Word: pinochets
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...reaction of Chile's military commanders to the indictment of their erstwhile chief may well have sent a shiver of fear through the hearts of many Chileans. The the generals signaled they were deeply unhappy. Navy chief Admiral Patricio Arancibia warned that Pinochet's indictment had brought tensions in Chile "to a critical point," while armed forces commander General Ricardo Izurieta demanded a meeting with the president to convey the military's discontent. General Izurieta, too, warned that the ruling harmed "the climate of tranquility" in Chile, although as it turned out, only a couple of hundred people turned...
...Last week, for the first time, a Chilean judge cut through the veil of fear Pinochet had draped over his country and charged the general with kidnapping. These charges, of course, are only a handful of the more than 100 criminal complaints against Pinochet pending in the Chilean legal system. But they'll do: The case concerns the notorious "caravan of death" in 1973, when a group of senior military officers murdered some 73 political prisoners in the weeks that followed Pinochet's military coup...
...What had held Chileans back until last week from prosecuting General Pinochet was not doubts over the strength of the case against him; it was fear of the consequences. Before he stepped down in 1990, the general, who ruled at gunpoint from October 1973, had authored an immunity decree for himself to avoid just such an eventuality, and it was only 10 years later that Chile's supreme court found the gumption to strike down this pseudo-legal impunity. The reasons for their caution are plain to see: Many Chileans feared that the generals who'd voluntarily allowed the restoration...
...When Pinochet launched his 1973 coup, he did it with the active support and encouragement of the U.S. government, who saw the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende as a dire threat to its Cold War regional interests. The Clinton administration has forced the keepers of the nation's secrets to shine some light on the relationship between Washington and Pinochet, and what has emerged through four tranches of document declassification is an unflattering picture of U.S. collusion with a regime that systematically undermined the constitution of Latin America's oldest democracy, and brutalized its citizenry. And what...
...Cold War, of course, is long over, and the U.S. is quite happy to have the very same Socialist party overthrown by Pinochet governing Chile today, all the more so because it has adopted the "Third Way" ideology, which prioritizes economic principles cherished in Washington. But if Chile's generals are once again getting restive, this time because a court wants their erstwhile commander to answer charges that by any standard democratic standard of behavior are extremely serious, then it may behoove Washington - preferably with the endorsement of whichever transition team makes it to the White House - to actively warn...