[Vision2020] The Man Who Brought the Spanish Inquisition to Chile

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Greetings:

This was my radio commentary for Radio Free Moscow this morning.  We should all be ashamed of our 17-year support for this dangerous autocrat.

Nick Gier

THE MAN WHO BROUGHT THE SPANISH INQUISITION TO CHILE:
AUGUSTO PINOCHET, DONALD RUMSFELD, AND TORTURE 

This criminal [Pinochet] has departed without ever being sentenced 
for all the acts he was responsible for during his dictatorship.

--Hugo Gutierrez, human rights attorney

I see myself as a good angel. . . Not a leaf moves 
in this country if I'm not moving it.

--Augusto Pinochet

In October, 2002, I took part in an Elder Hostel trip to Chile.  After a few days in Santiago, we spent one week in the Atacama Desert in the North and then one week on Chile's Easter Island, 2800 miles out in the Pacific Ocean. 

We met a local guide in the port city of Iquique, who took us to a famous nitrate mine and ghost town where he had grown up as a child.  He trained as a school teacher and was assigned to an Indian village near the Bolivian border. 

One night in 1974, agents from DINA, the Chilean secret police, arrested our guide and jailed him without charge for two years.  He was repeatedly tortured as he was interrogated about allegations that his support for the Indians in his village was subversive. I now regret the many questions that I asked him, because he eventually broke down and cried as these memories welled up in him.

Our guide on Easter Island was a son of Orlando Letelier, former Chilean ambassador to the U. S., whose car was blown up by DINA agents in Washington, D. C., on September 26, 1976.  (An American colleague Ronni Moffitt was also killed.)  Even after 28 years, returning to Chile after Pinochet's ouster in 1990, Jos Letelier was apparently so numbed by the experience that he refused to talk about the Pinochet dictatorship and his father's murder.

The assassination of Orlando Letelier was part of Operation Condor, an intelligence cooperative set up by the military dictators of the Southern Cone of Latin America.  Allegations about the CIA's connection to Condor were finally verified in the 2001 release of a State Department document that proved that communications among the Condor countries was routed through a U. S. base in Panama. By means of this facility, intelligence was shared about leftist activities, the best torture techniques, and various ways to "disappear" people.  The Argentine military routinely flew detainees out over the Atlantic Ocean and pushed them out the door.

On June 8, 2006, Michelle Bachelet, Chile's first woman socialist president, laid a wreath at the site of the D. C. bombing.  Bachelet and her mother had been imprisoned and mistreated, and her father, an Air Force general who had defied Pinochet, was tortured to death by DINA agents.  Needless to say, Bachelet announced that conscience would prevent her from attending Pinochet's funeral.

As leader of the Socialist Party, Salvador Allende won a plurality of votes in the 1970 election, and he was confirmed as President by a vote of 153 to 15 in Chile's Parliament.  On September 11, 1973, General Pinochet and two other military officers organized a coup and ordered an attack on the Presidential Palace in Santiago, where Allende decided to commit suicide rather than be dishonored by mutinous troops.

The U. S. role in the overthrow of Allende is well documented.  The CIA financed a truckers' strike that paralyzed the country's economy. A CIA cable dated October 16, 1970 announced that it was "the firm and continuing policy" of the U. S. "that Allende be overthrown by a coup." 

In a 1976 meeting with Pinochet, Henry Kissinger told him to ignore widespread international criticism and said: "We wish your government well."  A CIA memo admitted that DINA's interrogation techniques were "out of the Spanish Inquisition," but they appear to be no different from those used by the CIA in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Under the Pinochet the economy, already weak under Allende and made worse by CIA subversion, went into a tailspin.  It was saved by free market consultants from the Univeristy of Chicago, led by Nobel Laureate and recently deceased Milton Friedman.  Inflation was brought under control and commentators started talking about the Chilean economic miracle.  Allende privatized all pensions in the country, and that fact that most Chileans believe that it has been a failure was used against Bush's plans to privatize Social Security.

While in London for back surgery in 1998, Pinochet was issued a summons by a Spanish judge, who wanted Pinochet to stand trial for human rights violations against a Spanish citizen. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visited him there and reassured him that Chile's Socialist Party was "a small minority of Communists who nearly wrecked the country." A British court decided that he was too ill to stand trial and he returned to Chile in 2000. Until his death his attorneys skillfully protected him from prosecution in the 200 plus criminal cases brought against him.

A German judge is now considering a case against Donald Rumsfeld brought by 12 detainees, who, as German citizens, charge that they were tortured in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Col. Janis Garpinski, former commander of Abu Ghraib, is prepared to testify that the "alternative" interrogation techniques used at that infamous prison were approved by the Pentagon.

The same day that Chile's new president laid the wreath at the site of the terrorist bombing, she also met with President Bush.  I'm sure that she was far too polite to mention the obvious parallels on human rights abuses, and we cannot be sure if our obtuse and ill informed leader realized how embarrassing and tragic the 17 years of U. S. support for Pinochet actually was.  The White House did, however, release a statement of sympathy: "Our thoughts today are with the victims of his [Pinochet's] reign and their families."

In Santiago's Plaza Constitucion there are three monuments in front of the Presidential Palace: a moving tribute to Chile's indigenous tribes, a statue of the founder of the country, and a statue of Salvador Allende.  There is one tribe in Patagonia that prides itself in never being defeated by the Spaniards, and it was because of our guide's support of Chile's proud Indians that he has been scared for life.  

The quotations in this column came from the AP and "The Guardian" (December 11, 2006). Copies of CIA cables can be viewed at www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/18/documents/cia.chile.