Miguel Enríquez was a physician and a founder of the Chilean Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria – MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left). He was General Secretary of the MIR between 1967 and his death, on October 5, 1974, in a gunfight with agents of Chile’s secret police, the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, a Gestapo-like tool of the Pinochet dictatorship that tortured and murdered opponents of that vicious regime with impunity.
On October 5, 2024, members of Winnipeg’s Chilean-Canadian community celebrated his life and work. A half-century has passed, but the hopes and dreams for a better world live on. As Canadian singer-songwriter Nancy White sang about Víctor Jara, another famous Chilean murdered by Pinochet’s thugs, “they killed the man but they couldn’t kill the song!”
Paul S. Graham 