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CHILE: The Seemingly Interminable Transition to Democracy

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Sep 10 2003 (IPS) - An incomplete transition to democracy and unattainable reconciliation, seasoned by a range of interpretations of the past, make up the political panorama in Chile on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the 1973 coup d’etat.

An incomplete transition to democracy and unattainable reconciliation, seasoned by a range of interpretations of the past, make up the political panorama in Chile on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the 1973 coup d’etat.

Sep. 11, 1973 marked the start of the longest military dictatorship in the history of Chile, which 30 years later still finds itself in the midst of a political transition that looks like it will never end, according to analysts like journalist Manuel Cabieses, director of the leftist magazine Punto Final.

In an international seminar on ”Journalism, Memory and Human Rights” which ended Wednesday in the University of Chile in Santiago, Cabieses and Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky pointed to vestiges of the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet that continue to stand in the way of the country’s complete transition to democracy, which began on Mar. 11, 1990.

They agree with President Ricardo Lagos, a moderate socialist, that the transition will not be complete as long as relics like the designated senators representing the branches of the armed forces or an electoral system that excludes small parties from the legislature are still alive, and until civilian authorities regain the power to remove senior military officers from their posts.

The ceremony held Wednesday in La Moneda, the government palace, in homage to former president Salvador Allende, who died in the 1973 coup, triggered debate about the Chile of three decades ago and the country that has taken shape after 17 years of dictatorship and 13 years of transition to democracy.


In the presence of Hortensia Bussi, Allende’s widow, parliamentary Deputy Isabel Allende, his daughter and the current president of the lower house of parliament, and other special guests, a commemorative plaque was unveiled near the spot where Allende apparently took his own life while the palace was bombed.

Two enormous photographic images were also unveiled. In the first, Allende is waving from a balcony of La Moneda on Nov. 4, 1970, the day he took office. The second shows the same balcony destroyed by the bombing of the palace on the day of the coup.

The vindication and reappraisal of Allende, the predominant theme of the heavy media coverage that has surrounded the 30th anniversary of the collapse of one of South America’s strongest, most vibrant democracies, has annoyed the right-wing opposition.

”The truth has been modified, and what we’ve been seeing is an attempt to revive the hatred and confrontation of 30 years ago, while the country’s institutions are shamelessly used to vindicate the figure of Allende in the worst possible way,” said Senator Hernán Larraín of the rightist Independent Democratic Union (UDI).

Lucía Pinochet Hiriart, Gen. Pinochet’s daughter, recently complained that ”history is being distorted. They are trying to turn one (Allende) into a saint and the other (Pinochet) into a demon.”

Pinochet’s son Marco Antonio said ”the story is not being told in its true context.”

Until 1998, acts of homage to Allende on the anniversary of the coup were limited to the left, while political leaders and the media kept silent about Pinochet and the human rights crimes committed during the dictatorship, when at least 3,000 people were killed or ”disappeared”, and tens of thousands were tortured.

”In my view, the most significant aspect of this year’s anniversary is the resurgence in Chilean society of an enormous interest in Allende, and in what happened” in the early 1970s, economist Manuel Riesco with the independent National Research Centre on Alternative Development (CENDA) told IPS.

Like never before, Allende has been the focus of debates and recitals and other academic and artistic events not only in Chile, but in other Latin American countries and Europe as well, particularly Mexico and Italy.

”The number of events being held around the world to pay homage to Allende and his (coalition) government of Popular Unity, and to repudiate the 17 years of military dictatorship, is just incredible,” Lorena Pizarro, the head of the Group of Families of the Detained-Disappeared, said in a conversation with IPS.

But businessman and former senator Sebastián Piñera, the president of the right-wing National Renovation Party, complained that the Allende commemorative plaque reads 1970-1976 – which would have been the dates of his presidential term if it had not been cut short by the coup.

No matter where they stand on the political spectrum, however, political leaders agree that today’s Chile is a very different country than the one that existed when the heady attempt to transform Chilean society by the leftist Popular Unity coalition government led by Allende was abruptly brought to an end.

”The most important thing that has changed (in the past 30 years) is the correlation of forces,” said Deputy Rodolfo Seguel with the Christian Democracy Party, one of the political forces that make up the ruling centre-left Coalition for Democracy, along with the Socialist, For Democracy and Radical Social Democratic parties.

”Now there is one major political bloc, the Coalition for Democracy, and the old scenario in which the political spectrum was broken up into thirds – the right, the centre, and the left – luckily does not exist anymore,” the lawmaker, a former trade unionist, told IPS. ”Now we have the Coalition and a right-wing bloc.

”The extremist groups – the extreme right and the extreme left – have no representation in Congress, with the exception of part of the extreme right, which is represented by the UDI,” he added.

”From a political, social and economic standpoint, today’s Chile has nothing to do with the country that existed in 1973,” another Christian Democratic Senator, Jorge Pizarro, said in an interview.

The biggest change lies in ”the functioning of a democratic system today that is more unified, more tolerant, and less tied to polarised ideologies, one that allows degrees of expression of the different ideological, political, economic and religious points of view,” said Pizarro.

The senator added that Chile today is a modern country that is well inserted into the world, although he said it still has some way to go before it achieves ”real tolerance, respect for minority opinions, and full freedom of speech.”

UDI Deputy Felipe Salaberry commented to IPS that ”what matters” at this point are Chileans’ plans and expectations ”for the next 30 years, with respect to the future of their families, their children, education and work – not what happened 30 years ago.

”What has changed is not only that Chileans are different today in their thinking and way of life, but that 70 percent of the population is under 40 and half of the population of the country was not even born yet on Sep. 11, 1973,” said the legislator.

But Juan Andrés Lagos, a member of the political commission of the Communist Party, which is opposed to the centre-left coalition but is not represented in parliament, sees things in a very different light.

”Before the conspiracy and the coup, Chile was one of the most pluralistic and democratic countries on the continent and in the Third World,” he said in a conversation with IPS.

”This was a country with a strong democratic culture, and that culture cut right across political, social and cultural structures,” he said.

”But today, Chile is a fragmented country marked by great social inequalities. It is a country with a high degree of social schizophrenia, burdened by the weight of a militarism that has taken root in recent history, in a threatening manner,” he added.

 
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CHILE: The Seemingly Interminable Transition to Democracy

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Sep 10 2003 (IPS) - An incomplete transition to democracy and unattainable reconciliation, seasoned by a range of interpretations of the past, make up the political panorama in Chile on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the 1973 coup d’etat.
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