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NEWS & LETTERS, February - March 2007Our Life and Times by Kevin A. Barry and Mitch WeerthThe repressive legacy of PinochetThousands of jubilant residents of Santiago, Chile rushed into the streets to celebrate when Augusto Pinochet died at 2:15 p.m. on Dec. 10. The festive atmosphere was not only inspired by those who suffered most under the 1973-1990 dictatorship--families of those murdered and the survivors of torture and imprisonment--but today’s youth and working class who suffer from the ongoing legacy of that era. Jubilation was also heard from around the world, just as Pinochet’s repression was felt around the world. He was admired by rulers and despised by workers everywhere for the sinister, murderous, lying thief that he was. Outside Chile the only one who dared publicly to express sadness for his passing was Margaret Thatcher. Inside Chile the divisions and lies that Pinochet sowed were on display when some 50,000 attended his funeral; continuity from the 1988 plebiscite when more than 40% voted in favor of him staying in power. Chile’s President, Michele Bachelet, denied Pinochet a state funeral, though she allowed the military to give him a full military funeral (they draped him in the presidential sash), and even sent her minister of defense to participate. Certainly nothing less was expected of her. This “socialist” president of today works closely with the military that is, for the most part, the same one that ruled up until 1990, complete with rapists and assassins who hide under the cover of Pinochet’s 1978 amnesty law. Pinochet died unpunished, as did his fellow dictators Banzer of Bolivia and Stroessner of Paraguay. Much is still unknown about the crimes committed by them. Operation Condor, the alliance between five South American regimes, assisted by the CIA, that allowed them to pursue, torture, and murder dissidents in each other’s countries, is still mostly shrouded in mystery. The CIA has admitted it participated but refuses to release more files on it. Pinochet, when questioned by the Chilean judge Juan Guzman in 2004, claimed that if it did exist it was the responsibility of mid-level officers, something he wouldn’t know about. This clear and concise lie, coming from one supposedly too demented to stand trial, was ironic given his insistence that “not even a leaf stirred” in Chile from 1973-1990 without him knowing about it. Details of Pinochet’s crimes will continue to be revealed for years to come. Names of perpetrators cited in the 1990 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, appointed by President Alywin, will not be released publicly until 2016. The 2004 National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture, appointed by President Lagos, heard among others the testimony of 3,400 women, many of whom never spoke before about their experiences. It revealed that 94% of the approximately 30,000 jailed were tortured. It also stipulated that details of testimony and names of the accused will not be released until 2054. Only recently (2004) was it learned that Pinochet amassed a fortune over the years of $27 million stashed in secret accounts outside Chile. The details of his theft, revealed in a U.S. Senate investigation and then a Chilean investigation, was a great blow to Pinochet supporters who long insisted on the tyrant’s “honesty.” Perhaps more discoveries will be made like the “archives of terror,” found in a police station in Paraguay in 1992. Perhaps one day details will also be revealed of Henry Kissinger’s collusion with Manuel Contreras, the head of Chile’s secret police (DINA), who was on the CIA payroll from 1975-77, and is one of the few who has done time for their murders. He was convicted and jailed from 1993 to 2001. Other aspects of Pinochet’s legacy, however, are of more immediate concern to today’s youth who are looking for alternatives to the stratified society Chile is today. One day before he left the presidency in 1990 Pinochet created the Ley Organica Constitucional de la Ensenanza (LOCE). This education law stipulates that schools be funded by grants to private companies, without any oversight. This has created a two-tiered system: the wealthy have good schools and the poor are crowded into run-down buildings with few materials. In April and May last year the student organization Asamblea Coordinadora de Estudiantes Secundarios (ACES) held a national strike that hundreds of thousands of students (secondary and college) and teachers participated in. Dozens of schools were occupied. The strike resulted from the breakdown in negotiations with the Bachelet administration over repealing the LOCE. This ongoing rebellion is known as the “rebelion de los pinguinos” the “penguins” being the youth in their school uniforms. The idea of letting capitalists run the schools without oversight was a natural outgrowth of a dictatorship that ran the military without oversight. The military is still funded by 10% of copper sales going directly to them without oversight from the government. The increase in the price of copper in recent years has allowed this military to outfit itself with new F-16 fighter jets and submarines from the U.S., a process that Bachelet previously participated in while she was minister of defense under Lagos. In 1970-73 Salvador Allende had the tragic illusion that the transnational capitalists like ITT and Anaconda could be fought while leaving the Chilean military intact. Today the “socialists” in power embrace both the transnational corporations and the military that Pinochet led for 17 years. This is the legacy that today’s activists have to confront. |
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