against Allende, police in Paine mopped up, disappearing in broad daylight a young militant, Pedro Vargas, who had been organizing workers at Bavaria, as he waited in line to buy bread.” On the disappearing of Pedro Vargos, an organizer of Michael Kast’s employees at Cecinas Bavaria, see Frank Jordans and Joshua Goodman, “Father’s Nazi Past Haunts Chilean Presidential Frontrunner,” Associated Press (AP) News, December 8, 2021, apnews.com/article/europe-media-caribbean-social-media-chile-44564195379055c3ca0bcb04e7589216. On Michael Kast’s loan of a truck to the police, see “The Kasts in the Paine Crimes,” El Mostrador, November 6, 2014, www.elmostrador.cl/noticias/pais/2014/11/06/los-kast-en-los-crimenes-de-paine/.

142      being present for the torture  Survivor Alejandro del Carmen Bustos González recalled Christian Kast being present at the station while he was kicked by police. Bustos said of the murders, “There were more civilians, but with the lights and the darkness, I did not identify them all. I do not remember seeing Kast there, but he could have been there too.” Lissette Fossa, “Javier Rebolledo on Matanza de Paine: ‘José Antonio Kast Cannot Say That His family Had Nothing to Do with It, Because There Are Plenty of Antecedents,’" Interferencia, June 17, 2022, interferencia.cl/articulos/javier-rebolledo-por-matanza-de-paine-jose-antonio-kast-no-puede-decir-que-su-familia-no, via Google Translate; and “The Kasts in the Paine Crimes,” www.elmostrador.cl/noticias/pais/2014/11/06/los-kast-en-los-crimenes-de-paine/.

142      now runs the family restaurant business  Veronica Reyes, “The Kast Family Makes Adjustments to Its Businesses and Reduces the Number of Cecinas Bavaria Stores,” Radio Bío-Bío, August 2, 2021, www.biobiochile.cl/noticias/economia/actualidad-economica/2021/08/02/familia-kast-aplica-reorganizacion-a-sus-negocios-y-reduce-numero-de-locales-de-cecinas-bavaria.shtml.

142      his neighbor Grim and Hibbett, “Marco Rubio Met with Far-Right Chilean Candidate Tied to Military Dictatorship,” web.archive.org/web/20211201170903/https://theintercept.com/2021/12/01/marco-rubio-chile-pinochet-jose-antonio-kast/.

142      died in 2014 at age ninety José Antonio Kast, “Column: Miguel Kast Schindele, An Exemplary Man,” The Clinic, August 28, 2015,” www.theclinic.cl/2015/08/28/columna-miguel-kast-schindele-un-hombre-ejemplar/.

142      received his master’s degree in economics at the University of Chicago  Mary Helen Spooner, Soldiers in a Narrow Land: The Pinochet Regime in Chile (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 107–108. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/41935258?oclcNum=41935258.

142      Chicago Boys, the group of economists trained by Milton Friedman Grim and Hibbett, “Marco Rubio Met with Far-Right Chilean Candidate Tied to Military Dictatorship,” web.archive.org/web/20211201170903/https://theintercept.com/2021/12/01/marco-rubio-chile-pinochet-jose-antonio-kast/.

142      as president of the Central Bank . . . before Miguel died of cancer  Manuel Salazar Salvo, “The Origin of the Kast Clan in Chile,” Interferencia, June 15, 2019,” interferencia.cl/articulos/el-origen-del-clan-de-los-kast-en-chile, via Google Translate.

142      public spending. . . markets . . . back of unions . . . trade barriers, and privatizing . . .  Orlando Letelier, “The ‘Chicago Boys’ in Chile: Economic Freedom’s Awful Toll,” Nation, August 1976, www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-chicago-boys-in-chile-economic-freedoms-awful-toll/; Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007), 77–85. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/182737600. M. Victoria Murillo, “Conviction Versus Necessity: Public Utility Privatization in Argentina, Chile and Mexico,” Paper prepared for the 97th Annual Meeting for the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, August 30–September 2, 2001, www.files.ethz.ch/isn/30093/2001-17.pdf, 10–11.

142      made their way to most countries  Klein, Shock Doctrine, 7, 10–11, 132–141. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/182737600. Walden Bello, “Short-Lived Legacy: Margaret Thatcher, Neoliberalism and the Global South,” Poverty Matters, blog, The Guardian, April 16, 2013, www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/apr/16/legacy-margaret-thatcher-neoliberalism.

142      made possible the flood of wealth . . . rushed up to the super-rich  Political economy scholars David Hope and Julian Limberg examined the effects of tax cuts for the rich in eighteen Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries—including the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, and France—between 1965 and 2015. They found that “tax cuts for the rich lead to higher income inequality in both the short- and medium-term. In contrast, such reforms do not have any significant effect on economic growth or unemployment.” David Hope and Julian Limberg, “The Economic Consequences of Major Tax Cuts for the Rich,” Socio-Economic Review 20, no. 2 (April 2022), academic.oup.com/ser/article/20/2/539/6500315, 539, 548.

142–143 a growing mass of people are turning anti-capitalist Scholar Rainer Zitelmann “commissioned a survey on the image of capitalism in 34 countries,” including the United States and “small, medium and large countries in Europe, South America, Africa and Asia.” “In only six of these countries—led by Poland and the United States—do pro-capitalist attitudes dominate . . . The most frequently mentioned criticisms of capitalism are that capitalism is dominated by the rich and that capitalism leads to growing inequality.” Rainer Zitelmann, “Attitudes Towards Capitalism in 34 Countries on five Continents,” Economic Affairs 43, no. 3 (October 2023), onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecaf.12591, 353, 354. See also Jacob Zinkula, “Gen Z Will Change Capitalism as We Know It,” Business Insider, December 14, 2023, www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-capitalism-socialism-inequality-healthcare-democrats-republicans-biden-trump-2023-11.

143      destroyed unions and propped up big business William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (1960; New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 201–203, 205–206, 263–264. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/1333912673.

143      directed the drafting of a new constitution for Chile  Cynthia Gorney, “Pinochet, With Disputed Constitutional Mantle, Moves Into Palace,” Washington Post, March 12, 1981, wapo.st/40L3ZEY.

143      A national referendum in 1988 would determine  International Commission of the Latin American Studies Association to Observe the Chilean Plebiscite, The Chilean Plebiscite: A First Step Toward Redemocratization, 1989, lasaweb.org/uploads/reports/chileanplebiscite.pdf, 2.

143      56 percent of Chileans courageously voted no  Tribunal Calificador de Elecciones, 1988 plebiscite results, tricel.cl/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/SENTENCIA-PLEBISCITO-1988.pdf, 233, via Google Translate.

143      An elected president arrived in 1990 Shirley Christian, “Elected President Replaces Pinochet,” New York Times, March 12, 1990, www.nytimes.com/1990/03/12/world/elected-president-replaces-pinochet.html.