Art and Autocracy in the Americas- Artist spotlight Amy Kaslow Gallery
ART AND AUTOCRACY IN THE AMERICAS ARTIST SPOTLIGHT JUANA ESTRADA HERNÁNDEZ AND FRANCISCO LETELIER Francisco Letelier , Flower Power, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 40 in Chilean-American muralist Francisco Letelier comes by his passion for human rights honestly. Son of the prominent and dominant activist against Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Francisco was just 17 years old and a junior at Bethesda’s Walt Whitman high school when his father was blown up by a car bomb as he and his colleagues were driving around Sheridan Circle. Chile’s Secret Police ordered the 1976 assassination of Orlando Letelier, the longtime colleague of democratically-elected President Salvador Allende, who was overthrown in a coup led by General Pinochet. Living in Washington, DC, where many top Chilean emigres fled Pinochet’s wrath, Orlando Letelier helped lead the resistance. A brilliant economist, foreign minister, defense minister, and ambassador, Letelier had earlier suffered a year of t...
