Chilean militant fights detention by U.S.

Revolutionary Chilean activist Victor Toro was detained by Border Patrol (ICE) agents in Rochester, N.Y., on July 6 and finally set free on bond on July 10 after four harrowing days.

Workers World was able to interview Toro and his life partner and partner in the struggle for social justice, Nieves Ayress, on July 8. This is their story.

Toro, who has lived in the Bronx, N.Y., since 1984, co-founded La Peña del Bronx in 1987, a community grass roots organization serving the poor and the needs of the community. While in a passenger train returning from a six-month community building and organizing campaign in California, he was arrested July 6.

He was soon transferred to the detention center at Cayuga County Jail in Auburn, N.Y. A fellow passenger gave Ayress a call and left the message of Toro’s arrest. Soon afterwards attorney Carlos Moreno discovered where Toro was and filed a “habeas corpus” brief asking that the authorities set bond to allow Toro’s release.

The state then accepted the brief and requested a $5,000 bond. On July 9, Ayress and other family members drove for eight hours to Auburn to post bond.

What about his case is different from the millions of workers without U.S. papers?

Victor Toro is one of 13 children. He grew up in Chile under very poor conditions. His father was a miner. Most immigrants from Latin America have this poverty in common. What distinguishes Toro is that in the 1960s he co-founded the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria—MIR) and organized poor workers without housing to collectively take, occupy and develop unproductive and abandoned land. MIR thus became known as one of the most radical underground organizations in Chile at the time. The MIR gave critical support to the pro-socialist government led by President Salvador Allende, who was democratically elected in 1970.

In 1973, the U.S. sponsored an illegal overthrow led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet on Sept. 11. His forces killed, disappeared and tortured thousands of Chilean activists up until 1990, when his military dictatorship finally ended. Toro and Ayress had been captured by the fascist dictator’s repressive forces and held in jail for three years. During that time, they were tortured and held in bondage for one year, all without any outside contact.

In 1976, the Chilean government gave eight of the MIR’s political prisoners, including Ayress and Toro, exit-only passports and told them that they would not survive if they returned. Ayress said that they traveled to Cuba, Sweden and other countries, and that Toro entered the U.S. through the southern border. While Ayress was naturalized a long time ago, Toro is not a U.S. citizen. Thus, she said, because there is no progress on the immigration bill in the U.S. Senate, “the U.S. government is ripping my family apart by detaining him now and we demand the immediate release of Victor.”

Ayress also said that this would not have happened if immigrants had been given “amnesty” or legalization as they have been demanding of the government “and what we need to do is demand the government to legalize all immigrants here immediately, as we demanded on May 1, 2006.”

In 1978, in a maneuver peculiar to the Pinochet dictatorship, the Chilean government pronounced Victor Toro dead and published his obituary. Toro and Ayress did not find out about this until 2005, when Toro went to renew his Chilean passport from the Chilean Consulate for the third time since his stay here in the U.S. Unlike the prior two times where his passport was renewed with no problem, this time they told him that he was dead and that he could not renew his passport.

The two wrote to Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s current president, but nothing much has been done to resolve the matter, says Ayress. Yet, what is clear is that Victor Toro and Nieves Ayress were victims of the nefarious Operation Condor and are still haunted by it. Operation Condor was sponsored by the U.S. State Department and directed by the CIA from 1970 through the 1980s. Many believe that either Condor is still in effect or vestiges of it are.

Operation Condor was the U.S. plot to promote military dictatorships in South America in that period, including those in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia. One can charge Operation Condor with being behind the killing of 50,000 political and union activists, torturing another 30,000 and imprisoning over 400,000.

On Sept. 17, 2006, in Argentina a 76-year-old militant, Jorge Julio López, was disappeared. The note found where he was last seen was signed by “Condor.”

López was disappeared and tortured 32 years ago for two-and-a-half-years and lived to tell about it. This time just before his disappearance, López was a key witness in a trial of some of the leaders of the Triple A, a fascist organization, which was given free reign to kill and torture under the bloody U.S. sponsored military dictator of Argentina Jorge Rafael Videla (1976-1983).

Toro is not disappeared in the U.S., but if he is deported to Chile he is at risk, especially since he had been declared dead in 1978. His family and friends fear that he too could end up as López did. Even with a “democratic” bourgeois government in Chile, they believe it does not have total control over all sectors of the state.

A press conference has been called for July 11 at Carlos Moreno’s law office, where the family, friends and supporters will join Toro and Ayress as they demand that the U.S. government drop the deportation charges and grant Toro political asylum.