The Story of Sergio Mancilla Caro,
A Southern Internationalist Guerrilla Fighter
by Sergio Reyes (*)
This October 2014 a Spanish
language e-book entitled "La Historia de Sergio Mancilla Caro, Un Guerrillero
Internationalista Austral" (The Story of Sergio Mancilla Caro, A Southern
Internationalist Guerrilla Fighter) has begun international circulation. This
book reveals the transformation of a young man born where the land ends in the
South, Magallanes, Chile, to conclude his life in the mountains of El Salvador.
This paper has been a collective effort of his childhood friends, his family,
and especially his beloved companion in struggle and wife, in an effort to
rescue the details of his life, which over the lapse of more than 30 years
seemed lost.
This story, however, has revealed
to be not just a simple story. Combined here are Mancilla Caro's thoughts, his
political work, his solidarity activities, and the terrible repression that
pushed him to go into exile from Chile to Panama. Then, the stories reveal that
his own convictions led him to work in the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua,
and finally in the revolutionary guerrilla war in El Salvador.
Like all Chilean political
prisoners, Mancilla Caro was dragged from military barrack to military barrack
transformed into prison camps, including a concentration camp built exclusively
for this purpose, Dawson Island. From prisons in Punta Arenas he was moved to
the prisoners camp Tres Alamos in Santiago. From there he went into exile to
Panama in 1975. Once there, he actively participated in solidarity with the
revolutionary struggles that occurred at that time in Central America.
In 1979, Mancilla Caro,
decided to go to work in support of the Nicaraguan Revolution. This
revolutionary process was supported by many Chileans as Mancilla Caro. In
Nicaragua, a group of members of the Chilean MAPU (Garreton) Party prepared to
participate in the armed guerrilla struggle in El Salvador. Eight young men
belonging to the Chilean MAPU party traveled to fight alongside the People's
Liberation Front of El Salvador in July 1981. In October 1981, Mancilla Caro,
fell riddled with bullets from soldiers of the Salvadoran military. Of the eight
members of the international contingent of MAPU, six survived.
In Chile, including his
family, we had lost track of our friend Mancilla Caro, wondering what was of his
aspirations, his ideals, his political work and finally his sacrifice for the
cause he lived and died for. As it usually happen when information is not
available, we had replaced the life and death of this young man with a myth. To
the extent that the reader becomes witness to the stories told us by those who
where close to him, you will see that his history is far more important and
interesting than any myth.
The story of this young man
from Magallanes turned revolutionary guerrilla is a bigger story. In Magallanes
we perceived him wrongly as an outsider, when Magallanes was his cradle.
Obviously, we did not know much about his childhood. We knew little or nothing
about his family life. When he left Chile we didn't know that he found love in
exile and that he, his love and many others joined in the ensuing struggle for
social justice in Panama, Nicaragua and El Salvador. We didn't know that in El
Salvador he ceased to be Sergio simply to become Horacio, the guerrilla
fighter.
Sergio did not live to see
the final years of the infamous military dictatorship in his country to make way
for a capitalist "cautelada" (“controlled” - as political analysts politely call
it) democracy . He could not see either that some of his own leaders who praised
his revolutionary fighter sacrifice are now large capitalists within the system
that they inherited from the dictatorship. Neither he could see that in the same
country where his remains are still buried in the mountains, the second
guerrilla commander at the time of his death is now president of El
Salvador.
Capitalism has solidified in
Chile, and is working very well for the rich with the help of many of those who
survived the repression of the dictatorship. A former Chilean political prisoner
and exile is now president for the second time and yet is instrumental to
capitalism. Those among us who are still able to raise a critical voice about
these things, like yesterday, are a minority. I'm sure if he was alive, Sergio
would side with us with the same courage that characterized him.
Sergio Mancilla Caro will no
longer be missing among us. There will no longer be “presumed death” as his
official death certificate indicates. We found him in our collective memory and
we know when and where he died fighting. Now, after reading this book, we all
can learn details about his life and his death. Those of us who loved him as a
friend and comrade, can now continue to think of him as an "average man", as he
wanted us to remember him. And based on this history of this average man we
reaffirm that he was a good man, a good companion, a good revolutionary, a great
brave, a good man from Magallanes, a good Chilean, a good internationalist,
faithful to his ideals until death. Sergio Mancilla Caro, Presente! - Comrade
Horacio, Presente! One day, after many struggles like yours, I am convinced that
we shall overcome.
-------------------------
(*) Sergio Reyes, was a political
prisoner in Magallanes, Chile, from 1973 to 1976. He lived in forced exile in
the United States until 1989 when the ban on 6000 prisoners whose exile was
extended by a decree that prevented him from returning to the country
indefinitely was lifted. Reyes is the coordinator of this collective memory
project. He is also the digital book producer.
E-book
Specifications:
Title: La Historia de Sergio Mancilla Caro, un
Guerrillero Internacionalista Austral
ISBN-13: 9781483539515
Author: Compiled by Sergio
Reyes
Publication Date: October 1, 2014
The e-book can be
purchased directly at the publisher's the format for Nook, Kindle, or pdf.
It will soon be
available in Amazon, iBookstore, Kobo, Scribd, and other international
distributors.
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