1973: Jose Gregorio Liendo, “Comandante Pepe”
October 3rd, 2018 Headsman
Comandante Pepe was shot on this date in 1973.
Jose Gregorio Liendo (English Wikipedia entry | Spanish), a onetime agronomy student, had quit his studies years before to join a Marxist guerrilla organization.
From the gorgeous inaccessibility of Chile’s mountainous border with Argentina, the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) launched pinprick-level attacks on the state in the late 1960s and took land reform by the barrel of the gun by seizing farms around Panguipulli for the use of workers.
The quixotic former student turned campesino revolutionary, Liendo became one of MIR’s most visible public faces under the nom de guerre of “Comandante Pepe”, even settling down in the mountains and marrying a local.
In the early 1970s this movement enjoyed the simpatico of the socialist Salvador Allende government. (One of MIR’s co-founders was President Allende’s nephew.)
That moment ended abruptly with the September 11, 1973 coup replacing a socialist administration with a far-right military dictatorship — and the latter immediately began slaughtering leftists.
The MIRistas themselves managed a few small attacks on the Pinochet regime in the weeks following the coup but were speedily overwhelmed. Captured after an attack on a carabineros station, “Pepe” with eleven comrades — a mixture of students and lumber workers — were condemned to immediate execution by a drumhead military tribunal in Valdivia.
“A week later, on October 9, the army executed seventeen more persons in the area,” according to Mark Ensalaco. “They were loggers, farmers, and peasant activists. The following day Helicopter Squadron 3 arrested sixteen employees of the same lumber and forestry complex where Comandante Pepe had worked and agitated. The prisoners were taken to a bridge over the Tolen River and executed.”
There’s a recent historical novel about this legendary character, Lo Llamaban Comandante Pepe (They Called Him Comandante Pepe).
On this day..
- 1845: Abner Baker, feudmaker - 2020
- 1938: Vladimir Varankin, Esperantist - 2019
- 1629: Giorgi Saakadze - 2017
- 1853: Three for the McIvor Gold Escort attack - 2016
- 1750: James Maclaine - 2015
- 1937: Alexander Chayanov, economist of the peasantry - 2014
- 1904: Herero prisoners, at the command of Lothar von Trotha - 2013
- 1945: Henry William Hagert - 2012
- 1873: Kintpuash, aka Captain Jack - 2011
- 2008: A son, all in the family - 2010
- 1283: Dafydd ap Gruffydd, Prince of Wales - 2009
- 1795: Tula, Curacao's Nat Turner - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,Chile,Death Penalty,Execution,Guerrillas,History,Martyrs,Mass Executions,Power,Revolutionaries,Shot,Soldiers,Terrorists
Tags: 1970s, 1973, augusto pinochet, comandante pepe, communists, jose liendo, october 3, salvador allende, valdivia
