Democracy murdered in Chile

Fifty years ago today, with the assistance and at the instigation of the United States government, the Chilean military overthrew the democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende, killing the elected leftist in the presidential palace. The coup was followed by years of brutal right-wing military rule headed by Gen. Augusto Pinochet in what had previously been one of the Americas' proudest democracies.

Ariel Dorfman -- Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist -- has preserved memory of that terrible time. In the New York Review of Books, Dorfman, who worked in Allende's government as a young man, explains the Chilean's crime: his government empowered the people, the wrong people.

.. the Chilean pueblo had many reasons to support the Allende experiment.

His cabinet—the first to include a peasant and an industrial worker as ministers—had undertaken a series of reforms, the most impressive of which was the nationalization of the enormous copper mines, until then owned by predatory US corporations. It had also nationalized the mining of minerals like nitrate and iron, as well as many banks and large factories, a number of which were being administered by those who worked in them.

An ambitious agrarian reform had been handing over latifundios—large rural estates—to the peasants who had toiled on them from time immemorial; by 1973 almost 60 percent of Chile’s arable land had been expropriated.

Though some of these initiatives (and blunders by the relatively dysfunctional government of the Unidad Popular, the alliance of left-wing parties that had supported Allende for president) caused economic and financial disruptions, there had been a remarkable redistribution of income and services to the most underserved members of society.

Other measures revealed Allende’s priorities: a half-liter of milk daily for every child; cabins erected by the ocean so workers could vacation with their families (most had never seen the Pacific before); the acknowledgment of indigenous identities and languages; the publication of millions of inexpensive books that were sold at newspaper kiosks; and major advances in health, affordable public housing, education, and child care.

All this was accompanied by a blossoming of culture, particularly in music, mural painting, and documentary film. But perhaps more important than these material advantages was the dignity felt by so many disadvantaged citizens, their sense that they were now the central characters of their nation’s history.

After the murder of the man and the democracy, decades of repression, torture, and murder followed. Chile eventually crawled out of autocracy, but as an oligarchic, a hollowed out society. That complex ongoing story is for new generations of Chileans to live and to tell.

Dorfman can only conclude:

The wounds of Chile are deep, but regardless of how Chileans decide to deal with our trauma and conflicts, Allende’s legacy might have some bearing beyond the borders of his country. The need for radical change through nonviolence that this unique statesman posed—and did not achieve half a century ago—has again become the crucial issue of our era. 

With new variants of Pinochet troubling so many lands, Allende’s insistence throughout his life that for our dreams to bear fruit we need more democracy and never less—always, always more democracy—is more relevant than ever. He calls out to us that there can be no solution to the dilemmas plaguing the planet—war, inequality, mass migration, the twin threats of climate change and nuclear annihilation—without the active participation of vast majorities of fearless and enthusiastic men and women marching past the balconies of the future.

Fifty years after his death, Salvador Allende is still speaking to us.

• • •

Months before his murder, President Allende tried to explain to distant and uncomprehending North Americans the scope of Chileans' bold aspirations.

I invite the North American reader to overcome all prejudice and listen to us with an open mind. To fully grasp what Chilean socialism proposes, an objective understanding is necessary of the true character of our people, whose aspirations, so often passed over or betrayed, are manifestly just.

. . . Reformism in Chile has not been able to eradicate the endemic evil of a society which has permitted a life of leisure for a few and deprivation for the majority. The search for a different formula, more daring and identified with the common man, could not do other than lead us to socialism, Chilean socialism. 

... We believe in the justness of popular aspirations, for we identify with the peasant, bowed down by his task of providing his dally bread; with the worker who gives us the wealth he has created with his hands; with the white collar worker, the soldier, the intellectual, the student, and all those who have the inalienable right to enjoy the wealth they produce by their effort and sacrifice.

As bumptious billionaire tech bros (and their real estate profiteer con man) plot to lord it over this country, might we too need to revive a democratic economic system even more inclusive than Chile's fifty years ago? The struggle for democracy doesn't end.

Unlikely eruptions of democracy

In this moment when we're forced to watch the laughably undemocratic (small "d") U.S. Senate thwart the will of a sizable majority of us, it's worth recalling that the democratic impulse is astonishingly resilient -- and on the move in unlikely places.

Honduras: In 2009, the U.S.-backed a military coup ousted the more or less legitimate government of President Manuel Zelaya. That unfortunate country has been governed (and misgoverned) by a series of unpopular violent kleptocrats ever since. At times, narco traffickers seemed to own the state. The 2017 election was a violent mess; 23 people died and protesters filled the streets, protesting electoral manipulation which kept the ruling party in power. Even the Organization of American States called that "election" a fraud.

But this November, Hondurans gave Xiomara Castro 51 percent of their vote to only 37 percent for the previous ruling party's candidate. Somewhat remarkably the losing candidate conceded. Castro brings her own baggage -- she's the wife of the deposed Manuel Zelaya and governing Honduras involves overwhelming challenges and opportunities for corruption. But the people are getting what they chose, democratically.

Chile: On December 19, it was that Latin American country's turn to endorse a democratic triumph:

SANTIAGO, Chile — Gabriel Boric, a tattooed 35-year-old former student leader from the far south of Patagonia, has secured a crushing victory to become Chile’s president-elect.

Chile was Latin America's most stable democracy until the U.S.-backed a coup in 973 overthrew its elected socialist government. U.S. rightwing economists used the unfortunate country as a playground for trying out their exploitative theories. Chile then suffered under a vicious fascist military dictatorship until 1990. It seemed to have established a viable constitutional system including peaceful transitions of power, but popular fury over remnants of the dictatorship and economic inequity has been rising.

The election was a runoff between Boric, representing younger people and the impoverished, against the rightwing populist José Antonio Kast. The coalition of the left was broad and held together, proving simply larger than the opposing coalition of the right. Kast conceded within 24 hours.

After torture, facing awful realities

Here's a heartening note: the Chilean ship Esmeralda can't take part in an Amsterdam naval festival this month without provoking protest.

The presence of Chilean school ship Esmeralda, used for the torture of political opponents under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), has brought controversy to the family event.

An association of Chilean exiles has said it would hold a vigil next to the four-master on Wednesday.

"At least 100 people were tortured or raped on board," the association said in a statement, expressing disappointment that "the boat's dark past is still taboo."

In addition to serving as a training vessel for the Chilean Navy, the Esmeralda roams the oceans acting as a kind of floating embassy for the South American nation.

I remember protesting the Esmeralda on one of its visits to San Francisco in the 1970s when its reputation for horrors was more fresh. In trying to confirm my recollection, I came across this letter published in the Baltimore Sun from a William A. Yankes:

While I was a cadet in the Chilean Naval Academy, I and everyone I knew viewed the Esmeralda as the symbol of all that was bright and good about my country. I was eagerly looking forward to sailing with my graduating class as a midshipman in 1973.

But before that happened, my family fled to the United States to avoid President Salvador Allende's Marxist regime. At 17, I was forced to leave with them.

I first heard about torture on the Esmeralda from protesters while visiting the ship in San Diego, Calif., in 1997. I dismissed the charges as absurd. I was sure it was just another attack by extremists determined to besmirch her unimpeachable reputation.

When I asked a Chilean naval officer, a former classmate of mine at the naval academy, whether civilians had been tortured on the Esmeralda, he looked straight at me and said, "We were at war." My heart sank, but even then I couldn't bring myself to believe it.

But while traveling in Chile in March [2000], I interviewed several Chilean writers, some of whom told me they had been tortured. They said that it was well known that people had been tortured on several ships, including the Esmeralda, during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Finally, I had to accept that it was true.

After speaking with some who were tortured, I now understand why protesters have expressed outrage against the presence of the Esmeralda at various foreign ports and why she was turned away from San Francisco in 1974. ...

Mr. Yankes chose to face unwelcome truths. As I always say about the probable course of any effort to repudiate torture, this takes time. We don't want to look, to know. But looking is how a turn away from wrong begins. Looking is hard, but necessary.

Maybe we'll get to Dick Cheney yet …

Dictators, torturers (and the intellectual authors of torture), and fascist thugs can never be completely secure that society won't seek retribution for their crimes until they die.

A Chilean friend tipped me off to the important news that the Chilean government is trying to extradite a thug involved in the killing of the popular leftist singer Victor Jara almost 40 years ago during the U.S.-supported fascist coup against a democratically elected Chilean government.

Guess what? The shooter, named as Pedro Barrientos Nunez, has been hiding in plain sight in Miami. He is a retired U.S Army officer. The other seven charged with the crime are being taken into custody within Chile.

The Australian explains:

Jara, the singer whose lyrics spoke of love and social protest, became an icon of Latin American popular music with songs such as The Right to Live in Peace, The Cigarette and I remember you, Amanda. …

Jara was arrested the day after the September 11, 1973, coup that installed Pinochet as dictator. The singer's body was found days later, riddled with 44 machine-gun bullet wounds.

Jara, 40, had been held with 5000 other political prisoners in Santiago's biggest stadium, where he was interrogated, tortured and then killed. The case was revived in 2009 and Jara's body was exhumed after a soldier who had been in the stadium after the coup admitted to the shooting -- though he later retracted his confession.

A lesson for our Democrats?

When democracies elect progressive politicians, we hope to see public campaigns like this poster in contemporary Chile.

Maybe our Democratic administration could try to emulate some other moderate progressives who took office under far more difficult conditions than they face.

Chile grew at an average of 5.1 percent per annum during those twenty years. The proportion of the population living in poverty fell from 38.8 percent of the population to 13.7 percent in 2009. GDP per capita was $4,542 in 1989: in 2009 it was $14,299.

... In 1989 there were 249,482 students in higher education -- in 2009 there were 809,417. Chile was investing $7 million in health in 1989; by 2009 that figure had risen to $307 million. In infrastructure, the 27.3 kilometres of the metro line in [the capital] had expanded to 94.5, and major roads improved. Minimum wages increased substantially, and the pension system was reformed to benefit poorer pensioners. ...

The government ... in 2005 was eventually able to reform the constitution to make it more democratic... On human rights, the government has a record that compares favourably with other countries. Since 2000 in Chile, some 779 former agents have been indicted, charged or sentenced for human-rights abuses ... By the end of December 2009, 279 former agents of the military had been sentenced for abuses, of whom fifty-nine are serving out final sentences in prison; while most of the rest are still in the appeal process or have received lesser punishment such as house-arrest or suspended sentences.

Open Democracy

Who were these paragons? The governments of Chile between 1990-2010 that pulled that country back to democracy in the wake of the brutal Pinochet dictatorship. They accomplished all this under the dangerous eyes of a previously all-powerful military that had to be both controlled and appeased in order to enable civilian government to survive.

I sure don't see U.S. Democrats achieving anything like that much.

The article linked to above is an account of how these moderate reformers wore out their welcome after 20 years. It examines whether the election of a President from the right will mean a consolidation of democracy or a swing away from progress. Unhappily, one of the worst omens for continued progress toward social justice is the enhanced weight a government of the right will have to give to the Roman Catholic Church's regressive views. All very interesting and worth thinking about in our context.

Patagonia impressions

Back in town today from almost two weeks in the far south of Latin America -- a few days in Chile and more in Argentina -- I've got oceans of work clutter to clear away, so this blog gets only a few oddments about the trip for now. More later.

It would be mad for me to claim to know anything about the countries whose mountains, parks and hospitality I've been enjoying. The appropriate analogy for what I convey here might be impressions of the United States garnered by a non-English-speaking tourist dropped into South Lake Tahoe who then visited Yosemite Valley. Not deep or necessarily meaningful. But here goes.

The world watches and waits on Obama, anxiously.


Headline from the English language Buenos Aires Herald on the day we arrived.

The old maxim, "when the U.S. sneezes, Latin America catches pneumonia" still holds, or at least people fear that it does.

Knowing that politics in other people's countries is not our business, we engaged in only one substantive political conversation. This was with an Argentinian who had lived in the United States in the late 1970s and early 1980's, in exile from the rightwing military's (and CIA's) Dirty War of torture and "disappearance" against leftists and students. He volunteered that when Obama was elected, people had had great hopes that the United States had changed. But he fears that the new administration's support for the anti-democratic coup in Honduras in June and the sham elections there in November has emboldened right wing elements throughout the continent.

Our new friend, on learning that my partner is a student of the implications of the U.S. adopting torture as policy under the Bush regime, spoke proudly of Argentinians' twenty year effort to prosecute their own torturing generals. "It took a long time, but the result is worth it."

Badly behaved tourists.

Somewhat to my surprise, there is a set of tourists much more resented in Chile and Argentina than the relatively few oblivious North Americans. People from both countries volunteered their disgust with the behavior of back-packing Israelis. "They are not well-brought up; they leave garbage all over."

Hence the sign at left from an Argentinian park.

I have no idea whether this sentiment contains elements of European anti-Semitism, stems from repulsion against Israel's treatment of Palestinians, or simply reflects that traveling Israelis actually do act boorishly when wandering the world. This was something I had not encountered previously.

Argentinians and Chileans don't much like each other

However little Patagonians may like various foreigners who descend on their countries, they save their real distrust and dislike for each other.


Once upon a time this Chilean sheep farm on Last Chance Fiord was a grand estancia, though land reform and the contemporary economy has reduced its owners to welcoming tourists for magnificent lamb barbecues.


But the current Senor Eberhard proudly recounts that when Argentinians tried to move in during the last century, his grandfather continued to fly the Chilean flag, defending the land.

Chileans we met seemed to feel that neighboring Argentina was "the boondocks." Their border crossing bureaucrats were strict and thorough, a little reminiscent of the paranoid U.S. TSA, in fact. Argentina seemed "laid back" in comparison.


A bronzed figure of Francisco "Perito" Moreno sits behind a desk in an information center of Argentina's Los Glaciares National Park.

Meanwhile, Argentinians described Chile as aggressively grasping. Mr. Moreno, pictured above, is a hero for having surveyed the Patagonian hinterland in late 19th century and successfully staking out Argentina's claim to the peaks that became this most astonishing park.


In contemporary El Calafate, the tourist town that serves as Argentina's gateway to its Patagonian wonders, people had very immediate concerns. Chileans, enjoying a stronger economy, are "buying up all the land." Don't know if this is true, but I have enough experience of urban gentrification to know what ugly feelings arise when property becomes unaffordable to its present residents ...