Word: pinochets
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...shouted 80,000 exuberant teenagers, stomping their feet and shaking the arena. Then they began to chant "Pin-o-chet, go away!," conscious that they were on the site where scores of Chileans were killed and hundreds tortured after the 1973 coup in which General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte toppled elected Marxist President Salvador Allende Gossens. His voice trembling, the Pope acknowledged the "sadness" of the place and urged his audience "not to remain indifferent in the face of injustice" but cautioned them to avoid being "seduced by violence and the thousands of reasons that seem to justify...
...said it. While the visit was only one stop in a two-week South American tour that also included Uruguay and Argentina, the six-day Chilean stay was the centerpiece. The question on everyone's lips: What would the activist Pope tell his authoritarian host and oppressed flock? Pinochet, 71, is one of South America's two remaining military dictators.* A practicing Roman Catholic, as are 10 million of Chile's 12 million people, he has ruled with an iron hand, claiming that the threat of Communism justified his repressive regime. Opponents accuse the government of imprisoning, torturing and killing...
...Santiago's La Bandera slum, where Luisa Rivera, one of 600,000 people who gathered for the occasion, told him, "We want a dignified life without dictatorship." Replied John Paul: "Today has deeply affected my spirit." Earlier in the day the Pontiff had paid a 42-minute visit to Pinochet at La Moneda, the 182-year-old presidential palace. Details of the conversation were sparse, but a Vatican source said the Pope planned to urge Pinochet to forsake violence and allow democratic elections...
John Paul declined to celebrate a private Mass hoped for by the Pinochets, but prayed with them briefly in the palace chapel, an event that was broadcast on the government-owned television channel. Pinochet is eager to show he is not a pariah and hopes the goodwill extended to John Paul by ordinary Chileans will rub off on him. Chile's bishops had initially invited the Pope to come and celebrate the peaceful resolution of a territorial dispute between Chile and Argentina that nearly led to war before a Vatican- brokered peace agreement was signed in 1984. John Paul...
...free elections "in the not too distant future." At present the government has scheduled a plebiscite for 1989 to approve a presidential candidate chosen by the military. Those seeking a clue to the Pope's strategy found it during his meeting with the bishops. In a quiet dig at Pinochet's rule, he told them that "every nation has the right of self- determination" but noted that "it is also necessary that respect for human rights is assured." That restraint contrasted with his tough talk aboard the papal jet en route to Uruguay but typified the Pope's comments...