Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Pinochet and the Saving of Chile

If you've read previous posts on this blog, you know I served as a Mormon missionary in Chile in 1979-80, which was during the halcyon days of the military dictatorship headed up by Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. (His maternal surname always reminds me of Peter Lorre's character in Casablanca: "Reeck! You must help me! Re-e-eck!") I feel like I have a pretty balanced opinion of Pinochet (pronounced pee-no-CHET, not pee-no-SHAY), although most Americans, having been spoon-fed a most unsavory image of the man by the mainstream media, would regard me as a right-wing nutball for not completely condemning him as the devil incarnate.


Let me say this: to the extent Pinochet's government tortured and murdered people (especially in extra-territorial operations, such as the Prats and Letelier murders), I do condemn him. Furthermore, it was while living under his government's austere, laissez-faire economic system -- in which the middle class rapidly dissipated, effectively leaving three social classes: the rich, the poor, and the desperate -- that I first realized what untrammeled capitalism does to a society and the people in it. (I once had a conversation with an educated Chilean woman of German descent about Pinochet's economic advisors, the notorious "Chicago Boys"; she advised me that for most Chileans the first syllable was silent. [Inside joke.])

However, that having been said, today's Chile owes Pinochet a debt of gratitude for having almost single-handedly preserved the underpinnings of democratic government in Chile at a time when they were severely threatened. Though many now pooh-pooh the notion, Pinochet prevented the advent of a Cuba-like wasteland envisioned by Salvador Allende, the democratically elected but still diabolical Marxist president whom he ousted in the now-infamous 1973 coup de etat. (Even in 1980, when a constitution was ratified consolidating power in the military, there was no doubt that eventually Pinochet would allow free elections. Can anyone see that happening in Cuba anytime soon?)

What really bugs me, notwithstanding the reported crimes of the Pinochet regime, is the great number of dictators (generally left-wing, of course) whose crimes are much worse, but who don't have nearly as much opprobrium heaped on them. That suggests to me that crimes against humanity aren't, finally, the issue, whereas ideology is. Thus Pinochet's greatest crime in the world's eyes appears to be his having thwarted Allende's Marxist designs, and the rest is mere window dressing.