Cabello-Barrueto succeeds in becoming a voice for her brother and other victims of repressive states.
In this affecting nonfiction account, a woman describes her civil suit against the Chilean death-squad commander who murdered her brother.
When Pinochet took over Chile in a 1973 military coup, Zita Cabello-Barrueto’s brother Winston Cabello, 28, an economist in Allende’s government, was no political activist. It didn’t matter. He became an early victim of the notorious Caravan of Death, the Chilean army death squad. Along with a dozen other political prisoners, he was driven to the desert, murdered and buried in an unmarked grave. After having immigrated to the United States, where Cabello-Barrueto worked her way up from janitor to professor, she learned years later that the man responsible, Armando Fernandez Larios, was living in Miami, Florida. A criminal case wasn’t possible, but (with pro bono legal help and other assistance) Cabello-Barrueto filed a civil suit against him, tracking down and interviewing many witnesses herself. In 2003, a federal jury unanimously found Fernandez liable for the summary execution, torture and inhumane and degrading treatment of Winston—as well as crimes against humanity. Damages awarded were $4 million, but Cabello-Barrueto writes, the money was never the point. “We knew we would never be paid.” Fernandez remains free. By publishing testimony not presented in court, Cabello-Barrueto hopes to complete the historical record. Her unflinching account shows not just one family’s grief, but also how fear and self-interest play into the interests of the powerful, so that for many Chileans, death squads were an acceptable alternative to Allende’s breadlines. And though constantly motivated by the drive to know why her brother died, she has to conclude that his death was arbitrary. “It is possible. That is all you need to know,” says one military figure she interviewed. Cabello-Barrueto also shows how tangled, painful, tedious and disillusioning the legal process can be (although her exhaustive details can tax reader interest). Her overall mood is optimism, but the book ends on a plaintive note: The U.S. still has not answered Chile’s request to extradite Fernandez.
Cabello-Barrueto succeeds in becoming a voice for her brother and other victims of repressive states.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1500256753
Page Count: 328
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
