One of My Biggest Bêtes Noires

Out of all the many truly vile dictators in Latin American History, one would think that it would be easy to come up with the worst, but such an exercise illustrates the futility of trying to quantify evil.  Would you pick Castro?  Clearly he would be a good choice: he's appropriately megalomaniacal, he's now the longest running leader in the Western Hemisphere (and the only dictator) he's unable to consider the fact that he bears any responsibility for Cuba's present state and he's long winded to the point of verbal flatulence.  How about Efraín Rios Montt?  Incredibly brutal and vile man, but a mercifully short time in office (18 months - and let's hope it stays that way come this November).  Juan Peron would be a good choice: the very essence of a demagogue and his cozying up to the Nazis would place him up there.  Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay for his sheer longevity; the Argentine Junta of the 1970's-80's, Hugos Banzer and Chávez might merit some attention as well. [ed. note: Yes, I know Chávez was elected.  It doesn't mean that he doesn't have a dictatorial side.]

Well in the interest of fairness, I'll award the title to a right-wing dictator and a left wing dictator.  The left-winger is far too easy (the pool of choice is also pretty small), but I'll gladly give the title to Fidel Castro.  For the right-winger, I have to award the title to Augusto Pinochet Ugarte.

I'm sorry that I didn't have this blog when Pinochet was in power; indeed I'm sorry that blogging wasn't a phenomenon at the time.  I'm sorry that I still have any reason to blog about Castro at all.  I wish he were either in the dock at the Hague or slipping off into quiet, drooling dottage in a nursing home on Isla de Pinos.

The comments in this post on Tacitus' blog brought back to me why I find Pinochet so reprehensible.  Let me state first and unequivocally that the purpose of this post is not to burnish the image of Salvador Allende Gossens.  I carry no brief for Allende and I certainly feel that his friendship with Castro was morally indefensible.  I have little doubt that he overreached and in his zeal, ignored the needs and concerns of a sizable portion of Chilean society.  Any decent leader should never forget that they serve their entire nation and not just their most ardent supporters.

I have no patience with those who claim that Allende continued rule would have been worse than Pinochet's.  I prefer to deal in the facts at hand and here they are: in the three or so years Allende was in power torture was not widespread and institutionalized, people were not disappeared, Congress was not dissolved and political parties were not banned.  In the first three years of Pinochet's rule, all of these things occurred and the human rights abuses continued throughout the Pinochet years.  Please don't take my word for it regarding the human rights abuses.  Consider the reports of The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, The International Commission of Jurists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights among others all investigated and documented human rights abuses in Chile during the Pinochet years.  In August 1991 after Pinochet had been turned out of power in a plebiscite, the human rights arm of the Roman Catholic Church in Chile, the Vicariate of Solidarity announced the discovery of 128 bodies that had been buried secretly in Santiago's General Cemetery sometime shortly after the coup in September 1973.  In some cases two bodies were placed in the same coffin.  President Aylwin summoned Pinochet, who was still in charge of the military, to La Moneda, Chile's presidential palace to express his anger.  Upon leaving, a television reporter asked Pinochet to comment on the fact that some of the coffins carried two bodies.  His sole response was "How very economical!"  This is the man that Margaret Thatcher and Robert Nova among many others on the right have lionized.

Pinochet also had a strongly megalomaniacal side.  When he lost the plebiscite in 1988, he refused to formally acknowledge the results that night when it appeared that his side was losing.  His regime was releasing disinformation indicating that his side was winning, but some of his closest advisers wouldn't stand for it.  His Interior Minister, Sérgio Onofre Jarpa threatened to go public with the news that Pinochet's opponents had won.  The heor of that night was General Fernando Mattei, the Commander of the Air Force who announced before reporters that it appeared that the NO (to continued rule by Pinochet) vote had won and further stated - no doubt in a sensitive and carefully considered effort to ease tensions - "We are calm."  A couple of years ago Mattei disclosed on Chilean television that Pinochet had demanded that the military be sent out on the streets and that the plebiscite be annulled.  Mattei, Admiral Merino and the head of the Caribineros, Rodolfo Stange all refused to do so.  After the loss, Pinochet was speaking before a Chilean women's group and commenting on the plebiscite, said that history had another famous plebiscite and the public chose Barabbas instead of Jesus.  One of among many peculiar acts by a man who claimed to be a devout Roman Catholic.

The final aspect of Pinochet's record that makes him one of my bêtes noires was the way in which he had La DINA, his secret police go after his enemies and kill them outside of Chile.  In 1974, General Prats, Pinochet's predecessor as Commander of the Army was blown up along with his wife in Buenos Aires by a car bomb so pwerful that it was estimated that it sent the car five stories high.  In 1975, La DINA hired the services of an Italian neo-fascist named Stefano Della Chiae to shoot Bernardo Leighton, the cofounder of Chile's Christian Democrat Party on the streets of Rome.  Leighton and his wife both survived.

Far and away, however, the most notorious example of these acts of extraterritorial terrorism was the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington, DC in 1976.  One of the men convicted of the act (in Chile, no less) was Manuel Contreras, the head of La DINA who had breakfast nearly every day with Pinochet in his office at La Moneda.  Contreras, who was also in the military at the time and thus Pinochet's subordinate in chain of command stated under oath that he engaged in any activities only on Pinochet's express orders and knowledge.  Makes you wonder how Margaret Thatcher can have tea with a terrorist.

Comments

[Michael J. Totten]

Great post.

I would personally put the Argentines as worse than Pinochet for various reasons, but you're right that it is hard to quantify evil in this way. Aside from that non-quibble, bravo! This is exactly right.

[Randy Paul]

I think that if the Argentine Junta had kept the same leader in charge the entire time, he would have gotten my vote. The cult of personality is what cinched it for me regarding Pinochet; that and the fact that Chile had been fairly democratic before Pinochet and the extraterritorial acts of terrorism.

Thanks, Michael.

[James R MacLean]

Excellent posting on this, Randy. I was thinking about la guerra sordida in Argentina also, and I'd say Gen. Videla really gave Pinochet a hard run for his money. Videla's policies included a few thuggish twists I find especially hateful, such as executing women immediately after giving birth and kidnapping their children; the dumping of living prisoners out of airplanes in the S. Atlantic; and the murderously criminal financial policies, which were known to the leadership to be leading Argentina to ruin.

But Pinochet was more of an architect, more of a spider in the midst of the web; Videla stuck me as the single most macabre of the caricatures bumbling and diddling their way in calamity.