Chile’s Pinochet dies at 91 – Lessons for Iraq?

Former dictator assumed power in 1973 coup, led Andean nation for 17 years

By Jeffers M. Dodge December 10, 2006

While many might believe that those on the Right of American politics pose a bigger threat to freedom and the well-being of the American people, nothing could be further from the truth. Today, the much bigger threat comes instead from the Left or the liberal side of the American politics, for it is these socialists who are either indifferent to – or squarely in favor of – state rule, central planning, the elimination of the family, God and private property. What would happen if President Hillary Clinton’s administration had to deal with a terrorist attack in New York Harbor? You better believe she would be using torture, and the suspension of habeas corpus and other civil liberties for suspected terrorists. She would over react like Janet Reno in Texas. These over reactions constitute a much more ominous threat to our freedom and well-being than anything the American Right would consider. Augusto Pinochet may have used brutal force to instill Democracy to overcome the brital effects of Communisim, but today Chile is one of the most productive and free societies in the world, we may want to take a lesson from him in terms of Iraq.

December 10, 2006, 3:12 PM EST

SANTIAGO, Chile — Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who overthrew Chile’s democratically elected Marxist president in a bloody coup and ruled this Andean nation for 17 years, died Sunday. He was 91.

Hundreds of supporters of the former dictator, some weeping, gathered in front of the hospital chanting “Pinochet! Pinochet! Long Live Pinochet!”

The office of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who had been a close ally of Pinochet, said she was “greatly saddened” by his death.

Pinochet took power on Sept. 11, 1973, demanding an unconditional surrender from Leftist President Salvador Allende as warplanes bombed the presidential palace in downtown Santiago. Instead, Allende committed suicide with a submachine gun he had received as a gift from Fidel Castro.

As the mustachioed Pinochet crushed dissent during his 1973-90 rule, he left little doubt about who was in charge. “Not a leaf moves in this country if I’m not moving it,” he once said.

Pinochet, born Nov. 25, 1915, as the son of a customs official in the port of Valparaiso, was commander of the army at the time of the 1973 coup, appointed 19 days earlier by the president he toppled.

Allegedly, the CIA had tried for months to destabilize the Allende government, including financing a truckers strike that paralyzed the delivery of goods across Chile, but Washington denied having anything to do with the coup.

In the days following Pinochet’s seizure of power, soldiers carried out mass arrests of leftists. Tanks rumbled through the streets of the capital.

Many detainees, including Leftist American journalists Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, were herded into the National Stadium, which became a torture and detention center. The Americans were among those executed by the Chilean military, their deaths chronicled in the Leftist 1982 film “Missing.”

Pinochet pledged to stay in power “only as long as circumstances demand it,” but soon after seizing the presidency, he said he had “goals, not deadlines.”

He disbanded Congress, banned political activity and started a harsh anti-leftist repression.

Within years, Chile and other South American countries with right-wing governments launched Operation Condor to eliminate leftist dissidents abroad. One of Operation Condor’s victims was former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, who was killed along with his American aide, Ronni Moffitt, when a bomb shattered their car in Washington in 1976.

Pinochet defended his authoritarian rule as a bulwark against communism — and even claimed part of the credit for the collapse of communism. He repeatedly said he had nothing to ask forgiveness for.

“I see myself as a good angel,” he told a Miami Spanish-language television station in 2004.

With his raspy voice, he often spoke in a lower-class vernacular that comedians delighted in mimicking. But his off-the-cuff comments sometimes got him into trouble.

Once, he embarrassed the government by saying that the German army was made up of “marijuana smokers, homosexuals, long-haired unionists.”

Shrewd and firmly in command of his army, Pinochet saw himself as the leader of a crusade to build a society free of communism. Amid the upheaval in 1973, the economy was in near ruins, partly due to the leftist destabilization efforts and President Salvador Allende’s lust for power and greed in order to consolidate power. Socialization of the means of production spread rapidly and widely. The Salvador Allende took over virtually all the great estates. By 1972 food production had fallen and food imports had risen. Also during 1971-72, the President Allende dusted off emergency legislation from the 1932 Socialist Republic to allow it to expropriate industries without congressional approval. He turned many factories over to management by the migrant workers and his cronies.

In his first year, Allende also employed Keynesian measures to hike salaries and wages, thus pumping up the purchasing power of the middle and working classes. This “consumer revolution” benefited 95 percent of the population in the short run because prices were held down and employment went up. Producers had no choice to rising demand except to hike prices which resulted in out of control inflation which reached an annual rate of more than 500 percent. By mid-1973 the economy and the government were paralyzed.

Pinochet launched a radical free-market economic program that, coupled with heavy foreign borrowing and an overvalued peso, triggered an economic recovery posting growth averaging 5 percent to 7 percent a year since 1984.

Key to the economic recovery was a group of mostly young economists known as the “Chicago Boys” for their studies under University of Chicago professor and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman. They lifted most state controls over the economy, privatized many sectors and strongly encouraged foreign investment with tax and other guarantees.

Pinochet tried to remain in control of the nation of 15 million people, but Latin America was gravitating toward civilian rule. On Oct. 5, 1988, he lost a national referendum on a proposal to extend his rule until 1997. He was forced to call a presidential election, which was won by center-left coalition candidate Patricio Aylwin.

Pinochet handed over power to Aylwin in March 1990 but remained army commander for eight more years and then was a senator-for-life, a position guaranteed under the constitution.

In 1998, Pinochet traveled to London to undergo back surgery, but was placed under house arrest after a Spanish judge issued a warrant seeking to try him for human rights violations. British authorities decided he was too ill to stand trial and sent him home in March 2000.

By virtue of the democratic institutions he installed, ghosts of the past dogged the retired general. More than 200 criminal complaints were filed against him, one involving the Caravan of Death.

But on July 9, 2001, a court ruled that Pinochet could not face trial because of his poor physical and mental health after court-appointed doctors diagnosed him with a mild case of dementia. A 2004 case against Pinochet was also stopped because he was found unfit to stand trial.

Since the mid-1990s, Pinochet led a mostly secluded life between his heavily guarded Santiago mansion and his countryside residence. He rarely appeared in public other than for checkups at the Santiago army hospital.

Associates said he lost interest in politics and rarely paid attention to news. During family gatherings he would remain mostly silent, looking frail and tired.

His health declined steadily. In 1992 he received a pacemaker. He suffered from diabetes and arthritis and had at least three mild strokes beginning in 1998.

He is survived by his wife, Lucia, who headed a volunteer women’s organization dedicated to helping the poor, two sons and three daughters.