This Sunday, during the Pilgrimage to the General Cemetery in Santiago, a man, later identified as Patricio Salerick Villafaña Juica, who was seen leaving a picket of carabineros shouting that it was “counter-march”, stabbed three people in the back; one of them was the anti-authoritarian vegan comrade Alonso Verdejo, 26, who remained in serious condition with wounds to the abdomen and back, dying a few hours later in the San José hospital. Attacks by fascist groups or individuals protected by repressive forces are increasingly common, the legitimization of fascist discourse in the media, political and repressive complicity, generates protection for them to act, the truth is that they sporadically murder comrades and our coordination and radicalization of self-defense is increasingly urgent.
Video recordings manage to capture how Alonso Verdejo is cowardly stabbed by the fascist, who was dressed in lead and held a knife that he concealed with something dark (apparently a jacket or bag). Accounts from the attendees state that this man, with an obvious decision to go and attack the people in the demonstration, remained between a picket of carabineros shouting that it was a “counter-march”. He eventually wounded two people and killed Alonso.
The murders in the commemorations of the 11th, which have previously been at the hands of $hile carabineros, as in the case of comrade Claudia López, are today being carried out by fascists who take refuge between the police and their cars. It seems that it is easier for them to use other useful idiots for these attacks, (commonly servile hotheaded, unthinking fanatics), instead of continuing to get an institution raised from the ashes in trouble, thanks to a great strategy of media manipulation.
But who are they? Do they get paid? Are they or were they pacos? These are questions that arise in this scenario; however the reality is that we are facing fascist civilians, who in groups or protected by cops, cowardly attack comrades who attend and participate in the marches.
This event is no longer isolated; in July 2018, three women were stabbed during the march for free abortion. In 2022, Francisa Sandoval, a communicator for Señal 3 de La Victoria, was murdered in front of Meiggs Street in Estación Central, by Marcelo Naranjo, who was shooting in full view and patience of the police. In that same place, students who were protesting had already been attacked.
Contract killings are a reality; the murders of Macarena Valdés and Bau have demonstrated it. The ultra-right and Nazism have $hileno henchmen, the landowner sends the foreman and this one sends the tenant to carry out the dirty work, the latter goes to jail after a good agreement with the landowner. But the poor fascists are also a reality, who, lost in their nationalist and religious discourses, can take up a weapon to attack, driven by the statements they see daily on TV and in all the communication channels of power.
Alonso’s murder and the repression of power marked the pilgrimage of this 2024, but there is still September, and the territorial departures will leave the true account in the face of such cowardly attacks on the memory of the murdered and on Alonso’s life. SELF-DEFENCE.-
By: La Zarzamora
Photo of comrade Alonso Verdejo, scratching the metro car against the IIRSA from Informativo Anarquista