Can Chile's Right Emerge from Its Dark Past?

Chile's right is haunted by the brutal legacy of Augusto Pinochet (center) who seized power on Sept. 11, 1973, in a bloody coup and ruled for 17 years.

In the December 12, 2009 TIME article "Can Chile's Right Emerge from Its Dark Past?," Tim Padgett reports:

Chileans have had macabre reminders this month about how vicious the country's political right once was. Last week saw the reburial ceremony for Victor Jara, a popular 20th-century Chilean folk singer. His remains had been exhumed recently to help determine just how he was killed in 1973, after he'd been arrested by the brutal right-wing dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who ruled from 1973 to 1990. (An autopsy revealed Jara was tormented in a game of "Russian roulette" and then executed by machine gun fire.) This week, a Chilean judge ruled that former President Eduardo Frei Montalva, a Pinochet opponent who died in 1982, had actually been fatally poisoned by Pinochet agents.

It's hard to consider those grisly findings and not wonder whether the Chilean right might still be capable of such reactionary cruelty if it ever came to power again. Chile, in fact, stands at that very crossroads this weekend. On the eve of Sunday's presidential election, conservative billionaire Sebastian Piñera leads the liberal candidate, former President Eduaro Frei Ruiz — Frei Montalva's son — by at least 10 points in most polls. Chile's incumbent left hopes the Jara and Frei Montalva cases give voters pause. But the exhumations underscore how important it is that the right, after almost 20 uninterrupted years of center-left rule, gets a new chance to govern South America's most developed country. It can prove once and for all that it has purged the ghosts of Pinochet, who died in 2006. "This election," says political analyst Guillermo Holzmann, "is an opportunity to see that a center-right exists in Chile."

That message has been a centerpiece of the campaign run by Piñera and his conservative coalition, the Alliance for Chile. The Chilean right is known less for open minds than for Opus Dei, the ultra-conservative Roman Catholic society. But Piñera, 60, a Harvard-educated tycoon whose brother was a government minister under Pinochet, has deflected charges that he's a right-wing lapdog by embracing progressive causes like gay rights — a stance that has scandalized the country's Catholic church. As an economist in the 1970s and 80s, Piñera followed Chile's free-market orthodoxy; but on the stump today, he's pledged not to cut social programs. "On the contrary," he said recently, "we're going to strengthen them." Says Michael Shifter, vice president of the InterAmerican Dialogue in Washington, D.C., "Chilean voters have been eager to see that kind of pragmatic evolution from the right."

Still, concerns abound that if he's elected, Piñera faces heavy pressure from conservatives, especially in the military, to move Chile far back to the right. The recent exhumations indicate how nervous many Chileans are that the rightward shift will enervate the robust human rights apparatus established since Pinochet stepped down after a 1988 referendum rejected his continued rule. Piñera himself opposed Pinochet in that plebiscite. But last month he told a gathering of retired military and police officials who served under Pinochet that he'll work to rein in the trials — "proceedings that go on ad eternum," he remarked — that have convicted a number of their colleagues for murders and other abuses committed during the dictatorship. Some 3,000 people were killed or disappeared in that 17-year period.

Among them were leftists like Jara and, as the court has now declared, moderates like Frei Montalva, who was President from 1964 to 1970. He was succeeded by Salvador Allende, whose sharp leftward turn alarmed Chile's conservatives and prompted Pinochet's iron-fisted 1973 military coup. Along with thousands of others in the putsch's early and darkest days, Jara was rounded up and held in Chile Stadium in the capital, Santiago. After being tortured and killed, his body was tossed into the streets. Frei Montalva originally backed Pinochet's rule, but by the 1980s opposed him. According to the Chilean judge, three men tied to Pinochet, including a doctor, secretly injected Frei Montalva with toxic mustard gas and thallium while he was in the hospital for stomach surgery.

But it's doubtful that even those morbid revelations can turn enough voters back to Chile's center-left coalition, the Concertación. President Michelle Bachelet, a moderate socialist and Chile's first female head of state, remains hugely popular; but Frei Ruiz, 67, hasn't been able to exploit her cachet and has instead come to symbolize the Concertación's staleness after two decades in power, especially as the global recession slows Latin America's most envied economy. Frei Ruiz's problems have been highlighted by the remarkable rise of a third candidate, Marco Enríquez-Ominami — born, ironically, in cataclysmic year 1973 — a socialist who bolted the Concertación and is gleaning younger voters weary of the two-party order. While none of the candidates look likely to win a majority on Sunday, the question is whether Frei Ruiz or Ominami will face Piñera in a January run-off.

Piñera is expected to win that round as well. And if he can truly govern as a reasonable instead of rabid conservative, it could do a lot to relieve the polarization and distrust that linger 20 years after Pinochet. "Pinochet is dead and fortunately not really an issue in this election," says Holzmann. "But if Piñera becomes the President most Chileans hope he'll be, it will amplify that gray area between liberal and conservative that countries like ours need more of."

Pinochet's Long Goodbye

In the December 15, 2006 TIME article Pinochet's Long Goodbye," Cristóbal Edwards reports on the life and death of Augusto Pinochet:

Last Saturday, two of Chile's top soccer teams met in the semifinal of a national competition. More than 30,000 fans went to the stadium; most cheered Colo-Colo's 3-0 victory, but Cobreloa supporters grieved and stood by their team. The crowds that poured onto the streets of Santiago the following day in response to the death of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, 91, were similarly divided: Some mourned an adored "savior of Chile from Marxism"; others celebrated the passing of a ruthless dictator who ruled with an iron fist from 1973 to 1990. In death, as in life, Pinochet divided Chileans, although not evenly. Supporters, who see him a good soldier and patriot who saved Chile from the chaos of its socialist experiment and laid the foundations of today's prosperity, are in the minority — comprising as much as 20% according to polls. The vast majority remember Pinochet for the thousands of murders, disappearances and instances of torture for which his regime was responsible.

The number of people who attended the funeral on Wednesday — about 30,000 — surprised many in Chile. Most were from sectors that benefited in some way from the dictatorship, such as the military, business and landowning communities. But they mourned for days, lining up patiently to pay their respects over a casket draped by a Chilean flag, in which the general lay in dress uniform, his sword nearby.

The crowds celebrating his passing last Sunday turned out mostly in downtown Santiago and in the capital's poorer neighborhoods, where police used tear gas to disperse violent protestors. During Tuesday's funeral, about 3,000 opponents gathered outside La Moneda presidential palace to honor Salvador Allende, the socialist president overthrown by Pinochet and the armed forces on Sept. 11, 1973. Allende committed suicide while the palace was bombed by the air force on that day. Many expressed anger that Pinochet had escaped justice, never facing a trial on any of the approximately 400 suits filed against him for human rights violations. The former dictator was also under investigation for allegations of tax evasion and illegitimate money appropriation.

Pinochet died at a moment when the democratically elected government in Chile is led by the same party he overthrew in 1973; President Michele Bachelet suffered torture at the hands of the regime and her father was assassinated by its agents. The government refused the former dictator a state funeral on the grounds that he was never legitimately a head of state; it argued that a military funeral was appropriate for a former head head of the armed forces. That angered Pinochet's family and supporters, and many mourners jeered at the arrival of the only government representative, defense minister Vivianne Blanlot. They also interrrupted the funeral mass many times with cheers and chants, waved flags and white handkerchiefs, and applauded furiously every time Pinochet was lauded.

One speaker went too far for the government: The general's grandson, 33-year old army captain Augusto Pinochet Molina, praised his grandfather as a head of state who defeated Marxism, and criticized the courts for persecuting him. Captain Pinochet was discharged the following day after the government copmlained. President Bachelet gave the official response, expressing the hope that Pinochet's death symbolizes the end of "a period of division, hatred and violence in the country."

After a funeral ceremony characterized by military ritual and occasional shouts of protest against the government, Pinochet's remains were transported by helicopter to the coastal town of Concón, north of Valparaíso, where the general was born in 1915. After a private cremation ceremony, his ashes were taken to the family's farm in Los Boldos, 87 miles southwest of Santiago, where, the family hopes, they will be safe from the scorn of his enemies.

The day after Pinochet's funeral, Colo-Colo played another soccer game, this time against Mexico's Pachuca. More than 70,000 people watched the local team lose 2-1, their passionate loyalty undiminished by the defeat. The response of Pinochet supporters will likely be the same, even though most Chileans believe he died in disgrace after losing his own game.

Pinochet's Fall From Power

In the October 17, 1988 TIME article "Chile Fall of the Patriarch," John Greenwald and Laura Lopez explain Augusto Pinochet's fall from power:

"He fell! He fell!"

For 15 years General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, 72, has held Chile in his proud and dictatorial grasp -- once even boasting that "there is not a single leaf in this country that I do not move." So why shouldn't he have believed that Chileans would vote si last week in an extraordinary plebiscite on whether to extend his presidential term to 1997? But shortly before 2 a.m. on Thursday, an ashen-faced official stepped from La Moneda, the presidential palace in Santiago, and headed for a nearby government building. There he told TV viewers that the public had said no to the extension. The final tally, with 7.2 million votes cast: 54.7% to 43%. Despite the hour, several hundred jubilant demonstrators sounded car horns in the capital and howled delightedly, "He fell! He fell!"

The vote was a turning point on Chile's long road back to a nearly 150-year tradition of democracy, which was toppled in the 1973 coup that brought Pinochet to power. Since ousting the elected, but floundering, government of Marxist President Salvador Allende Gossens, Pinochet has led a military junta that routinely uses terror to enforce its will. Deep scars remain from a 1973-76 antileftist purge in which tens of thousands of Chileans were exiled, tortured or executed. Meanwhile, the politically explosive gulf between rich and poor has steadily grown wider. "We broke an authoritarian system," said Ricardo Lagos, president of the Party for Democracy, one of the 16 groups that made up the Command for the No, which led the campaign to defeat Pinochet. "Now our work is to reconstruct a democratic system."

The vote will not transform Chile overnight. If presidential elections are held as scheduled in December 1989, Pinochet, who has already headed the country longer than any other leader, would retain power at least until March 1990. He can also remain commander of the army until 1995. Whenever the voting does take place (opposition leaders have pressed for an earlier date), Chile's traditionally fractious parties will have to agree on a field that allows the winner to emerge with enough support to govern.

For his part, Pinochet vowed not to go quietly. Wearing a crisp dress-white uniform, the general accepted "the verdict of the majority" but pledged "to complete my mandate with a patriotic sense." He buttressed the point by refusing to accept the resignation of his 16-member Cabinet, which then agreed to stay.

Pinochet's defiance produced a bizarre pattern of dancing and rioting in the streets. Police fired tear gas and water cannons at some antigovernment protesters in two days of clashes that left dozens wounded and two people dead. More than 20 foreign journalists were among the injured. On Friday hundreds of thousands of Chileans celebrated the no vote with a joyous rally in Santiago. Singing and swaying to music by popular groups, they called on Pinochet to step down.

The dictator hardly expected to lose the plebiscite when, in 1980, he pushed through a constitution that mandated the vote. Eager to gain democratic legitimacy, Pinochet expected a booming economy to buoy his popularity throughout the decade. But a 1982 crash ended that hope, and the subsequent recovery benefited wealthy landowners, bankers and multinational companies, while Chile's slums sank deeper into squalor. By the start of 1988, the failure of the country's growing riches to spread to the middle and lower classes had festered into a key campaign issue. The divide had a further impact: it strengthened such radical factions as the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front, a Communist splinter group that killed five of Pinochet's bodyguards in a 1986 assassination attempt. The army replied with a wave of reprisals that further alienated many Chileans.

With the plebiscite approaching, Pinochet lifted a 15-year state of emergency in August and allowed 500 exiles to return to the country. They found a more subtle form of repression. Instead of censoring the press, for example, the regime responded to articles it did not like by jailing reporters and publishers. While labor unions are now permitted, leaders who call for industry-wide strikes risk banishment. Last February a U.S. human-rights report noted at least 100 cases of torture in 1987 by Chilean security forces.

Pinochet also miscalculated the resolve of Chile's opposition parties. Though it had barely seemed possible, long-squabbling groups ranging from the right-wing National Party to the leftist Almeyda Socialists flocked together under the anti-Pinochet banner. They took the lead in registering an astounding 92% of Chile's eligible voters, though critics cautioned that some government sympathizers might have signed under different names to swell the si tally. Meantime, the no forces used newly granted access to TV studios to launch tuneful and compelling spots. The regime, by contrast, relied on stolid footage of factories and roads or warnings of a return to the chaos and violence of the Allende years.

Though he lagged in most of the polls, Pinochet still expected victory. But his eleventh-hour emergence as a baby kisser in civilian dress could not improve his chances. Nor could numerology sway the final outcome: deeply superstitious, Pinochet held the plebiscite on Oct. 5 apparently because five is his lucky number.

Within the government the vote immediately shifted the balance of power away from Pinochet. "I think the armed forces will treat Pinochet delicately for the moment," said a Western diplomat in Santiago. "They might gently insist on a more collegial relationship within the junta." But the military too was wounded by the vote. Known as "the last Prussian army" for its aloofness from the rest of society, the army considers the fall of its leader to be a personal defeat. That could make the armed forces sullen and defensive in coming months.

The opposition is clearly taking no chances on offending the army and triggering a possible coup. During the campaign, political leaders agreed to withdraw TV spots that showed carabinero security forces beating citizens. In return, police provided protection for opposition rallies and marches. Yet such fragile alliances could easily be shattered by embarrassing demands. For example, most opposition groups want to prosecute the military for human- rights violations. But moderate parties are willing to overlook old abuses in exchange for assurances that new ones will not occur.

Pinochet nevertheless emerged from last week's ballot in a relatively strong position. By winning 43% of the vote, he showed broader popular appeal than opposition polls had indicated -- a considerable achievement for a dictator after 15 years in power. Said Labor Minister Alfonso Marquez de la Plata: "The plebiscite was a personal triumph for the President and an electoral defeat for his collaborators. It's a clear demonstration that he enjoys a great deal of civilian support."

Perhaps. For now, the key issue remains the timing of presidential elections. A quick ballot could even help the government by allowing it to support a single candidate before the opposition can produce a strong field. A long delay, on the other hand, could unravel the opposition's recent unity. But such concerns seemed remote to exultant Chileans last week. In the fall of a ruthless patriarch, the country caught a happy glimpse of both its democratic past and its possible future.