Edmundo Pérez Zujovic

Edmundo Pérez Zujovic was a Chilean politician of the Christian Democrat Party. He was minister of the Interior, Public Works and Finance under the government of President Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970).

He is the father of the politician Edmundo Pérez Yoma, who is also a Christian Democrat.

Political life

On March 9, 1969, under his command as Minister of the Interior, a group of Chilean military police attacked a group of settlers, killing ten of them, in what has come to be called the "Massacre of Puerto Montt."

The leftist opposition blamed Pérez Zujovic and Jorge Pérez Sánchez, but they were never brought to trial.

Chilean folk singer Víctor Jara wrote a song about the massacre etitled "Preguntas por Puerto Montt" (Questions about Puerto Montt), which asks, "You must respond, Mr Pérez Zujovic, why did they answer the defenceless with rifles?"

On one occasion, Jara sang the song at Saint George's College in Santiago, in the presence of one of Pérez Zujovic's sons.

Assassination

On June 8, 1971, at approximately 10:47 AM, an extremist commando belonging to the group Organised Vanguard of the People intercepted him on Hernando de Aguirre Street when he was driving with his daughter María Angélica. One of the attackers shot Pérez Zujovic twelve times with a machine gun, killing him.

The investigation led to the location of the terrorists and three of them were killed.

Some of Pérez Zujovic's coreligionists, such as the writer Enrique Campos Menéndez, pointed the finger at the Popular Unity government as the intellectual authors of the crime.

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The name of Edmundo Pérez Zujovic is commemorated on many streets throughout Chile, including a heavily trafficked roundabout in the community of Vitacura in Santiago.

The faculty of Science, Physics and Mathematics at the University of Chile instituted a grant program under his name in 1991.

ee also

* Eduardo Frei Montalva
* Christian Democrat Party of Chile