CHILE: Setback and Decline for General Pinochet

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Analysis -- Carlos Castilho

SAN JOSE, Jun 26 1995 (IPS) - The political decline of Chile’s Army Commander and former maximum ruler, Gen. Augusto Pinochet continues apace.

In recent weeks, the man whose word was once gospel has tried – and humiliatingly failed – in his bid to save two former cohorts from going to jail.

The detention last week of retired Gen. Pedro Espinosa in a special jail for military personnel condemned for political crimes shook Pinochet’s reputation as guarantor of impunity for his old army comrades accused of violating human rights.

Ripples from the case will be felt far beyond Chile’s shores.

“Not only are Chileans breathing easier, but also civilian leaders of other South American countries, where there are many officers who consider Pinochet as the last bastion of old military Pride,” says Guatemalan political scientist and military expert Gabriel Aguillera.

Espinosa’s detention makes inevitable the jailing of another retired general – Manuel Contreras – who was also condemned by the courts as instigator of the assassination in 1976 in Washington of former Socialist foreign minister Orlando Letelier by secret agents of the dissolved National Intelligence Agency (DINA).

Contreras took refuge more than one week ago in a Chilean army hospital to avoid going to jail, where his colleague and subordinate in DINA, Pedro Espinosa, is already lodged.

Contreras, 65, must serve seven years, but he has decided to put to the test Pinochet’s promise to prevent reprisals against the military.

Press reports from Santiago indicate that Contreras has already lost his battle, and the commander of the Armed Forces hopes the notoriety of the case will soon die down, so that the retired general can go to prison without it being noticed too much.

Other sources report that now the principal question is between Pinochet and Contreras, who, troubled by the treatment received by his superior, may be shielding himself behind the excuse of health problems and even his personal fear of dying in prison, just to provoke concern among other military personnel accused of violations of human rights during the military dictatorship 1973- 1990.

Chile is the only Latin American country of importance where the military still remain ghostly figures haunting the political scene.

The survival of Pinochet is the result of an informal pact in which the former dictator stands as guarantor of the impunity of his subordinates, brandishing the threat of a new coup d’etat.

According to Aguillera, “Pinochet’s power to bluff is already no longer the same after the Contreras case”.

The iron control the ex-dictator maintains over his subordinates is intended to avoid any repetition in Chile of the recent ‘mea culpa’ pronounced publicly by the Argentine military for the thousands of disappearances (some 10,000 according to official reports, 30,000 according to the families of the victims) during the 70’s and 80’s.

The cracks in Chilean military ‘esprit de corps’ is affecting the military in countries like Guatemala and Peru, where, though they still are protagonists on the political scene, are now beginning to feel isolated.

The military are also losing their traditional ‘esprit de corps’ in Brazil, Venezuela, El Salvador and Honduras, where they are nevertheless still trying to regain part of their lost prestige.

But the public self-humiliation of the military, as has occurred in Argentina, is wholly unacceptable to Pinochet, who is using the Contreras case as a weapon to avoid another 20 high- ranking officers of the Chilean dictatorship being condemned to prison by sentences handed down by civilian courts.

The Contreras case has damaged Chile’s political image abroad, just at the time when the country is having to face delicate negotiations to enter the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA), comprising the United States, Mexico and Canada.

President Eduardo Frei’s government does not want the Contreras episode to give rise to more of the same. On this issue both Frei and Pinochet find themselves in agreement.

About 87 percent of the Chilean people responded “yes” to a question put them by a public opinion poll at the end of May: “Are you in favour of Manuel Contreras going to prison?”

But Pinochet does not care too much about the opinion of civilians. For him, only the opinion of his subordinates in barracks really matters.