The echoes of the last Chilean dictator still reverberate throughout Chilean democracy. Fifty years after the military coup, the figure of Pinochet emerges in the midst of a popular government.
Sunday, September 10, 2023
Half a century ago, a general with a puffed-out chest and dark glasses broke Chilean democracy with a bloody blow. He had thousands of people tortured, disappeared and executed, but the number of people was far from unanimously condemned Augustus Pinochet has resurfaced strongly in Chile.
The soldier, who died in 2006 without setting foot in prison or on a judge’s bench, is the symbol of the ultra-conservative right that dominates the Chilean electoral landscape while, paradoxically, the left-wing heir to Salvador Allende, the Marxist president half-overthrown by Pinochet a century ago in full Cold War, with the approval of the United States.
“He is the only western dictator in contemporary history who, 50 years after a coup d’etat, has more than a third of the population for himself,” says sociologist Marta Lagos, director of the Mori polling institute.
Survey 50 years after Pinochet’s coup: 36 percent of Chileans miss the military dictatorship
In fact, Pinochet has never been as popular in a democracy as he is now: 36% of the population believe he “freed Chile from Marxism,” according to Cerc-Mori pollsters.
A decade ago, Pinochet received his lowest support: 18%.
A “statesman”, the lawyer Luis Silva of the Republican Party, who in May received the most votes in the election of the Council that will draft a new constitution that should, in theory, replace the one promulgated by the dictatorship (1973-1990). I called him recently. ).
Chile will mark the 50th anniversary of Augusto Pinochet’s coup against Salvador Allende
The Republican Party, which controls this council, gained strength amid the nostalgia of Pinochet supporters and the concerns of a majority of Chileans about insecurity (54% consider it the main problem) and the arrival of migrants.
“Never a statesman,” replied President Gabriel Boric37 years old and not yet born at the time of the 1973 coup. “He was a dictator, corrupt and a thief,” added the only one of the five post-dictatorship presidents to publicly condemn him.
Augusto Pinochet died on December 10, 2006.
Smooth transition
On March 11, 1990, Pinochet handed over power after losing a referendum, but remained at the head of the army for another eight years. He was a senator for life until his resignation in 2002.
He died at the age of 91 while under house arrest on three counts of human rights violations and one count of embezzlement of public funds.. His 17-year dictatorship left 3,200 dead or missing.
The Democratic Concertation, a coalition of center-left parties, ruled for 20 years after the end of the dictatorship without ever taking on the figure of Pinochet. This “smooth” transition ultimately gave it “validity,” explains sociologist Lagos.
“Not only is it a reproduction of what is happening in much of the world with a resurgence of the most radical right, but in Chile the center-left governments have sinned by omission.” University of Santiago analyst Marcelo Mella agrees.
Inspired by the Chicago Boys’ free market theory, Pinochet applied the privatization model that brought years of prosperity and economic stability to Chile.
Former Concertación minister Jorge Arrate believes that the figure of the dictator has remained in force – with periods of more or less popularity – while “the fundamental institutions of neoliberalism” have never been reformed.
In 2019, popular discontent erupted with massive and often violent protests against the social inequality that Pinochet’s model spawned. The left came to power with Boric, but lost the referendum on his new constitutional proposal.
After this left-wing “drunkenness” came a reassessment of the opposite: Pinochet and “the figure of order” represented by the Republican Party, says historian Patricia Arancibia.
Silence in the classrooms
Pinochet was never brought to justice for the crimes of the dictatorship, so he did not receive unanimous social sanction. There was not enough time to convict him, says the former president of the Supreme Court between 2010 and 2012, Milton Juica. During the military regime, this court was “completely sympathetic to the regime,” he emphasizes.
It was not until 2000 that complaints of abductions, rapes, murders and torture began to be thoroughly investigated. Around 250 soldiers are imprisoned for human rights violations.
It was only this year that the Supreme Court issued final judgments in iconic cases such as the “Caravan of Death” and the 1973 murder of singer-songwriter Víctor Jara.
“Many of those who said they would never go to prison began to leave”Juica says.
Even in schools, people started talking late about the dictatorship, which was described in school textbooks as a military government. “There was silence for almost 20 years,” criticizes history professor Francisco Hevia.
Since 2009, “there has been a change and you realize that you are dealing with an authoritarian regime imposed by force,” adds this professor, who was born the year democracy returned to Chile.