Bautista van Schouwen
Encyclopedia
Bautista van Schouwen Vasey (San Lorenzo de Tarapacá, Chile
, 3 April 1943 - Santiago de Chile, 13 December 1973) was a medical doctor and one of the founders of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), the Chilean guerrilla organization which earliest resisted the Military Coup of Augusto Pinochet in 1973. Five among the "Ten most wanted" opposition figures warranted by the military government after the 11 September coup were militants of MIR. Bautista van Schouwen was at the time member of MIR's "Comisión Política" and the "Secretariado", the highest executive organ of the MIR. The military had set a ransom of 500 000 Escudos to whom would lead to the capture of Van Schouwen . He was abducted in Santiago December 13, 1973, in the church Parroquia Capuchinos (2345 Catedral Street), after been betrayed by a priest, or priests, in secret contacts to the military . Van Schowen and his lieutenant Patricio Munita had previously obtained clandestine shelter in the Capuchinos church-premises. They were soon after their capture killed under torture in the Army-managed detention and torture centre of Villa Grimaldi
. The assassinations of Van Schouwen and Munita were however concealed by the Pinochet government and the Van Schouwen case during several years labelled as desaparecido
(the "missing ones") by Human-rights organizations in Chile (see bellow Demise whereabouts).
and Marcello Ferrada-Noli
. These friends, together with an elder brother of Miguel Enríquez (Marco Antonio) and a new comrade they met at the first year of medical studies at the University of Concepcion (Jorge Gutiérrez Correa) started the secret group Movimiento Socialista Revolucionario in 1962. Other two members joined 1963-1964. The group first entered the socialist cell "Sierra Maestra" (also called "Espartaco", of the Socialist Party Youth in Concepción) led by Marcello Ferrada-Noli and who have according to their plans established earlier a "pie de terre" in the Socialist Party 1961. In fact, the group was from the beguining a fraction within the Socialist Party in Concepción. Historians have referred that this political group developed around their publication "Revolution" which first issue appeared in 1963.
Bautista van Schouwen married in the summer of 1964 Inés Enríquez Espinoza, and English literature graduate and the only sister of Miguel Enríquez, being best man of their wedding their other old-time friend Marcello Ferrada-Noli. Bautista van Schouwen and spouse Inés Enríquez had one child of name Pablo.
In October 1965 Bautista van Schouwen participated in the foundation of MIR in Santiago and was elected at that opportunity member of MIR’s Central Committee. Two years after was elected chairman of MIR’s Regional Committee of Concepción, the largest in MIR, nation-wide. In 1966 he was President of the Medical Student Union of the University of Concepción and led with Nelson Gutierrez (President of the Sociology Students Union), Marcello Ferrada-Noli (President of the Philosophy Students Union) and Luis Moreno (President of the Engineer Students Union) a long, and at times bloody, struggle for a university reform at the conservative University of Concepción. Together with medical student Luciano Cruz (another notorious MIR leader, died 1971) and other students of prominent participation in such struggle - mainly from the Movimiento Universitario de Izquierda, MUI - they finally succeeded in 1968 obtaining a university reform which became model for the student movement in the country elsewhere. Years 1968-1969 the student-movement in Chile had scored notable victories but at the same time increased a confrontation with the authorities both at the universities and government. It was then the time when Bautista Van Schouwen and Miguel Enríquez published the document De las luchas estudiantiles a las filas de la Revolución ("From the students' struggles to the ranks of the Revolution").
In 1969 the Christian Democratic government of Eduardo Frei
declared MIR out-law and many MIR cadres had to pass to clandestine life. The government implemented a nation-wide persecution of the thirteen most known leaders of the organization at that epoch (among the warranted were Miguel Enríquez, Luciano Cruz, Bautista Van Schouwen, Nelson Gutierrez, Marcello Ferrada Noli, Anibal Matamala, Jose Bordas, José Goñi, Juan Saavedra Gorriategy, and others) . Bautista Van Schouwen was however never captured. The cause against MIR was eventually dismissed the year after by the new government of Salvador Allende through an amnesty decree. By then Bautista Van Schouwen had moved to Santiago and had taken the political leadership and the editor-in-chief post of El Rebelde, MIR’s official newspaper.
Bautista van Schouwen graduated 1969 from medical school with the second best marks of his promotion and he took afterwards an internship and postdoctoral training in neurology. He left those activities shortly thereafter for fulltime dedication to the political and military activities of MIR, in preparation to resist the imminent 1973 Chilean coup d'état against the Salvador Allende
government which finally took place 11 September. Some months before in 1972 Bautista Van Schouwen had a second married with Astrid Haitman, a reg. nurse at the university hospital.
, favouring general strikes over cadre-organization political work as in Leninists traditions . Other authors of the epoch have placed Van Schouwen’s earlier ideological positions in the line of socialist humanism and also sympathetic with social-anarchist positions. Contrary to what "official" versions have maintained , historians have established – based in interview testimonies of Marco Antonio Enríquez, a History Professor at Sorbonne
( also referred above as elder brother of Miguel Enríquez) - that Bautista Van Schouwen did not participate in the elaboration of the first historical document in the foundation of MIR, The “Insurrectional Thesis” . Bautista Van Schouwen was nevertheless a prolific writer of political documents and he was trusted by his peers the political and ideological leadership of MIR's official newspaper "El Rebelde". The last known MIR-document in which Bautista Van Schouwen had personally participated was the situation-analysis of December 1973 authored by the Secretariado of MIR (the MIR executive committee, led by Miguel Enríquez).
, and again his body perforated from the back with multiple bullets from machine-gun fire. Another military patrol discovered later the corpses of Munita and Van Schouwen (with no identifications) and - unknowing of the above facts - took them routinely to the Forensic station in Santiago. There was an autopsy performed, and the victim’s identity were also established, what was routinely reported thereafter to the police. When this report reached DINA their operatives abducted the corpses and ordered a secret burial, at night, in Patio 29 at the "Cementerio General" of Santiago. The 16th of February of 1974, again in a secret operation - this time presumably under direct orders of Augusto Pinochet to General Ernesto Baeza, the Interior Minister - DINA arranged the exhumation and icineration of Bautista Van Schouwen's remnants. The secret killing of Bautista Van Schouwen had thou remarkable consequences.
The MIR let be known until years after that Van Schouwen was instead alive, under captivity by the military, but heavily wounded due to torture. MIR even published a picture of Van Schouwen depicting him with bandages supposedly imprisoned in a military medical compound. On the other hand, the military have given contradicted information to the public; first the interior ministry informed, and echoed by the press (17 August 1974) that Bautista Van Schouwen had been captured on December 13, 1973, and that he was "in custody at an undisclosed location" . Later that year the military retracted the information on that Van Schouwen was in custoody in Chile and affirmed instead that he had "escaped to Cuba on the 2nd of February" 1974 . Nevertheless, Amnesty International
informed in their first report about the human-rights violations by the Chilean Junta that Van Schouwen was held prisoner and had been transported to a variety of detention sites by the military. The Chilean human-rights organizations, for their part, for years went on demanding clarity on the "disappearance" of Bautista Van Schouwen and his case was included in a variety of judicial processes that ensued around the missing ones in Chile (those whose whereabouts were unknown). As late as 1998 had his friend and MIR co-founder Marcello Ferrada-Noli, then a university professor in Norway, filled in European courts a criminal case against Augusto Pinochet for the assassination or disappearance of Bautista Van Schouwen and Edgardo Enriquez . Pinochet was then under house arrest in London but was ultimately granted by the British government returning to Chile without processes in Europe.
In 2007 an Appeal Court in Santiago de Chile processed the former DINA commander, Army General (R) Marcelo Moren Brito, for the criminal killing of Bautista Van Schouwen and his lieutenant Patricio Munita .
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
, 3 April 1943 - Santiago de Chile, 13 December 1973) was a medical doctor and one of the founders of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), the Chilean guerrilla organization which earliest resisted the Military Coup of Augusto Pinochet in 1973. Five among the "Ten most wanted" opposition figures warranted by the military government after the 11 September coup were militants of MIR. Bautista van Schouwen was at the time member of MIR's "Comisión Política" and the "Secretariado", the highest executive organ of the MIR. The military had set a ransom of 500 000 Escudos to whom would lead to the capture of Van Schouwen . He was abducted in Santiago December 13, 1973, in the church Parroquia Capuchinos (2345 Catedral Street), after been betrayed by a priest, or priests, in secret contacts to the military . Van Schowen and his lieutenant Patricio Munita had previously obtained clandestine shelter in the Capuchinos church-premises. They were soon after their capture killed under torture in the Army-managed detention and torture centre of Villa Grimaldi
Villa Grimaldi
Villa Grimaldi was a complex of buildings used for the interrogation and torture of political prisoners by DINA, the Chilean secret police, during the government of Augusto Pinochet. The complex was located in Peñalolén, in the outskirts of Santiago, and was in operation from mid-1974 to mid-1978...
. The assassinations of Van Schouwen and Munita were however concealed by the Pinochet government and the Van Schouwen case during several years labelled as desaparecido
Desaparecido
Desaparecido is a Spanish word that means Disappeared. It can refer to :*One of los desaparecidos, the Argentines who "disappeared": that were secretly arrested and murdered by the Argentinian dictatorial government...
(the "missing ones") by Human-rights organizations in Chile (see bellow Demise whereabouts).
Biography
Bautista van Schouwen was the son of Civil Engineer Bautista van Schouwen Figueroa and spouse Carlota María Valentina Vasey. He had two younger brothers of names Carlos and Jorge. The family arrived to the Concepción region in 1959 and established first in a rural property in the nearby La Florida and then in Concepción City. During the second half of his high-school studies he met Miguel EnriquezMiguel Enriquez
Capt. Miguel Henriquez also spelled Enriquez , was a Puerto Rican Privateer in the latter part of the 17th century. Henriquez intercepted English merchant ships in the Caribbean Sea and was considered a pirate by his enemies...
and Marcello Ferrada-Noli
Marcello Ferrada-Noli
Marcello Vittorio Ferrada-Noli is a Swedish medicine doktor andProfessor Emeritus of Public Health Sciences / Epidemiology. He was formerly Professor in Epidemiology and in International Health at the University of Gävle, and Head of the at the Karolinska Institutet.He earned his PhD in Psychiatry...
. These friends, together with an elder brother of Miguel Enríquez (Marco Antonio) and a new comrade they met at the first year of medical studies at the University of Concepcion (Jorge Gutiérrez Correa) started the secret group Movimiento Socialista Revolucionario in 1962. Other two members joined 1963-1964. The group first entered the socialist cell "Sierra Maestra" (also called "Espartaco", of the Socialist Party Youth in Concepción) led by Marcello Ferrada-Noli and who have according to their plans established earlier a "pie de terre" in the Socialist Party 1961. In fact, the group was from the beguining a fraction within the Socialist Party in Concepción. Historians have referred that this political group developed around their publication "Revolution" which first issue appeared in 1963.
Bautista van Schouwen married in the summer of 1964 Inés Enríquez Espinoza, and English literature graduate and the only sister of Miguel Enríquez, being best man of their wedding their other old-time friend Marcello Ferrada-Noli. Bautista van Schouwen and spouse Inés Enríquez had one child of name Pablo.
In October 1965 Bautista van Schouwen participated in the foundation of MIR in Santiago and was elected at that opportunity member of MIR’s Central Committee. Two years after was elected chairman of MIR’s Regional Committee of Concepción, the largest in MIR, nation-wide. In 1966 he was President of the Medical Student Union of the University of Concepción and led with Nelson Gutierrez (President of the Sociology Students Union), Marcello Ferrada-Noli (President of the Philosophy Students Union) and Luis Moreno (President of the Engineer Students Union) a long, and at times bloody, struggle for a university reform at the conservative University of Concepción. Together with medical student Luciano Cruz (another notorious MIR leader, died 1971) and other students of prominent participation in such struggle - mainly from the Movimiento Universitario de Izquierda, MUI - they finally succeeded in 1968 obtaining a university reform which became model for the student movement in the country elsewhere. Years 1968-1969 the student-movement in Chile had scored notable victories but at the same time increased a confrontation with the authorities both at the universities and government. It was then the time when Bautista Van Schouwen and Miguel Enríquez published the document De las luchas estudiantiles a las filas de la Revolución ("From the students' struggles to the ranks of the Revolution").
In 1969 the Christian Democratic government of Eduardo Frei
Eduardo Frei
Eduardo Frei may refer to either of two presidents of Chile:*Eduardo Frei Montalva , Chilean political figure and president of Chile from 1964 to 1970...
declared MIR out-law and many MIR cadres had to pass to clandestine life. The government implemented a nation-wide persecution of the thirteen most known leaders of the organization at that epoch (among the warranted were Miguel Enríquez, Luciano Cruz, Bautista Van Schouwen, Nelson Gutierrez, Marcello Ferrada Noli, Anibal Matamala, Jose Bordas, José Goñi, Juan Saavedra Gorriategy, and others) . Bautista Van Schouwen was however never captured. The cause against MIR was eventually dismissed the year after by the new government of Salvador Allende through an amnesty decree. By then Bautista Van Schouwen had moved to Santiago and had taken the political leadership and the editor-in-chief post of El Rebelde, MIR’s official newspaper.
Bautista van Schouwen graduated 1969 from medical school with the second best marks of his promotion and he took afterwards an internship and postdoctoral training in neurology. He left those activities shortly thereafter for fulltime dedication to the political and military activities of MIR, in preparation to resist the imminent 1973 Chilean coup d'état against the Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende Gossens was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America....
government which finally took place 11 September. Some months before in 1972 Bautista Van Schouwen had a second married with Astrid Haitman, a reg. nurse at the university hospital.
Ideological stands
The ideological stands among the early generation of youngsters from Concepción that founded MIR in 1965 correspond to a variety of political ideologies ranging from Social-liberalism to Marxist and Trotskyite positions. Although official declarations of the epoch, MIR had not a truly uniform ideological stand until the Congress of 1967 (see Movement of the Revolutionary Left) in which prevailed the Leninists positions represented by the new elected General Secretary Miguel Enriquez. Bautista Van Schouwen did follow his friend Miguel Enríquez in this regard. However, it has been put forward that Van Schowen would have been a closer follower to the doctrine of Rosa LuxemburgRosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...
, favouring general strikes over cadre-organization political work as in Leninists traditions . Other authors of the epoch have placed Van Schouwen’s earlier ideological positions in the line of socialist humanism and also sympathetic with social-anarchist positions. Contrary to what "official" versions have maintained , historians have established – based in interview testimonies of Marco Antonio Enríquez, a History Professor at Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
( also referred above as elder brother of Miguel Enríquez) - that Bautista Van Schouwen did not participate in the elaboration of the first historical document in the foundation of MIR, The “Insurrectional Thesis” . Bautista Van Schouwen was nevertheless a prolific writer of political documents and he was trusted by his peers the political and ideological leadership of MIR's official newspaper "El Rebelde". The last known MIR-document in which Bautista Van Schouwen had personally participated was the situation-analysis of December 1973 authored by the Secretariado of MIR (the MIR executive committee, led by Miguel Enríquez).
Demise whereabouts
Bautista Van Schouwen was killed under captivity by DINA late at night of December 13 1973 with a bullet on the head; later abandoned under a tree, at a cross-road in the proximities of Villa GrimaldiVilla Grimaldi
Villa Grimaldi was a complex of buildings used for the interrogation and torture of political prisoners by DINA, the Chilean secret police, during the government of Augusto Pinochet. The complex was located in Peñalolén, in the outskirts of Santiago, and was in operation from mid-1974 to mid-1978...
, and again his body perforated from the back with multiple bullets from machine-gun fire. Another military patrol discovered later the corpses of Munita and Van Schouwen (with no identifications) and - unknowing of the above facts - took them routinely to the Forensic station in Santiago. There was an autopsy performed, and the victim’s identity were also established, what was routinely reported thereafter to the police. When this report reached DINA their operatives abducted the corpses and ordered a secret burial, at night, in Patio 29 at the "Cementerio General" of Santiago. The 16th of February of 1974, again in a secret operation - this time presumably under direct orders of Augusto Pinochet to General Ernesto Baeza, the Interior Minister - DINA arranged the exhumation and icineration of Bautista Van Schouwen's remnants. The secret killing of Bautista Van Schouwen had thou remarkable consequences.
The MIR let be known until years after that Van Schouwen was instead alive, under captivity by the military, but heavily wounded due to torture. MIR even published a picture of Van Schouwen depicting him with bandages supposedly imprisoned in a military medical compound. On the other hand, the military have given contradicted information to the public; first the interior ministry informed, and echoed by the press (17 August 1974) that Bautista Van Schouwen had been captured on December 13, 1973, and that he was "in custody at an undisclosed location" . Later that year the military retracted the information on that Van Schouwen was in custoody in Chile and affirmed instead that he had "escaped to Cuba on the 2nd of February" 1974 . Nevertheless, Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
informed in their first report about the human-rights violations by the Chilean Junta that Van Schouwen was held prisoner and had been transported to a variety of detention sites by the military. The Chilean human-rights organizations, for their part, for years went on demanding clarity on the "disappearance" of Bautista Van Schouwen and his case was included in a variety of judicial processes that ensued around the missing ones in Chile (those whose whereabouts were unknown). As late as 1998 had his friend and MIR co-founder Marcello Ferrada-Noli, then a university professor in Norway, filled in European courts a criminal case against Augusto Pinochet for the assassination or disappearance of Bautista Van Schouwen and Edgardo Enriquez . Pinochet was then under house arrest in London but was ultimately granted by the British government returning to Chile without processes in Europe.
In 2007 an Appeal Court in Santiago de Chile processed the former DINA commander, Army General (R) Marcelo Moren Brito, for the criminal killing of Bautista Van Schouwen and his lieutenant Patricio Munita .