Featuring:

• His Excellency Juan Gabriel Valdés, Ambassador of Chile to the United States and former colleague of Orlando Letelier at the Institute for Policy Studies
• Francisco Letelier, artist, poet, and son of Orlando Letelier
• Michael Tigar, a human rights lawyer and emeritus law professor at American University’s Washington College of Law and Duke University who has been counsel to Letelier and Moffitt families and to the families of other victims of the Pinochet regime.
• Musical Mother-Daughter Duo: Melinda St. Louis and Lila Benavente

Others to come

Background

On September 21, 1976, agents of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile detonated a car bomb on Washington, DC’s Embassy Row, taking the lives but not the memory of Institute for Policy Studies colleagues Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt.

Letelier, a former Chilean ambassador to the United States, had become one of the most outspoken critics of the Pinochet regime. Moffitt was a 25-year-old IPS development associate. For more than three decades, the pursuit of justice for their murders has been a symbol of hope for victims of tyranny everywhere.

Every year, human rights activists, friends, family, and colleagues gather in remembrance of Letelier and Moffitt and to reflect on the ongoing struggle for human rights around the world.

This program will take place outdoors at the site of the assassination and end with a laying of flowers on the Letelier-Moffitt memorial across the street from Sheridan Circle.