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Originally Posted by Leozinho
I lived in Chile for a couple of years in the late 90's but I don't claim to be a student of Chilean history. I tell you this because you asked and it explains my interest in the subject, not because I think my time there gives me any special insight that others on this board don't necessarily have. It doesn't. However, since I have apparently been dismissed as college boy regurgitating his professors' thoughts, I'll explain how I came to my view.
I was in Santiago during the time that Pinochet was arrested in London and later released. I supported Pinochet. For one, I thought his arrest set a dangerous precedent that would encourage rogue prosecutors to arrest leaders of sovereign countries. (Maybe it did. Kissinger can't travel freely for fear of arrest.)
But foremost, my support for Pinochet was for the same reasons many have said here. He deserved credit for putting in place the free market economic policies that led to the "Miracle of Chile." Furthermore, I would remind my contemporaries that we were too young really to understand the fear of communism at the time of the coup, and we all knew that Allende’s Socialism was disastrous for the country. I said you had to take the good with the bad, and that in this case the ends justified the means. Blah Blah. We did not know yet that Pinochet had hidden $28 million in bank accounts.
I knew, as everyone did, that most of the folks rounded up and tortured or killed in the days and months after the coup didn't posed a threat to Pinochet's government. They were labor leaders, writers, teachers that had been fingered as sympathetic to Allende, not subversives. The real power of the killings and disappearances was not eliminating those particular people, but striking fear in the population and letting any future dissidents know that exile was better than trying to mount a resistance movement. (That is, of course, state terrorism, but no one really used the term "terrorism" then.) None of that bothered me.
I met two or three folks that had been imprisoned under Pinochet. Drank with them at parties. I was unfazed. The whole thing had been so long ago. Besides, I had drank a whole lot more with rich cuico a**holes whose parents had prospered thanks to Pinochet.
After all, it was because of Pinochet that I came to Chile. I had studied international business and Spanish in school, so I was well aware of Chile the Latin American tiger. Foreign investment was flowing into Chile and it was often a US company's country of choice when first entering the Latin American market. All thanks to Pinochet. (Actually, all thanks to Milton Friedman and his acolytes, but you get my point.) For an American wanting to live and work in South America, Chile was the obvious choice. (It helped that Chile is an outdoor adventure paradise.) I went there not knowing a soul and without a single lead on a job. I stayed for a couple of years, traveled from one end of the country to the other, got bored and moved.
It's worth mentioning that the first Socialist president since Allende was elected while I was there. He wasn't a true socialist, and the sky defied expectations and didn't fall. US companies still pour into Chile.
That would have been the end of it, except later, I found myself thinking a bit about another authoritarian president, this one more of a dictator-in-waiting. He has erased some personal freedoms and taken steps to consolidate power, and he's a major thorn in the side of the US and I believe his economic policies will eventually prove disastrous. I have nothing but contempt for him. However, he's nowhere near Pinochet on the scale of oppression.
Thus, I came to see the hypocrisy in my political views. Should we look the other way when our allies' trample on basic human rights? I won't give Pinochet a free pass when he murdered in order to strengthen his rule, and then cry foul when an elected ruler dissolves congress to strengthen his hold on the country. Our country was founded on certain rights, those rights truly make life better, and when we can, we ought to encourage those rights and democracy in other countries. This would be where freeing the oppressed comes in.
I know that the Chilean coup was necessary and inevitable. It is the murders and torture, and 17 years of dictatorship and repression that followed that I object to. In Pinochet's case, the ends simply didn't justify his means.
I'm still a realist. I know, for example, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan shouldn't be democracies. If you think I'm not, then I will reframe a question that was asked of me. We might find that we are both realists, but some of us will go further before we draw the line.
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