Chile's New Chance for Democracy

...AFTER THE PLEBISCITE Chile's New Chance for Democracy By Antonio Ramirez The defeat of General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte in the October 5 "Yes-No" plebiscite reflected the determination of a majority of Chileans to restore democracy to their country...

...The 16 groupings that banded together to make up the Command for the No range from the Rightwing National Party, which split off from the Pinochet camp, to the Socialists led by Clodomiro Almeyda, participants 18 years ago in Salvador Allende's effort to build a Marxist society in Chile...

...one hopes his successor will make American visitors to Chile feel as proud of their country as he has...

...The document does little, though, to ensure an orderly transition of power...

...Any future democratic government will face the problem of what to do with those known to have committed crimes against human rights...

...But the degree of government brutality against the opposition has defied even the Chilean talent for laughing thingsoff...

...But there appear to be other factors at work that might contribute to a different outcome...

...But they are more interested in praising U.S...

...Four months ago she married a computer technician who is active in the Christian Democratic youth movement...

...The results, published in the opposition weekly ?n?lisis, reveal that currently more than 1.7 million live in exile—rather a staggering figure for a country whose population is 12.3 million...

...The Chileans I spoke to, by contrast, pointed to a widening gulf between the rich, who profit disproportionately from the country's prosperity, and the middle and working classes, who steadily lose ground as the government's relentless drive to privatize everything deprives them of important public services...

...In the course of the exuberant yet generally nonviolent demonstrations in Santiago's streets following the plebiscite, cameramen recorded celebrants embracing and shaking hands with carabineros, Chile's militarized policemen...

...The centrists who appear to be the heirs to Chile's political future—assuming, that is, a successful restoration of democracy—are not the kind who shrink from the dreaded "L-word...

...Four years ago, she was forced to run a gauntlet of nightsticks wielded by carabineros breaking up a peaceful sit-in at the University of Concepción...

...Small wonder, then, that when democratic forces won the teachers' union leadership from Pinochet loyalists four years ago, the union became a major force in the "No" campaign...

...More reprehensible is the Pinochet regime's policy of ruthlessly denying Chile's workers any opportunity to improve their lot through organized action...

...Some private talks may in fact be taking place...

...Despite the junta's grim tactics, the popular mood in the wake of the victory at the polls is upbeat...

...Fernanda's is not an idle threat...

...While democrats in Chile support the Communists' right to function as long as they refrain from violence (a right denied them and others on the left by Pinochet's Constitution), there seems to be little nostalgia for the follies of 1970-73...

...Still, some of them have the ring of credibility...

...It is reasonable to assume that the majority of the exiles are people of the caliber of Fernanda Poblete and her husband...

...According to its provisions, Pinochet is to remain in power until March 1990...

...Of course, that would not be easy to do, since as chief of the Army he has the backing of Chile's most powerful military branch...

...In a country where shoes sell for $40, they earn about $100 a month...

...A former teacher who today drives a taxi, because he was fired for political activities, put it more starkly: "Even fear ends...

...Politically active young people in Chile tend to be found in the meeting halls of the Christian Democrats, by far the country's largest party, and the Party for Democracy, consisting of various Social Democratic factions...

...He is supposed to call for general elections, including a presidential contest, by December 1989...

...The United States government as well can make a difference—as it has, for better and for worse, in recent Chilean history...

...The penalty for a teacher getting too vocal politically, or demonstrating inadequate zeal for turning out obedient and incurious students, has been dismissal with loss of pension benefits (which teachers pay for out of pocket...

...They hope to bring government killers and torturers to justice through the normal channels of criminal law, with legal safeguards to avoid scatter-gun accusations against Pinochet supporters...

...Veronica will tell you, more in sorrow than in anger, that suffering brutalization and imprisonment and seeing a classmate shot dead deprived her of much of the joy of growingup...

...People like union leader Hernol Flores display chilling "trophies," in his case one of the 18 bullets shot into his car by a military patrol...

...Ambassador Harry G. Barnes Jr...

...Barnes' willingness to confront the military junta on human rights violations, regardless of the politics of the victim, has won him universal esteem among Chile's democrats...

...For the visitor to Santiago, the most visible sign of theemphasis on private ownership may be the oppressive smog: While it is partly due to the city's location in a bowl surrounded by mountains, the ancient fleet of privatelyowned buses spewing diesel fumes into the air deserves much of the blame...

...The opposition strongly objects to the constitutional scheme...

...Pinochet has apparently been taking human rights lessons from the Soviet Union, the only other country I know where this penalty exists...

...The people here are not loath to remind visiting Americans that the CIA bears a heavy burden for the 1973 coup...

...If the dictatorship goes on," she told me, "we'll leave Chile...

...The Communists were neither invited to join nor sought participation in the coalition...

...Although the unions have shown a remarkable ability to persist in the face of repression, their membership is a fraction of what it once was...

...their plight and that of their families is kept alive by an information center in the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Santiago...

...Recently Manuel Bustos and Arturo Martinez, top leaders of Chile's newly-formed labor federation, the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores, were sent into "internal exile...

...It is being put about, too, that the most significant Right-wing party supporting Pinochet, Renovation Nacional, is ready to discuss a more rapid return to electoral politics than is called for by the Constitution...

...It is asking for a quicker transition to democracy, for the military's return to its previous nonpolitical role, and for the General to step out of public life...

...Admittedly, in a country where the independent press is denied access to the facts and the controlled press propagates lies, one must rely heavily on rumors...

...Now I feel I've regained my youth," she said after just under 55 per cent of the voters cast "No" ballots...

...The dwellings, bearing long-term mortgages based on interest rates that fluctuate daily, have clearly been constructed with an eye to scoring points for the government rather than solving Chile's serious housing shortage...

...He doesn't fit together," ran the on-screen legend...

...Certainly the parties making up the Command for the No are asking for a "dialogue" with the Armed Forces and the government...

...Had that not been the case, Chileans say, the loss of life would have been in the tens of thousands instead of the low thousands...

...The "Command for the No," as the 16-party anti-Pinochet coalition was called, similarly relied heavily on humor in the 15 minutes of television time it was allowed each day the month before the vote...

...A ticket combining the Center-Left and CenterRight parties headed by someone like Patricio Aylwin, president of the Christian Democrats and aleader of the Command for the No, could move Chile back into the mainstream of democratic nations...

...Pinochet himself is to stay on as head of the Armed Forces for another four years, and will retain the title of senator for life...

...From the beginning, the Catholic hierarchy has opposed the junta and has courageously defended human rights...

...Barnes is retiring this year after more than three decades in the Foreign Service...

...The Church is expected to use its enormous moral influence to get full-scale negotiations going...

...Along with their counterparts in other Latin American countries, they are openly liberal in their attitudes, supporting a mixed economy and social investment to provide a better life for all citizens...

...Indeed, so proud are Chileans of their prePinochet history that, although they welcomed the foreign observers who poured into the country, they could not resist noting that many were from nations with much shorter democratic experiences...

...Chile's post-plebiscite prospects will, to be sure, greatly depend on how effectively the coalition responsible for Pinochet's defeat continues to function...

...His warnings and those of the State Department that the United States would frown on any attempt to interfere with the plebiscite on October 5 undoubtedly contributed to its being held as planned...

...The role of the Roman Catholic Church in the transition process will be crucial...

...as a true friend of democracy...

...The situation of its teachers dramatically illustrates Chile's economic inequities...

...For example, it may well be true that the other three members of the junta—the heads of the Navy, the Air Force and the National Police—are less than unanimous in their enthusiasm for Pinochet and are now eager to dump him...

...The parties in the "No" coalition have agreed not to seek vindictive legislation...

...We can't raise children in a country without political or professional opportunities...

...It is unlikely, however, that Chileans will soon forget their anger over the pain they have been made to suffer...

...Pinochet intended the vote to put a formal stamp of approval on eight more years of military dictatorship...

...Throughout the plebiscite campaign, Pinochet bragged that every seven minutes a new government-subsidized home is built in Chile...

...Antonio Ramirez, a new contributor to the NL, is an editor of New York Teacher, the official publication of the New York State United Teachers...

...But during a week I spent as an observer invited by the Chilean teachers' union, apicture emerged of a people weary of seeing their human rights abused, of being lied to by state-controlled media, and of being denied the freedom to vent their highly-developed enthusiasm for political debate and hard-fought electoral campaigns...

...He obviously did not expect the opposition to rise to the challenge...

...A Santiago gathering of Chile's radical-Left coalition that I dropped in on looked like an old pois' reunion...

...No country can afford such losses...

...The Constitution that set up the plebiscite was rammed through by the General in 1980...

...In San Felipe I met Fernanda Poblete, a dynamic and talented young woman who runs a special education school...

...More than 600 desaparecidos are still unaccounted for...

...Chile's Catholic Institute on Migration recently did a survey of how many Chileans have moved abroad...

...Graffiti in Santiago around the time of the balloting proclaimed: "The nightmare is ending...

...One such conciliatory gesture was made by Veronica Vukasovic, a25-yearold graduate student...

...The junta is empowered to name a third of the Legislature...

...Unfortunately, many of the witnesses and much of the evidence has been buried in those clandestine mass graves...

...The week of the plebiscite, for instance, one of Santiago's main movie theaters advertised Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator in twofoot-high letters on its marquee...

...the Constitution, he says, will be "followed to the letter...

...Just before the plebiscite, a mass grave with 18 bodies—including one in a cassock with rosary beads—was found near San Felipe (the discovery was not reported on television or in the official press...

...The military can no longer frighten us," declared Flores, who has been jailed 18 times in 15 years...

...Hospitals, clinics, schools, universities, and public transportation have all been impoverished under Pinochet's rule...

...A statement published in several opposition magazines by an organization for relatives of the victims of political executions demands the prosecution and punishment of the guilty but, significantly, rejects the death penalty...

...Should the democratic transition be aborted—either because the military under Pinochet refuses to abandon its outlaw ways or because the centrists return to sectarian squabbling—Chile will suffer in more ways than one...

...A split-screen ad showed Pinochet in both his Prussian-style uniform and in the pin-striped suit he donned for the election campaign...

...To make ends meet, they must work double shifts and extra jobs, while their union tries to ease things by providing discount dental and medical services...

...Pinochet's apologists justify the junta's 15 years of repression by citing the country's economic "miracle": its healthy growth rate, its relatively low unemployment and inflation, and its declining foreign debt...

...But to see these tiny, ticky-tacky cottages piled up against each other is to wonder why anybody with an alternative would want to live in one...

...Average citizens also say they want to set aside thoughts of revenge and hatred...

...In the town of San Felipe in the Andean foothills where I went to watch the voting, Manuel Camilo Vial, a Roman Catholic bishop with a distinguished record of opposition to the regime and support for workers' rights, described Pinochet's 15-year reign as "a parenthetical lapse" in Chile's century-and-a-half tradition of constitutional democracy...

...Pinochet has indicated that he will stonewall these demands...

...Its announcement on October 14 that an agreement had been reached to field a single candidate in the forthcoming presidential election is a hopeful sign...

...Chileans also love to display their remarkable ability to laugh in the face of cruelty and repression...

...I can't destroy that by giving in to hate and violence...