Murderer or Economic Visionary? 

As I stood reading the displays of Chile’s excellent National History Museum in Santiago an American began to talk to me in a grating, southern drawl. “I can’t believe this country”, he told me. “They treat Pinochet like dirt, but he was the one who put this country on its feet. He opened this place up. Chile wouldn’t be the economic success it is today if it wasn’t for him”. I stared at this smart, middle-aged man in disbelief. He added, “You know he had American financial advisers from Chicago? Solid, well educated men that knew what had to be done”. Regaining my composure I asked, “By ‘what had to be done’ do you mean the disappearance of over 3,000 opponents and the torture of 30,000 political prisoners?”. Calmly he replied, “What is 3,000 compared to Stalin”. 

Few figures polarise Chilean, and evidently international, opinion as strongly as Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s dictatorial leader from 1973-1990. Some praise him as an economic visionary; others denounce him as a mass murderer. Whether you hold him to be the hero who saved Chile from a Marxist hell; or the traitor that destroyed the country’s one chance to mould its own future; make sure you know your facts before raising the topic, and expect a long and heated discussion. 

Pinochet was born in the busy port of Valparaiso on 25 November 1915. His education was primarily orientated towards the armed forces and in 1931 he enrolled in the Military School in Santiago. A diligent and successful student he graduated as a Second Infantry Lieutenant in 1935. Pinochet gradually moved up the ranks, and by the time Salvador Allende won the election of 1971 he had risen to Division General and been named as the General Commander of the Santiago Army Garrison. As the national situation deteriorated under Allende’s Marxist government, General Prats, Command in Chief of the Army, retired claiming his lack of support had made his position untenable. Augusto Pinochet, a man with a squeaky clean record and apparently loyal to Allende replaced him. It was a move that was to change Chilean history forever. 

The Military Junta that took power in 1973 had no qualms about what it had to do to restore stability. All opposition parties were banned, the press was censored and dissidents up and down the country were abducted and executed without trial. The notorious Caravan of Death, an Army death squad flew the length of the country by helicopter in October 1973, extinguishing 97 influential opposition figures. Even dissidents that had fled the country were not out of Pinochet’s reach. Operation Condor, tracked the numerous Chileans that had fled into exile. No-one was safe from Pinochet’s paranoid anti-communist drive. General Prats, Pinochet’s predecessor in the role of Commander in Chief, was killed in Buenos Aires in 1974. 

However, even given the above atrocities there are numerous Chileans who believe that Pinochet was precisely what the country needed. The stability his iron fist secured, and the confidence his positive relationship with the US created, made Chile a hotspot for foreign investment in Latin America. The economy was opened up and radical free market reforms instigated under the guidance of the ‘Chicago Boys’, a group of graduates from Chicago University that would become incredibly influential in Pinochet’s regime. Huge loans were given by the IMF and World Bank to facilitate these reforms. Chile would go on to enjoy economic prosperity, with the GDP growing by 7% annually from 1985 to 1996; by far the highest rate in Latin America.

The vast majority of this prosperity, however, was limited to the upper classes. Chile’s poor were worse off than ever, with practically all social welfare having been scrapped, and unemployment at 25% throughout the Pinochet period. By 1987 Pinochet’s continual claim that the country was not yet ready to return to democracy had begun to lose all credibility. Pressure, particularly from the international community, obliged Pinochet to call a referendum to decide the country’s political future. Political parties were officially legalised for the first time in 14 years and the nation’s fate was put to its people. A ‘Yes’ vote was to keep Pinochet in power until 1997; a ‘No’ was to force a general election for the following year.

55.99% voted ‘No’ and the country’s gradual return to democracy had begun. The next year Pinochet lost the general election and reluctantly, but honestly, gave up his presidency. However, despite losing the election Pinochet maintained the support of the army and thus any transition to democracy was done with his consent. He remained Commander-in-Chief of the army until 1998, after which he became a Senator-for-life. Although Pinochet lost the 1987 referendum, he still obtained a formidable support of 44.1%; his political influence was by no means over. 

The story might have ended there had Pinochet not been arrested in 1998 by English police officers, during a brief visit to the country to receive medical treatment, on the request of Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón. In an event that would rattle public notions of justice, forgiveness and memory Pinochet was accused of numerous charges of systematic torture, murder and illegal detention. The ‘Pinochet saga’ would continue well after the former-dictator’s death and polarise opinion around the world.

As the first former head of state in history to be arrested under universal jurisdiction, the case propelled the dilemmas and complications of human rights and international law into the global consciousness. Pinochet never stood trial, but the widespread accusations, investigations and growing body of evidence ensured that the man that many had heralded as Chile’s saviour died on 10 December 2006 in disgrace.

Want to know more? Try;

• Pinochet: The Politics of Torture, by Hugh O'Shaughnessy.
• The Dictator's Shadow: Life Under Augusto Pinochet - A Political Memoir, by Heraldo Munoz.
• Reckoning with Pinochet: The Memory Question in Democratic Chile, 1989-2006, by Steve Stern.