Augusto Pinochet
General Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (born November 25, 1915), military leader of Chile from 1973 to 1990. He was one of the leaders of a U.S.-backed1 military coup that deposed the socialist government of Salvador Allende in 1973. After losing a plebiscite in 1989, Pinochet stepped down from the presidency in 1990 and was succeeded by Patricio Aylwin. He retained his post as commander of the army until 1998, when he assumed a lifelong seat in the Chilean Senate, which brought him immunity from prosecution.
Early Career
Pinochet was born in Valparaíso. He went to primary and secondary school at the San Rafael Seminary of Valparaíso, the Quillota Institute (Marist Brothers), the French Fathers School of Valparaíso, and in the Military School, which he entered in 1933. After four years of study, he graduated from the latter with the rank of Second Lieutenant (alférez) in the infantry.
In September 1937, he joined the "Chacabuco" Regiment, in Concepción. Two years later, in 1939, then with the rank of Sub-Lieutenant, he moved to the "Maipo" Regiment, of the Valparaíso garrison. He returned to the Infantry School in 1940. In January, 1943 he married Lucía Hiriart Rodríguez, with whom he had five children: three daughters and two sons.
At the end of 1945, he joined the "Carampangue" Regiment, in Iquique. In 1948, he entered the War Academy, but he had to postpone his studies, because, being the youngest officer, he had to carry out a mission of service in the coal zone of Lota. The following year, he returned to his studies in the Academy.
After obtaining the Title of Officer Chief of Staff, in 1951, he returned to teach at the Military School. At the same time, he worked as a teacher's aide in the War Academy in the military geography and geopolitics clases. In addition to this, he was active as Director of the Insitutional magazine "Cien Aguilas" (One Hundred Eagles), an organ for the views of the Officers.
During the beginning of 1953, with the rank of Major, he was sent for two years to the "Rancagua" Regiment in Arica. While there, he was appointed professor of the War Academy, and he returned to Santiago, Chile to take up his new position. He also obtained a baccalaureate, and with this degree, he entered the School of Law of the University of Chile.
Beginning in the year 1956 Pinochet was chosen together with a group of young officers to form a military mission that would collaborate in the organization of a War Academy of Ecuador in Quito, which obligated him to suspend his law studies. He remained with the Quito mission for three-and-a-half years, during which time dedicated himself to the study of geopolitics, military geography and intelligence.
At the end of 1959, he returned to Chile and was sent to General Quarters of the I Division of the Army, in Antofagasta. The following year, he was assigned Commander of the "Esmeralda" Regiment, 7th of the Line. Owing to his success in this position, he was appointed Subdirector of the War Academy in 1963.
In 1968, he was named Chief of Staff of the II Division of the Army, in Santiago, and at the end of the year he was appointed Brigade General and Commander in Chief of the VI Division of the Iquique Garrison. In his new function, he was also appointed Intendent Representant of the Tarapacá Province.
In January of 1971, he rose to Division General and named Commander General of the Santiago Army Garrison. At the beginning of 1972, he was appointed General Chief of Staff of the Army.
With rising domestic strife in Chile, Pinochet was appointed Army Commander in Chief of the Army on 23 August 1973 by the President, the socialist Salvador Allende.
Coup of 1973
Allende and Pinochet before the coup (1973)
General Pinochet came to power in a military coup d'etat on September 11,1973 in which rebels bombed the Presidential Palace with British-made Hawker Hunter fighter jets. Allende remained inside, committing suicide instead of surrendering. Coup leaders named Pinochet head of the victorious junta's governing council, and he moved to crush Chile's liberal opposition, arresting approximately 130,000 individuals in a three-year period.
In his memoirs, Pinochet affirms that he was the leading plotter of the coup and used his position as commander of the Army to co-ordinate a far-reaching scheme that was coordinated with the other branches of the military. In recent years, however, high military officials from the time have said that Pinochet only reluctantly got involved in the coup a few days before it was scheduled to occur.
Once the Junta was in power, Pinochet soon consolidated his control, first retaining sole chairmanship of the Junta (originally agreed to be rotated among all members), and then proclaiming himself the President of the Republic.
Economic policy
Pinochet immediately set about making economic reforms. To formulate his economic policy, Pinochet relied on the so-called Chicago boys, who were economists trained at the University of Chicago and heavily influenced by the monetarist policies of Milton Friedman.
Under the early year's of Pinochet government, Chile's economy staged a massive recovery. Some global economists dubbed this recovery the Miracle of Chile while others have disputed this claim.
Privatization, cuts in public spending and anti-union policies angered some in Chile's working classes, though more prosperous strata benefited from real growth.
Allende's economic policy involved state ownership of many key companies, notably U.S.-owned copper mines. A large portion (though probably not a majority) of the population welcomed an intervention of the military to end the chaos caused by the combination of Allende's economic policies and foreign-backed domestic political opposition to them, culminating in a national transport owners' strike. Much of the opposition to Allende's policies was from business sectors, and it has been alleged that the US funded the lorry driver's strike ([1]), which was to a significant degree responsible for the chaotic situation. Pinochet promised to promote the development of a more open market, in his own words "to make Chile not a nation of proletarians, but a nation of entrepreneurs."
Suppression of opposition
Critics have charged Pinochet with brutal and bloody political repression.
The violence and bloodshed of the coup itself was continued during Pinochet's administration. Once in power, Pinochet ruled with an iron hand. Dissidents who were murdered for speaking out against Pinochet's policies are said to have "been disappeared." It is unknown exactly how many people were killed by government and military forces during the 17 years that he was in power, but the "Rettig Commission" listed 2,095 deaths and 1,102 "disappearances." Torture was also commonly used against dissidents. Thousands of Chileans fled the country to escape the regime.
Pinochet's presidency was frequently made unstable by riots and isolated violent attacks. Assassination attempts were common, which increased government paranoia and in the eyes of some contributed the cycle of oppression.
In contrast to most other nations in Latin America, Chile had, prior to the coup, a long tradition of civilian democratic rule; military intervention in politics had been rare. Some political scientists have ascribed the bloodiness of the coup to the stability of the existing democratic system, which required extreme action to overturn.
The situation in Chile came to international attention in September 1976 when Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean ambassador to the United States and minister in Allende's cabinet, was murdered by a car bomb in Washington, D.C. Gen. Carlos Prats, Pinochet's predecessor as army commander, who had resigned rather than support the moves against Allende, had died in similar circumstances in Buenos Aires, Argentina two years earlier.
CIA role in coup
According to declassified US archives, the United States government approved funds for actions to prevent Allende's election and, later, to destabilize his regime, which was friendly with Cuba.
The role of the US in the coup itself has not been established, but a document released by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2000 titled "CIA Activities in Chile" revealed that the CIA actively supported the military Junta after the overthrow of Allende and that it made many of Pinochet's officers into paid contacts or agents of the CIA or US military, even though the agency knew that they were involved in systematic and widespread human rights abuses. [2]
Documents declassified during the Clinton administration show that the United States government and the CIA had sought the overthrow of Allende in 1970, immediately after he took office ("Project FUBELT"), but claims of their direct involvement in the actual coup are not supported by documentary evidence, although many documents still remained classified. Regarding Pinochet's accession to the Presidency, the intelligence community concluded in a 2000 report that the CIA "did not assist Pinochet to assume the Presidency" and, in fact, many CIA officers shared broader US reservations about Pinochet's single-minded pursuit of power. [3]
The documents produced by various US agencies were provided by the US State Department in October 1999. The collection of 1,100 documents dealt with the years leading up to the military coup. One of these documents establishes that US military aid was raised dramatically between the coming to power of Allende in 1970, when it amounted to US$800,000 annually, to US$10.9 million in 1972, which suggests to some encouragement of a military-sponsored coup. The US government also supported Pinochet's government after he came to power.
On September 10, 2001, a suit was filed by the family of Gen. René Schneider, once head of the Chilean general staff, accusing former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger of arranging his 1970 murder because he would have opposed a military coup [4]. However, CIA documents indicate that while the CIA had sought his kidnapping, his killing, which was committed by an insurgent group which had been in contact with the CIA, was never intended.
In a 2003 interview on the U.S. Black Entertainment Television network, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked about why the United States saw itself as the "moral superior" in the Iraq conflict, citing the Chilean coup as an example of U.S. intervention that went against the wishes of the local population. Powell responded: "With respect to your earlier comments about Chile in the 1970s and what happened with Mr Allende, it is not a part of American history that we're proud of." The newspapers in Chile hailed the news as the first time the U.S. Government had conceded a role in the affair.
From May 1983 the opposition and labour movements organised demonstrations and strikes against the regime, provoking violent responses by the security forces. In September 1986, an unsuccessful assassination attempt was made on Pinochet's life by the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR), thought to be connected to the outlawed Communist Party. Pinochet suffered only minor injuries.
End of the Pinochet regime
According to the transitional provisions of the 1980 constitution, a plebiscite was held in October 1988, to vote on a new eight-year presidential term for Pinochet. In the plebiscite the advocates of a "No" vote won, and, again according to the provisions of the constitution, open presidential elections were held the next year, at the same time as the election of the congress that would have happened in either case. Pinochet left the presidency on March 11, 1990.
Due to the transitional provisions of the constitution, Pinochet remained the Commander-in-Chief of the Army until March 1998. Upon leaving that post, he took a senatorial position for life, granted by the constitution Pinochet had drafted to all former presidents with at least six years in office. His senatorship made his prosecution in Chile more difficult and the process only began after Pinochet had been arrested in Britain.
Arrest
While travelling abroad, Pinochet was arrested in October 1998 in London. The arrest warrant was issued by judge Baltasar Garzón of Spain, and he was placed under house arrest in the clinic where he had just undergone back surgery. The charges include 94 counts of torture and one count of conspiracy to commit torture. Britain had only signed the international convention against torture recently, so all of the counts were from the last 14 months of his regime.
Margaret Thatcher visits Pinochet during house arrest in London (1998)
There was some controversy over whether he should be brought to trial due to his fragile health. He was 82 years old at the time of his arrest. There was also some legal maneuvering in an attempt to prevent his extradition to Spain. The government of Chile opposed his arrest, extradition, and trial. The British Home Secretary decided in the end not to grant his extradition on humanitarian grounds. On his return to Chile, however, a judge had been named to investigate a large number of criminal suits against him. The appropriate courts stripped him of his parliamentary immunity, and he was prosecuted. The cases were dismissed by the Supreme Court of Chile for medical reasons (vascular dementia) in July 2002. Shortly after the verdict, he resigned from congress, and lives as an ex-president.
Legacy
Chileans remain divided on his legacy. Some see him as a brutal dictator who ended democracy and led a regime characterized by torture and favoritism towards the rich, while others believe that he saved the country from communism and led the transformation of the Chilean economy into a modern one. Even though there is widespread acknowledgement of the brutality of his regime, his followers try to explain that in the context of the increasing violence in Chilean society on the part of armed and political revolutionary groups in the decade before the coup.
Notes
1 The United States government had previously sought to overthrow Allende and actively supported Pinochet after he came to power. The extent of their involvement in the September 11, 1973 coup is not fully known, as many documents are still classified.
See further
- Operation Condor
- Missing, a film based on the true story of American journalist Charles Horman who disappeared in the aftermath of the Pinochet coup.
External links
- BBC coverage (special report)
- CIA Machinations in Chile in 1970 (report on CIA.gov)
- CIA activities in Chile (detailed report by the CIA itself)
- Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents relating to the Military Coup, 1970-1976
- The truth about Pinochet (economic analysis of his government and the Chicago boys)
- The crimes of Augusto Pinochet (several case studies)