Rodrigo Rojas De Negri

The day before yesterday in the Contemporany Art Museum (MAC) in Quinta Normal, they was opened an exposition of the photographer Rodrigo Rojas De Negri. The initiative come from the need of known the life and works of this chilean artist, and show to people the history of him, the way at he was killed in Pinochet dictatorship. I´m going to talk a little bit about him.

Rodrigo Rojas de Negri was born on 1967 in Valparaiso. In 1976 his mother was exiled to Canada and he went with her. His passion for the photography born when he knew a friend of his mother Marcelo Montecino. He comes in to his master.  In 1986 De Negri returned to Chile. In Santiago, he began dedicated to take photos of the dictatorship: army, carabineros, people on the streets, etc. 

In 2nd of July, at eight at the morning he was walking with a group of youths: they carried eight wheels and one tank of gasoline. They wanted to make a barricade and stop the transit. And they were detaniees: Carabineros arrested them (De Negri and his friend Carmen Gloria Quintana). They was beaten, sprayed with gasoline and burn them alive. The lieutenant at charge Pedro Enrique Fernadez Dittus, boos of the military patrol, ordered that the burned bodies had to be covered with blankets and put them in to a vehicle. Hours later, the bodies was launched in to a ditch in the outsides of Santiago, in Quilicura. They was discovered and traslated to the hospital (Posta Central). The 6th of July De Negri died because of the burns. 

The lieutenant Fernandez was sended to jail, but in a few years he comes out. This history is not been yet resolved. Justice is needed.