This Sunday, during the pilgrimage to the General Cemetery in Santiago, a man, later identified as Patricio Salerick Villafaña Juica, who was seen leaving a police picket shouting that it was a “counter-march”, stabbed three people in the back.

One of them was the anti-authoritarian vegan comrade Alonso Verdejo, 26, who remained in serious condition with wounds to the abdomen and back, dying a few hours later in the San José hospital.

Attacks by fascist groups or individuals protected by the repressive forces are increasingly common. The legitimisation of fascist discourse in the media, political and repressive complicity, generates protection for them to act. The truth is that they sporadically murder comrades and our coordination and radicalization of self-defense is increasingly urgent.

Video recordings manage to capture how Alonso Verdejo is cowardly stabbed by the fascist, who was dressed in lead and holding a knife that he was hiding with something dark (it seems to be a jacket or bag). Accounts of those attending affirm that this man, with an evident decision to go and attack the people in the demonstration, remained inside a picket of police shouting that it was a “counter march”. Finally he wounded two people and killed Alonso.

Murders during commemorations of the September 11th, 1973 ascent of the dictatorship in Chile, which previously were perpetrated by police, as in the case of the comrade Claudia López, are today being carried out by fascists who take refuge among the police and their cars. Apparently it is easier for them to use other useful fools for these attacks (usually fanatical, servile, and thoughtless fans), instead of continuing to get an institution that has risen from the ashes into trouble, thanks to a great strategy of media manipulation.

But who are they? Do they pay them? Are they or were they cops? These are questions that arise in this scenario. However, the fact is that we are facing fascist civilians, who in groups or protected by cops, cowardly attack comrades who attend and participate in the marches.

This fact is no longer isolated. In July 2018, three women were stabbed during the march for free abortion. In 2022, Francisa Sandoval, a communicator for La Victoria’s channel 3, was murdered in front of Meiggs Street in Estación Central, by Marcelo Naranjo, who shot in full view of the police. In that same place, protesting students had already been attacked.

Hitmen are a reality, the murders of Macarena Valdés and Bau have shown it. The extreme right and Chilean Nazism have henchmen, the landowner sends the foreman and the latter sends the tenant to carry out the dirty work, the latter goes to jail after a good agreement with the landowner. But the poor fascists are also a reality, who, lost in their nationalist and religious speeches, can take up a weapon to attack, driven by the statements they see daily on TV and in all the communication channels of power.

The murder of Alonso and the repression of power marked the pilgrimage of this 2024, but September is still to come, and the territorial exits will leave the true account in the face of such cowardly attacks on the memory of those murdered and on the life of Alonso.