| Q |
Allende |
Pinochet |
| 1. |
Was
he elected President of Chile? |
| |
Yes, in 1970. He had been a Senator
for many years and had stood for the Presidency in 1952,
1958 and again in 1964. In 1970 he obtained approx 36% of
the vote, with the Christian Democrat candidate second,
the nationalist third. Under the Chilean constitution, if
no candidate received a plurality, Congress had to meet
to determine who should be President. Allende was
approved with the favourable votes of the opposition |
No. Pinochet was a career
Army officer. He never stood in elections for public
office and was never elected. Possibly his appointment as
President of the Military Junta was endorsed or voted on
by three other people (the commanders-in-chief of the
other three armed forces). The only occasion on which in
a certain sense he ‘stood for office’ was the
plebiscite of 1988, when the Chilean people rejected his
continued tenure and voted for handover to a civilian
President, Patricio Aylwin. |
| 2. |
Were
people killed during his Presidency? |
| |
Yes. An ex-Minister of the Interior,
Edmundo Pérez Zujovic, was assassinated by members of a
left-wing radical group. There were sporadic acts of
violence and some fatalities during land-occupations and
strikes. While the government was sometimes accused of
incompetence or complacency, it was never accused of
organising extra-judicial killings. Not a single person
was judicially executed by decision of any civil or
military court or tribunal. |
Yes. Not least President
Allende himself who was killed (perhaps by his own hand)
rather than surrender to the military insurgents on
September 11 1973. One example: 72 people who were
already in custody in La Serena, Antofagasta and other
northern towns were taken from their cells in early
October 1973 and executed without any trial or judicial
process, on the orders of General Sergio Arellano Stark.
The Rettig
Commission, Chile’s own Truth Commission appointed
by President Aylwin, reported that at least 2,025 persons
were killed or disappeared during the period of military
rule. These were just the cases that could be documented.
Many believe the true figure to be much higher.
The Commission,
whose findings were accepted in toto by the civilian
government in March 1991—but rejected in toto by the
Chilean Army of which Pinochet was still the
Commander-in-Chief—concluded that the overwhelming
majority of these killings and disappearances were
carried out by the Armed Forces, the Police, the security
agencies or persons acting with their protection.
|
| 3. |
Was
there freedom of speech? |
| |
Yes. On occasions when the government
attempted to curtail it (e.g. by imposing temporary bans
on opposition newspapers) the courts ordered the bans to
be lifted, and they were. The opposition controlled much of the
national press, many radio stations and one of the three
principal TV channels.
Criticism of the
government and of Allende was widespread, lively and
often vituperative.
|
No. On the day of the coup
the military occupied and/or bombed radio, TV stations
and newspapers which supported Allende. All press, radio
and TV was subsequently censored for the duration of the
State of Siege (until March 1978). While opposition
magazines gradually began to publish they were subject to
closure and their owners, editors and journalists to
prosecution. |
| 4. |
Was
there freedom of assembly? |
| |
Yes. Vast rallies were held both by
the opposition and pro-government groups and innumerable
meetings held by groups of every persuasion and none. |
No. Curfews were imposed
from the outset and for most of the duration of the State
of Siege (until March 1978). During this period any
gathering of more than 20 persons had to have prior
permission from the military authorities. |
| 5. |
Did
large numbers of people leave the country? |
| |
Some did. Immediately after the
election of Allende in 1970 a number of people, mostly
comparatively wealthy farmers and business people and
some professionals such as doctors left, mostly for the
US. Some of these returned during the next couple of
years. None sought political asylum in any other country,
excepting possibly a handful of persons involved in the
abortive military coup in June 1973. |
Yes. In the days following
the military coup many hundreds of people sought asylum
in more than a dozen foreign embassies in Santiago and
were admitted because they were universally accepted to
be in imminent danger of their lives. Perhaps 10,000
people left the country as refugees, many of them under
the auspices of UNHCR. Many persons sentenced by military
courts to terms of imprisonment were allowed to commute
their sentences for exile. After the restoration of civilian
government in 1990 an ‘Office of Return’ was
set up to promote and assist the repatriation of exiles.
|
| 6. |
Was
there economic stability? |
| |
No. The ‘threat’ of a
left-wing government inspired a flight of capital,
undoubtedly fuelled by those hostile to Chile’s
democratic socialist experiment. Foreign companies,
notably ITT, worked actively to destabilise the new
government and it is now generally accepted that the US
government and the CIA did all they could to make
economic conditions difficult, manipulating, among other
things, the price of Chile’s crucial export, copper,
on the world market. The government’s economic
policies were risky and often mistaken. By 1973 Chile was
close to hyper-inflation.
However, employment
was protected, peasants and poor people benefited greatly
and programmes in health, education and social care were
targeted at the poor and dispossed.
|
No. Although at the close of
the Pinochet period Chile’s economy was strong and
buoyant, there had been several crises (notably the
collapse of the secondary banking sector, the financieras),
and stability was procured at an exceptionally high cost
in the 1970s (soaring unemployment, drastic wage
reductions and the virtual prohibition of trade unions). |
| 7. |
Were
land and property seized by the government? |
| |
Yes. The Allende government pursued a
vigorous land reform and legally expropriated quite a lot
of land, but owners were compensated and allowed to keep
a ‘reserve’. Foreign companies, notably the
copper companies, were nationalised, again with
compensation. Some
companies which the government believed to be
deliberately under-performing were ‘intervened’
with the imposition of government administrators, a move
which was bitterly resisted by the owners and was
probably counter-productive
|
Yes. The property of
political parties, trade unions, news media and other
organisations proscribed by the government were simply
seized by the military in the period after the coup. Much
of this property was not transferred to the state, but to
sections of the Armed Forces and in some cases to
individual officers. |
| 8. |
Were
foreigners granted political asylum? |
| |
Yes. Left wingers, academics, artists
and students from all over Latin America converged on
Chile between 1970 and 1973. |
No. |
| 9. |
Were
people tortured? |
| |
A handful, possibly. Some members of
a left-wing radical group alleged torture while under
arrest. For the entire Allende period Amnesty
International received less than a dozen complaints. |
Yes. Amnesty International
received thousands of detailed complaints and compiled
volumes of testimony. The Chilean Truth Commission was
excluded from investigating torture unless the victim
died or disappeared, but it confirmed the existence of
many of the known torture centres (Villa Grimaldi, Calle
Londres, Venda Sexy, Colonia Dignidad and others) and the
routine use of torture by the Armed Forces, Police, DINA
and CNI. The
British doctor Sheila Cassidy was stripped naked and
tortured by electric probes to the breasts and vagina.
|
| 10. |
Were
books burned and ideas proscribed? |
| |
No. Chilean publishing flourished. |
Yes. Following the coup
bonfires of books were burned in the streets of Santiago,
university libraries were purged and bookshops were
obliged to empty their shelves of many political,
sociological and and economic texts. The songs of the Chilean
folk singer Victor Jara (and many others) were banned.
The Editorial
Universitaria publishing house in Santiago deleted 29
titles from its list after the coup, including 18 out of
37 in its economics and political science list.
A Santiago bookshop
owner was arrested for displaying ‘Marxist’
literature.
|
| 11. |
Was
there academic freedom? |
| |
Yes. |
No. After the coup all
universities had military officers appointed as rectors
and were declared ‘under reorganisation’. The
existing governing bodies were dissolved. Many faculties
were closed (e.g. at the University of Chile in Santiago,
the faculties of sociology, philosophy, journalism and
psychology). |
| 12. |
Were
political parties banned? |
| |
Yes, the fascist party Fatherland and
Freedom was banned in June 1973 after it openly organised
and backed the abortive military coup of June 29. |
Yes. Following the coup all
political parties were declared ‘in recess’ and
forbidden to function. Parties deemed to be Marxist or to
be inspired by foreign ideologies were banned
indefinitely. The 1980 Constitution (which is still in
force, though moderated somewhat in 1989) attempted to
proscribe any party affiliation for a whole range of
posts and positions, including that of trade union
officials. |
| 13. |
Was
the existing constitution respected? |
| |
Yes |
No. It was suspended and
ignored. The Electoral Registers were burned. It was
replaced in 1980 by a new Constitution drafted by
Pinochet’s advisers. This explicitly envisaged a new
form of ‘protected’ democracy—essentially
one with quasi-democratic institutions under the power
and tutelage of the armed forces who would have veto
power over appointments, elections and affiliations. |
| 14. |
Were
political exiles pursued and attacked abroad? |
| |
No |
Yes. The former
Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Armed Forces, General
Carlos Prats was assassinated by a car bomb in Buenos
Aires together with his wife on September 30 1973.
Argentine courts held DINA, Pinochet’s secret
police, responsible. DINA also organised the shooting and
serious injury of Christian Democrat deputy Bernardo
Leighton in Rome on October 6 1975 and, on September 21
1976, the killing by a car bomb in Washington DC of
Orlando Letelier, Allende’s former Ambassador to the
United States. |
| 15. |
Was
there corruption? |
| |
Yes, some, especially perhaps in the
‘intervened’ industries and possibly the land
reform. But despite their best efforts, Pinochet and the
military never produced convincing evidence of corruption
and personal enrichment by Allende or any of his
ministers. |
Yes. Less than many
dictatorships, and more at the institutional than the
personal level (i.e. the Army and Navy, especially,
converting themselves into formidable economic powers
with vast holdings of land and industry). The secondary
banking collapse was partly caused by corruption.
Pinochet’s family, especially his son, have been
accused of enriching themselves at public expense. Chile’s economic boom
in the late ‘80s and since is sometimes attributed
in part to the laundering of drug profits from elsewhere
in Latin America.
|
| 16. |
Were
there any concentration camps or other special places of
imprisonment? |
| |
No. |
Yes. After the coup 7,000
people were detained in the National Stadium. The Navy
ships Lebu and Esmeralda were used as floating prisons.
Concentration camps were opened at Pisagua, Chacabuco,
Dawson Island, Tres Alamos and Colonia Dignidad, among
others. |
| 17. |
Were
any secret burial grounds (of persons extra-judicially
murdered) discovered? |
| |
No. |
Yes. In the days after the
coup bodies floated down the Mapocho River in Santiago.
Years later, bodies were discovered stuffed into disused
lime-kilns at Lonquen, near the concentration camp at
Pisagua, buried in unmarked graves at the Santiago
Cemetery and in many other locations. |
| 18. |
Were
strikes permitted? |
| |
Yes. They occurred frequently, and
were organised both by supporters and opponents of the
government. |
No. They were banned during
the State of Siege and effectively outlawed by the 1980
constitution. |
| 19. |
Was
there religious freedom? |
| |
Yes. Some prominent church people
supported Allende. Others opposed him. The Catholic
University TV Station was generally hostile and prominent
Catholic intellectuals hosted anti-government programmes
on it. |
It was restricted. Church
people who advocated for the poor and for human rights
were threatened, sometimes persecuted and some of them
killed. The Catholic Church’s Vicaria de la
Solidaridad was the leading human rights organisation
providing legal aid for political prisoners, and support
for their families. Its work was denounced and harassed
by the military, but they did not dare close it down. |
| 20. |
Was
Chile internationally respected? |
| |
Yes. Despite mounting difficulties
and chaos in the economy, Chile was the focus of
international attention for its attempt to implement a
radical, socialist solution by democratic means. Within
Latin America it was regarded as a haven for intellectual
and artistic creativity. |
No. Despite some admiration
in business circles for its flourishing neo-liberal
economic model, Chile became an international pariah, its
government the paradigm example of military dictatorship. |
