Pinochet's downfall marks a new Chilean society
It has become such a regular occurrence that to question its validity seems almost churlish. Every time the former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet heads towards another milestone in his long battle against prosecution, his health mysteriously takes a turn for the worse. Last Wednesday, he was reported to have fainted and lost consciousness for some thirty minutes, coincidentally on the eve of a debate in the Chilean Congress on whether or not to strip him of diplomatic immunity and prosecute him. Ironically, he is being charged not for the crimes perpetrated by his regime in the 1970s and 1980s – charges which his lawyers claim he is too senile to fight – but for a recently-disclosed tax evasion scandal. Al Capone would appreciate this twist in the tale.
The likelihood is that he will be dead and buried before any judicial procedure is ever completed. But his hounding by the authorities over the last eight years – ever since his dramatic house arrest in Britain, at the behest of the Spanish judge Balthazar Garzon – shows how irrevocably ruined his reputation is in his homeland. His supporters, once a vocal group, have dwindled to insignificant figures, and the country is changing in many ways that are making it unrecognisable from the one that he ruled for seventeen brutal years.
Over the last decade Chile has steered the most successful and stable economy in South America. The gulf between rich and poor which blights the entire continent has, at least somewhat, been addressed through a number of social programs that have bolstered President Ricardo Lagos’ popularity while not endangering the country’s growth; and, most notably for the outside world, scores of key figures from the seventeen-year long dictatorship – not least, Pinochet himself – are at long last being prosecuted, in a clear sign that the country is beginning to come to terms with the atrocities that still linger in recent memory.
Two of the clearest indicators of the progress that Chile is making under Lagos come in the form of the leading candidates to replace him. Michele Bachelat, currently the country’s defence minister, and Soledad Olvear, the Foreign Trade minister, were locked in a tight race for the nomination of the ruling Concertacion party. What distinguishes them is the fact that they are women, and the likely prospect of a female Chilean president in the next year demonstrates a significant shift in the country’s attitudes. In recent weeks Olvear finally acquiesced to her opponent, and Bachelat will now represent Concertacion in December’s election. As the daughter of a political prisoner who died under Pinochet, and a self-described socialist, Bachelet is the type of politician who would have been unthinkable under the military dictatorship. Her ascendancy to the cusp of the country’s top job demonstrates the plurality of the new political order.
Meanwhile, further indications of the country’s progressive development are found in the new divorce laws. Until 2004, Chile was one of the few remaining countries in which divorce did not exist. The only way around this legalistic black hole was to arrange an expensive marriage annulment, far too costly for most Chileans. However, in March 2004 – amidst harsh condemnation from the Church – the Congress approved a divorce law, which became a reality in November. Since then thousands of Chileans have applied for divorce, legally separating couples who – in some cases – had been estranged for years or even decades. A new law against domestic abuse is also being debated in the Senate, which aims to give police more power to arrest and prosecute serial abusers. According to the English-language newspaper The Santiago Times, around 1 in 3 Chilean women are abused at home, and in a culture where male-on-female violence is all too accepted, it is encouraging that there are measures to tackle the problem.
Chilean society is changing in other ways too. The relationship between the civilian population and the military is now a far more transparent one that it was in the years since the dictatorship’s end. During the 1990s, the upper echelons of the military still retained immunity from prosecution, and figures such as Pinochet were self-elected as senators for life. However, such immunity no longer exists, and many of those who committed the atrocities during the seventies and eighties are being tried and punished for their crimes. The reaction by the public in May, when 46 army recruits were lost when their mismanaged expedition in the Andes hit a blizzard, was one of fury and incredulity. Several officers lost their jobs, and the episode managed to call into question the continuation of military service.
Of course all of these changes are not mutually linked, yet they are endemic of a widening of the conservative social mores that have traditionally dominated Chile. How far they go to permanently changing the structure of the country remains to be seen, but right now Chile has gone some of the way to regaining its pre-dictatorship position as a bastion of strength and stability in the often-unruly climes of South America.
The likelihood is that he will be dead and buried before any judicial procedure is ever completed. But his hounding by the authorities over the last eight years – ever since his dramatic house arrest in Britain, at the behest of the Spanish judge Balthazar Garzon – shows how irrevocably ruined his reputation is in his homeland. His supporters, once a vocal group, have dwindled to insignificant figures, and the country is changing in many ways that are making it unrecognisable from the one that he ruled for seventeen brutal years.
Over the last decade Chile has steered the most successful and stable economy in South America. The gulf between rich and poor which blights the entire continent has, at least somewhat, been addressed through a number of social programs that have bolstered President Ricardo Lagos’ popularity while not endangering the country’s growth; and, most notably for the outside world, scores of key figures from the seventeen-year long dictatorship – not least, Pinochet himself – are at long last being prosecuted, in a clear sign that the country is beginning to come to terms with the atrocities that still linger in recent memory.
Two of the clearest indicators of the progress that Chile is making under Lagos come in the form of the leading candidates to replace him. Michele Bachelat, currently the country’s defence minister, and Soledad Olvear, the Foreign Trade minister, were locked in a tight race for the nomination of the ruling Concertacion party. What distinguishes them is the fact that they are women, and the likely prospect of a female Chilean president in the next year demonstrates a significant shift in the country’s attitudes. In recent weeks Olvear finally acquiesced to her opponent, and Bachelat will now represent Concertacion in December’s election. As the daughter of a political prisoner who died under Pinochet, and a self-described socialist, Bachelet is the type of politician who would have been unthinkable under the military dictatorship. Her ascendancy to the cusp of the country’s top job demonstrates the plurality of the new political order.
Meanwhile, further indications of the country’s progressive development are found in the new divorce laws. Until 2004, Chile was one of the few remaining countries in which divorce did not exist. The only way around this legalistic black hole was to arrange an expensive marriage annulment, far too costly for most Chileans. However, in March 2004 – amidst harsh condemnation from the Church – the Congress approved a divorce law, which became a reality in November. Since then thousands of Chileans have applied for divorce, legally separating couples who – in some cases – had been estranged for years or even decades. A new law against domestic abuse is also being debated in the Senate, which aims to give police more power to arrest and prosecute serial abusers. According to the English-language newspaper The Santiago Times, around 1 in 3 Chilean women are abused at home, and in a culture where male-on-female violence is all too accepted, it is encouraging that there are measures to tackle the problem.
Chilean society is changing in other ways too. The relationship between the civilian population and the military is now a far more transparent one that it was in the years since the dictatorship’s end. During the 1990s, the upper echelons of the military still retained immunity from prosecution, and figures such as Pinochet were self-elected as senators for life. However, such immunity no longer exists, and many of those who committed the atrocities during the seventies and eighties are being tried and punished for their crimes. The reaction by the public in May, when 46 army recruits were lost when their mismanaged expedition in the Andes hit a blizzard, was one of fury and incredulity. Several officers lost their jobs, and the episode managed to call into question the continuation of military service.
Of course all of these changes are not mutually linked, yet they are endemic of a widening of the conservative social mores that have traditionally dominated Chile. How far they go to permanently changing the structure of the country remains to be seen, but right now Chile has gone some of the way to regaining its pre-dictatorship position as a bastion of strength and stability in the often-unruly climes of South America.
posted by DN at 12:18 AM
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