The sociologist Manuel Antonio Garretón (Santiago, 80 years old) welcomes EL PAÍS to his home in the municipality of La Reina in the east of the Chilean capital. It’s a cold winter morning and in his train-shaped house – in a condominium designed by architect Fernando Castillo Velasco – he has set up several stoves to receive the journalist and the photographer. Filled with books, paintings and photographs, but above all with books on display in libraries and on his desk, his office portrays the intensity and productive life of its occupants: a left-wing intellectual with an intense speech, to whom Alain Touraine is very close . , National Humanities and Social Sciences Award and Author of essential titles for understanding Chile in recent decades – such as “People’s Unity” and “The Political Conflict in Chile” with Tomás Moulián – and has been described by some as “our best sociologist”. It’s the same office from which he records the interview program Tras la línea – broadcast on Radio Universidad de Chile – where he talks week after week with protagonists of today’s Chile.
It was in the program of June 13, number 148, where he spoke with the writer Patricio Fernández, adviser to President Gabriel Boric, as part of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état. In the middle of the dialogue, they talked about the common minimum values that could be established in Chilean society half a century after the collapse of democracy. “Historians and political scientists will be able to debate why and how this happened, but we could try to agree that what happened after this coup is not acceptable in any Civilization Pact,” the author said.
Parliamentarians from the ruling left, especially the Communist Party (PC), accused him, along with around 160 human rights organizations, of distancing the coup from the criminal consequences for the population – not condemning the coup as a founding crime – and asking for his resignation from his duties . Garretón himself, among many others, clarified that it was not what his guest had said in “After the line”. But controversy erupted on such a scale that Fernández resigned on Wednesday, amid something of an internal war between the left.
Questions. In short, you lit up the prairie.
Answer. It was a conversation and so you say something, then change it a bit, with arguments…typical. But I wouldn’t say that I or the show lit up the prairie [sonríe]: Due to the reaction to part of the dialogue, a fire broke out on the prairie. The controversy began a week later because someone uploaded phrases that were strictly out of context and misrepresented the general meaning of the conversation. Like me, Patricio strongly condemned the military coup of 1973 and its aftermath – the human rights violations – because the bombing of La Moneda was the first human rights violation, a crime against humanity.
Q Besides the controversy with Fernández, what is the underlying issue?
R The problem is that there is an important segment of the population that continues to claim responsibility for the 1973 coup. It’s the 44% who voted for Augusto Pinochet in the 1988 plebiscite — or the exact same 44% who voted for José Antonio Kast in the 2021 presidential runoff that says the coup was necessary or justified. But condemnation of the coup is an ethical principle that must be upheld.
Q Doesn’t Chile have an overarching agreement condemning the 1973 coup?
R Unfortunately, there is no consensus in Chile to condemn Pinochet’s coup against Allende. It is a society divided around the only thing that matters to a country: an ethical consensus about the right to life, human rights and the fundamental principle that governs coexistence, namely the democratic principle expressed in a constitution . Anyone who violates this commits – as stated in the 1973 constitution – hate speech. And the military was both riotous and murderous.
The Chilean sociologist at his home in Santiago, July 6, 2023. Sofia Yanjari
Q How do you talk about this ethical principle with a country that, as you say, is still divided half a century later?
R It’s a key question: how will this issue be socialized so that there is a general consensus in the country that something like this should never happen again? Not the Nunca más referred to, which refers solely to human rights violations – in that there has been significant progress, at least at the declarative level – but there has been no progress on what made the human rights violation possible: the coup. In Chile, one must be aware that the entire country has been a victim and therefore must have an inherent solidarity with the sector that has actually been a victim.
Q Do you understand the disgust of the victims’ associations?
R There is a perfectly understandable vision, particularly from the world of the victims: adequate justice has not been served in Chile, an official condemnation of the country to what was the founding crime of the La Moneda bombing, and there is delay and gaps in the Truth, Repair, and Nonrepetition. What I can’t justify in this last episode is the way Patricio was attacked or talked about. The cruelty done to him is not just, for he is in no other position.
Q To what extent is the coup still present in Chilean society?
R For 50 years, the bombing of La Moneda has been the central division in Chilean society. This is where the society in which we live is created.
Q Could it be that the generations have changed and are perhaps watching from afar what happened in 1973?
R I’m saying this is in the DNA: it runs through families, the education system, the healthcare system, and even the regional organization. Unlike comparable Latin American dictatorships, all aspects of Chilean society were shaped by the bombing of La Moneda and its aftermath. And there is one sector in Chile that will never condemn the coup because it defines its DNA. They or their parents or grandparents carried out the coup, supported it, promoted it.
Manuel Antonio Garretón on July 6, 2023. Sofia Yanjari
Q Can people’s unity government be debated in Chile?
R There may be a debate about the nature of Allende’s People’s Unity project and the efforts of a left to implement socialism with democracy and respect for human rights. The problem is that any criticisms that are voiced and what is said about them must take into account the scenario that this administration has faced from the start: the attempted overthrow by the United States and certain sections of the right before adoption . Nothing happens during this period that is not shaped by this scenario. It is the inadequacy of Daniel Mansuy’s book Salvador Allende, the Chilean Left and the Unity of the People.
Q Because it’s called? It is a book that was even recommended by President Boric, who asked the Chilean left to analyze the period from 1970 to 1973 “in more detail and not just from a mythical point of view”.
R What President Boric is saying is that the left’s analysis of the UP takes into account the various aspects. I believe this analysis has been done, we’ve been doing this analysis for 50 years. But I repeat: if you want to analyze the Allende government or Allende itself, you cannot do it without taking the conflict into account, that is, trying to overthrow it from the first moment. Mansuy’s book, a serious investigation – he’s read it all – and very original in the way it’s written, is riddled with this bias: it abandons the attempted coup that has bothered the President from the start, and therefore his project of transformation .
Q As a result of the 1950s, they again began to talk about the responsibilities of the coup.
R I have heard these days that the main responsibility for the coup rests with President Allende. And this is not only a monstrous mistake, but also stupid. It’s like saying if you kill me it’s my responsibility because I told you things you didn’t like. It’s brutal. Those responsible are the military, the ones who did it. Are we talking about those responsible for the political crisis? That’s another matter. Of course, the responsibility lies with the people’s unity. Not the most important, but important. But if we are talking about the way out of this crisis, then why did the military have the right to stage a coup?