The communist Chilean administration of Salvador Allende was an early example of a democratically elected government in which Washington ignored the popular choice because it did not suit its purposes. For three years, the then Nixon White House authorized the CIA to spend tens of millions of dollars stirring up discontent, sabotaging the economy and generally undermining Allende. On Sept.11, 1973, the Allende government was overthrown in a military coup. Thereafter tens of thousands of Chileans were imprisoned for leftist sympathies. More than 3,000 of them were executed, some without trial. A significant number simply disappeared, snatched by the police or military, tortured and then murdered.
The man who led that coup, Augusto Pinochet, died this week aged 91. His passing was the cause for wild celebrations among leftists in the streets of Santiago, the Chilean capital. A far smaller number of the dead dictator’s supporters wept openly. Today the general who ruled Chile with an iron fist will be accorded a military funeral, in recognition of the fact that before he overthrew the government, he was his country’s top military commander.
What Pinochet did, with US connivance, must now be judged by historians since the man himself twice escaped a verdict by a court of law. An attempt in 1998 by the Spanish to extradite him from the UK, where he had been arrested while having medical treatment, failed. After 17 months, the Blair government decided Pinochet was too ill to be tried. Back in Chile, the immunity from prosecution he had given himself upon relinquishing power was revoked. Thus began a long period of attempts to try him for crimes committed during his rule. Clever lawyers and his own increasing infirmity meant that no trial was ever completed.
Liberals now say that the man should have been prosecuted far earlier and that he should never have escaped justice. They are wrong. What Pinochet and the Chilean military did was inexcusable. His supporters cannot justify his rule because of its rapid economic recovery and growth. But, in October 1988, Pinochet held free elections which he thought he would win. Nearly 55 percent of voters rejected him. He could have ignored the result and carried on, as many in the military urged him. But two years later, he quit the presidency making himself a senator for life.
His immediate successors, Patricio Aylwin and Eduardo Frei, both freely elected, moved carefully to curb the power of the military. Precipitate action against Pinochet would very probably have sparked a new coup. However strong the moral case of liberals, politics is always the art of the possible. In the end, it actually does not matter that this once brutal leader, shrunk into his dotage, was not prosecuted. Enough is known about the depravities of the military’s rule. A successful trial would only have encouraged extremists on both sides. During and after 15 years of military dictatorship, Chile has learned bitter and bloody lessons about consensus and compromise. And ironically it was the ruthless Pinochet who was the country’s teacher.
