Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

CHILE: Pinochet Will Continue to Mark Chilean Society

Daniela Estrada

SANTIAGO, Dec 19 2006 (IPS) - The body of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet has been reduced to a handful of ashes, kept at one of the family residences. But although he had no political power at the time of his death, his legacy of division and violence will continue to mark Chilean society.

Pinochet will be a bone of acerbic contention for several generations yet in Chile, according to analysts and ordinary observers. This pattern has already emerged in the demonstrations that followed his demise on Sunday Dec. 10.

Over 50,000 people flocked to the Military College to attend the funeral of the man who ruled the country with an iron fist for 17 years (1973-1990).

At the same time, thousands of other people gathered, not to mourn but to celebrate, at the statue of socialist former President Salvador Allende (1970-1973), the democratically elected president deposed and killed on Sept. 11, 1973 in a bloody coup d’état by the armed forces led by Pinochet.

The statue of Allende, who died in his office during an aerial bombing attack on the government house, is by the rear entrance to the restored La Moneda palace, along with those of other former presidents such as Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez (1958-1964) and Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970).

Elizabeth, 35, a computer systems analyst, believes that the polarisation of society over Pinochet will never really end, “because neither side is willing to forgive.”

The only possibility for healing the wounds of the dictatorship is “for the detained-disappeared to be produced,” she said, alluding to the 1,119 victims whose bodies have not been found. In addition to the victims of forced disappearance, 1,800 dissidents were killed, 35,000 tortured and 800,000 forced into exile, among them the current president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet.

“Until they are found, the sorrow will remain and be transmitted from generation to generation,” Elizabeth told IPS.

In effect, associations of the relatives of victims of human rights violations have not taken Pinochet’s death as a signal to end ongoing trials for these crimes, and for alleged corruption during his regime.

Alfredo, 31, who declares himself pro-Pinochet, also thinks that Chilean society will remain divided for many years, although he has a different point of view.

“To end the division, both sides have to admit their mistakes and take real steps towards unity, such as a proper amnesty law,” the engineering student told IPS. He acknowledged, however, that some members of the armed forces have been reluctant to disclose what happened to the disappeared.

He denied that Pinochet’s followers are fanatics. “They are only extolling their hero, the world’s only liberator from Marxism,” he said.

President Bachelet spoke about the former dictator’s death for the first time three days after he died. She said it “symbolised the departure of a representative of a climate of divisions, hatred and violence in the country.”

However, she stressed that Pinochet’s death would not usher in a new era. “The new phase Chile is experiencing began in 1990, when we regained democracy,” said Bachelet, whose words were supported by the Coalition of Parties for Democracy, the centre-left alliance of four parties that has been in power in Chile for 16 years.

One of the key events since Pinochet’s death, which analysts are treating as indicative, was the speech given at the end of his funeral by his grandson, Augusto Pinochet Molina, which cost him his army career.

Captain Pinochet Molina, 33, justified the dictatorship, and said that his grandfather was, in his time, one of the world’s most prominent leaders, “a man who, at the height of the Cold War, defeated the Marxist government which tried to impose its totalitarian model, not through the ballot box, but through direct use of force.”

He said his grandfather had to stand by and watch while his wife and family were “humiliated by judges seeking to make a name for themselves rather than seeking justice,” Pinochet Molina said, alluding to Chilean Judge Juan Guzmán, now retired, who came close to sentencing the former dictator, and Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón, who sought Pinochet’s extradition to Spain in 1998.

President Bachelet made a harshly-worded statement after the speech, and a few hours later Pinochet Molina was discharged from the army for breach of discipline.

Another grandson, that of General Carlos Prats, former commander-in-chief of the army during the Allende administration who was assassinated by the de facto regime, had quite the opposite attitude. As he filed past Pinochet’s body, lying in state in the Military College in the early hours of Dec. 12, he spat on the coffin.

Francisco Cuadrado Prats, an artist, waited patiently for several hours surrounded by Pinochet supporters so that he could express his fury at the carbomb attack that cost his grandparents their lives. General Prats and his wife Sofía were murdered in Buenos Aires in 1976 by agents of the DINA, the Chilean dictatorship’s secret police.

Cuadrado Prats was arrested on the spot but later released without charge.

Analysts have also been discussing how Pinochet’s legacy will impinge on the country’s political future.

“Pinochet was very astute. With the help of Jaime Guzmán (a lawyer killed in 1991 by the insurgent Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front), he designed the constitutional playing field in such a way that it has forced the Coalition to govern as a kind of trustee or executor of his ‘legacy’,” wrote academic Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt in his column in the La Tercera newspaper. Similarly, analyst Patricio Navia pondered the future in store for the governing coalition.

“The Coalition was born out of opposition to the dictatorship, and consolidated itself as representing that position. Pinochet’s death engenders doubts about the future viability of an alliance that was able to maintain the best of the military government’s economic policies, while achieving a more fair, inclusive democracy with greater respect for human rights,” Navia wrote in the same newspaper.

“Now that the Coalition appears to be united essentially by its desire to remain in power, Pinochet’s passing will end up stripping the veil from its lack of unity over plans for the future,” he warned.

Another reaction was that of sociologist Rodrigo Baño of the University of Chile, who told IPS that Pinochet divides Chileans not only in political and ideological matters, but along social lines as well.

“Pinochet’s supporters and detractors are from very different social backgrounds,” the academic said, explaining that the business community and the wealthy classes, who attended the funeral en masse, supported the late general, while the majority of ordinary working people were against him.

Baño said the social division in Chile began to appear during Allende’s government and grew during the dictatorship. He added that the rift remains to this day, and that it will be very difficult to mend.

Because of this state of affairs, he could not say how long Chilean society would remain divided over the deeds of the former dictator. “It will depend on the political process and the degree of integration it achieves,” he said.

However, he said that if an economic crisis arose, exacerbating social divisions, a new rightwing leadership could arise to replace that of the former dictator. “The identification between Pinochet and the right will continue until there is a viable alternative,” Baño said.