PINOCHET STANDS FIRM The Opposition Remains Divided
Tauber, Walter
Policemen patrolled the flower beds, soldiers in full battle dress guarded palm trees and fountains. General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte was arriving at the Casino of Vifia del Mar. Eleven years...
...The party issued a very ambiguous statement on the possible use of force in ending the dictatorship...
...Politics is like a horse cart that can topple over," one guard told Ivan Poblete, "one day you are on top, the next you are down under...
...Colonel Larafiaga reportedly beat up former Christian Democratic Senator Jorge Lavandero when he was conducting an investigation on corruption charges against Pinochet...
...But according to popular wisdom in Santiago, the killing of four carabineros in Valparaiso a few weeks ago was the work of the CNI, offering Pinochet a pretext for the new hard line...
...At first it was all theory: whether carabinero training is better than Army training, which books offer the best surveillance techniques...
...They complain as loudly as the Christian Democrats about hunger in Chile, yet none pose viable solutions...
...Conflict With Church Denied Signs that the Church too is pressuring the regime have prompted the government to insist: "There is no conflict with the Church...
...So don't forget how well we treated you...
...Herded into trucks and taken to an abandoned soccer stadium, most were set free after a thorough ID check...
...Historical reasons" is the main excuse-a very thin cover for what is often little more than personal conflict at the leadership level...
...There will either be an end to the state of siege and a political solution soon," a leader of the small left-wing MAPU party told me, "or Chile will sink into complete chaos...
...Over 600, mostly medium-level cadre of leftwing political parties and trade unionists, have been relegado-sent into internal exile for three months in remote villages a thousand miles from Santiago...
...Everybody wants to be a Felipe Gonzalez," sighs a politician, drawing a parallel to the Spanish transition from dictatorship to democracy, "but nobody wants to take up the burden of being Adolfo Suarez...
...And they are incapable of explaining why the opposition is so divided...
...The signs of decomposition and the servists for guard duty at bridges and major crossroads...
...The state of siege announced only days later was like a golpe within the regime, a return to the days following the September 11, 1973 military takeover...
...Jos6 Ruiz de Giorgio, union leader of the petroleum workers and like Seguel a Christian Democrat, had said almost the same words during a protest-day press conference six months before...
...The pact was never signed...
...The carabineros don't live in barracks, but among the people, in the same poblaciones they have to attack," explains an official, who wishes to remain anonymous...
...But I am worried about what'll happen to us when this whole thing topples over...
...0 d o CC6 REPORT ON THE AMERICASThe October 1984 protest days were among the most successful...
...Economic policy is nonexistent, yet Economy Minister Modesto Collados continues presenting wide-eyed fantasies he calls "people's capitalism...
...Many of the relegados who had been imprisoned in earlier days knew the CNI as brutal torturers...
...He Knows Too Much The number of similar stories and anecdotes is seemingly endless...
...Chaos seems nearer than ever in Chile...
...Air Force General Fernando Matthei-who several months ago withdrew his secret service personnel from joint operations with the feared intelligence agency, CNI-appeared on television to announce that he is not under house arrest...
...They kept telling me: now don't go and tell foreign journalists we mistreated you...
...But evidence indicates otherwise...
...They see the people as the immediate reason for their suffering...
...And when budget time rolls around, the JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1985 7carabineros, moved by Pinochet from the interior ministry to defense, always get the smallest piece of the pie...
...At the break of dawn on November 10, armed personnel carriers (Swissdesigned Mowags) and trucks overflowing with troops roared into the poblaciones, the slums surrounding Chile's capital, Santiago...
...Our men are ashamed to leave their barracks iin uniform when off duty," confessed an Army general recently...
...In the meantime the Communists' armed wing, the Manuel Rodriquez Patriotic Front (which they lovingly call "Manolito"), is slowly but surely increasing the pressure with bombings...
...We must force them to stop their ridiculous political games," demanded Rodolfo Seguel on the day of the successful October 28 protest strike...
...All to no avail...
...In the short term, Pinochet can only be ousted by another general...
...The cara6 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Walter Tauber, South America correspondent for the German news weekly, Der Spiegel, spent November and December in Chile...
...Despite the November setback, the feeling that Pinochet's regime is crumbling has become stronger...
...Such a general will only act if he can find firm support for a coup among the few remaining pro-government parties, as well as in a large sector of the opposition-and explicit support from Washington...
...The Episcopal Conference has broken through censorship in aggressive pastoral letters that are read aloud at Sunday mass...
...A "Day of National Protest" at the end of November was a complete flop...
...This Colonel Larafiaga is a danger to the service when he loses all control...
...The political spectrum from moderate socialists to Social Democrats is occupied not by the one or two parties one might reasonably expect, but by two dozen groups...
...Suarez was the first prime minister appointed by King Juan Carlos after Franco's death...
...Christian Democrats Rodolfo Seguel, Andres Zaldivar, Gabriel Valdes...
...Meanwhile the poblaciones around Santiago are sinking ever deeper into misery and disorder...
...Other relegados on the nearby island of Chilo6 relate similar stories: "They gave us orange juice in champagne glasses," marvels Ivan Poblete, a student leader from Antofagasta...
...While helicopters menacingly throbbed overhead, the soldiers burst into the humble houses and arrested all men between 12 and 65 years of age...
...Three young men sat talking shop two tables further down...
...Of late, squabbles within the reBanging saucepans has become standard protest...
...or: We are not sadists...
...Certainly the most surprising was a conversation I overheard during lunch time in a picada, a cheap popular restaurant near Santiago's central market...
...And the officer corp is seriously worried...
...Church attendance has increased significantly throughout the country...
...They quite rightly demand recognition by all other parties and full participation in any future democracy...
...absence of any coherent government policy are so evident that the detailed accounts in some of the pro-government newspapers seem more revealing and subversive than anything the now closed-down opposition press could print...
...She is now exiled in Maullin, a beautiful fishing village near the southern port of Puerto Montt...
...Even the base of Pinochet's power seems to be rotting away...
...Tainted by association with the dictatorship, Suarez resigned under pressure in early 1981...
...As yet it is impossible to discern who has what to offer...
...Matthei and Pinochet are known to be locked in severe conflict...
...The third agent was obviously from another branch of the service...
...I bineros, or militarized police, are suffering especially under the pressure of being the main instrument of repression and thus in the front line of popular hatred...
...groups of young slum dwellers have seriously injured lone policemen on their way home...
...A Fragmented Opposition In between the Left and the Right are a collection of small parties: they enjoy the same amount of relative political freedom as the Christian Democrats, holding press conferences, negotiations, party council meetings...
...I was not subjected to any physical violence," says Fanny Pollarolo, a psychologist and Communist leader in the left-wing coalition Popular Democratic Movement (MDP) about her arrest by the CNI...
...But now it seems that even this last redoubt of Pinochet's regime is suffering a severe attack of conscience...
...To everyone's surprise, the action forced an "opening" on the military...
...Everything is normal," says a government spokesman, who then goes on to explain the necessity of calling up several thousand Army regime have taken on a touch of comic opera...
...The Communists, on the other hand, seem only to gain terrain the longer the crisis lasts...
...The protest was the twelfth since Rodolfo Seguel, president of the copper workers' union, called on Chileans over 18 months ago to defy the regime by banging on saucepans...
...But we can't throw him out, he knows too much about that case when we killed those guys...
...The main reason the "whole thing" hasn't toppled over after nearly two years of continuous protest seems to be the lack of a really coherent alternative...
...The Christian Democrats, by far the strongest party, lament the lack of democracy but seem far more worried by a possible electoral victory by the Left, whenever elections are held, than by the problem of how to bring about these elections and get rid of Pinochet...
...Plaza de Armas, Santiago de Chile...
...Increasingly, policemen are subjected to acts of revenge...
...Our country is becoming a tropical dictatorship," an opposition magazine remarked acidly in its last edition before being closed down...
...Hatred for the people is increasing among the troops," says the official...
...It seems that they are seriously worried about the future," explains Fanny Pollarolo...
...They are sick of being used by the Army-the regime's favorite-to carry the main load of repression...
...Santiago, September 1983...
...Some are harmless-a bus driver suddenly drives off, leaving a last-in-line carabinero behind...
...Then, after a plate of clams and before diving into their steaks, the three-by now identified as CNI members-went into detail...
...The politicians have not been up to their task," is the sad summation of a Chilean journalist...
...Unarmed demonstrations were out of the question in the face of massive Army patrols...
...Eleven years after his brutal military coup, Pinochet's casino speech last November heralded the beginning of a new ice age...
...Juice in Champagne Glasses In recent months, according to rumors in Santiago, the secret servicemen of the CNI have been shadowing the armed forces more closely than the opposition parties in their quest for any sign of dissent...
...Even the moderate Santiago Archbishop Juan Francisco Fresno has been hinting at the possibility of excommunicating the regime or some of its members...
...One of us even received 10,000 pesos ($80) with the comment: share that with the others, you'll need it down there in the south...
...Some are more serious...
...I don't care about that...
...But they-consciously, some say-scared the Christian Democrats just before a "constitutional pact" on the basis of future democracy was to be signed by all parties...
...We'll offer the military an alternative," declared Christian Democratic leader Gabriel Valdes recently...
Vol. 19 • January 1985 • No. 1
