I got the call while preparing my Sunday breakfast: scrambled eggs, soy-sausage, toast and black coffee. The news did not come as a shock, his health had been deteriorating for years and Chileans throughout the world knew it could happen at any time. In fact, some of us wanted it to happen.

When my co-worker Hendrik called from the office, my first thought was “What the hell is he doing at the office on a Sunday?”, and then his first words were, “Guess who just died?”

I knew who died before he even finished the sentence. It was Sunday December 10, 2006, International day for human rights.

(In an effort to not give him any more attention than I think he deserves, I refuse to say or write his name publicly from now on, so throughout this posting I will refer to him as “HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED” – not to be confused with the guy from the Dwarves)

I have never found joy in someone else’s pain; in fact hatred and resentment are things I try no to dabble in, but I caught myself inadvertently smiling at the idea of his supporters freaking out and behaving like the hysterical troglodytes that they are once they heard of his death.

HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED supporters are some of the most violent and irrational people I have ever encountered. Not unlike religious fanatics or fascist authoritarians, they do not accept nor tolerate dissent or the questioning of their leaders and their legacies. Any kind of criticism or doubt of their validity is immediately retaliated with accusations of “unpatriotic”, “communist”, “fag”, and/or any other kind of adjective which they associate with “bad”. Sometimes they will even resort to physical violence, no questions asked.

This all takes me back to when HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED was arrested in London. The morning after hearing the news (and some of us were a bit hung-over from celebrating the night before) a bunch of friends (8-12 young co-ed punks) and I decided to meet and organize a counter protest to the rally that his supporters would be holding outside the Spanish Embassy in Las Condes (the extradition order for which he was being held in London had come from the Spanish courts). We assumed, and made asses of ourselves actually, that there would be other counter protestors. I mean, why wouldn’t there be? We were thankful for the fact that Spain had the guts to demand his extradition and hold him accountable for crimes against humanity, something that courts in Chile had never done (and never did), and we thought others would be to.

We met at my friend Miguel’s house where we painted a giant banner made out of brown wrapping paper with the words “Thank You Judge Garzon”. Our plan was to walk to the protest site, observe his supporters and then wait for the right time to reveal the banner.

At around 3 pm we began walking up Av. Apoquindo, supporters carrying Chilean flags and portraits of their hero were also making their pilgrimage up the hill. The avenue and surrounding streets had been sealed off for the protest, businesses -fearing damage to their establishments, had also closed down and sealed their doors and windows. I had never seen so many right wing nuts together in one place, except in movies, and it was quite a sight. The most surprising, well not really, were the Nazi and Iron Cross flags that some supporters carried. At one point, a white pickup truck filled with pre-pubescent kids wearing arm bands with the “Patria y Libertad” (a fascist paramilitary group from the 1970’s) logo rode past us. I wondered if those poor kids even knew what they were getting into, if maybe they would have preferred to spend that day at home playing video games or watching cartoons or just plain hanging out instead of getting paraded around by their parents as the new right wing vanguard. I wondered what they would do when they hit puberty and considered everything about their parents to be lame, how would they rebel? I hoped they would grow up to be god-bashing anarchists or flaming queens with artistic inclinations, or whatever would annoy their parents the most.

As we walked towards the embassy, we began to see the crowd that had gathered outside. It was a really large crowd, probably over 3,000 people, mostly middle-aged women and families. The fact that his most fervent supporters have always been middle aged women just boggles me. He was not a good public speaker; in fact, his use of the Spanish language was quite brutish. He was not an attractive man, and I know an attractive older man when I see one. And this guy was no Julio Iglesias. Anyways... the middle-aged hags and families were pelting eggs and throwing paint at the gates of the embassy while chanting “Viva Chile, Viva (insert HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED here)” and other moronic diatribes in defense of someone who oversaw the deaths and torture of thousands of Chileans while robbing the country blind to fill up his secret accounts with Riggs Bank.

As we watched the supporters do their thing we began to realize that we were the only counter-protestors there and it was unlikely that anyone else would show up. So we made the decision right then and there to get it over with before the mob got any bigger.

We moved back a bit, until we were about 20 feet away from the line of HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED supporters, a few policemen that were doing their usual crowd control so us backing up and gave is a suspicious look. They knew we were up to something. My friend Miguel who was carrying the banner began to unroll it; six of us took hold of a part of the banner, one on each end and four holding the middle. I was the second to last from the right. It took the HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED supporters a while to become aware of our presence since we were basically behind them and facing the same direction as them, towards the Spanish Embassy.

The second one of them saw us and began shrieking in our direction (kind of like being identified as a human in Invasion of the Body Snatchers) the domino principal came into effect and in a few seconds a large portion of the mob was facing us and screaming all kinds of insults, soon enough, rocks began flying. The cops, surprisingly, began forming a column in front of us and separating us from the angry mob, one of them came up to us and asked that we leave because they could only offer a limited amount of security since they would be clearly outnumbered. “That was nice of him” I thought to myself. In Chile, to have a cop treat you with civility if you are a HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED opponent at a pro-HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED rally was pretty unusual. I mean, you used to “magically disappear” for pulling these kinds of stunts.

The situation began to escalate when rocks turned into people rushing towards us with fists in the air and sticks in their hands, it was time to go.

In spite of the threat we did not roll the banner back up, we continued to walk backwards, just at a faster pace. Once the mob saw that we were retreating they went back to their business and we made our way down the hill. We kept the banner spread out and facing forward as we walked down the street so that anyone coming up the hill towards the rally would see it. We got a few insults, middle fingers, just the usual crap. Once we were back on the intersection of Av. Tobalaba and Av. Apoquindo, where there was normal traffic, we got honks of approval from passing cars. That was a good reflection of Santiago, things and people are considerably different depending on what neighborhood you happen to be in.

It was a good time. Anything that had to do with making some form of statement against HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED to me was not only productive from a merely moral and political standpoint; it was also lots of fun, especially if the actions were creative and spontaneous.

HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED, I’m glad you’re gone, we don’t need you around, and we never did.