On this day in 1973, following the fascist coup against Chilean President Salvador Allende, American journalist and documentary filmmaker Charles Horman was executed in the National Stadium concentration camp in Santiago.

Horman was born in New York City on May 15th, 1942, graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1960 and Harvard in 1964. He was an active anti-war protester, present at the 1968 DNC protests and producing an award winning documentary titled "Napalm". He also worked as an investigative journalist for publications such as The Nation and The Christian Science Monitor.

In December 1971, Charles and his wife Joyce left the U.S. for Latin America, eventually settling down in Santiago, Chile, where he worked as a freelance writer.

On September 11th, 1973, fascists led by Augusto Pinochet and the CIA ousted democratically elected Marxist President Salvador Allende. In the following weeks, many prominent left-wing activists, such as Flora Sanhueza, Victor Jara, and Frank Teruggi, were arrested and killed.

Horman himself was arrested on September 16th, seized from his home by Chilean soldiers and taken to the National Stadium, which had been turned into a de facto concentration camp following the coup. There, Horman was executed on September 19th, 1973.

Documents declassified by the Clinton administration in 1999 indicate the U.S. knew of Horman's plight but initially obfuscated investigations into his death. They also indicated that it was unlikely Horman would have been killed without the knowledge and permission of the CIA.

In June 2014, a Chilean court ruled that U.S. authorities had played a "fundamental" role in Horman's murder. In January 2015, two former Chilean intelligence officials were sentenced to jail in Chile for the murders of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, another American activist who was also arrested, executed the following day.

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  • DoiDoi [comrade/them, he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I studied Mandarin in college. All of my professors were from Taiwan and would find a way to work anti-communism into every topic. They wouldn't allow anyone to do anything in simplified characters or work with media from the mainland in general. Clearly it didn't work lol