A-Infos (en) Chile, Anarkismo.net: the Death of Pinochet

This is a selection of articles and public statements on the death of 
the dictator Pinochet, who end up his days in impunity, protected by the 
governements of the ruling political alliance (Concertación) and all of 
the political class. His dark period in power will not only be remebered 
for what it was as a tyranny marked by torture and political murder, but 
also, as the start of an economic and political model that increased the 
traditional marginalisation and exclusion of the Chilean popular sectors 
to its highest degree.The struggle for liberation was not over with the 
formal end of the dictatorship and it won't be over with the death of 
this criminal.
> Public statement on Pinochet’s death
The darkest figure of our country’s history has just passed away. He, 
who was a mixture of a mythological monster and scumbag, expired on 
Saturday the 10th of December, on the afternoon, paradoxically, on the 
very day that happens to be the Human’s Rights international day. We 
cannot find the words to fully describe the heinous legacy of this 
creepy animal, who was nothing but the puppet of international 
capitalists and US imperialism in order to defeat a people building 
socialism from below and who walked the road to overcome the narrow 
frame of the bourgeois-democracy offered by reformists; the military 
dictatorship started on a dark September the 11th, 1973, did not only 
bring us annihilation, missing prisoners, torture and exile for 
thousands of brothers and sisters, but also it condemned the generations 
to come to live out of the scraps generated by the system of neoliberal 
accumulation of capital, founded on fire and blood. Taking all this into 
account we declare:

1. That while the US Department of State declared to be on the side of 
the people that had to suffer the consequences of the military coup, in 
this very moment, they condemn millions of human beings in Iraq, 
Afghanistan and all over the world to the same kind of atrocities; this 
glamorous beasts do not acknowledge, at the same time, that it was they 
who planned the coup, being the main beneficiaries of the resulting 
neoliberal model. Today, instead of taking a cowardly distance, they 
should say thanks to the dictator for all the benefits they got when he 
got rid of those “marxist and anarchic hordes” that had the country 
‘under siege’. Without their massacre and without the resulting 17 years 
dictatorship it would not have been possible to impose the new 
“development” model for Chile, and therefore, on the rest of the world.

2. That the ones to give continuity to Pinochet’s legacy, those who seat 
happily in the ICARE, in the dinners organised by the Production and 
Commerce Chamber, those who administer the country while having their 
breakfast in the Palace of Government, are all united under the figure 
of the dictator, though they can state otherwise in their speeches. The 
government alliance that administers the power of the rich ones is 
beyond the parties that explicitly form it. It is a concubinage of the 
right wing and the social-democracy in a single block of power that 
represents the interests of the national bourgeoisie and of the 
monopolist international capitalism, against the interests of the bulk 
of the people.

3. That, in the face of the attitudes of the army, we know that, since 
the battle of Lircay they have always been ready to draw their swords 
and attempt coups whenever the merchants bourgeoisie call them to defend 
their interests; therefore, we cannot be surprised with the special 
treatment and the submission to them showed by the current 
administration; being the military caste the guarantee of the bourgeois 
institutional order, as stated in the cursed Constitution of 1980.

4. That Pinochet’s death was an occasion of popular protest against 
impunity and against an economic model that keeps it stranglehold around 
our necks; taking this into account, we believe that Bachelet’s 
government manoeuvres in order not to give State honours to Pinochet was 
only intending not to be overwhelmed, at the end of the first year of 
her weak government, by a people with an enormous frustration and an 
indescribable anger against the impunity of murderers and torturers. 
Thus, we want out to vomit our anger in her face, to the Palace of 
government, as well as in our own neighbourhoods and squares, reassuring 
our own identity in struggle.

5. That, if we are sharper to interpret events, we believe that whoever 
affirms something negative –Pinochet was not a president- as an argument 
not to give State honours on behalf of a government that boasts to be 
respectful of law and the institutional order, is affirming at the same 
time, something positive that is the contrary of its denial –that the 
regime was itself illegitimate and that the dictator’s constitution is 
therefore illegitimate in origin. The government has therefore got 
entangled in an elementary bourgeois-judicial contradiction while 
clinging to the current state of affairs founded with the tyranny. Now, 
the people made its historical judgement on the streets and that has 
been an absolute fact. To understand this logic exercise is to 
understand fully the Pinochet’s constitution on its historical 
dimension, as well as his economic legacy. Therefore, it entitles us to 
overcome in a revolutionary fashion the dictatorship of the capitalists, 
with a new historical project of a legitimacy of a POPULAR SOCIALIST AND 
LIBERTARIAN nature.

For those who fell in the struggle yesterday, today and in the future

We will not fail you!

ORGANIZACION COMUNISTA LIBERTARIA – CHILE

Tuesday 12th of December, day of the beast incineration
--------------------------------------------

The Shadow of Pinochet over Chile

He died because he had to, because we all have to. That tyrant that 
thought he was invincible, the one that said that in our country not a 
single leaf moved without him knowing it, the one of the dark specs and 
those spooky speeches addressing the nation, he was taken away by the 
grim reaper. Our feelings about this are very confusing: on the one 
hand, we are glad to know that we don’t have to keep inhabiting the same 
world with such a heinous figure, nor breathing the same air. But we 
have a bitter feeling as we know that he passed away without being 
tried, protected by his amnesty laws and the governments of the ruling 
coalition, “la Concertación”. They remained always faithful to that pact 
with which they negotiated their power share. Let us remember that no 
one forced them to rush to London, back in 1998, to give a hand to their 
generalisimo, when he was facing some serious trouble. With not a trace 
of shame, they were the real protectors of the people’s murderer. We 
will never forget that “la Concertación” as an accomplice bear in their 
own consciousness the weight of thousands dead.

It has been them, the ruling coalition (including the Socialist party), 
that has been administering the institutions inherited by Pinochet, his 
State, his Constitution, his economic model. They are the ones who have 
resorted to his legacy of repressing the people in struggle and the 
mapuche indians. They are the ones who have grown rich with 
neoliberalism, which was founded with bullets and blood. They are the 
ones. And maybe because of that they are the ones that have more reasons 
than anyone else to be happy. Because the old crook is dead, because 
he’s no longer a problem for them, because it represents no longer their 
dark consciousness, because there is one reason less for all those nasty 
human rights’ lawyers to give them hassle. Because the living proof of 
the crime upon which the institutions of our country are founded is 
gone; institutions that they happily administer, by the way. He was gone 
without a trial but who are we trying to deceive? Not even in a thousand 
years time, if he was going to live that long, he would have been tried 
by “La Concertación”. He’s gone never to be tried, that’s why I suppose 
they might be so happy.

With the corpse of Pinochet, they think they can bury all those dead 
standing in the way. But in order to erase the face of Pinochet from the 
face of Chile, they should do what they did in the past with the ancient 
kings: he should be buried with all of its belongings –his army, his 
State, his innumerable pages of laws and his Constitution. His death is 
only making obvious the various contradictions in today’s Chile.

Some say that he is a dividing figure in the country: but he was only 
making too evident the division that has always existed between the 
elites and the riff raff, division that is reflected dramatically in a 
political system that works as a gigantic machine to exclude and 
marginalise 90% of the population.

President Bachelet said she would be shocked to give official State 
honours to the tyrant. But if she were being honest, she would have 
given him State honours: after all, it is she who is at the head of 
Pinochet State. Whether she likes it or not, she’s his successor. She 
should, at least, be kind enough for that little favour. Otherwise, if 
she is not to be the heir of the butcher, let her be coherent and put 
forward the extermination of the institutions inherited by the dictator, 
or at least, their democratic reform. This ambivalence between 
supervised democracy and authoritarianism has given to the Chilean 
capitalist class its particular flavour for the last three decades.

Though Pinochet is dead, his shadow will remain haunting us, what a pity 
for the traitors and opportunistic ones in “la Concertación”. His legacy 
is alive in our country, and its living personification is the army and 
the counter-insurgency State. But above all, it is the dual power that 
the army holds in practice. It is no coincidence that the Chilean flags 
were waving half mast in the barracks, but not in the rest of the State 
buildings. This happens because they are not subordinated to the civil 
powers and the do what they want. Whenever they feel like it, they might 
kick out any other government that might become “too radical”. Those 
half mast flags represent the supremacy of the military over the 
executive (something typical of dependent countries where the weakness 
of the bourgeoisie is compensated through the strength of the military).

Pinochet was condemned long ago by the entire world, something in Chile 
“la Concertación” was not able to do. Even the White House, referring to 
the death of Pinochet, took some distance from this psycho they put in 
power and hypocritically declared that their sorrow lied with the 
victims of his bloody reign. He had even to ask pathetically for his 
corpse to be incinerated, to avoid his tomb being desecrated. The sole 
sincere friend he ever seemed to have was Margaret Thatcher, both of 
them being made out of the same fabric, the Iron Lady. She seemingly was 
the only person to express sadness for his decease.

Well, of course, apart from the military and a number of pathetic ladies 
waving flags outside the Military Hospital. They said that 60,000 people 
went to see his coffin (including one person that conveniently spat it 
and three nutcases that did the nazi salute); this was completely 
outnumbered by the funeral, last year of his arch-enemy during the 80s, 
the general secretary of the Communist Party, Gladys Marín, who was 
visited by around 1,000,000 people.

In the slums of Chile, a bit of happiness was felt, a bit of frustration 
and a bit of anger: after all, those are the elements that constitute 
the soul of our generation, a generation that grew under the military 
boots, the ones that had to put up with his speeches, those who learnt 
to read and write under that grey sky. Those of us, as an anarchist 
paper said angrily in the 80s, who did our first communion and 
masturbated for the first time under Pinochet. That generation developed 
its senses with the heinous sight of the military in commando dress on 
the streets, with the sound of bullets and empty pots, with a bitter 
taste in the mouth –impotence and anger-, with the heat of the 
barricades felt on its skin, and with the smell of the barricade’s smoke 
and of tear gas bombs. This generation learnt that its natural political 
space was in the street and learnt to struggle since a very young age.

We felt, as I said, a bit of joy and anger. Joy, because they die and we 
will live forever. Joy because without rotten people like him, there’s 
an actual space for a new world. Joy just for the sake of it, for it 
seemed that this crook was going to stay forever haunting our country. 
And anger, for he was gone without a trial and without receiving the 
news of our victory to come. So who is now going to take away from us 
that bitter taste after all the victims who were left behind claiming 
for justice, and our people were left beaten, alienated, repressed, 
impoverished, drowning in debts and want in the middle of the Chilean 
“Economic Miracle”? Who, comrade? The people and no one but the people. 
And how are they going to do it? Struggling, creating the people’s 
power. The struggle keeps going on and victory belongs to us.

José Antonio Gutiérrez D.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pinochet: Dead at last

For lovers of freedom, 2006 has been a good year with P.W. Botha, Milton 
Friedman and now General Pinochet shuffling off this mortal coil. 
Pinochet was the head of the military dictatorship which overthrew (with 
the aidand backing of the CIA) the democratically elected Chilean 
government ofMarxist Salvador Allende on September 11th, 1973. 
Officially,his troops killed or disappeared over 3,000 people (according 
to Human Rights and Church groups, it is over 10,000). Thousands were 
tortured and tens of thousands went into exile.

The standard defence of the regime was that it stopped Chile becoming a 
socialist state. Did Pinochet stop Chile sliding into "Communist 
dictatorship"? No, but he did stop the Chilean working class from 
itsattempts to expand liberty by taking over their workplaces, land and 
communities. As the Situationist group PointBlank! noted, "Allende was 
overthrown, not because of his reforms, but because he was unable to 
control the revolutionary movement which spontaneously developed at the 
base of the UP." ("Strange Defeat: The Chilean Revolution,1973")

What was shocking for many on the liberal and labourite left was that 
Chile had South America's strongest democratic traditions. If it could 
happen there, it could happen here they thought (and in the context of 
the 1970s, this was a real possibility). However, Thatcher's election 
and subsequent mishandling of the economy broke the back of working 
class resistance. While state repression was required to break the 
miners strike, theneed for a coup had declined as Thatcher had ensured 
that workers were forced to take the road to serfdom after tasting 
freedom in the rebellious'70s.

Pinochet would probably have went down in history as yet another 
blood-soaked military dictator except for one thing, his embrace of 
Milton Friedman's economic ideology. Due to this, Chile became a 
test-case for whatbecame known as neo-liberalism and it has been used as 
a template aroundthe world for economic "reform", including here under 
Thatcher. The results have been remarkably consistent and very far from 
the "economic miracle" proclaimed by the "free-market" right. In fact, 
the reality was radically different and hardly "miraculous" unless you 
were wealthy. As one expert summarises, Chilean workers "were central 
target's of political repression and suffered greatly from his state 
terror. They also paid a disproportionate share of the costs of his 
regime's regressive social policies. Workers and their organisations 
were also the primary targets of Pinochet's labour laws and among the 
biggest losers from his policies of privatisation and 
deindustrialisation." (Winn, Peter (ed.), Victims of the Chilean 
Miracle: Workers and Neoliberalism in the Pinochet Era, 1973-2002, p. 10)

After a deep recession caused by applying Monetarist shock-treatment in 
1975 (the economy fell by 13%), it started to rebound. This is the 
source of claim of a Chilean "economic miracle." Friedman, for example, 
used 1976 as his base-line, so excluding the depression year of 
1975which his recommended shock treatment had deepened. This is 
dishonest asit fails to take into account not only the impact of 
neo-liberal policies but also that a deep recession often produces a 
vigorous upsurge - particularly is workers are too terrified to ask for 
pay rises. Ironically, soon after Friedman proclaimed his "miracle" the 
bottom fell outof the economy and Chile's GDP fell 14% in 1982.

The crisis forced the regime to abandon its Monetarist dogmas and 
bailout the capitalist class. The economy finally stabilised in 1986, 
but ata cost paid by the country's workers: "By 1988, the average 
realwage had returned to 1980 levels, but it was still well below 1970 
levels. Moreover, in 1986, some 37 percent of the labour force worked in 
the informal sector, where wages were lower and benefits often 
non-existent. Many worked for minimum wage, which in 1988 provided only 
half of what an average family required to live decently -- and a fifth 
of the workers didn't even earn that . . . nearly half of Chileans lived 
in poverty." (Winn, p. 48) The level of state intervention pursued by 
Pinochet's regime post-crash made opponents talk of "the Chicago road to 
socialism." Working class people, on the other hand, faced state 
repression after taking to the streets in response to the crash.

Between 1970 and 1990, Chile's total GDP grew by a decidedly average 2% 
a year. The average growth in GDP was 1.5% per year between 1974 and 
1982, which was lower than the average Latin American growth rate of 
4.3% and lower than the 4.5% of Chile in the 1960's. For the 1981-90 
period, itwas just 1.84% a year. Hardly an economic miracle, 
particularly once thesocial costs thrust upon the terrorised population 
are taken into account (unsurprisingly, Friedman's Chilean followers 
affirmed that "ina democracy we could not have done one-fifth of what we 
did.")

Somewhat ironically, Chile provided substantial empirical evidence to 
refute Friedman's own capitalist ideology. In "Capitalism and Freedom", 
he asserted that the more capitalist a country, the more equal it was. 
Inequality under Pinochet soared to record levels and Chilewent from the 
second most equal to the second most unequal society in South America. 
The "distribution of income in Chile in 1988,after a decade of 
free-market policies, was markedly regressive." Between 1978 and 1988 
the richest 10% of Chileans increased their share of national income 
from 37 to 47%, while the next 30% saw their share shrink from 23 to 
18%. The income share of the poorest fifth of the population dropped 
from 5 to 4 %. Overall, "wages stayed low even as the economy began to 
recover. Low wages were key to the celebrated 'miracle' recovery . . . 
The average wage . . . was 5 percent lower at the end ofthe decade than 
it had been in 1981 and almost 10 percent lower than theaverage 1970 
wage." After 1982, "stagnant wages and theunequal distribution of income 
severely curtailed buying power for most Chileans, who would not recover 
1970 consumption levels until 1989." (John Lear and Joseph Collins, 
"Working in Chile's Free Market", pp. 10-29, Latin American 
Perspectives, vol. 22, No. 1, p=2E 26, p. 21 and p. 25)

Friedman had also been at pains to attack trade unions and the idea that 
they defended the worker from coercion by the boss. Nonsense, he 
asserted, the "employee is protected from coercion by the employer 
because of other employers for whom he can work." Chile refuted that 
notion, for "in wake of the coup, factory owners suddenly had absolute 
control over their workers and could fire any worker without case=2E 
From 1973 through 1978, practically every labour right for organised 
and unorganised workers was suspended. All tools of collective 
bargaining, including of course the right to strike, were outlawed." 
After1978, the labour code designed by Friedman's acolytes made it 
extremely difficult to strike, particularly as "employers could count on 
the backing of the military in any conflict with workers." (Lear and 
Collins, p. 13)

Which refutes Friedman's attempts to support the economic policies of 
the regime while paying lip-service to criticising its dictatorial 
nature=2E It staggers belief that any intelligent person could argue 
such a position, given that the political system must have an impact on 
the economic system. If the former is authoritarian, it would be hardly 
surprising to discover that the economy, at least for workers, would 
also be authoritarian. Given that workers faced a visit from the secret 
police if they got uppity, it is clear that there was no "economic 
liberty" for them. To state otherwise simply shows that the person has 
no concept of what liberty means - but, then, Friedman was an ideologue 
for capitalism so this can be taken for granted.

It is true that the atomised labour market produced by state terror did 
approximate the neo-classical ideal as there were no or weak unions 
andworkers were unwilling to take collective action. The results, as 
noted above, were only a "miracle" for the bosses. Any link between 
productivity and wages went out the window. Even in the 1990s, there is 
evidence that productivity growth outpaced real wage growth by as much 
as aratio 3:1 in 1993 and 5:1 in 1997. (Winn, p. 73) Being able to seek 
a new job did not stop exploitation particularly as Chile (yet again!) 
refuted another of Freidman's assertions about capitalism, namely that 
people would "be surprised how fast people would be absorbed by a 
growingprivate-sector economy." In fact, unemployment reached record 
levels for decades. During the 1960s it had hovered around 6%; by 
contrast, the unemployment level for the years 1974 to 1987 averaged 20% 
of the workforce. Even in the best years of the boom (1980-1981) it 
stayed as high as 18%. (Lear and Collins, p. 22)

The only miracle about Chile's economy is how anyone with any knowledge 
or intellect could claim it was an "economic miracle" based on "economic 
liberty."

Chile is now a democracy. However, the legacy of Pinochet still remains. 
Over a quarter of the Senate are "designated" including four retired 
military officers named by the National Security Council. He also 
imposed a "unique binomial electoral law, [in] which to elect two 
deputies or senators from the same district, a party or electoral 
alliance needed to double its opponent's vote -- a difficult feat -- or 
else the opponent received an equal number of seats in congress." This 
ensured rightist control of the Senate despite a decade of majority 
victories by the centre-left in elections. Pinochet threatened on 11 
September 1990 that he would lead another coup is conditions warranted 
it. Threeyears later, he ordered combat-ready troops onto the streets 
for an "exercise" when investigations into an arms procurement scandal 
implicated his son. Even with a controlled democracy, "Pinochet 
maintained an army 'shadow cabinet' that acted as a political 
pressuregroup." However, the new centre-left governments have managed 
some reforms. For example, through targeted social spending" the new 
government "was able to halve the 1988 45 percent poverty rate 
bequeathed by Pinochet." (Winn, p. 64, p. 50 p. 52)

It is one of the ironies of life that Pinochet died on Human Rights day. 
That the dictator never saw his day in court is unsurprising, given how 
popular he was in elite circles and how he ensured that "democratic" 
Chile was bound by his will. He was a murderous thug whom no saneand 
civilised person could feel any emotion bar hatred or disgust for. That 
the right-wing embraced him so fully (while paying lip-service to 
condemning his political regime) says a lot about them. It also shows 
how little they are concerned about logic, empirical evidence and 
(needless to say) liberty.
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