Pinochet Dead at 91

[Monte Smith]

Obituary: Augusto Pinochet 1915-2006
Financial Times
By Robert Graham, David Pilling and Richard Lapper



General Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s former military dictator who has died at the age of 91, was one of the most controversial figures in twentieth-century Latin America.

In his extreme old age, sustained efforts first by Britain and Spain and then by a string of Chilean judges to bring him to trial for human rights abuses made headlines around the world and highlighted the two sides of his legacy: on the one hand he presided over what was undoubtedly a murderous regime; on the other he was the man who paved the way for Chile’s economic prosperity.

Outside Chile he was seen by many as the archetypal South American tyrant – part caricature with his sinister dark glasses and Prussian-style military uniform, part terrifying as the creator of a police state that thrived on torture and repression. Inside Chile, opinions about the man who in 1973 overthrew the socialist government of Salvador Allende have been more complex.

For Pinochet was instrumental in modernising the Chilean state and laying the foundations for sustained economic growth. He was also one of the few dictators voluntarily, if reluctantly, to relinquish power. He himself believed his historic role had been to show the world that communism was reversible.

Yet repeated attempts to bring him to trial – he was indicted for the murder of two of Allende’s bodyguards only last month and faced prosecution on tax evasion and fraud charges – helped to tarnish his reputation among even his most fervent supporters.

Born into a lower-middle class family in 1915 in Valparaiso, the eldest of six children of a dock clerk, he was encouraged by his ambitious mother to enter officer cadet school. The puny 16-year-old was only accepted at the third attempt, a humiliation that gave him a lifelong obsession with physical fitness.

Pinochet began to climb the military ladder and had risen to garrison commander in Santiago by the time Allende embarked on the Chilean road to socialism in the early 1970s. It was just 19 days before the coup that led to his death that Allende appointed Pinochet – who had earned a reputation as an obedient, if unremarkable, constitutionalist – as commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

Pinochet’s part in Allende’s overthrow is ambiguous. He claimed to have masterminded the coup. Fellow conspirators maintain he was only persuaded to take part at the eleventh hour. Whatever the truth, Pinochet quickly became undisputed leader of the four-man junta – declaring himself president in 1974 – and set about the task of stamping out opposition.

The ferocity and surgical precision of that repression repulsed the world and made Chile an international pariah for nearly two decades. In the years that followed, the bodies of suspected left-wing sympathisers were regularly washed up in Santiago’s sludgy Mapocho river or were unearthed from mass graves.

Strict censorship, the banning of all political parties and the desire of many Chileans to turn a blind eye meant that it was not until the publication of the Rettig report in 1991 that the full horror of what had happened became public. Some 3,000 people had been killed or “disappeared” (a verb that became synonymous with Chile), tens of thousands were subjected to routine torture and still more were forced into exile.

Pinochet regarded institutional terror, meted out by his feared secret police, as a legitimate weapon. His supporters argue that more people would have died had Chile been allowed to drift into civil war.

Yet absolute political control was combined with a gradual reduction in the state’s economic role. Pinochet was persuaded by his business allies, many of them influenced by the “Chicago Boys” – followers of the Chicago school of free market economics. They believed that free-market policies would be the most effective bulwark against Marxism.

Although Pinochet had leaned towards more nationalistic economic policies, he allowed his civilian advisers to open up the economy and dismantle Chile’s import-substitution model. Subsidies and price controls were scrapped, tariffs reduced and a liberal foreign investment regime established. Inflation – which had reached Weimar proportions under Allende – was sharply reduced, the public payroll was slashed and government spending cut. Nationalised businesses were returned to the private sector and union power was curbed.

The economy was battered by this shock therapy, shrinking 13 per cent in 1975, but recovered strongly in the five years to 1981. However, over-reliance on foreign borrowing meant that Chile was harder-hit than any other Latin American country by the debt crisis of the early 1980s. Nearly a third of Chile’s labour force was unemployed and the economy withered by a further 14 per cent.

More pragmatic policies restored economic health in the years that followed but the 1982 slump marked a watershed in Pinochet’s career. Santiago echoed to the beating of empty casserole tins (a protest symbolising hunger) and a political opposition began to organise. Pinochet had been deserted by the middle classes. When he submitted himself to a plebiscite in October 1988, the majority of Chileans – 66 per cent – felt the country no longer needed an ageing military leadership. Pinochet found he had misjudged the mood of the nation and the ability of the opposition to unify.

Pinochet had many different personas. The man who barked orders to his inferiors, took to wearing flamboyant capes and scoffed at assassination attempts was transformed during the 1988 campaign into a grandfatherly figure, dressed in civilian clothes and frequently seen kissing babies. In private he was a teetotal non-smoker who was deeply influenced by the wishes of his formidable wife, Lucia Rodriguez.

After the handover of power, Pinochet remained head of the armed forces and tried to cast himself in the role of “protector of democracy”. That ambiguous role came to a dramatic end in the London Clinic in 1998, where he had gone for surgery on his back. There he was arrested after a Spanish request that he be extradited to Madrid to face charges of crimes against humanity.

The case caused considerable controversy in Britain. Jack Straw, the then Labour home secretary, was known to have demonstrated against Pinochet as a young man. Margaret Thatcher, the former Conservative prime minister, stoutly defended the General, saying he had been a staunch friend of Britain during the Falklands war and that his arrest was the result of a political vendetta.

In March 2000, Pinochet was allowed to fly home on the grounds that he was too old and ill to be mentally fit to stand trial. But in the years that followed, Chilean judges stripped Pinochet of the legal immunity he once enjoyed and he faced a string of human rights charges, evading trial only by virtue of ill-health and old-age. A separate set of charges related to tax evasion, fraud and other financial impropriety further discredited Pinochet and led Chile’s right-wing parties to distance themselves from his legacy.

Pinochet himself has continued to defend his record, arguing in a letter read out by his wife just over a week ago that his only motive in governing Chile had been to “make the country great and avoid its disintegration”. But for many, particularly those who suffered repression, the price was far too high.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

[Daniel]

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/pol...cle2064687.ece

Thatcher 'saddened' by death of Pinochet
By Chris Moncrieff and Joe Churcher, PA Political Staff
Published: 11 December 2006

Baroness Thatcher was tonight said to be "greatly saddened" by the death of General Augusto Pinochet, the one-time ruthless right-wing dictator of Chile.

The former British Prime Minister remained a firm and loyal supporter of Pinochet, especially in the last stormy years of his life when a series of legal attempts were made in Chile to charge him with alleged crimes relating to the disappearance of thousands of dissidents during his years of power.

Lady Thatcher always maintained that Pinochet had offered the British invaluable help during the Falklands conflict of 1982.

And when he came to Britain on a private visit in 1998, she had tea with him and expressed her opposition to attempts by the Spanish government to extradite him to Madrid to face charges concerning the disappearance of Spanish citizens in Chile during his presidency.

That procedure was foiled, when the then Home Secretary Jack Straw said he should not be extradited because of his state of health, creating a huge political storm among Labour MPs.

A spokesman for Lady Thatcher said she would not be issuing a formal statement on his death, but said she would be sending her "deepest condolences" to his widow and family.

Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said: "We note the passing of General Pinochet and want to pay tribute to the remarkable progress that Chile has made over the last 15 years as an open, stable and prosperous democracy."

And Amnesty International said the death should spur the Chilean government to ensure delays did not help others escape prosecution.

A spokeswoman said: "General Pinochet's death should be a wake-up call for the authorities in Chile and governments everywhere, reminding them of the importance of speedy justice for human rights crimes, something Pinochet himself has now escaped.

"His death must not be the end of the story. Amnesty International urges the Chilean authorities to declare the amnesty law void and proceed with investigations and prosecutions of all those others involved in the thousands of cases of 'disappearances', torture and execution during Pinochet's period of rule.

"Families and survivors need to know what happened, need justice and need their day in court."

Baroness Thatcher was tonight said to be "greatly saddened" by the death of General Augusto Pinochet, the one-time ruthless right-wing dictator of Chile.

The former British Prime Minister remained a firm and loyal supporter of Pinochet, especially in the last stormy years of his life when a series of legal attempts were made in Chile to charge him with alleged crimes relating to the disappearance of thousands of dissidents during his years of power.

Lady Thatcher always maintained that Pinochet had offered the British invaluable help during the Falklands conflict of 1982.

And when he came to Britain on a private visit in 1998, she had tea with him and expressed her opposition to attempts by the Spanish government to extradite him to Madrid to face charges concerning the disappearance of Spanish citizens in Chile during his presidency.

That procedure was foiled, when the then Home Secretary Jack Straw said he should not be extradited because of his state of health, creating a huge political storm among Labour MPs.

A spokesman for Lady Thatcher said she would not be issuing a formal statement on his death, but said she would be sending her "deepest condolences" to his widow and family.

Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said: "We note the passing of General Pinochet and want to pay tribute to the remarkable progress that Chile has made over the last 15 years as an open, stable and prosperous democracy."

And Amnesty International said the death should spur the Chilean government to ensure delays did not help others escape prosecution.

A spokeswoman said: "General Pinochet's death should be a wake-up call for the authorities in Chile and governments everywhere, reminding them of the importance of speedy justice for human rights crimes, something Pinochet himself has now escaped.

"His death must not be the end of the story. Amnesty International urges the Chilean authorities to declare the amnesty law void and proceed with investigations and prosecutions of all those others involved in the thousands of cases of 'disappearances', torture and execution during Pinochet's period of rule.

"Families and survivors need to know what happened, need justice and need their day in court."

[bostontricky]

In lieu of burial, Pinochet's body will be tortured, and then dropped from an aircraft into the Pacific Ocean.

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by bostontricky

In lieu of burial, Pinochet's body will be tortured, and then dropped from an aircraft into the Pacific Ocean.

Resulting in a stable and prosperous Pacific.

[Pete C]

He'll be missed.

[Al in NYC]

Not soon enough and not by the right method.

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by Al in NYC

Not soon enough and not by the right method.

Exactly my thought. He should have been elected.

[Dr Dave]

R.I.P., Salvador Allende.

[Uli]

what dave sed.

[Sergio Zamora]

[Tom Storer]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

Exactly my thought. He should have been elected.

Alas, he didn't bother with that little nicety. But what matter that he preferred murdering the opposition to winning a majority vote? He helped Thatcher win back the Falklands!

[Gary Sisco]

Another who managed to escape justice.

That line about he who lives by the sword dies by the sword gets disproven all the time.

See you in hell, Pinochet.

[Dr Dave]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

Resulting in a stable and prosperous Pacific.

I have this vision of Monte masturbating in front of an illustrated Mein Kampf.

[Tom Storer]

You're a sick man, Dr. Dave.

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

I have this vision of Monte masturbating in front of an illustrated Mein Kampf.

Hmm. Am I wearing anything?

[burning dog]

[Gary Sisco]

Monte finds something to love in any rightist dictatorship. He fits in very well with his party.

One notices, however, in the celebratory obits for Kirkpatrick, the empty place where her support of Saddam Hussein in the Reagan days should be. And that was in the days when Hussein was actually *using* actually existing WMDs in the form of poisonous gas, especially against the Kurds. Many thousands of dead. But he was a useful murderer at the time so he was used and very much supported and armed. Indeed it was the US who greatly magnified his power by such support, to which old commies like me were opposed then, when it mattered, unlike the Reaganists and repugdim party.

Please not below the official use of terrorism in Washington, DC, including, as in his dirty war in Chile, against American citizens. There was no great outcry at the time. They were terrorists but "our" terrorists. That makes it different, you see.

(Slate)

Augusto Pinochet, 1915-2006
Farewell to the perpetrator of one of the most shocking crimes of the 20th century.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Dec. 11, 2006, at 9:04 AM ET
Augusto Pinochet
Just a short walk from my apartment in Washington, D.C., is the memorial at Sheridan Circle to the murdered Orlando Letelier, a Chilean exile and former foreign minister who was blown up by a car bomb in rush-hour traffic on Sept. 21, 1976. It did not take very long to establish that this then-unprecedented atrocity on American soil, which also took the life of a U.S. citizen named Ronni Moffitt, was carried out on the orders of the late Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Indeed, we have the testimony of his own secret police chief, Gen. Manuel Contreras, that such was the case. The U. S. Department of Justice has had an indictment for Pinochet, first drawn up by its Criminal Division during the tenure of Janet Reno, completed for some time. But the indictment has never been unsealed. The death of Pinochet is an occasion, among other things, for a moment to remember the many victims of his state terrorism and international terrorism and the deplorable way in which he managed to outlive their claims.

Pinochet ended up like Spain's Gen. Francisco Franco, with a series of deathbed farewells that were obscenely protracted and attended by numerous priests and offerings of extreme unction. By the end, Chileans had become wearily used to the way in which he fell dramatically ill whenever the workings of justice took a step nearer to his archives or his bank accounts. Like Franco, too, he long outlived his own regime and survived to see his country outgrow the tutelage to which he had subjected it. And, also like Franco, he earned a place in history as a treasonous and ambitious officer who was false to his oath to defend and uphold the constitution. His overthrow of civilian democracy, in the South American country in which it was most historically implanted, will always be remembered as one of the more shocking crimes of the 20th century.

His coup—mounted on Sept. 11, 1973, for those who like to study numinous dates—was a crime in itself but involved countless other crimes as well. Over the past decade, and especially since his arrest in England in 1998, these crimes began to catch up with him. Pinochet had arranged a lifetime immunity for himself via a lifelong Senate seat, as part of his phased withdrawal from power. But this deal was not binding on Spain, where a magistrate successfully sought a warrant for his arrest in connection with the "disappearance" of some Spanish citizens. That warrant from Judge Baltasar Garzón, served in London, was the beginning of the unraveling. By the time he returned to Chile, the general was faced with a newly aroused citizenry. I once went to testify in front of Judge Juan Gúzman, the magistrate who finally ordered him indicted and fingerprinted. He told me that he himself had been a supporter of the original coup and that he came from a conservative military family that had thought of Pinochet as a savior. It was only when he read through the massive and irrefutable judicial files, on murder and torture and kidnapping, that he realized that there was only one course open to him.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



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Probably the worst of these offenses was "Operation Condor," a coordination between the secret police forces of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador, and Brazil. This network was responsible for assassinations of political exiles as far away as Rome (in the case of Christian Democrat Bernardo Leighton) and Washington, D.C. But within Chile itself, there were appalling cases of extra-judicial killing, secret prisons, and torture centers like the notorious Villa Grimaldi. Those decades in the Southern Cone were a nightmare that still seems like yesterday to millions of people.

There were those who used to argue that, say what you like, Pinochet unfettered the Chilean economy and let the Friedmanite breezes blow. (This is why Mrs. Thatcher was forever encouraging him to take his holidays and shopping trips in London; a piece of advice that he may well have regretted taking.) Yet free-marketeers presumably do not believe that you need torture and murder and dictatorship to implement their policies. I read Isabel Allende not long ago saying freely that nobody would again try the statist "Popular Unity" program of her uncle. But Salvador Allende never ordered anybody's death or disappearance; he died bravely at his post, and that has made all the difference. Meanwhile, a large part of Pinochet's own attraction to "privatization" has been explained by the disclosures attendant on the collapse of the Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C., which revealed large secret holdings in his name. This, combined with the cynical delaying tactics that he employed to delay or thwart prosecution, made his name stink even more in Chilean nostrils while he was still alive.

It is greatly to the credit of the Chileans that they have managed to restore and revive democratic institutions without any resort to violence, and that due process was scrupulously applied to Pinochet and to all his underlings. But there is a price to be paid for the slowness and care of these proceedings. We still do not know all that we might about the murder of U.S. citizen Charles Horman, for instance. And many Chilean families do not know where their "disappeared" loved ones are buried or how they died. (Perhaps sometimes it is better not to know the last bit.) Not once, in the prolonged process of investigation and clarification, did Pinochet offer to provide any information or to express any conscience or remorse. Like Slobodan Milosevic (who also cheated justice by dying) and Saddam Hussein, he was arrogant and blustering to the very last. Chile and the world are well rid of him, but we can thank his long and brutish rear-guard action for helping us to establish at least some of the emerging benchmarks of universal jurisdiction for tyrants.

[Monte Smith]

I apologize for all the glowing things I apparently said about Pinochet on this thread?

[Tom Storer]

Well, in post 7 you seemed to regret not having had a chance to campaign for him!

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by Tom Storer

Well, in post 7 you seemed to regret not having had a chance to campaign for him!

Hey, if Pinochet was a democrat, I think he'd a been a fine leader. Groovy economic ideas. That's kinda the rub, though, isn't it? He was a tyrant. He shoulda thought about an election campaign, but as you pointed out, he didn't bother with that little nicety. He didn't bother with a lot of little niceties. He was a thug, and groovy economic ideas do not make up the ill that was done.

[Gordon B]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

R.I.P., Salvador Allende.

Compared to Allende, Bush deserves special commendation for running a fiscally responsible Presidency.

[Doc Martin]

Sad news indeed. I’ll bet Geppetto and Jiminy Cricket are devastated. Oh wait does that read “Pinochet Dead at 91” Damn, I thought the topic was about Pinocchio

Sorry

[lynn]

Thanks to Nixon and his folks, the instability of Chile's economy leading to the Pinochet regime (also supported by the US) is another shining hour in US foriegn policy.

[Al in NYC]

Originally Posted by Gordon B

Compared to Allende, Bush deserves special commendation for running a fiscally responsible Presidency.

Unlike Bush, and Pinochet, Allende was legally elected.

Loved the shots on the news tonight of all the wealthy folks in Santiago lining up to mourn for Pinochet.

[Monte Smith]

Anybody here ever been to Chile? I have. I drove across the Andes from Argentina and stayed in Valparaiso (Pinochet's hometown) and Santiago in 1994. Nice place. The beach was polluted, was the worst thing. The highway in Argentina had armed policemen stopping cars, demanding American dollars. None of that in Chile. I enjoyed it.

[LennyH]

I've been to Punta Arenas, Monte. It's on the Southern tip, right on the Straight of Magellan. It's a fantastic place with good food and beautiful women. It's fairly isolated and different than any other place in Chile, I believe.

Even got to see the penguins.

[Monte Smith]

Haven't been that far south, Lenny. Must be neat. The Chile I saw was real neat. I was driving a diesel Toyota Four-Runner and the sonuvabitch had an altimeter and gauges that let you know what your forward and side-to-side tilt was. Which is kind of important when you can fall off a mountain at any time. It took us hours and hours to get up the Andes from the Argentine side. We crossed over to Chile at the summit (unbelievable cold, fog, wet black rock) and were in sunshine at sea level on the Chile side in probably twenty minutes. Crazy dropping switchbacks!

[Gerardo A]

I went to Chile this summer, posted a few pics in other threads here. Amazing country! Gorgeous women and food. Mostly stayed in Santiago but I also travelled to Valparaíso and Viña del Mar. Still dream of going to Isla de Pascua (Easter Island) someday.

But I second Sergio's contribution to this thread:

[Jeffrey Wozniak]

Don't Cry for Pinochet
Chile succeeded despite him.
by John Londregan
12/25/2006, Volume 012, Issue 15



The death of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte marks the definitive end of his efforts to associate himself with conservatism. It also marks the ultimate success of his efforts to avoid accountability for his murderous behavior as a leader of the Chilean military junta that took power in 1973.

In September 1973, Chile was in the midst of a social crisis as the elected Socialist president Salvador Allende lost control over his own Popular Unity (UP) coalition, and violence erupted in the streets. There were certainly members of the UP who would have delighted in transforming Chile into a Marxist state along the lines of Castro's Cuba, but they were not at the point of being able to do so, and the elected political opposition to Allende had by no means exhausted its options in dealing with him. This did not prevent Pinochet from joining the unfolding coup plot. The violent succession of events on September 11, 1973, was highly one-sided; the military themselves were surprised by how little armed opposition they encountered as they seized power.

Despite Pinochet's initial declaration that he was the temporary leader of a temporary government, he managed to push aside the other heads of the armed forces, and to remain in power for the next 16 and a half years, longer than any other ruler, elected or otherwise, in the post-independence history of Chile. During the long years of military rule, Pinochet remorselessly sought control. He outlawed political parties and had opponents murdered. The butcher's bill for his time in power included the lives of over 3,000 of his fellow citizens (in a country of 15 million), not counting the many thousands more who were tortured by the government, and the thousands driven into exile. Pinochet sought to transform Chilean society, and he incorporated a series of free-market economic reforms as a part of his recipe for success.

His embrace of economic reform seems unlikely to have sprung from a commitment to freedom, given the overarching contempt for liberty that characterized the rest of his government. Rather, in order to insulate himself from the consequences of his murderous seizure of power, Pinochet sought out political allies, and his free market reforms helped him to garner support domestically on the right, and also among members of the international community. One must be careful not to fall into Pinochet's trap--accepting his brutal seizure of power and tyrannical rule as a natural accompaniment of free market reforms. Propagandists on the left lost no time in seeking to discredit economic freedom by associating it with Pinochet. To this day, we hear from Moscow that it takes a Pinochet to implement economic reforms successfully; Vladimir Putin seems all too willing to have Pinochet's uniform taken in a few sizes so he can try it on.

Pinochet and his apologists argue thus: "Castro and the far left are worse than Pinochet, they kill more people and deliver fewer benefits than did the military government of Chile." Are we to admire Pinochet because his murderous regime was more efficient than tyrants on the left at producing higher GDP? Without the torture, rape, and killing, would economic and political freedom have been impossible in Chile? Hardly! But this is the argument insinuated by Pinochet. He successfully appropriated the utilitarian fallacy to which many on the left fall prey: that murder and torture are acceptable if they hasten the advent of the utopia implied by one's ideological model. That fallacy probably killed more people during the 20th century than typhus, and it stands to do so again in this century if we do not inoculate ourselves against it.

Pinochet tied his advocacy of free markets about people's eyes like a blindfold, to keep them from seeing his firing squads. Nothing that was achieved during his years of tyranny justifies the crimes he committed. Nor is there any meaningful sense in which the policies adopted by the Pinochet government should be viewed as paradigmatic for economic freedom. The military government long pursued a badly misguided policy of overvaluing the local currency; during the debt crisis of the 1980s it took the outrageous step of converting private debts to foreigners into public debt. And then there was its corruption, details of which continue to gradually leak into public view. Indeed, there continues to be a need for economic reform and openness in Chile, where a "good old boy network" acts as a powerful check on economic and social mobility.

Pinochet got some of the answers to economic policy questions right, but for the wrong reasons. The ongoing debate about economic freedom in Chile and elsewhere is confused by the spurious association between freedom and the tyrant Pinochet. The Germans would have narrower roads, lower incomes, and an even worse collective memory if, after the Second World War, they had given the Nazis credit for building the Autobahns and marketing VWs. We should not make the mistake of giving Pinochet credit for the economic achievements of millions of hard-working and enterprising Chileans, nor for the policies that got out of their way.

John Londregan, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton, is the author of Legislative Institutions and Ideology in Chile.



© Copyright 2006, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

[Gordon B]

Originally Posted by Al in NYC

Loved the shots on the news tonight of all the wealthy folks in Santiago lining up to mourn for Pinochet.

What about the wealthy folks who didn't mourn for Pinochet?

Here's an interesting, balanced, well thought out assessment of Pinochet's economic policies by Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution.http://www.marginalrevolution.com/ma...s_pi.html#more

I'd love to see Douglas weigh in if he reads this.