2023-09-05 05:43:04
SANTIAGO (AP) — The dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet left 3,200 murdered in Chile and 1,162 disappeared, including children, following a military coup that has received international condemnation and many in the country.
However, on the 50th anniversary of the start of the dictatorship, there are still those who support it: “Fortunately, Augusto Pinochet carried out the coup”, “life improved”.
How does Chile come to have a perception of nostalgia or indulgence in a third of the population in the face of a period of fear and repression that left thousands of families with still open wounds?
Sergio Gómez Martínez, a 72-year-old retired accountant, is the one who says that “fortunately” Pinochet carried out the coup once morest the government of the socialist Salvador Allende (1970-1973), but he also defends that “the economic life of the country improved, there was order, work ” and the fields and industries began to produce.
His perception is shared by 36% of Chileans who believe that the military “were right” to lead the uprising, according to recent surveys of the population. 10 years ago, that figure was half: 18% justified it.
On September 11, 1973, Pinochet led a coup once morest the government of Salvador Allende —who committed suicide the same day the uprising—, which established 17 years of dictatorship.
Those who describe Pinochet as a dictator (64%) continue to be the majority; In contrast, those who defend that his military regime was “partly good and partly bad” are increasing.
Despite this turn towards benevolence, the conclusions on the atrocities committed have remained unchanged with respect to the report of the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 1991.
The commission concluded that crimes once morest humanity were committed and human rights were violated. State agents killed 3,200 people accused of their leftist political tendencies and 1,162 who were detained are still listed as missing.
Already in 1978, the UN condemned, showed its “indignation” and urged Chile to cease the “violations of human rights”, including disappearances “for political reasons” and torture, according to a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly of this year.
200,000 citizens were exiled outside of Chile and 28,000 opponents were tortured. According to the Ministry of Justice, during the dictatorship there were 40,179 victims among those killed, disappeared, political prisoners and tortured, as established by two truth commissions.
Even so, 39% of Chileans think that Pinochet (1973-1990) modernized the country and 20% see him as the best ruler of the 20th century, according to the survey “Chile under the shadow of Pinochet”, from May, of the Mori organization, which asked 1,000 young people, adults and the elderly. Mori’s is one of the independent and respected surveys in Chile.
“Before, there wasn’t as much evil as now… Before, you didn’t see so many robberies,” said Ana María Román Vera, 62, a vendor in a crowded Santiago neighborhood. She also believes that life “improved” at that time.
Instead, the memory of Efrén Cortés Tapia, a 60-year-old painter who lives in Pudahuel, also in the capital, crystallized with another perspective. “The dictatorship meant repression, fracture (of democracy), a limitation in cultural and educational development… Fear and dread”, he recalls.
He knew a woman who was so traumatized following being tortured that she committed suicide in exile in Sweden.
The capital is part of that other portion of Chilean society that does not reconcile with what happened.
Today, for 42% of citizens, the insurrection fractured democracy. But a decade ago the figures were very different: those who condemned the coup reached 62%.
This perception of acceptance has been advancing without all those responsible having been punished or the whole truth clarified.
It was only last week that the government of President Gabriel Boric launched the first official program to find the more than 1,000 victims who are still missing. The left-wing president has insisted that the United States make public documents that reveal the role that Washington played in the coup.
At the end of August, the CIA declassified a portion of the president’s official bulletins related to Chile since September 8, 1973—three days before the coup—which confirm that then-president Richard Nixon was informed of the possibility of a coup. an uprising.
It is also estimated that there are 1,300 active criminal proceedings for human rights violations, according to June figures from the Minister of Justice, Luis Cordero. And 150 convicts are serving their sentence in Punta Peuco, an exclusive prison for them.
Pinochet himself died in 2006 without conviction or facing Chilean justice. Although he was detained for 17 months in London by order of the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón —who applied the principle of universal justice to prosecute him— the procedures delayed his extradition to Spain so that he might be tried and he ended up returning to Chile for health.
The Chilean justice system later opened a criminal case once morest him for covering up 75 kidnappings, homicides and torture that ended up being temporarily closed in July 2001. He received house arrest but was never convicted. He died and with his disappearance all the proceedings were dismissed, as established by Chilean law. His funeral was held without state honors.
It is precisely the figure of Pinochet one of the backgrounds that softened the perception in that part of society that today continues to defend the dictatorship.
“The transition validated Pinochet,” reflects Marta Lagos, director of the regional pollster Latinobarómetro and founder of Mori Chile. Pinochet left power in March 1990 and immediately became Commander-in-Chief of the Army until 1998, which lengthened the fear of facing the atrocities experienced.
Later, Lagos points out, he remained senator for life, a position created by himself, which he resigned in 2002. “In such a way that Chileans got used to living with Pinochet,” the analyst emphasizes, arguing that this constant presence left a “soft” image of the dictatorship and its leaders. He is “the only dictator in the West (…) who, 50 years following his coup, is still valued.”
Marcelo Mella Polanco, a political analyst and academic at the University of Santiago, attributes the increase in voices that justify the uprising to a “more polarized interpretation” that Chileans have of the dictatorship. And he concludes that it is “a certain failure in the process of construction of historical memory.”
In this ideology of tolerance, other factors fluctuate. Like the current economic situation.
Pinochet seized power in the country with a severe crisis—caused in part by the hoarding of food concocted by the opposition—and introduced a free market model.
This unleashed consumerism in wealthy sectors, which boosted the recovery and was reflected in an improvement in some indicators.
Despite the fact that the military regime ended with 45% poverty and inflation close to 25%, there are Chileans who experienced it as a period of more prosperity.
For the vendor Román Vera “things have changed, you no longer have to wait in lines to buy.” Carmen Jeldrez Sepúlveda, a 75-year-old retired chemical engineer, also remembers it that way. Two days following the coup, “the economy, in general It sprouted magically,” he says. “It caught my attention that everything (the food) that wasn’t there appeared.”
And that contrasted with the end of the Allende government, in which the opposition promoted a virtual economic war, with hoarding and shortages of basic products, which led to long lines to purchase food.
However, the chemical engineer does keep the memory of rights violations. “It was scary because no one can torture someone because they think differently.” His younger brother, according to his account, lived one block from Villa Grimaldi, Pinochet’s largest torture and extermination center, and told him that “in his house, the screams might be heard” coming from there.
Among young people who did not live through the dictatorship, such as Jaime Mazzarella, a 24-year-old lawyer from Santiago, the position condemning abuses was internalized. “It was an atrocity that should never have happened.”
Both he and Bastián Arias, a 22-year-old medical student, believe that some of the legacies of the dictatorship that harmed the institutions are still valid. “It meant an almost irrecoverable breakdown of certain state systems, such as health,” Mazzarella says regarding the creation of a public and a private network.
Arias remembers the impact it left on her family. His father was a construction worker and, in the “post-dictatorship, it was not possible to reestablish the workers’ union, which to this day has consequences, which are reflected in the poor working conditions.”
For the academic Mella, “the lack of effectiveness” in solving social problems of the governments of the former socialist president Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010, 2014-2018) and the right-wing Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014 and 2018-2022) “leads to that the country sees the military regime very black and white.
So much so that, following the social outbreak of 2019 and the first unsuccessful attempt by the left to draft a new constitution, Chileans elected a conservative majority —from the Republican Party— last May to write the new constitutional text that will be submitted to a plebiscite. , being that block the most reluctant to replace the magna carta inherited from the military regime.
The other aspect that weighs on the opinion of Chileans is the need for order or security.
The retired accountant who considered Pinochet’s uprising to be lucky defends that before “there was respect” for the police and now “you cannot go out into the street in peace.”
Jaime Contreras agrees with that, although with an important nuance. The 65-year-old electronics technician, who has a repair shop next door to his home in Santiago, admits that “security improved, but in quotes because there was order, but there was no freedom.”
He keeps bitter experiences. For his family it was “a painful time” because his father lost his job. “I lost my university degree, I was studying engineering and there was no job.” They were seven brothers.
Immediately following the coup, the military implemented a curfew that lasted until January 1, 1987 —14 years— with some interruptions and variations in length. “A leaf does not move in this country if I am not moving it,” Pinochet said in October 1981.
The dictator, in fact, did not move from power until 1990 and only following the Chileans rejected by popular vote in 1988 that the military continue in government. 56% of Chile supported the end of the regime. Today, the same half of citizens see good and bad aspects of what happened.
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