Pinochet Under Siege

...From 1976 through 1980, Chile's economy had dramatically picked up, growing at an annual rate of 7 per cent...

...A 40 per cent drop in the price of copper, the nation's primary export, added to the troubles...

...A diplomat in Santiago speculated that such a coup would involve a simple, sudden announcement by the army that the president was no longer able to carry out his duties and that another general was taking over...

...To the surprise of almost no one, the official results of the plebiscite showed that two thirds of those voting had approved the plan...

...According to this plan, General Pinochet would remain in office until 1989, when the regime would choose another leader to serve eight more years...

...a nearby supermarket still offers such items as Friskie's dog food, Celestial Seasonings herbal tea, and Revlon's Hex shampoo...

...Pinochet was under house arrest but was negotiating with his captors...

...In such a scheme, the collapse of a single company could threaten a domino-like chain of bankruptcies...

...Copper and timber prices fell, cutting sharply into export revenues...

...Making matters worse, twenty-five banks had lent CRAV more than $230 million without adequate backing...

...The real upheaval, however, came last summer when the regime unexpectedly devalued the peso...

...The copper workers' confederation and opposition groups have called for national protests one day every month until the Pinochet regime substantially alters its economic policies and eases its restrictions on trade union and political activity...

...And it automatically bit into the purchasing power of workers, since goods and services were now more expensive in real terms...

...The June announcement that money would be devalued from thirty-nine pesos to forty-six pesos to the U.S...

...The program was initiated in 1975 to absorb the unemployed...

...In the absence of hard information, the rumors persist...

...In 1972, middle- and upper-class housewives took part in similar "empty pot" demonstrations against the Allende government...

...By 1980, the Pinochet regime felt sufficiently secure to call a plebiscite to ratify a new authoritarian constitution that would enhance the powers of the head of state...

...Built during the boom years of 1979-1981, the apartments were aimed at a market that has since dwindled...

...The measures applied by the Chicago Boys—a tighter money supply, a uniform 10 per cent tariff on most imports, lower taxes, deep cuts in government spending, and the return of more than 400 state-owned companies and banks to private hands—initially made the Chilean economy go from bad to worse...

...One of the country's largest companies, the CRAV sugar group, went into bankruptcy following a questionable multimillion-dollar speculative venture on the sugar futures market...

...The rumors, which reflected wishful thinking on the part of the regime's critics, were sparked when he was not seen in public for a few days...

...the most optimistic predictions for this year suggest the economy will grow only 1 or 2 per cent...

...Over a thousand people accused of political activities were arrested...

...Much of the opposition, meanwhile, hopes the military may eventually move against Pinochet and quicken the slow transition to democratic rule in Chile...

...1974 In May 1974, seven months after the coup, there were still an estimated 6,000 or 7,000 political prisoners in Chile, the majority of them detained without trial...

...They blindfolded me and I was interrogated about supposed political activities and was asked if I distributed pamphlets...

...In Providencia, a fashionable shopping and residential area, Chilean matrons in fur coats and teen-agers sporting designer jeans still promenade up and down the area's main avenue on Saturdays...

...And few observers outside the military, from the U.S...

...On the night of June 14,1 saw families in automobiles bearing Las Condes and Providencia license plates taking part in the protest, leaning out car windows and banging their pots and pans together...

...Today, the peso is hovering around seventy-seven to the dollar, with the unofficial market values at least eight pesos higher...

...In a defiant, fist-waving announcement, the union leaders vowed to continue a strike until democracy is restored...

...to midnight, and army troops were stationed throughout several working-class neighborhoods...

...But since the peso was devalued, these goods are no longer within easy reach of most middle-class Chileans...

...Pinochet had been shot and killed by rival military officers, who were keeping the matter a secret until plans for a new government could be ironed out...

...Window-shopping is practiced more frequently than actual buying in Providencia...

...In the mid-1970s, Pinochet, who admits to knowing little about economics, turned economic policymaking over to a U.S.-trained team of young technocrats...

...Chilean officials had intercepted an internal party document urging contacts to be made with liberal-minded military officers as a first step toward restoring democracy...

...Such torture went on for eight days.' 1981 In a written complaint to the military courts, Sergio Patricio Aguilo Melo stated: T was placed naked on my back...

...In addition to the Christian Democrats and labor, Chile's private sector has soured on the junta...

...Dubbed the Chicago Boys because many of them had studied at the University of Chicago under such free marketeers as Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger, Chile's new economic officials lent an aura of respectability to a regime with one of the worst human rights records in the world...

...These powerful institutions view devaluation as necessary for encouraging exports, increasing foreign exchange, and facilitating debt repayment...

...PINOCHET UNDER SIEGE Mary Helen Spooner Ten years after the coup, Chileans are banging empty pots again Chile* ITlid" 1973* The country's independent truckers and copper miners, with the support of business and professional guilds, have called an indefinite strike...

...Between 1,500 and 2,000 people were arrested for political reasons during 1979 and the beginning of 1980, mostly for participating in public and peaceful demonstrations...

...Chile's gross domestic product contracted by 0.1 per cent in 1972...

...Various testimonies have been received of torture involving the use of drugs and electric shocks in an attempt to induce partial amnesia, so that the victims forget their torture and torturers...

...Those who bitterly opposed Salvador Allende's government and for years supported the military regime on the grounds that it was preventing a return to Marxism are now having second thoughts about General Augusto Pinochet's austere order...

...The new president could be either civilian or military—but Pinochet would have the option of remaining in office for this second term...

...But over the years, even as the economy picked up, many supporters of A Dark Decade Each year, Amnesty International, the Nobel Prize-winning human rights organization, issues a report on global political persecution...

...They have moved beyond protesting specific policies of President Salvador Allende to calling for the outright removal of his socialist government...

...Leftist parties had been banned since the coup...

...miners and truckers, "empty pot" demonstrations have occurred throughout the country, with Chileans of all economic and social sectors banging kitchen utensils together in a symbolic protest against the high cost of living...

...In the years since the regime had followed the advice of the Chicago Boys and auctioned off hundreds of unwieldy and unprofitable state-owned companies, a new breed of entrepreneurs had emerged, snapping up many of the old nationalized companies and gradually building small financial empires...

...In February 1982, barely a week after he had held a press conference to propose a nationwide Chilean labor organization that would resist the Pinochet regime's economic policies, Jimenez was found dead in the taxicab he drove to support himself and his family, his throat cut and his head almost severed from his body...

...Perhaps the most concrete achievement of the Chicago Boys was the diversification of Chile's exports...

...During the Allende years, copper accounted for 80 per cent of export revenues, leaving the Chilean economy highly vulnerable to fluctuations in the world metals market...

...At 8 p.m., they stood on their balconies beating empty pots with kitchen utensils and waving to passing motorists, who honked their horns in a rhythmic show of protest...

...Cracks in the Order Along a five-block stretch of the Pa-seo Ahumada, Santiago's main pedestrian walkway, dozens of street vendors illegally hawk their wares...

...1975 The use of torture is still known to be widespread in Chile...

...In truth, General Pinochet was vacationing at a summer residence...

...But unrest in Chile has been accompanied by just enough violence to persuade many military officers that a real threat to the country's security exists—and a strong central authority is needed...

...M.H.S...

...Although real unemployment never dropped below 15 per cent—a combustible level in any democratic society—the atmosphere in Chile was so heady that even one-time Allende supporters grudgingly conceded that some economic measures taken by the regime were well-conceived...

...Chile's normally conservative business community, once a bedrock of support for General Augusto Pinochet, is now openly critical of the regime's handling of the economy...

...The plebiscite carried an addendum: a lengthy transition period for return to democratic rule...

...The officers see him, but they do not quicken their pace to make an arrest...

...On the day of the third national protest, July 12, Chilean authorities took extraordinary measures...

...See box...

...Used books, corkscrews, cheap imported toys, woolen socks, and other items are spread out on sheets of brown wrapping paper or blankets, so the vendors can pack up and disappear when the police arrive...

...The bankruptcy itself was not as significant as the fact that CRAV left uncovered liabilities of almost $100 million...

...Less than three years ago the Pinochet regime could not have looked sturdier...

...it was to be a temporary measure...

...A kind of tape is placed on the stomach, chest, between the testicles and legs, and on the soles of the feet, through which the current is passed at times decided by the torturers, which is generally when the answers being given by the person being tortured are not deemed satisfactory.' the military regime drifted into the opposition camp...

...If the decline in these commodity prices could not be blamed on the Chicago Boys, other fundamental weaknesses of the economy certainly could be...

...They went out on the streets, beating their sauce pans...

...In Las Condes, Santiago's most affluent neighborhood, several multi-story apartment buildings stand almost vacant...

...1976 Bodies showing signs of severe torture have been discovered in various parts of the country...

...On May 11 and June 14, the first two national days of protest, middle- and upper-class Chileans heeded the call of the copper miners for a cacerolazo, a banging of pots and pans to protest the high cost of living...

...One dramatic case was that of Tu-capel Jimenez, the leader of the National Association of Public Employees...

...Over the next year, authorities prevented Jimenez and his followers in the public employees' association from holding broad-based meetings with other trade unions...

...Barely three months after the new banking code was decreed, the regime felt compelled to seize administrative control of eight banks and finance companies teetering on the verge of collapse...

...None of us really knows what a coup against Pinochet would be like," says the Chilean head of an American company's subsidiary in Santiago...

...But by the time the regime unveiled its restrictive labor code in mid-1979, Jimenez had joined a growing band of trade union critics...

...Few really know what percentage of support the Pinochet regime enjoyed during the 1980 plebiscite, after voting irregularities and intimidation are discounted...

...Chile, mid-1983: Truckers and the 23,000-member copper miners' confederation, along with various other labor groups, have threatened a nationwide strike of indefinite duration...

...Truckers' federation leader Leon Vilarin, who helped organize the massive anti-Allende strikes a decade earlier, says his guild's economic problems are worse than they were during the Allende years...

...The residents of Providencia and Las Condes no longer staunchly support the Pinochet regime as they once did...

...The once-excellent relations between business and Pinochet took a turn for the worse at the end of 1981, when the "economic miracle" began to unravel...

...In Pudahuel, one of the capital's poorest municipalities, workers clear debris from a dusty street in a shantytown...

...The CRAV case prompted the regime to take a closer look at the cozy relationships among some of Chile's biggest companies and banks...

...A few months after the coup, Jimenez defended Chile's new military junta before a meeting of the International Labor Organization in Geneva...

...They then proceeded to place electrodes on my arms, legs, nipples, stomach, and arourid the anal zone...

...Many Chilean trade unionists, recalling labor-government clashes during the Allende years, also initially supported the regime...

...In the late 1970s, other export products, such as timber and molybdenum, increased in importance, reducing copper's share to less than half of the country's export revenues...

...This means that a Chilean has to pay twice as much for goods and services today as last year...

...And that makes us all a little nervous...

...they applied electric current to my chest and penis.' 1979 There was a marked deterioration in the human rights situation this year...

...The following are excerpts from the Amnesty International annual reports on Chile during the ten-year reign of Augusto Pinochet...

...Chile's Christian Democrats, who once formed the backbone of opposition to the Allende government, found themselves an object of political persecution in 1977, when Pinochet dissolved the party...

...I felt unimaginable pain causing me uncontrollable convulsions...

...Inflation had been reduced from the triple-digit figures that marked the Allende years to a low of 9.5 per cent in 1981...

...The stores still stock imported clothing, stereos, and color television sets...

...They applied electricity to my tongue, ears, genitals, hands, head and feet.' 1980 Eduardo Andres Arancibia Munoz was arrested on 6 September 1980, and kept incommunicado in a secret place by the CNI [Chilean secret police] until 26 September____T was stripped and moved onto a kind of iron bedstead, to which they tied me...

...BY MARY HELEN SPOONER Last February, as the Chilean summer was in full bloom, startling rumors swept through Santiago: General Pinochet, the ruler of Chile since 1973, had been deposed in a silent coup...

...A teen-age boy calls to an elderly woman, who perhaps has not heard the warning, "Cuidado, abuela (watch out, granny...

...The acting president of Chile's human rights commission, Maximo Pacheco, estimates that only about 20 per cent of the population is supportive of the Pinochet regime, and that the majority opposition contains groups willing to take up arms against the junta...

...1977 Short-term detention is still common in Chile...

...Like the street vendors, such workers are not counted in the official unemployment statistics...

...There could be a crackdown, with the rationale being, 'See what happens when you're too nice to people,'" the diplomat said...

...A few months later, faced with rapidly falling international reserves, the Central Bank moved to float the peso, which further lowered the currency's value to about sixty-six pesos to the dollar...

...embassy in Santiago to Chile's increasingly vociferous opposition groups, claim to have any idea of how the armed forces feel about Pinochet...

...By withdrawing their labor, the strikers threaten to cripple Chile's economy...

...One victim] testifies: 'During my interrogation, they applied electricity to me through the parrilla, metal bed frame...

...The vendor passes word to his nearest colleague, and a ripple of excitement travels down the walkway...

...He was fired from his civil service job shortly after the 1980 plebiscite, which he had opposed...

...It is impossible to travel even a few blocks on a city bus without encountering one of them making his brief pitch, or a beggar singing and asking riders for a spare coin...

...Signs that Chile's short-lived economic miracle has not touched the country's poor are everywhere...

...This caused a public outcry in Chile as well as a two-month lull in foreign lending...

...A few weeks later, many of these protesters received anonymous warnings in the mail that included drawings of demonstrators leaning out of their cars, their own license plate numbers penciled in...

...In addition to strikes by copper Mary Helen Spooner is an American journalist living in Santiago...

...But the number of participants has grown so large that the program now accounts for roughly 10 per cent of the Chilean work force...

...After insisting for months that there would be no devaluation, Pinochet and his economic officials bowed to pressures from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which lend the country millions of dollars...

...In any case, the removal of Pinochet would not necessarily signal a return to democratic rule...

...If this trend continues, it will be the worst crisis in Chile's history...

...The short-term outlook for Chile's economic and political situation is as murky as the smog that hangs over the capital, Santiago...

...The bank interventions have continued through last year, to the point where the greater part of Chile's financial institutions can be said to be back in the hands of the State...

...To guard against such a reaction, Chilean officials promulgated a new banking law—over the objections of the Associa-cion de Bancos—that imposed stricter accounting practices and stiffer collateral conditions...

...In my neighborhood, people defied the curfew," reported Alicia, a part-time maid...

...in 1973, it will shrink another 3.6 per cent...

...The regime has responded by prohibiting the news media, which used to operate under a cautious self-censorship, from reporting on any opposition activity...

...They hit me on the ears with the palms of their hands which made me feel sick...

...She, too, backs away into the crowd...

...The vendors grab their wares and blend into the crowd...

...Down the Paseo, a vendor spots two military police officers, carabineros, approaching...

...dollar automatically boosted the debts of middle- and upper-class Chileans who had contracted dollar-denominated bank loans...

...There were army troops stationed in the area, who aimed their guns and fired into the air...

...One possible scenario has it that an even more rigid hard-line officer would take power, blaming his predecessor for having been, of all things, too soft...

...Even if the military regime is losing much of the support it once enjoyed among conservative Chileans, Pinochet's hold on power ultimately depends not on his political popularity but on the continued good will of the armed forces...

...The gross domestic product shrank by 13 per cent in 1982...

...When the winter rains come, the street will be a river of mud...

...Widespread torture of political dissidents has been reported...

...The new conglomerates often held shares in at least one bank, and a pattern of financial inbreeding occurred in which banks were lending to affiliated companies with inadequate collateral...

...A curfew was declared from 8 p.m...

...But the difference between Chile in 1973 and 1983 is that Salvador Allende was a civilian and Augusto Pinochet is a general...

...There is an increasing polarization in this country, with those who want to use violence to defend the government and those who want to use violence to bring it down," Pacheco said recently...

...The climate of uncertainty still persists in Chile...

...The street cleaners are participants in the Pinochet regime's Programa de Empleo Minimo, an employment program that pays the equivalent of $25 to $50 per month for full-time menial work...

...on] the parrilla grill, which is a kind of metal bedstead to which one is tied by the feet and hands...

...But by 1979, industrial and agricultural production had shot up, the inflation rate had fallen to 38 per cent, the budget was balanced, and foreign investment had returned...

...1978 The following is an extract from testimony received...

...These vagrant merchants board Santiago buses without paying a fare, walking up and down the aisles to sell newspapers, candy, chewing gum, or aspirin...

...1973 Estimates of the number of those killed in the [September 11] coup or in the months following the coup ranged from 10,000 to 20,000...

...The government promised a full investigation, but a year and a half after the murder no suspect has been apprehended...