Sunday December 10, 2006 Chile’s former dictator Augusto Pinochet died of a massive heart attack. Pinochet died at 2:15 PM Sunday afternoon. At 10 AM that morning doctors at Santiago’s Military Hospital issued a news bulletin saying Pinochet was progressing and that they were optimistic that he would be released in the next few days. But four hour later, the former dictator was dead.
Word quickly went out, the news came in the form of a newsbreak at around 2:30 PM, at 2:35 I was on the phone filing for Sky News in the UK. Soon after France 24, CBC Newsworld and BBC Ulster wanted items that day. Then Monday and Tuesday I filed news reports to CBC Newsworld and Pacifica Radio in the United States.
The news was remarkable, in one side hard-core supporters of mourning his passing mounting a vigil outside the Military Hospital. Meanwhile at Plaza Italia in downtown Santiago opponents gathered to celebrate.
Pinochet’s remains were driven in the early hours of Monday to the Military Academy where a throng of supporters had assembled to pay their respects. In the hours that ensued until his funeral Tuesday, some 50 thousand supporters saw Pinochet’s body.
Despite the large throng of Pinochet, supporters gathering to mourn their leader, the most vocal opponents and victims celebrated the rest of the country did not pay attention, they general feeling is glad it is over. Pinochet is/was such a divisive force in the country that the majority of Chileans want nothing to do with the former dictator.
Pinochet’s dictatorship was brutally harsh, from the moment he took power on Tuesday, September 11, 1973 until he handed power to the recovered democratic regime in 1990. Nearly three thousand people were killed and made to disappear in the years the ensued the military coup, to this day some 1,100 remain missing. Confirmed more than 30 thousand tortured, and close to million people into left for political or economic conditions that ensued the coup.
Such is the legacy of Pinochet’s regime. To further diminish Pinochet’s image is the millions of dollars he absconded in foreign banks, an estimated 27 million dollars have been found in banks in the United States and Caribbean.
But to supporters of the military dictatorship and Pinochet in particular, he saved the country from communism. Supporters say Pinochet had to act to prevent a civil war from happening; they charge the Socialist government of President Salvador Allende was prepared to declare a civil war on opponents. They say there was a mass extermination plan, known as Plan Z, and that there were one million foreign/Cubans ready to act.
That Monday and Tuesday, I spoke to people, mostly women, lining up waiting to see Pinochet and during the funeral, I asked them why they were there the response was the similar in kind, he saved the country from communism, from a civil war. They were also enraged by the government’s decision not to grant a State Funeral and only permit a Military Funeral.
To the 50 thousand supporters that gathered Monday and Tuesday to say good-bye to their leader, they supported Pinochet’s dictatorship and actions, most looked to the side ignoring reality creating a reality that allowed them to explain to themselves the events that happened in the years of dictatorship. Also present along with hard-core supporters during the funeral, were prominent businessmen and right-wing politicians.
Right-wing politicians and business leaders publicly defend Pinochet’s rule for setting the groundwork for economic development and free market policies, Chile has used to economically develop to the point it can aspire to becoming a developed country.
But they ignore that the economic take off of Chile’s economy was not the free market policies set by the Pinochet dictatorship but democratic rule that opened markets to Chilean products, and attracting large sums of foreign investment.
Pinochet regime’s record cannot be found with those mourning his passing but on the streets, those celebrating his passing and with the democratic rule that has made strides and efforts to judge Pinochet’s for his crime. It was at best a cautious effort to ensure calm, but in the end, Pinochet died under prosecution under Chile’s old criminal system, where a person is guilty unless that person can prove his o her innocence.
Pinochet died as a violator of human rights, he faced charges in Chile and abroad, and as a thief who enrich himself illicitly. His passing though mourned by his supporters the judgement of the Chilean is another; he was a violent crude dictator who ironically died on International Human Rights Day.
