Arrogance and the River

by Santiago2

Born of snowmelt in the high Andes
the Río Mapocho tumbles
along an ageless course,
Whispering secrets and dancing
to timeless rhythms.

Below, in Santiago
the Bulnes bridge stands witness
to an abomination,
a soulless being - floating, discarded in the Mapocho.
A portent of state torture and mayhem.

Today, the Mapocho swells with tears of the dead
and no longer whispers,
but wails at the Andean peaks
who will echo her cries for years.

In time, truth makes a captive
of the Arrogant Architect,
The purveyor of state-sanctioned murder
who made justice his servant.

A generation has passed,
Still, the waters of Mapocho do not dance,
but endlessly recite
the quiet chorus of her lament.

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The Mapocho River is iconic in Chile, flowing down from the Andes through the heart of Santiago, the capital.

Victims of Pinochet's death squads appeared as floating corpses in the Mapocho.

My Chilean wife and I lived under the Pinochet regime. Friends and college classmates of my wife's were murdered by Pinochet. These students were present in class as usual one day, and gone the next -- because, perhaps, they happened to be a cousin of someone in an opposition political party.

General Augusto Pinochet killed over 3,000 of his Chilean countrymen following his overthrow of a democratically-elected government in 1973. He also robbed the Chilean national treasury of millions. He escaped legal justice by dying just before his conviction in the Hague of crimes against humanity.

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Justice Denied

Arrogance and the River

by Santiago2

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