Augusto Pinochet

Augusto Pinochet Ugarte
File:Augusto Pinochet official portrait.jpg
In office September 11, 1973 (coup) – March 11, 1990
Preceded by	Salvador Allende
Succeeded by	Patricio Aylwin
Personal details
Born	November 25, 1915 Valparaíso
Nationality	not-american
Political party	none (military)
Spouse	Lucía Hiriart Rodríguez

General Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (born November 25, 1915) was head of the military dictatorship that ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990. He came to power in a violent coup that deposed Salvador Allende, a Marxist physician who had become the first Socialist to be elected President of Chile. The coup ended a period of strained relations between the United States (which had actively sought Allende's removal) and the South American country, and allowed Pinochet to implement profound neoliberal economic reforms and, at the same time, to commit extensive human rights violations, both at home and abroad.

On September 11, 1973, the military, led by Pinochet, stormed the presidential palace and seized power from President Allende, who was found dead soon after. A junta headed by Pinochet was established, which immediately suspended the constitution, dissolved Congress, imposed strict censorship, proscribed the leftist parties that had constituted Allende's Popular Unity coalition, and halted all political activity. In addition, it embarked on a campaign of terror against opponents and perceived leftists in the country. As a result, approximately 3,000 Chilean residents are known to have been executed, or "disappeared", more than 27,000 were incarcerated and in a great many cases tortured, according to the Valech Report. Many were exiled and received abroad, in particular in Argentina, as political refugees; but they were followed in their exile by the DINA secret police, in the frame of Operation Condor which linked South-American dictatorships together against political opponents.

In 1980, a new constitution was approved, which prescribed a single-candidate presidential plebiscite in 1988, and a return to civilian rule in 1990. Pinochet lost the 1988 plebiscite, which triggered multi-candidate presidential elections in 1989 to choose his replacement. Pinochet transferred power to Patricio Aylwin, the new democratically elected president, in 1990; however, he retained his post as commander-in-chief of the army until 1998, when he assumed a seat in the Chilean Senate, which was intended to be his for the duration of his life, according to the constitutional amendments of 1980. In 1998 Pinochet, who still had much influence in Chile, travelled to the United Kingdom for medical treatment. While there, he was arrested on a warrant from Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón and kept under house arrest for over a year, before eventually being released on medical grounds. He returned to Chile and resigned his senatorial seat in 2002, after a Supreme Court ruling that he suffered from "vascular dementia" and therefore could not stand trial for human rights abuses—allegations of abuses had been made numerous times before his arrest, but never acted upon. In May 2004, Chile's supreme court ruled that he was capable of standing trial, and he was charged with several crimes in December of that year.

Supporters of Pinochet credit him with staving off the beginning of Communism, fighting terrorism from radical groups such as MIR, and implementing free market policies that laid the groundwork for rapid economic growth that continued into the 1990s. His opponents charge him with destroying Chile's democracy, pursuing a policy of state terrorism, catering exclusively for private interests, and adopting economic policies that favored the wealthy and hurt the country's middle- and low-income sectors. While it was originally denied by his supporters, it is now generally accepted that Pinochet's government was responsible for torturing and killing thousands of people perceived to be opponents.

Early career

Pinochet was born in Valparaíso on November 25, 1915, the son of Augusto Pinochet Vera (descendant of Breton immigrants who arrived in Chile during the 18th century) and Avelina Ugarte Martínez. He went to primary and secondary school at the San Rafael Seminary of Valparaíso, the Rafael Ariztía Institute (Marist Brothers) in Quillota, the French Fathers' School of Valparaíso, and in the Military School, which he entered in 1933. After four years of study, in 1937 he graduated with the rank of alférez (Second Lieutenant) in the infantry.

In September 1937, he was assigned to the "Chacabuco" Regiment, in Concepción. Two years later, in 1939, then with the rank of sub-lieutenant, he moved to the "Maipo" Regiment, garrisoned in Valparaíso. He returned to Infantry School in 1940. On January 30, 1943, he married Lucía Hiriart Rodríguez, with whom he had five children: three daughters (Inés Lucía, María Verónica, Jacqueline Marie) and two sons (Augusto Osvaldo and Marco Antonio).

At the end of 1945, he was assigned to the "Carampangue" Regiment in the northern city of Iquique. In 1948, he entered the War Academy, but he had to postpone his studies, because, being the youngest officer, he had to carry out a service mission in the coal zone of Lota. The following year, he returned to his studies in the Academy.

After obtaining the title of Officer Chief of Staff, in 1951, he returned to teach at the Military School. At the same time, he worked as a teachers' aide at the War Academy, giving military geography and geopolitics classes. In addition to this, he was active as editor of the institutional magazine Cien Águilas ("One Hundred Eagles").

At the beginning of 1953, with the rank of major, he was sent for two years to the "Rancagua" Regiment in Arica. While there, he was appointed professor of the War Academy, and he returned to Santiago to take up his new position. He also obtained a baccalaureate, and with this degree, he entered the University of Chile's Law School.

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Pinochet (left) and Allende in 1973

In 1956, Pinochet was chosen, together with a group of other young officers, to form a military mission that would collaborate in the organization of the War Academy of Ecuador in Quito, which forced him to suspend his law studies. He remained with the Quito mission for three-and-a-half years, during which time he dedicated himself to the study of geopolitics, military geography and intelligence.

At the end of 1959, he returned to Chile and was sent to General Headquarters of the I Army Division, based in Antofagasta. The following year, he was appointed Commander of the "Esmeralda" Regiment. Due to his success in this position, he was appointed Sub-director of the War Academy in 1963.

In 1968, he was named Chief of Staff of the II Army Division, based in Santiago, and at the end of that year, he was promoted to Brigadier General and Commander in Chief of the VI Division, garrisoned in Iquique. In his new function, he was also appointed Intendant of the Tarapacá Province.

In January 1971, he rose to Division General, and was named General Commander of the Santiago Army Garrison. At the beginning of 1972, he was appointed General Chief of Staff of the Army. With rising domestic strife in Chile, Pinochet was appointed Army Commander in Chief on August 23, 1973 by President Salvador Allende.

Military coup of 1973

Main article: Chilean coup of 1973

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Pinochet (sitting) as head of the newly established military junta.

Pinochet came to power in a coup d'état on September 11, 1973, in which the rebelling Chilean Air Force bombed the Presidential Palace while it was being stormed by Army troops. President Allende committed suicide during the capture of the palace. For decades, the exact circumstances of his death were disputed. The junta's official version at the time was that Allende committed suicide with a machine gun which bore a golden plate engraved "To my good friend Salvador Allende from Fidel Castro." At the time of the coup and for many years after, his supporters nearly uniformly presumed that he was killed by the forces staging the coup, a minority alternately believing that Allende was killed in combat on the steps outside the Presidential Palace. However, an autopsy in 1990 following the end of the military dictatorship found that Allende's wounds were consistent with the suicide account.

The new junta was made up of Pinochet representing the Army, Admiral José Toribio Merino representing the Navy, General Gustavo Leigh representing the Air Force, and César Mendoza representing the carabineros (the uniformed police). Since Pinochet was the chief of the oldest branch of the military forces (the Army), he was made the head of the victorious junta — this position was originally to be rotated among the four branches, but was later made permanent. The junta immediately moved to crush their left-wing opposition, arresting hundreds of people and killing many of them. Thousands more were arrested and tortured over the next three years, and a total of 2,700 were killed. Internationally, the Pinochet government became known for severe human rights abuses, including many "disappearances".

In his memoirs, Pinochet affirms that he was the leading plotter of the coup, and used his position as Commander of the Army to coordinate a far-reaching scheme with the other two branches of the military and the national police. In recent years, however, high military officials from the time have said that Pinochet reluctantly got involved in the coup only a few days before it was scheduled to occur and followed the lead of other branches (especially the Navy) as they triggered the coup.

Once the Junta was in power, Pinochet soon consolidated his control, first retaining sole chairmanship of the junta, and then being proclaimed President on June 27, 1974. He also promoted himself to the supreme army rank of Capitán General (literally Captain General), previously borne by colonial governors and by Bernardo O'Higgins, a hero of Chile's war of independence, and first head of state.

General Leigh of the Air Force became increasingly opposed to Pinochet's policies, and he was kicked out of the junta on July 24, 1978. He was replaced by General Fernando Matthei.

During 1977 and 1978, Chile was on the brink of war with Argentina (also ruled by a military government) over a disagreement regarding the ownership of the strategic Picton, Lennox and Nueva islands at the southern tip of South America. Antonio Samoré, a representative of Pope John Paul II, successfully prevented full-scale war. The conflict was finally resolved on 1984, with the Treaty of Peace and Friendship (Tratado de Paz y Amistad). Chilean sovereignty over the islands and Argentinian over the around Sea is now undisputed.

Pinochet's economic policy

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Pinochet as self-proclaimed President

By mid 1975, Pinochet set about making free-market oriented economic reforms. He declared that he wanted "to make Chile not a nation of proletarians, but a nation of proprietors". This was a play on words using the Spanish, "propietarios", i.e. owners or business proprietors which rhymes with "proletarios", i.e. proletarians. To formulate his economic policy, Pinochet relied on the so-called Chicago Boys, who were economists trained at the University of Chicago and heavily influenced by the monetarist policies of Milton Friedman.

Pinochet launched an era of economic deregulation and privatization. To accomplish his objectives, he abolished the minimum wage, rescinded trade union rights, privatized the pension system, state industries, and banks, and lowered taxes on wealth and profits. Supporters of these policies (most notably Milton Friedman himself) have dubbed them "The Miracle of Chile", due to the country's sustained economic growth since the mid-1980s.

President Allende's economic policy had involved nationalizations of many key industries, notably U.S.-owned copper mines. In order to run these nationalized companies, Allende and his government put politically loyal but fiscally inexperienced and incompetent administrators in charge. This led to an immediate loss of worker productivity, noted as early as 1971, two full years before the coup. Not only that, the expropriated former owners of these companies sued the government, the civil courts putting in limbo the administration of the nationalized industries, furthering loss of productivity.

Almost as soon as Pinochet took control of the economy, Allende's nationalization policy was rescinded. All nationalized companies and factories, as well as expropriated lands, were returned to their former owners. However, and very interestingly, the major copper mines that had been nationalized by Allende were not returned to their former owners, mostly U.S.-based companies, and the penalties for over-exploitation imposed by Allende on these companies was carried out.

Allende had also imposed a price freeze and a mandatory wage hike. This had led, unsurprisingly, to chronic shortages of basic supplies and foodstuffs, massive inflation, and a rampant black market. Pinochet deregulated all wages and prices and, in order to control inflation, fixed the Chilean peso to the U.S. dollar. This caused an almost immediate end to hyperinflation, which in 1973 had reached 500% a month, but which after the coup and during the mid to late 1970's averaged around 20%, falling still further during the 1980's to around 10% annually.

However, because of the fixed exchange rate, a balance of trade deficit began to accumulate. Because of the 1982 worldwide recession, the Pinochet dictatorship was forced to let the peso float, leading to a hard economic landing, and resulting in the 1983 recession in Chile which saw unemployment soar to 25%. This ushered in the period of most political instability during the Pinochet dictatorship, culminating in August of 1983, when the military were forced to bring out the Army to secure the peace.

After late 1983, when Pinochet installed Sergio Onofre Jarpa as his Interior Minister and Hernan Büchi as his Finance Minister, the economic situation of Chile became one of almost uninterrupted forward momentum, gross nation product rising at a steady 3% to 7% rate until the end of the regime in 1989.

One of the key measures implemented by the Chicago Boys was the establishment of the AFP system (Asociación de Fondos Previsionales, literally "Association of Previsional Funds"). This is a cumpulsory private pension fund system, whereby all workers and employees are required to deposit a fixed percentage of their incomes into individual retirement accounts. Workers whose income falls below a certain level receive a government subsidy. These retirement accounts are deposited in highly regulated investment corporations, which in turn invest money in government approved investment vehicles, such as stocks and bonds. Though they can change investment corporations if a competing firm offers higher rates of return, workers and employees cannot withdraw this money until they retire. Once they leave the work force, the individual accounts are used to finance the workers' retirement.

Though strongly criticized at the time of its inception, the AFP system imposed by the Pinochet dictatorship has had long lasting, highly beneficial effects on the Chilean economy and culture.

The most obvious benefit on a macroeconomic level was to create an enormous pool of funds for the capital markets to draw upon. This led to a decrease in foreign borrowing, and an increase in local investments, most notably in capital-intensive and long-term investments such as new factories, infrastructure and heavy machinery.

Culturally and socially, the system engaged the middle classes in the fiscal well-being of the country. This had a tremendous impact in the social cohesion of Chile. For the first time in its history, a large swathe of the country had a direct, vested interest in the growth and stability of the economy as a whole, and the soundness of its management. This is a unique event in Latin America, where in almost every other country, the large, poor majority feels a disconnect with the economic health and well-being of their country. In Chile, however, because of the AFP system, ordinary citizens came to feel intimately connected to the health and growth of the economy, since a rise or fall in the balance of trade, inflation, the dollar, or any other key economic indicator had a direct, tangible impact on their pension funds, as reported to them on a monthly basis through the AFP system.

The AFP system has been noted as an extraordinary achievement insofar as public policy is concerned. For a time, U.S. President George W. Bush hailed the Chilean system as the model for his own plans of Social Security reform. However, due to political pressure in the United States, the proposal was eventually shelved.

Suppression of Opposition

During the months immediately following the September 11, 1973, coup, the junta ruthlessly supressed any and all groups or individuals which it considered actual or potential threats to its hegemony. But it must be noted that the bloodiest period of repression happened immediately following the coup. According to independent studies and post-dictatorship research, fully two thirds of the individual acts of murder, torture and repression happened in the three months following the coup of September 11, 1973.

The junta took two paths to controlling the opposition: Control by law, and control by suppression.

Assuming the position of the legislative branch to Pinochet's executive authority, the Junta passed laws almost immediately after the coup banning not merely the leftist parties that had constituted Allende's UP coalition, but all parties altogether, from the far right to the far left and everything in between. It was the belief of the members of the Junta and the Armed Forces that it had been all the political parties which had led to the chaos that had engulfed Chile during the ten years prior to the coup.

Furthermore, it banned all "illegal associations", and made the unliscenced assembly of more than ten people a crime. This last measure was in a practical sense softened, though it remained a legally viable option for the Pinochet dictatorship throughout its duration. It was this banning of illegal associations which was the legal basis for the disolution of any and all labor unions and laborers' associations.

It also passed laws banning all paramilitary groups, be they left or right, and their surrendering of their weapons immediately. The right wing paramilitary groups, which of course had wanted the military overthrow of Allende, voluntarily disbanded. The left wing paramilitary groups did not. Specifically, the MIR (Moviemiento de Izquierda Revolucionario, that is, "Revolutionary Left Movement"), Allende's and the UP coalition's de facto paramilitary arm, organized the Frente Patriotico Manuel Rodríguez (FPMR) (Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front) and immediately began a proto-civil war. This group was the most heavily repressed group during the Pinochet dictatorship.

Control by suppression took one of three forms: Arrest, exile, or murder.

In order to carry out this control by suppression, Pinochet's army organized the DINA (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, that is, "National Intelligence Directorate")—basically, a secret police. Its name was later changed to the CNI (Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, that is "National Intelligence Center"), but it was effectively the same thing. Its task was to stamp out all opposition to the Pinochet dictatorship.

Starting on the day of the coup, thousands of people were arrested and put in mass prisons, the most famous being the National Stadium in the Ñuñoa section of the city. Every man, woman and child who was on the street on the day of the coup was arrested and imprisoned on the spot. Most of these people were held for two to three days and then released.

However, most of the political leaders who were arrested immediately following the coup were not released—they were held without due process, most of them on Dawson's Island at the very tip of Chile, and were eventually exiled from the country. The Pinochet dictatorship exiled thousands of opponents, most of them political leaders either loyal to Allende, or opposed to Allende but critical of a military dictatorship. This automatically had the effect of isolating the Pinochet dictatorship from the vast majority of the political elite, who would incessantly criticize and undermine the regime throughout its existence.

(Parenthetically, it should be noted that many Chileans, exhausted by the civil unrest caused by the Allende government, left the country under cover of fleeing from the dictatorship, though in fact leaving for non-political reasons. A huge contingent of non-political exiles made its way to Sweden, whose government offered such aggressively favorable conditions for those claiming to be political exiles that many poor and criminal elements of the country took advantage of the opportunity, to Sweden's regret.)

The final method of control by suppression was murder.

It is not known exactly how many people were killed by government and military forces during the 17 years that Pinochet was in power. But the Rettig Commission listed 2,095 deaths and 1,102 "disappearances", and listed most of those deaths as ocurring during the three months immediately following the coup. Likewise, in 2004, the National Commission on Political Prisoners and Torture produced the Valech Report after interviewing an estimated 35,000 people who claimed to have been abused by the regime. About 28,000 of those testimonies were regarded as legitimate. According to the Commission, more than half of the arrests occurred in the months immediately following the coup (approximately 18,000 of those testifying claimed they were detained between September and December of 1973).

Following 1974, there was relatively little organized protests against the dictatorship within Chile. Contrary to the popular view held by people outside of Chile, Pinochet's dictatorship was highly stable and for the most part remarkably peaceful. It is a mistake to compare the regime to one of the hard Fascist dictatorships, such as Hitler's or Mussolini's. Following Jean Kirkpatrick's useful dichotomy, the Pinochet dictatorship was an authoritarian regime, rather than a totalitarian one—a more live-and-let-live approach.

There is no question that the DINA, later CNI, carried out repressive measures. But to compare them to, say, the KGB and claim that they terrorized the entire nation is simply not true. The chilean organs of repression were uninterested in the daily lives of the citizens—they only targetted clear and immediate political threats to the regime.

There was only one serious flashpoint of internal domestic unrest during the entire 17 year Pinochet dictatorship, and that was August, 1983.

During 1982 and 1983, the chilean economy had suffered a major blow because of the fiscal policy of fixing the chilean peso to the American dollar. This had had the effect of curing the economy of the rampant hyperinflation of the Allende years, but created a serious balance of trade issue. Though the peso was floated in late 1982, the subsequent economic crisis led to massive unemployment, reaching an unprecedented level of 25%. A political crisis and a call to strike inevitably ensued.

Pinochet brought out the army and all but declared a state of martial law, with a ten o'clock curfew and other punitive measures to guarantee the civil peace. At the same time, he replaced his Interior Minister with an old-time right-wing politician, Sergio Onofre Jarpa, and appointed a young economics professor, Hernán Büchi, as his Finance Minister.

Jarpa, because of his personal prestige and good relations with members of all political parties, immediately made overtures to the political establishment both in Chile and in exile, securing the return of most of those in exile, and creating a situation of political dialogue between the political parties and the dictatorship, instantly deflating the political crisis.

Following the August 1983 crisis, aside from sporadic, small-scale terrorist attacks by the FPMR and subsequent retaliation by the DINA, later CNI, there was relatively little suppression by the Pinochet dictatorship, especially as the 1989 plebiscite approached. The plebiscite, which was to be a referendum of the Pinochet regime, was a straight yes-or-no vote: Yes to eight more years of a Pinochet dictatorship, or no to Pinochet and therefore free democratic elections within one year. It is remarkable that the Pinochet-as-dictator vote garnered a 46% of the electorate.

In contrast to most other nations in Latin America, prior to the coup Chile had a long tradition of democratic civilian rule; military intervention in politics had been rare. Some political scientists have ascribed the bloodiness of the coup to the stability of the existing democratic system, which required extreme action to overturn. However, this analysis ignores the level of street violence prevalent in Chilean society prior to the September 11 coup. Heavily armed paramilitary organizations on the left and right were fighting daily, and civil society had reached a point of almost total chaos. This, coupled with the fact of chronic shortages, rampant hyperinflation, and massive civil unrest was at the time leading many to believe that a civil war in Chile was about to erupt. In retrospect, what is surprising is not the violence of the coup and its immediate aftereffects—what is surprising is the relative modest level of violence that engulfed Chile following the end of the Allende regime.

Suppression Outside of Chile

The Pinochet dictatorship was responsible for the assasination of two figures in exile: General Carlos Pratts and Ambassador Orlando Letelier.

On September 30, 1974, General Carlos Prats, Pinochet's predecessor as Commander in Chief of the Army under Allende, was assassinated along with his wife when his car exploded in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He had resigned his post in August of 1973, barely one month before the coup, upon realizing that he no longer had the confidence of his officer corps.

On September 21, 1976, Orlando Letelier, former Chilean ambassador to the United States during Allende, and later his Minister of Defense at the time of the coup, was assassinated, also by car bomb, in Washington, D.C.. His secretary, Ronni Moffitt, was also killed in the attack.

Both assassinations were carried out by Michael Townley, an American expatriate with long-standing ties to Chile. Townley was also a DINA agent, and had previously been a member of Patria y Libertad (that is, "Fatherland and Freedom") one of the right-wing paramilitary groups operating during the Allende government.

It is unclear whether Pinochet himself authorized the two assassinations, or whether they were done under the orders of General Manuel Contreras, the Army general who headed the DINA during most of its existence. In either case, Pinochet was aware that elements of his dictatorship had carried out the murders, thus making him as responsible as Townley and Contreras.

Why these two figures in particular represented such a threat to the regime is unclear. Carlos Prats had lost the confidence of the entire chilean officer corps, putatively because of his failure to restore civil order during 1973, when Allende had named him Interior Minister, but mostly because of the Paulina Lyon Incident. Within the officer corps, there was the perception that Prats was a waffler, and that he would lose control of himself under pressure. Thus no shadow government would have ever formed around him.

Orlando Letelier, on the other hand, was a charismatic, well-connected Socialist who very clearly was positioning himself as the leader of a possible shadow government or government-in-exile. His assassination had a very clear impact on the chilean exile community, though that impact, by definition, is impossible to measure.

Certainly the Prats assassination, but most definitely the Letelier killing, had a tremendously negative impact insofar as Chile's and the dictatorship's foreign relations are concerned. It also gave credence to any and all charges leveled against the dictatorship, no matter how absurd.

After the Letelier assassination, the Pinochet regime withdrew completely from any attempts at suppression outside Chile's borders.

Chilean foreign relations under Pinochet

The new junta quickly broke off the diplomatic relations with Cuba that had been established under the Allende government. Having come to power with the self-proclaimed mission of fighting communism, Pinochet found common cause with the military dictatorships of Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and later, Argentina. The six countries eventually formulated a plan that became known as Operation Condor, in which one country's security forces would target suspected "Marxist subversives", guerrillas, and their sympathizers in the allied countries. After Orlando Letelier's assassination in Washington, D.C. (September 1976) the United States started opposing themselves to Condor operations abroad (phase 3), asking for the extradition of DINA agent Michael Townley. However, it wasn't until details of the plot leaked out after each of the regimes collapsed and the discovery of the "terror archives" in Paraguay that Condor came to be widely condemned as coordinated state terrorism. The military governments justified, however, the "Dirty War" by the imperative of stability during a time when many urban and rural Marxist guerrillas were actively seeking to violently overthrow each country's respective government. In Argentina, for example, the "doctrine of the two demons" was created to justify this violent form of anti-communism that took place in the more general historic frame of the Cold War.

Under Pinochet, Chile was the only country in Latin America not to support Argentina in its war with the U.K. over the Falkland Islands in 1982, after having almost started a war over a confrontation on some strategic islands.

Pinochet's government received tacit approval and material support from the United States of America. The exact nature and extent of this support is disputed. (See U.S. role in 1973 Coup, U.S. intervention in Chile and Operation Condor for more details.)

End of the Pinochet regime

In May 1983, the opposition and labor movements began to organize demonstrations and strikes against the regime, provoking violent responses from government officials. In 1986, security forces discovered 80 tons of weapons smuggled into the country by the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR), the armed branch of the outlawed Communist Party. The shipment of Carrizal Bajo included C-4 plastic explosives, RPG-7 and M72 LAW rocket launchers as well as more than three thousand M-16 rifles. The operation was overseen by Cuban intelligence, and also involved East Germany and the Soviet Union.

In September, weapons from the same source were used in an unsuccessful assassination attempt against Pinochet by the FPMR. Pinochet suffered only minor injuries, but five of his military bodyguards were killed.

The beheading of leftist professor José Manuel Parada, and journalist Manuel Guerrero, and Santiago Nattino by the uniformed police (carabineros) led to the resignation of junta member General Mendoza in 1985.

According to the transitional provisions of the 1980 Constitution, approved by 75% of voters in what has been said to be "a highly irregular and undemocratic plebiscite.", a plebiscite was scheduled for October 5, 1988, to vote on a new eight-year presidential term for Pinochet. The Constitutional Tribunal ruled that the plebiscite should be carried out as stipulated by the Law of Elections. That included an "Electoral Space" during which all positions, in this case two, Sí (yes), and No, would have two free slots of equal and uninterrupted TV time, simultaneously broadcast by all TV channels, with no political advertising outside those spots. The allotment was scheduled in two off-prime time slots: one before the afternoon news and the other before the late-night news, from 22:45 to 23:15 each night (the evening news was from 20:30 to 21:30, and prime time from 21:30 to 22:30). The opposition No campaign, headed by Ricardo Lagos, produced colorful, upbeat programs, telling the Chilean people to vote against the extension of the presidential term. Lagos, in an interview, called on Pinochet to account for all the "disappeared" persons. The Sí campaign did not argue for the advantages of extension, but was instead negative, claiming that voting "no" was equivalent to voting for a return to the chaos of the UP government.

In the plebiscite, 55% of the votes rejected the extension of the presidential term, against 42% for "Sí", and again according to the provisions of the constitution, open presidential elections were held the next year, at the same time as congressional elections that would have taken place in either case. Pinochet left the presidency on March 11, 1990.

Due to the transitional provisions of the constitution, Pinochet remained as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, until March 1998. He was then sworn in as a senator-for-life, a privilege first granted to former presidents with at least six years in office by the 1980 constitution. His senatorship and consequent immunity from prosecution protected him, and legal challenges began only after Pinochet had been arrested in the United Kingdom.

Arrest

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Pinochet is visited by Margaret Thatcher during his house arrest in London, in 1998

While traveling abroad, Pinochet was arrested in October 1998 in London, England, the United Kingdom, under an international arrest warrant issued by judge Baltasar Garzón of Spain, and he was placed under house arrest: initially in the clinic where he had just undergone back surgery, and later in a luxurious rented house. The charges included 94 counts of torture of Spanish citizens, and one count of conspiracy to commit torture. The government of Chile opposed his arrest, extradition to Spain, and trial.

There was a hard-fought 16-month legal battle in the House of Lords, the highest court of England, Pinochet claimed immunity from prosecution as a former head of state. This was rejected, but the Lords decided that only crimes alleged to have been committed after the incorporation of the International Convention against Torture into English law in 1988 could be considered. This invalidated most, but not all, of the charges against him; but the outcome was that extradition could proceed.

There were then questions about Pinochet's allegedly fragile health. After medical tests, the Home Secretary Jack Straw ruled, despite the protests of legal and medical experts from several countries, that he should not be extradited, and on 2 March 2000, he returned to Chile.

Significance of the arrest

Despite his release on grounds of ill-health, the unprecedented detention of Pinochet in a foreign country for crimes against humanity committed in his own country, without a warrant or request for extradition from his own country, marks a watershed in international law. It is considered one of the most important events since the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals.

Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón's case was largely founded on the principle of universal jurisdiction—that certain crimes are so egregious that they constitute crimes against humanity and can therefore be prosecuted in any court in the world. The British House of Lords ruled that Pinochet had no right to immunity from prosecution as a former head of state, and could be put on trial. (See The Ripple Effect of the Pinochet Case.)

Prosecution in Chile

On August 8 2000, the Supreme Court of Justice voted 14 to 6 to strip Pinochet of his parliamentary immunity, and he was prosecuted. However, the cases were dismissed by the same Court, for medical reasons (vascular dementia), in July 2002. Shortly after the verdict, Pinochet resigned from the Senate and lived quietly. He rarely made public appearances and was notably absent from the events marking the 30th anniversary of the coup on September 11, 2003. Almost two years after his resignation, on May 28, 2004, the Court of Appeals voted 14 to 9 to revoke Pinochet's dementia status and, consequently, his immunity from prosecution. In arguing their case, the prosecution presented a recent television interview Pinochet had made to a Miami-based television network. The judges found that the interview raised doubts about the mental incapacity of Pinochet.

On August 26, 2004, in a 9 to 8 vote, the Supreme Court confirmed the decision that Pinochet should lose his senatorial immunity from prosecution. On December 2, 2004, the Santiago Appeals Court stripped Pinochet of immunity from prosecution over the 1974 assassination of General Carlos Prats, his predecessor as Army Commander-in-Chief, who was killed by a car bomb during exile in Argentina. On December 13, 2004, Judge Juan Guzmán placed Pinochet under house arrest and indicted him over the disappearance of nine opposition activists and the killing of one of them during his regime. On March 24, 2005, the Supreme Court reversed the Santiago Appeals Court ruling in the Carlos Prats case, and affirmed Pinochet's immunity in that particular case. In another case involving the killing of 119 dissidents, the Supreme Court decided to strip Pinochet of his immunity in a ruling issued on September 14 2005.[1] The following day he was acquitted of the human rights case due to his ill health. Late in November of 2005, he was deemed fit to stand trial by the Chilean Supreme Court and was indicted on human rights, for the disappearance of six dissidents arrested by Chile's security services in late 1974, and again placed under house arrest, on the eve of his 90th birthday. (See Operation Colombo.)

Tax fraud and foreign bank accounts

A year long U.S. Senate investigatory committee released a report about Riggs Bank on July 15, 2004, which had solicited Pinochet and controlled between USD $4 million and $8 million of his assets. According to the report, Riggs participated in money laundering for Pinochet, setting up offshore shell corporations (referring to Pinochet as only "a former public official"), and hiding his accounts from regulatory agencies. The report said the violations were "symptomatic of uneven and, at times, ineffective enforcement by all federal bank regulators, of bank compliance with their anti-money-laundering obligations." Five days later, a Chilean court formally opened an investigation into Pinochet's finances for the first time, on allegations of fraud, misappropriation of funds, and bribery. Then, a few hours later, the state prosecutor, Chile's State Defense Council (Consejo de Defensa del Estado), presented a second request for the same judge to investigate Pinochet's assets, but without directly accusing him of crimes. On October 1, 2004, Chile's Internal Revenue Service ("Servicio de Impuestos Internos") filed a lawsuit against Pinochet, accusing him of fraud and tax evasion, for the amount of USD $3.6 million in investment accounts at Riggs between 1996 and 2002. Pinochet could face fines totaling 300 percent of the amount owed, and prison time, if convicted. Aside from the legal ramifications, this evidence of financial impropiety has severely embarrassed Pinochet. According to the State Defense Council, his hidden assets could never have been acquired solely on the basis of his salary as President, Chief of the Armed Forces, and Life Senator. Late in November of 2005, he was deemed fit to stand trial by the Chilean Supreme Court and was indicted and put under house arrest on tax fraud and passport forgery, but was released on bail; however he remained under house arrest, due to unrelated human rights charges.

This tax fraud filing, related to Pinochet's and his family secret bank accounts in United States and in Caraïbs islands, for an amount of 27 millions dollars, shocked the Chilean public opinion more than the accusations of criminal activities. Ninety percent of these funds would have been raised between 1990 and 1998, when Pinochet was chief of the Chilean armies, and would essentially have come from weapons traffic (when purchasing Belgian 'Mirage' air-fighters in 1994, Dutch 'Léopard' tanks, Swiss 'Mowag' tanks or by illegal sales of weapons to Croatia, in the middle of the Balkans war.) General Pinochet would owe to the Chilean tax administration a total of $16.5 million. In that case Pinochet's immunity was set off by the Appeal Court of Santiago, and this was confirmed by the Supreme court on October 19 2005. The judiciary procedure may eventually lead to a trial for Pinochet, his wife Lucia Hiriart and one of his sons, Marco Antonio Pinochet, sued for complicity. Judge Juan Guzman Tapia -- sometimes called "Pinochet's hunter" -- remains skeptic on the probability of a trial, either for human rights violations or for fiscal fraud. However, some medical examinations reported that the physical and mental health condition of the former Chilean dictator would allow him to be judged. On November 23 2005, judge Carlos Cerda charged Pinochet for fiscal fraud and ordered his arrest. Pinochet was freed under caution, as following the judgment minutes, "his freedom did not represent a danger for the security of the society", but it is the fourth time in seven years that Augusto Pinochet is indicted and charged for illegal behavior.

On 23 February 2006 Augusto Pinochet's children Lucía, Jacqueline, Marco Antonio, Jacqueline and Verónica Pinochet; Augusto Pinochet's wife, Lucia Hiriart; a daughter-in-law; and Pinochet's personal secretary were indicted on charges of tax fraud, including failing to declare bank accounts overseas, and using false passports. Lucía flew to the US, but was detained and returned to Argentina, her country of departure, after attempting unsuccessfully to claim political asylum[2]. he was rapped by a gang of gorillas in the tooshie!!!!!!! ahh now he has aids but he is dead so oh well let the stds rot him inside out!!!!

Legacy

Chileans remain deeply divided on his legacy. Many see him as a brutal dictator who ended democracy and led a regime characterized by torture and favoritism towards the rich, while others believe that he saved the country from communism, safeguarded Chilean democracy and led the transformation of the Chilean economy into Latin America's most stable and fastest growing economy.

This debate was revisited after Pinochet's arrest in 1998. At that time, the General said of the 1973 coup, “We only set ourselves the task of transforming Chile into a democratic society of free men and women." [3]. His supporters made similar claims. Former Prime Minister Thatcher, for example, thanked the General for "bringing democracy to Chile". [4]. When in power, however, Pinochet gave a series of speeches that rather clearly indicated that the 1973 coup targeted not only Allende's Popular Unity government, but Chilean democracy itself, which the General saw as hopelessly flawed. In wording that Pinochet repeated several times in various speeches, he claimed that Chile had been “slave and victim of the Congress since 1925, and slave and victim of the political parties.” Arguing for an "organic" type of democracy, Pinochet argued “Merely formal democracy dissolves itself, victim of a demagogy that substitutes simple, unattainable promises for social justice and economic prosperity.” Democracy would inevitably result in a marxist dictatorship, according to his analysis. Chilean democracy, therefore, was “progressively socializing in its economic experiments.... Those who thought they could detain or control this evolution... were given proof under the marxist regime of their impotence and incomprehensible lack of vision.” (Pinochet, “Patria y Democracia”, 1983, Santiago, Andres Bello)

Any doubts about the human rights abuses carried out by the Pinochet regime have been stilled by several detailed reports and the emergence of evidence. In January 2005, the Chilean Army accepted institutional responsibility for past abuses. Other institutions also accept that abuses took place, but blame them on individuals, rather than official policy. Lucía Pinochet Hiriart, Augusto Pinochet's eldest daughter, said the use of torture during his 1973–90 regime was "barbaric and without justification", after seeing the Valech Report.

See also

• History of Chile
• U.S. intervention in Chile
• 1970 Chilean presidential election
• Operation Condor
• Missing, film based on the life of U.S. journalist Charles Horman, who disappeared in the aftermath of the Pinochet coup.

he was a great man who was loved by many

External links

• Official Government Biography
• Pinochet's Chile (Washington Post)
• Timeline of Pinochet Prosecution (Amnesty International)
• Template:Es iconAugusto Pinochet Ugarte Foundation
• Template:Es iconPinochet Real – For Supporters of General Pinochet
• "The crimes of Augusto Pinochet" (several case studies)
• BBC coverage (special report)
• Article: "Doubts Remain over Pinochet's Fate: Chile's 'antiquated penal code' could be his undoing"
• Pinochet Timeline: Human Rights in Chile The Chile Information Project
• Reconcile Chile
• Fidel, Pinochet & Me by David Horowitz
• Article: "Persistent Persecution of Pinochet" (The New American)
• Template:Es icon[http://www.gobiernodechile.cl/comision_valech/index.asp Valech report on political imprisonment and torture, November 2004
• BBC News report: "Banks accused over Pinochet cash"
• Amnesty International
• Remember Chile Inside
• Remember Chile Begins
• George Washington University article
• Pinochet and Me by Allende's US translator Marc Cooper, ISBN 1859843603
• "Killer File" entry on Pinochet includes timeline and links