Chilean journalist Eva Vergara, who in her four decades at The Associated Press covered stories including the first protests against the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and revealed key information about abuses by members of the Catholic Church, died Tuesday. She was 68.
Vergara died as a result of a recently diagnosed cancer, said her son Camilo Torres Vergara.
As a correspondent in Chile, Vergara reported extensively on the end of the Pinochet era and the country’s transition to democracy in 1990. She covered the many human rights violations and the thousands of missing people after the military coup against President Salvador Allende in 1973. She also reported on the gripping rescue of 33 trapped miners in the San José mine in 2010.
“I saw Eva’s work every day covering the news in Chile during very, very difficult times,” recalled retired Chilean journalist Eduardo Gallardo, who worked at AP’s New York headquarters when Vergara joined the team.
“The first protests against the dictatorship broke out and they showed what would eventually become one of Eva’s notable characteristics as a reporter: courage and precision in covering street protests that invariably turned violent and dangerous,” Gallardo said in a statement to the Chilean correspondents’ union following Vergara’s death.
In 2018, Vergara and AP Vatican correspondent Nicole Winfield exclusively published a letter in which Pope Francis acknowledged that he was aware of abuse by members of the Catholic church in Chile and that he had nevertheless appointed a bishop at the center of the scandal to the helm of the diocese of Osorno. The case of Bishop Juan Barros sparked protests and dogged the pontiff during his visit to the South American nation that year.
Vergara also was part of the AP team that covered the takeover of the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima by the subversive group Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement on Dec. 17, 1996, which ended with the rescue of the hostages five months later.
Vergara leaves behind her son Camilo, four grandchildren and her dog Luke.
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Zamorano reported from Panama City