A Letter to Donald Trump

Recién hice llegar a la Casa Blanca por e-mail la siguiente traducción de mi carta abierta al Presidente Donald Trump, en tres etapas, y me fue acusado recibo:

Dear Mr. President Donald Trump,

I am writing to you because you are a figure endowed with almost unparalleled political courage in the contemporary world, noted by the fact that you dared to say that the Pinochet government saved Chile from communism. Precious few political leaders have ventured to state that truth publicly, other than statesmen like you and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

I am also writing to you because your government recently sent a message to Cuba, prompting its regime to put an end to the state of affairs that shackle a hundred people as political prisoners. The latter group is defined as those who have been deprived of their liberty, not because of the application of the law under a system governed by the rule of law, but because of political considerations that run contrary to a country’s legislation.

Such is the case of Chile, too, according to that definition. There are currently over two hundred political prisoners in different detention centers—twice as many as in Cuba—convicted in a manner that runs contrary to Chilean constitutional provisions and laws. These people have been persecuted for having fought terrorists who sought to seize power between 1973 and 1990, wherein serious attacks against both military and civilian populations were committed in the process. They had the support of Cuba, the Soviet Union, and East Germany, the latter case being documented by American author John O. Koehler in his book Stasi.

It is up to your government to condemn the current Chilean one, as it has done in the case of Cuba, because the present administration of President Piñera, and his previous one (2010–2014), have not only been active accomplices in this travesty of justice, but also co-authors of most of the illegal prosecutions that led to the deprivation of the liberty of those two hundred political prisoners. Unfortunately, the Chilean judiciary has been, for at least ten years, left in the hands of a majority of red judges who have undertaken an unflinching offensive against those who defeated extreme leftist terrorism by force of arms.

In recent days, the Piñera administration suspended the warden of the Punta Peuco prison for limiting himself to parole, according to the law, just fifteen military political prisoners. In doing so, the government has not only contravened the law, but also the Chilean Constitution, by denying parole to those political prisoners. That charter prohibits applying criminal law retroactively and establishes the principle that the rule most favorable to the inmate must govern.

As in Chile there are no political institutions capable of opposing the stranglehold that the extreme left wields over the judiciary—being backed by the co-sponsorship of the government along with the indifference of the congressional majority (that judiciary has railroaded more than two hundred political prisoners now serving time), you are the only world-class statesman who is endowed with sufficient political courage that can exercise true diplomatic influence and uphold the human rights of these people. No one else is able to rise above the prevailing leftist rhetoric that merely parrots the “talking elites” (as Paul Johnson stated). No one better than you can denounce the stomping on the human rights of these Chileans—not to mention the undermining of the Chilean constitution and its laws. Such violations have been perpetrated against the military forces that defeated Marxist guerrillas in Chile.

A recent American video warns those in the United States about the potential risk of anti-Al Qaeda terrorism combatants falling in the future into the hands of politicized leftist judges, as it says textually, wherein many uniformed men would lose their freedom as a result of acts of vengeance for having triumphed over leftist terrorists.

Now is the time, Mr. President, for you to intervene, once again, in defense of freedom, human rights and the rule of law in our world. Moreover, you would be doing so on behalf of a friendly country that shares the same ideals of the United States but is currently beleaguered by a multifaceted attack on the fundamental rights of those who fought to preserve its democracy and freedoms.

I hope that representatives of your government in Chile, or perhaps people who share your ideals of freedom and fidelity to historical truth, will also send you this request. Accordingly, I am optimistic that it will promote the same foreign aid and action in Chile that your government has deployed in Cuba, defending the law, justice, and truth that have been overrun by leftists, thus unjustly depriving two hundred military people of their freedom, who are in this very moment being held as political prisoners in my country.