Ruling Against Gustavo Gatica: Concessions, Impunity, and Advances on Chile’s Path to Trumpism

Original article: Sentencia contra Gustavo Gatica: Concesiones, impunidad y adelantos en la vía chilena al trumpismo

By Matías Bosch Carcuro

On October 20, 2019, Sebastián Piñera declared Chile to be at war against «a powerful, relentless enemy that respects nothing and no one.»

With this statement, he criminalized the social uprising that filled the streets with a populace rising against 30 years of ruthless neoliberalism.

The Carabineros and the military geared up for battle, and as a result, three generals from their high command, including the former director, are currently being prosecuted for decisions, actions, and omissions that led to serious human rights violations.

In that context of “war,” there were 3,216 complaints filed for the use of excessive force, with 3,777 identified victims, including seven murders and five suicides recorded to date.

The University of Chile confirmed around 450 victims of ocular and functional trauma, many of whom suffer from permanent blindness. Fabiola Campillai, a current senator, and Gustavo Gatica, who was recently elected as a congressman for the Communist Party, are among the most visible victims of the military and police brutality that Piñera first categorized as belonging to the «relentless, powerful enemy.»

The State Blinds You in Self-Defense

“I’m going to take your eyes,” and “let it burn,” are expressions from Carabinero Claudio Crespo captured during the social uprising, recorded by police cameras. He even pulled hair from protesters and sent their photos to WhatsApp groups.

Crespo became known as “The Butcher,” holding the rank of lieutenant colonel and deputy prefect of special forces. On November 8, 2019, he fired his anti-riot shotgun at the demonstration where Gatica was present, leaving him blind and so injured that it took 12 days, after multiple surgeries, for doctors to remove the pellets from his eye sockets.

The sentence in Crespo’s trial for “illegal coercion and severe and very serious injuries” to Gatica was to be announced on January 13. This was overshadowed by Law 21,560 (“Naín-Retamal”), which the Boric government and a significant part of its legislative block pushed for and enacted in 2023, despite warnings from those who resisted, as it established legal conditions for state agents to use all their force, including lethal force, under the notion of «privileged self-defense.»

Indeed, the court ruled to acquit Crespo. When reading their ruling, they specified that they would not judge the actions of the police in general nor the institutional conduct during the uprising, but only the behavior of the accused.

Conversely, while Gatica sat waiting for the verdict, the judges made it a point to frame the protests with obviously political characterizations: “impulsive and disturbed behavior,” “evident danger,” “aggressive protesters,” “violent and agitated torrent,” “mobs,” and “combat zones” were just some of the terms used by the judges to conclude that Crespo and the police were facing “the dynamic and organized actions of individuals clearly willing to harm or kill Carabineros.”

Thus, while the judges decided to “exclude” a trial concerning the actions of the Carabineros and the systematic conduct of the so-called “Butcher” who fired indiscriminately into a crowd, they did engage in character profiling of the social rebellion and Gustavo Gatica himself. They identified “antisocial” behaviors systematically and daily, attributing intentions that they refrained from imputing to Crespo “based on the videos.”

Gatica “holding a stone in his hand” transitioned from victim to “potentially lethal” aggressor, while Crespo, who came running and fired from 25 meters away without any imminent danger to himself, transformed into a hero intervening “in self-defense and defense of others,” leaving protesters blind and injured.

A Blank Check for State Violence

As previously warned, the 2023 law enacted by Boric for “privileged self-defense” and “imminent danger” serves as the culmination of the war apparatus that Piñera and the right activated in 2019 against the “powerful enemy.” It has effectively worked as the perfect shield and endorsement to present the police executioner as a victim of violence while simultaneously embodying the necessary order and sacrifice, while Gatica and those like him, marked forever by state violence, are labeled the public enemy.

Reconstituted after November 2019, the right and the power elite have achieved significant victories by using all available means:

1) Suppressing the social uprising with a political agreement that preemptively shielded Pinochet’s Constitution, 2) Exempting Piñera from impeachment for human rights violations and later for corruption, 3) Preventing a new Constitution, 4) Neutralizing the government from structural reforms, and placing it into a transition pact, 5) The electoral victory of José Antonio Kast, and with him, the arrival of pinochetism and trumpism at La Moneda, and 6) In the case of Gustavo Gatica, establishing the criminalization of the uprising, popular struggle against neoliberalism, and right-wing drift as judicial precedent, and activating Law 21,560 which grants a free pass and guarantees impunity for state agents and security forces to use lethal power and force.

The political, media, and now judicial right seal the narrative surrounding the social upheaval as “Octoberism,” “vandalism,” and a “coup d’état” that must be repelled “in self-defense,” endorsing the use of force as the preferred antidote.

The judges’ ruling could now be distributed as a manifesto glorifying the police state and demonizing protest. The fact that Gatica, the specific target, is a communist parliamentarian further reinforces the political imprint of this judicial resolution and fan the flames of rampant pinochetism.

In less than two months, Kast and his “Emergency government” will be at La Moneda, and not even on their Christmas list could they have dreamed of a better gift, which the concentrated media will now maintain alive, stigmatizing every impulse of popular resistance, whitewashing and emboldening fascism, and preemptively terrorizing with a gun to the head or pellets in the eyes anyone who thinks and acts like Gatica.

This is the “Chilean path to Trumpism,” and paradoxically, it will be the government and parliament that emerged from the anti-neoliberal protests in which Gustavo put his faith that will have granted another tool of violence and impunity and a new ideological setback.

Matías Bosch Carcuro.-

The Citizen