A somber anniversary
Buchanan, Paul G.
CHILE PERFECTS ITS TECHNIQUES OF REPRESSION A somber anniversary PAUL G. BUCHANAN SEPTEMBER 11 marked the ninth anniversary of the coup d'etat that overthrew the government of Salvador Allende....
...Sociology and political science are still not taught at the university level, having been classified as Marxist sciences (since when have Marxists exclusively appropriated certain facets of the social sciences...
...THE CHILEAN ECONOMY is currently suffering through a major crisis, one so severe that Pinochet has twice ordered the mass resignation of his cabinet this year in order to effect an extensive overhaul of the economic apparatus...
...All unions have been placed under de facto military control and are subject to official recognition, as well as proscribed from political activity...
...The Chilean lawyer hired by the Letelier family to represent their interests in Chile was recently expelled from the country...
...While remaining the basis of their rule, brute force no longer constitutes the sole means of imposing the junta's will on the Chilean nation...
...Having accomplished the one, these regimes plead for time in order to accrue the beneficial effects of the other, this being a marked increase in the material well-being of the nation as a whole...
...One would think that this notion had been laid to rest by Argentina's actions in precipitating the South Atlantic conflict, but yet it still persists within the Reagan administration...
...The overall picture presented by the Chilean junta is one of utter contempt for justice, legal norms, and democratic institutions...
...prosecutors of the case are vehement in their condemnation of the Chilean junta's attitude, which has been one of consistent refusal to comply with U.S...
...To say that there has been progress in human rights in Chile only serves to admit an acute myopia that is unwilling or unable to see fault in those governments that are ostensibly on "our side" in the international political spectrum...
...Our enemies are not merely those who are ideologically opposed to us, but are all those who would seek to restrict the will of their people, who curtail freedom, and who repress and persecute - in sum, authoritarian regimes, both leftist and rightist, regardless of artificial distinctions...
...Thus the only certifiable fact is that Chile at present remains a very oppressive state, maybe not for the rich or the internationalized classes, but certainly for the majority of the population...
...From this perspective, in nations such as Chile where, as General Pinochet remarked, "traditional democracy is unable to defend itself against Marxism," trade-offs between the different components of human rights must of necessity be made...
...There is no measure that can claim that the people of Chile are on the whole better off today than they were nine years ago...
...There are now over 300,000 Chileans forced to live abroad for political reasons, 50,000 of whom have been permanently barred from returning to their homeland...
...National cdnfedera-tions of labor and trade organizations remain dissolved, public health and retirement services have been closed or turned over to private hands (effectively excluding the majority of the population), public education has been curtailed, and, not coincidentally with all of this, the incidence of malnutrition has, according to world health organizations, risen alarmingly in the last year...
...In sum, incidents of naked repression, which declined somewhat during the Carter years, have now begun to increase...
...Industrial production fell 14 percent in the first quarter of 1982, the much heralded inflation rate rose from 9.5 percent in 1981 to over 15 percent (and rising) this year, interest rates have soared, construction has slumped, bankruptcies have increased dramatically, and by August the unemployment rate had risen to a record level 23 percent of the total work force...
...The freedoms of association, speech, and thought, banned in 1973, are still proscribed by emergency law...
...If this logic and these policies hold true, the material well-being of the entire Chilean nation should have been raised substantially during the past few years...
...Publicly documented cases of torture through June amounted to 65...
...there were 68 such cases in all of 1981...
...The educational system continues to operate under military supervision...
...This is an attempt by Pinochet and his minions to demonstrate that they have not been weakened by the crisis, and that come what may, they are willing to do whatever is necessary to ensure their permanence in power...
...It is perversely ironic that the a-vowedly anti-Communist Chilean junta that celebrates this date has perfected the techniques of societal repression so effectively used throughout the Soviet bloc, towards which they claimed Chile was irrevocably leaning under Allende...
...To the regular selective use of torture and disappearances have been added increased mass arrests, exile, internal banishment, physical intimidation, and psychological terror...
...Not individually, not collectively, not materially can the majority of Chileans claim to be better off than they were nine years ago...
...He also exposes other assassination plots by the junta against various dissidents living abroad, including successful attacks in Italy and Argentina...
...This cynicism on the part of the junta is further evident in other acts...
...Instead, as the junta becomes more entrenched with the passage of time, more subtle techniques for suppressing domestic opposition have been adopted, techniques that while not entirely replacing nor as notorious as the naked mass coercion practiced before, are no less effective...
...Thus, until genuine progress in human rights occurs in Chile, there can be no doubt that it belongs with the bad guys, not the good, and deserves our continued condemnation, not renewed assistance...
...Likewise, the ban on political parties remains in effect, as does the prohibition of worker and peasant meetings...
...Repression in Chile has just become more varied and sophisticated with the gradual institutionalization of authoritarian rule...
...All this in a country where the laboring classes have already been victimized by the junta's economic measures (since 1973 the bottom 60 percent of the population have lost 19 percent of their consumption power of that year, versus a 15 percent rise in the consumption of the top 20 percent of Chilean wage-earners), and where there exists no institutional insulation against a recession...
...What remains unchanged are the effects of prolonged authoritarian rule on the Chilean people: alienation, social stratification, and disen-franchisement, and above all fear, a pervasive fear that promotes the type of social apathy requisite for authoritarian success...
...This is wrong...
...Threats against and detention of human rights monitors, including officials of various church-sponsored groups, have increased markedly during the last year, to the point that church leaders have taken to regularly airing their concerns about these and other violations of human rights from the pulpit and in church publications...
...friends in the world are not those who ideologically are on "our" side, but those in which individual rights and freedom are respected...
...Human rights, they argue, include not only personal liberties and political rights, but material well-being as well...
...Expulsion and exile of dissidents resumed in 1981 after a three-year hiatus...
...Yet despite this, the Reagan administration continues to press for resuming military exports to the Chilean armed forces...
...Given the Reagan administration's efforts to certify that the Chilean junta is a valuable ally that has made substantial progress in human rights and therefore warrants renewed military aid (which was cut off by the Carter administration in 1977), it is worthwhile that we pause on the ninth anniversary of that coup and reflect on the status of Chile in 1982, and in doing so reflect as well on the status of another event connected to the Chilean certification process - the murders of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit in Washington six years ago, ten days after the anniversary of the coup, an event which prompted the Carter decision to end military assistance to those charged with ordering the murders, the Chilean junta...
...While the regional security requirements of realpolitik may make it necessary f or the U. S. to have military ties with certain front-line authoritarian regimes that are on "our" side, Chile is clearly not one of them...
...The fact is that Chile is on a path similar to the one fostered by Franco in Spain and the generals in Brazil: the gradual entrenchment and institutionalization of authoritarian rule, aided by the passage of time and the elimination of internal enemies, overcome in the long run only by death, economic chaos, social upheaval, or gradual and limited withdrawal, the exact conditions of which cannot be accurately foreseen...
...The peso has been devalued twice in the past year, compounding the misery...
...candidate at the University of Chicago...
...A QUICK look at the Chilean situation in 1982 reveals the following...
...They have no political freedom (something they had then), few if any individual rights (which they had then), and now have for the most part lost whatever material gains they may have made over the last nine years (which does not apply to a majority of the population), this as a result of the economic malaise brought on by the pursuit of the junta's economic policies...
...In the Santiago area alone over one million people are out of work...
...Even so, during recent weeks every human rights group in Santiago had its offices ransacked by military personnel, who rifled files and destroyed valuable documents in each instance...
...Political arrests through June stood at SS7 individual cases and 7,719 mass detentions, compared to a total of 909 in 1981 and 509 in 1980...
...The three Chilean intelligence officials responsible for ordering the murders remain untouched in Chile, the Justice Department's attempts at extradition frustrated by Chilean government denials, misinformation, and labyrinth-ian legal maneuvering...
...Internal banishment, forced relocation to remote and inhospitable areas of the country, most often in mountainous regions, remains a standard practice, with over 100 individuals thus banished over the past two years...
...The realities of such rule for the majority of Chileans remain now much as they did before...
...The hit-man-turned-government-witness hired to kill Letelier writes letters from prison that reveal his high position in the Chilean secret police (a claim previously denied by the junta), and that his legal fees and family expenses while on trial and in prison are being paid by the junta...
...PAUL G. Buchanan is a Senior Research' Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington and a Ph.D...
...And yet, even by the logic of the junta's adherents themselves, human rights in Chile remain at present unac-ceptably poor...
...As FOR THE STATUS of the Letelier-Moffit case, little can be said because so little has been done over the last twelve months...
...The convoluted logic of this quid pro quo should be substantiated by the realities of modern Chile, where limitations on civil liberties have paralleled the implementation of monetarist economic policies championed by a group of economists at the University of Chicago...
...demands that those responsible for the murders be brought to justice...
...The state of emergency remains in force now just as it did in 1973...
...The junta's response to all this, beyond the reshuffling of the cabinet, has been to crack down vigorously on the unrest that has surfaced along with the economic deterioration of the nation...
...Nonetheless, right-wing regimes such as mat governing Chile often predicate their position and policies on the achievement of economic and social stability, the latter via the physical eradication of domestic opposition, the former through the implementation of monetarist economic policies designed to reduce inflation and attract foreign investment...
...They have and will continue to do as they please in pursuit of their narrow, self-serving objectives, checked only by the pressures exerted on them by the international community...
...In fact, Article 24 of the 1981 Chilean Constitution makes the state of emergency that imposes these and other limitations on the rights of citizens a permanent fact of Chilean life...
...The present state of affairs is therefore far from being anything near certifiable progress in human rights...
Vol. 109 • October 1982 • No. 18
