Cecilia Magni Camino

Cecilia Magni Camino (24 February 1956 – 28 October 1988) was a Chilean guerilla leader and sociologist, better known by the political name Comandante Tamara. She was one of the leaders of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR), a guerilla organization which arose from the Communist Party of Chile in the 1980s to fight against the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Biography Magni was born in Chile to an upper-class family. She was educated in elite schools in Santiago, including The Grange School.

In the mid-1970s, while studying sociology at the University of Chile, she began to identify with the struggle of those opposed to the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, and took part in numerous student demonstrations. By the late 1970s she and her right-wing father, Hugo, had a very strained relationship.

By the 1980s she had married Rafael Walker at Nuestra Senora de los Angeles in El Golf, Santiago. The couple lived in Vitacura. she and fellow FPMR member César Bunster rented a house and three vehicles, and coordinating the transfer of the weapons that would be used in the ambush.

Initial plans had Magni acting s a riflewoman in the operation, but she was pulled from the role at the last minute, due to the high probability that the combatants would not come out alive. Magni's experience was deemed too valuable to risk.

After the attack, she went underground until 1988, at the beginning of the failed National Patriotic War. On 21 October 1988, "Commander Tamara" and Raúl Pellegrin, her partner and main commander of the FPMR, led the taking of Los Queñes in the Maule Region. During the assault, they attacked the Los Queñes police checkpoint, which was manned by two police officers. One, Corporal Juvenal Vargas, was killed and the other police officer was wounded. On 28 October 1988, the body of Cecilia Magni was found floating in the Tinguiririca River; her body showed signs of electric shocks and wounds from blunt instruments.

In popular media The figure of Cecilia Magni has appeared in Chilean film and television, such as the 2012 television film Amar y morir en Chile, directed by Alex Bowen and starring Antonia Zegers as Tamara. The 2020 cinematic film Matar a Pinochet, directed by Juan Ignacio Sabatini, has Daniela Ramírez in the role of Magni.

The play La Compañera follows Camila, Magni's daughter, as she explores her relationship with her deceased mother.