General Augusto
José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte[1]
(November
25, 1915
– December
10, 2006)
was head of the military
dictatorship that ruled Chile
from 1973
to 1990.
He came to power in a violent coup
that deposed Salvador
Allende, a Marxist
physician who had become the first Socialist
to be elected President
of Chile. The coup ended a period of strained relations between
the United
States—which had actively sought Allende's removal—and
the South
American country, and allowed Pinochet to implement profound neoliberal
economic reforms and, at the same time, to commit extensive human
rights violations, both at home and abroad.
On September
11, 1973,
the military, led by Pinochet, stormed the presidential palace and
seized power from President Allende, who was found dead soon after.
A junta
headed by Pinochet was established, which immediately suspended the
constitution, dissolved Congress,
imposed strict censorship, proscribed the leftist
parties that had constituted Allende's Popular
Unity coalition, and halted all political activity. In addition,
it embarked on a campaign of terror against opponents and perceived leftists
in the country. As a result, approximately 3,000 Chilean residents
are known to have been executed, or "disappeared",
more than 27,000[2]
were incarcerated
and in a great many cases tortured,
according to the Valech
Report. Many were exiled
and received abroad, in particular in Argentina,
as political refugees; but they were followed in their exile by the DINA
secret police, in the frame of Operation
Condor which linked South-American dictatorships together
against political opponents.
In 1980, a new
constitution was approved, which prescribed a single-candidate
presidential plebiscite
in 1988, and a return to civilian rule in 1990. Pinochet lost the
1988 plebiscite, which triggered multi-candidate presidential
elections in 1989 to choose his replacement. Pinochet transferred
power to Patricio
Aylwin, the new democratically elected president, in 1990;
however, he retained his post as commander-in-chief
of the army until 1998, when he assumed a seat in the Chilean
Senate, which was intended to be his for the duration of his
life, according to the constitutional amendments of 1980. In 1998
Pinochet, who still had much influence in Chile, travelled to the United
Kingdom for medical treatment. While there, he was arrested on a
warrant from Spanish judge Baltasar
Garzón and kept under house arrest for over a year, before
eventually being released on medical grounds. He returned to Chile
and resigned his senatorial seat in 2002, after a Supreme Court
ruling that he suffered from "vascular dementia" and
therefore could not stand trial for human
rights abuses—allegations of abuses had been made numerous
times before his arrest, but never acted upon. In May
2004, Chile's supreme court ruled that he was capable of
standing trial, and he was charged with several crimes in December
of that year.
Supporters of
Pinochet credit him with staving off the beginning of Communism,
fighting terrorism from radical groups such as MIR,
and implementing free
market policies that laid the groundwork for rapid economic
growth that continued into the 1990s.
His opponents charge him with destroying Chile's democracy, pursuing
a policy of state
terrorism, catering exclusively for private interests, and
adopting economic policies that favored the wealthy and hurt the
country's middle- and low-income sectors. While it was originally
denied by his supporters, it is now generally accepted that
Pinochet's government was responsible for torturing and killing
thousands of people perceived to be opponents.
Early career
Pinochet was born
in Valparaíso
on November
25, 1915,
the son of Augusto Pinochet Vera and Avelina Ugarte Martínez. 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,
in 1937 he graduated with the rank of alférez (Second
Lieutenant) in the infantry.
In September
1937,
he was assigned to the "Chacabuco" Regiment, in Concepción.
Two years later, in 1939, then with the rank of sub-lieutenant, he
moved to the "Maipo" Regiment, garrisoned in Valparaíso.
He returned to Infantry School in 1940. On January
30, 1943,
he married Lucía
Hiriart Rodríguez, with whom he had five children: three
daughters (Inés Lucía, María Verónica, Jacqueline Marie) and two
sons (Augusto Osvaldo and Marco Antonio).
At the end of 1945,
he was assigned to the "Carampangue" Regiment in the
northern city of 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
service mission 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 teachers' aide
at the War Academy, giving military geography and geopolitics
classes. In addition to this, he was active as editor of the
institutional magazine Cien Águilas ("One Hundred
Eagles").
At 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
to take up his new position. He also obtained a baccalaureate,
and with this degree, he entered the University of Chile's Law
School.
In 1956, Pinochet
was chosen, together with a group of other young officers, to form a
military mission that would collaborate in the organization of the
War Academy of Ecuador
in Quito,
which forced him to suspend his law studies. He remained with the
Quito mission for three-and-a-half years, during which time he
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 Headquarters of the I
Army Division, based in Antofagasta.
The following year, he was appointed Commander of the
"Esmeralda" Regiment. Due to his success in this position,
he was appointed Sub-director of the War Academy in 1963.
In 1968, he was
named Chief of Staff of the II Army Division, based in Santiago,
and at the end of that year, he was promoted to Brigadier General
and Commander in Chief of the VI Division, garrisoned in Iquique.
In his new function, he was also appointed Intendant of the Tarapacá
Province.
In January 1971, he
rose to Division General, and was named General Commander 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 on August
23, 1973
by President Salvador
Allende.
Military coup of
1973
-
Main article:
Chilean
coup of 1973
Pinochet came to
power in a coup
d'état on September
11, 1973,
in which the rebelling Chilean Air Force bombed the Presidential
Palace while it was being stormed by Army troops. President Allende
died during the capture of the palace. The exact circumstances of
his death are disputed. According to the junta's official version,
he committed suicide with a machine gun[3]
which bore a golden plate engraved "To my good friend
Salvador Allende from Fidel
Castro." At the time and for many years after, his
supporters nearly uniformly presumed that he was killed by the
forces staging the coup. Another version says that Allende was
killed in combat on the steps outside the Presidential Palace. An
autopsy in 1990 found that Allende's wounds were consistent with the
suicide account.
The new junta was
made up of Pinochet representing the Army, Admiral José
Toribio Merino representing the Navy, General Gustavo
Leigh representing the Air Force, and César
Mendoza representing the carabineros
(the uniformed police). Since Pinochet was the chief of the oldest
branch of the military forces (the Army), he was made the head of
the victorious junta
— this position was originally to be rotated among the four
branches, but was later made permanent. The junta
immediately moved to crush their left-wing opposition, arresting
hundreds of people and killing many of them. Thousands more were
arrested and tortured over the next three years, and a total of more
than 3,000 were killed. Internationally, the Pinochet government
became known for severe human
rights abuses, including many "disappearances".
In his memoirs,
Pinochet affirms that he was the leading plotter of the coup, and
used his position as Commander of the Army to coordinate a
far-reaching scheme with the other two branches of the military and
the national police. In recent years, however, high military
officials from the time have said that Pinochet reluctantly got
involved in the coup only a few days before it was scheduled to
occur and followed the lead of other branches (especially the Navy)
as they triggered the coup.
Once the Junta was
in power, Pinochet soon consolidated his control, first retaining
sole chairmanship of the junta,
and then being proclaimed President on June
27, 1974.
He also promoted himself to the supreme army rank of Capitán
General (literally Captain General), previously borne by
colonial governors and by Bernardo
O'Higgins, a hero of Chile's war of independence, and first head
of state.
General Leigh of
the Air Force became increasingly opposed to Pinochet's policies,
and he was kicked out of the junta on July
24, 1978.
He was replaced by General Fernando
Matthei.
During 1977 and
1978, Chile was on the brink of war with Argentina (also ruled by a
military government) over a disagreement regarding the ownership of
the strategic Picton,
Lennox and Nueva islands at the southern tip of South America. Antonio
Samoré, a representative of Pope
John Paul II, successfully prevented full-scale war. The
conflict was finally resolved on 1984, with the Treaty
of Peace and Friendship (Tratado de Paz y Amistad).
Chilean sovereignty over the islands and Argentinian over the around
Sea is now undisputed.
Pinochet's
economic policy
By mid 1975,
Pinochet set about making free-market oriented economic reforms. He
declared that he wanted "to make Chile not a nation of
proletarians, but a nation of proprietors". This was a play on
words using the Spanish, "propietarios", i.e. owners or
business proprietors which rhymes with "proletarios", i.e.
proletarians. 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.
Pinochet launched
an era of economic deregulation
and privatization.
To accomplish his objectives, he abolished the minimum
wage, rescinded trade
union rights, privatized the pension
system, state industries,
and banks,
and lowered taxes
on wealth
and profits.
Supporters of these policies (most notably Milton Friedman himself)
have dubbed them "The
Miracle of Chile", due to the country's sustained economic
growth since the late 1980s.
President Allende's
economic policy had involved nationalizations of many key companies,
notably U.S.-owned copper mines. This had been a significant reason
behind the United
States opposition to Allende's reformist socialist government,
in addition to his establishing diplomatic relations and cooperation
agreements with Cuba
and the Soviet
Union. Much of the internal opposition to Allende's policies
came from business sector, and recently-released U.S. government
documents confirm that the U.S. funded the lorry drivers' strike,
that had exacerbated the already chaotic economic situation prior to
the coup.
Suppression of
opposition
After the
military's seizure of power, Pinochet engaged in brutal political
repression, aiming to destroy all remaining support for the defeated
Popular
Unity (PU) government. In October
1973, at least 70 people were killed by the Caravan
of Death. Almost immediately, the junta banned all the leftist
parties that had constituted Allende's UP coalition. Much of the
regime's violence was directed toward those it viewed as socialist
or Marxist sympathizers, though dissidents who spoke out against the
government were also persecuted. Those murdered during Pinochet's 17
years in power are said to have "been
disappeared." It is not known 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.",
with the vast majority of victims coming from the opposition to
Pinochet at the hands of the state security apparatus. Torture
was also commonly used against dissidents. Thousands of Chileans
were expelled from and fled the country to escape the regime. In
2004, the National Commission on Political Prisoners and Torture
produced the Valech
Report after interviewing an estimated 35,000 people who claimed
to have been abused by the regime. About 28,000 of those testimonies
were regarded as legitimate. According to the Commission, more than
half of the arrests occurred in the months immediately following the
coup (approximately 18,000 of those testifying claimed they were
detained between September and December of 1973).
