“If we just whisk people off, at that point it’s game over. We’re in 1973 Chile. From there to black vans showing up in the middle of the night.” Asha Rangppa, Ezra Klein Show

Ezra Klein,

“Kilmar Abrego Garcia is not a small thing. If he can do this to some random Maryland father 3 kids. Nobody actually believes this guy it a threat to anybody and then sit in the Oval Office with Bukele, ’I would like to do this with US citizens and people shrug their shoulders and move on. Then what he is learned is he can do it.”

Asha Rangppa,

“All these authoritarians, as Timothy Snyder says, power is usually given to them… We’re definitely there in the red zone, but I think we’re early enough that there’s still a lot that we can do…

And to bring us back to Abrego Garcia there are certain stories that.. can be the only story… This should be the story. 

Because it’s something that people get… If the government can stop this guy that’s been here for 10 years, come out of a car, put him on a plane to El Salvador and wash their hands, that’s us… They have put a face on their lawlessness."

The Emergency is Here (Part 2) | The Ezra Klein Show

“Asha Rangappa is a Senior Lecturer at the Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and a former Associate Dean at Yale Law School. Prior to her current position, Asha served as a Special Agent in the New York Division of the FBI, specializing in counterintelligence investigations. Asha has been a contributor on numerous television and radio outlets, and is now a legal and national security analyst.”

FROM:

Asha Rangpappa

***

The Caravan of Death (Spanish: Caravana de la Muerte) was a Chilean Army death squad that, following the Chilean coup of 1973, flew by helicopters from south to north of Chile between September 30 and October 22, 1973. During this foray, members of the squad ordered or personally carried out the execution of at least 75 individuals held in Army custody in certain garrisons.^[1] According to the NGO Memoria y Justicia, the squad killed 97 people: 26 in the South and 71 in the North.^[2]

Augusto Pinochet was indicted in December 2002 in this case, but he died four years later before a verdict could be rendered. Trials of others accused of involvement continued after his death…

“The group traveled from prison to prison in a Puma helicopter, inspecting military garrisons and then ordering — or carrying out themselves — the execution of the detainees. The victims were then buried in unmarked graves. General Joaquin Lagos [es] explained why he didn't return the bodies of the 14 executed prisoners of Antofagasta to their families:

I was ashamed to see them. They were torn into pieces. So I wanted to put them together, at least leave them in a human form. Yes, their eyes were gouged out with knives, their jaws broken, their legs broken ... At the end they gave them the coup de grace. They were merciless. "[...] "The prisoners were killed so that they would die slowly. In other words, sometimes they [...] shot them [in] parts[: first, the legs, then the sexual organs, then the heart. In that order the machine guns were fired^[3][4]

Though the Rettig Commission puts the count of murdered individuals at approximately 3,000 during the 17-year Pinochet regime, the deaths of these 75 individuals and the Caravan of Death episode itself are highly traumatic, especially as many of the victims had voluntarily turned themselves in to the military authorities, were all in secured military custody and posed no immediate threat because they had no history of violence, nor were threatening to commit any such violence.

According to Oleguer Benaventes Bustos, the second in command at the Talca Regiment when Arellano landed there on September 30, 1973, the squad's aims were to instill "terror" in potential opponents as well as to ensure the loyalty to the new assembly of military staff outside the capital:

It seems to me that one of the reasons for the mission was to set a drastic precedent in order to terrorize the presumed willingness of the Chilean people to fight back. But without any doubt, it was also intended to instill fear and terror among the commanders. To prevent any military personnel, down to lowest ranking officers, from taking a false step: this could happen to you!”

Caravan of Death