"Sometimes democracy must be bathed in blood."
Gen. Augusto Pinochet, military dictator of Chile.
"But from each crime are born bullets that will one day seek out in you where the heart lies."
Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet, diplomat, political figure, winner of Nobel Prize in literature.
"I am a woman, a socialist, separated and agnostic—all the sins together."
Michelle Bachelet, president of Chile.
Chile, like every country, contains the entire spectrum of human potential, with all the inherent messiness of the human condition. The three people quoted above are among the most famous Chileans in history. All had an enormous impact on their country and, since all countries are connected, the world.
Pinochet was named commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army in August 1973 by President Salvador Allende. On Sept. 11, 1973, a military coup toppled Allende's democratically elected government. Pinochet was appointed president by the military junta and ruled one of the most brutal, murderous regimes in Latin American history until 1990. Exact numbers are impossible to determine, but under Pinochet some 3,200 of his political opponents were murdered, 80,000 were jailed without trial, 30,000 were tortured (some dying as a consequence) and 200,000 went into exile.
A few exiles were tracked down by Pinochet's secret service and murdered in other countries, including Orlando Letelier and American Ronni Moffitt in Washington, D.C. Since the CIA, at the behest of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, supported, funded and gave advice, advisors and weaponry to both the coup and Pinochet's dictatorship, America is complicit in this criminal period of Chile. Sadly, it is not the only time the United States has subverted the democratically elected governments of sovereign nations (Iran and Guatemala come to mind).
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Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1971. Fellow Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez of Colombia called Neruda "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language." John Leonard of The New York Times called him "one of the great ones, a Whitman of the south." He was a poet of and for the people, and he was in many ways the conscience of South America. In 1966, he was invited to speak at an International PEN conference in New York but was officially barred from entering the U.S. because he was a communist. Arthur Miller, the conference organizer, persuaded the Johnson administration to give Neruda a visa. Good for Lyndon Johnson. Neruda was a star of the conference, giving readings to packed halls and recording some of his poetry for the Library of Congress. Because of the presence of Neruda and several writers from Eastern Bloc communist states, Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes later termed the 1966 PEN conference "a beginning of the end" of the Cold War.
In 1970, Neruda was nominated for the Chilean presidency but he chose to support Allende, who in turn appointed him ambassador to France, where he stayed until failing health brought him back to Chile to die in 1973. Just days before his death, Pinochet's thugs searched Neruda's home and he said to them, "Look around—there's only one thing of danger to you here—poetry." Despite Pinochet's threats, curfews and enormous military presence, Neruda's funeral was attended by thousands of Chileans and turned into the first public protest against the military dictatorship.
It was the seed that grew into the 2006 election of Michelle Bachelet as president of Chile. Bachelet, one of the more accomplished and remarkable people on the world stage, exemplifies heart and why there is hope in the world, even in the imperfect, corrupt world of politics. Her father, a general in the Chilean air force, was arrested on Sept. 11, 1973, for the "treason" of believing the military should be governed by civilians rather than vice versa, and jailed. He died in prison as a result of six months of daily torture. The next year, both Michelle and her mother were arrested, interrogated and tortured, but because of "sympathetic" military connections—not every Pinochet military man was a monster—they were allowed to go into exile.
Eventually they were "allowed" to return to their native country, in which political power had been traditionally wielded by an elite bastion of conservatism, Catholicism and machismo. Still, as a single female with two children from an aborted marriage and one from outside marriage, a socialist and an agnostic, she was elected president, the first female in Latin American history to do so without riding in on a husband's coattails. In Chile, a president can only serve one term (a fine idea in my view), so she will step down in a few months with a current approval rating of over 70 percent, leaving her country in far better shape than she found it, having broken some traditional gender/religious/social/superstitious taboos and stereotypes, healing some crimes and washing off some blood of the past. Bachelet is the first political/social role model of the 21st century. Obama is the second.
There is hope, comrades.
