Pinochet: senator for life, thug for eternity

"Money’s freedom, which scorns everyone else’s, knew no bounds during the dictatorship of General Pinochet, and made a worthy contribution to poisoning everything."

Eduardo Galeano

The recent arrest in Britain of former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet is good news.

If he is actually brought to justice for his innumerable crimes against humanity, against the Chilean people, against citizens of many other countries (Spain, Switzerland, Argentina, France, England and the United States among them) unfortunate enough to be in Chile when Pinochet seized power, against the concepts of justice, democracy, decency and civilized behavior, it will be better news. At this writing it is unclear whether the arrest will stick or if justice will be served.

Pinochet is a thug.

Like many military dictators, Latin American and otherwise, he is a thug with an attitude protected by force, the force of murder, torture, brutality, secrecy and the economic interests he served. That he is a general makes him a high-ranking thug with an attitude in a uniform. That the general in his military uniform presided over a police state that changed active verbs into dead nouns, adding los desaparecidos—"the disappeared"—to the world’s lexicon makes him a high-ranking thug with an attitude, a uniform and a legacy.

Much to Pinochet’s consternation, the legacy, unlike more than 3,000 of los desaparecidos themselves, hasn’t conveniently disappeared into the soil of Chile and the vast waters of the Pacific Ocean.

Nor will it.

Nor should it.

In 1973 Pinochet led a violent military coup of the democratically elected government of Chile. The elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, was murdered in the process, though the man who introduced "the disappeared" into modern language and who was secretly recorded during the coup ordering Allende’s murder, insists that Allende committed suicide. From the beginning, murder was the literal order of the day, a useful political contrivance, in the brutal regime of General Augusto Pinochet.

Murder is the business of thugs for hire, not that of legitimate generals, politicians, presidents, statesmen or honest businessmen. In this regard, it needs mentioning that the military of Chile is a police force, not an army. The primary ‘war’ the military of Chile has fought since 1973 is with its own citizenry; it has engaged in a few minor skirmishes with Argentina, with a couple of military casualties on each side, but nothing compared to the numbers of los desaparecidos civilian deaths.

Thugs, no matter in whose employ or how powerful, no matter how starched their uniform or dark their glasses, no matter how deep their yearning for a respectability that respectable people can never bestow upon them, are the enemies of democracy and all free peoples.

Democracy is the people’s best friend.

As cannot be mention too often, Augusto Pinochet is a thug, an enemy of democracy and human decency in human affairs.

The coup of 1973 ended more than 100 years of freedom and democratically elected government in Chile, the longest existing democracy in Latin American history.

The coup of 1973 was financed, organized, instigated, informed, encouraged and, let no one forget, armed by the CIA at the instigation of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.

General Augusto Pinochet, the high ranking thug with an attitude in a uniform who changed active verbs into dead nouns, was, as dictator of Chile, an instrument of American foreign policy.

An understanding of the significance of the last three sentences is necessary for an appreciation of the stakes involved in bringing Pinochet to justice. One murder is, of course, one too many. More than 3,000 murders is a form of cultural genocide. Genocide is not nice, and neither are the people responsible for it, no matter what uniform they hide within, no matter what weltanschauung they use as justification for their actions. Those who caution that Pinochet’s arrest threatens the ‘new’ democracy in Chile have no sense of irony and a very short view of history.

A perspective of scale and terror instilled may be useful for thinking about Pinochet: the relative populations of the U.S. and Chile are such that it would take 60,000 los desaparecidos in the U.S. to have the same effect on the American populace as Pinochet did in Chile. Think of that. Those of us fortunate enough to have full bellies, warm beds to sleep in and freedom from the terror of thugs are reluctant to think about people who have been dragged from warm beds in the night, who have had their bellies slit, who have been tortured, raped, murdered and disappeared as part of the political process.

Some people like to think such things don’t happen, or if they do they happen to other people in far off countries whose people are different than us and we are not in any way…complicit. This is the thinking of denial, repression, avoidance, irresponsibility and simple dishonesty.

Other people like to think about justice and the more subtle reality that los desaparecidos took a bit of you and me and everyone else (especially Americans whose taxes funded Pinochet) with them. Bringing Pinochet to justice can regain some of what has been lost; not the lives of the disappeared, of course, but something more enduring without which the possibility of freedom cannot exist.

Pinochet retired last year, trading in his uniform for a dark, conservative business suit. He cleverly wangled a deal conferring upon him "senator-for-life" status that keeps him forever immune from prosecution in Chile. There are many in Chile who would prosecute him if they could. He is 82 years old and in poor health. Assuming that his senator- for-life status gave him diplomatic immunity from justice, he went to England for back surgery and to drink tea and eat chocolates with Margaret Thatcher, a staunch supporter and admirer of the thug from Chile.

This was not the first mistaken assumption of Pinochet’s sordid life of brutality.