Pinochets Dictatorship: The Context of the Dirty War in Chile - Essay Example

25 April Pinochet’s Dictatorship: The Context of the ‘‘Dirty War’’ in Chile The dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet led to the deaths of up to 3,000 people, with up to 30,000 having been tortured. However, the true scope of these repressions cannot be understood out of context of the 1970s “Dirty War” in Chile and Southern Cone. This essay will deal with this issue in depth, with a view to analyzing the factors that enabled Pinochet to institute his repressive system and the effects it had upon the Chilean society. THE CHILEAN MILITARY U.S.-LED TRAINING AND ITS EFFECT ON THE MILITARY CULTURE The beginning of the Cold War led to the introduction of new concepts of national security to the Third World nations, including those of Latin America. The spread of left-wing ideas facilitated the increase in concerns among the military elites about the influence of Communist parties, which had its repercussions in Chile as well1. This was in turn enhanced by military assistance provided to Latin American nations by the USA. In case of Chile, for the period of 1950-1979, more than 7,000 Chilean army officers were trained at the School of the Americas or at the other U.S. military facilities2. The scale of training programs for Chile rose especially fast from 1966 to 1969, when 107 Chilean officers were sent for training to the School of the Americas in Panama, while as of 1973 this number reached 2573. The U.S.-sponsored training programs were not limited to the technical and functional aspects; they allowed for the establishment of close contacts between the Chilean military and the U.S. Armed Forces, facilitating the spread of anti-Communism among the Chilean officer corps4. The courses of the School of the Americas centered more on countering the efforts of ‘internal’ enemies and ‘subversives’ than on the potential military threats, psychologically preparing the army officers who took these courses for their future role in right-wing repressive regimes5. THE DINA AND THE CIA ASSISTANCE Shortly after the coup d’etat of 11 September 1973, a new security agency, Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (the DINA), was established by Pinochet’s regime. It soon became a major tool of Pinochet’s repressive policies6. According to the testimony of former DINA commander Manuel Contreras, he was ordered by Pinochet to apply for the CIA assistance in organizing the DINA in 19737. Contreras asserted that he then met with General Vernon Walters, CIA Deputy Director, and in March 1974 eight CIA operatives were dispatched for Chile to aid in establishment of the DINA8. Even though after 1975 relations between the CIA and the DINA were somewhat dampened by the Congressional revelations of shadowy CIA activities and the election of President Carter9, the cooperation between the two agencies in anticommunist operations continued unabated. The controversy around the murder of Lettelier in 1976, which ended in formal dissolution of the DINA itself in 1977, also contributed to perceptions of connection between the CIA and the DINA, as Contreras claimed that the U.S. authorities were aware of his agents’ activities in Washington, D.C.10 Nevertheless, as secret documents on the U.S.-Chile relations released in 1999 confirm, the CIA continued to cooperate with Pinochet’s secret services even after 197611. PINOCHET’S REGIME AND THE ROLE OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT Although the government of the USA did not offer explicit support for the policies of the Pinochet dictatorship, it was definitely willing to tolerate it as a counter-balance to pro-Soviet forces in Latin America. The Nixon Administration was a strong proponent of Pinochet’s government, having helped to undermine the government of Salvador Allende through the effective economic blockade and clandestine support for the Chilean far right groupings12. These actions of the U.S. government were justified by the precepts of so-called Johnson Doctrine of 1965, according to which the U.S. should not allow the creation of left-wing regimes in Latin America13.While the Carter Administration earned displeasure of Pinochet by its verbal attacks on human rights violations in Chile, Carter did not try to make decisive steps against the Pinochet regime. The Reagan Administration was much more cordial in its relations with Pinochet’s Chile; during the visit of Reagan’s special envoy, Jeane Kirkpatrick, to Santiago in 1981, the economic policies of Pinochet achieved official praise of the U.S. government14. The appointment of James Theberge, who was known for his conservative views15, as an Ambassador to Chile in 1981 also showed what the position of the Reagan Administration on Pinochet really was. These, and other, expressions of the U.S. support or benevolent indifference undoubtedly encouraged Pinochet to ignore his critics abroad and push with the further repressive policies at home. OPERATION CONDOR Operation Condor was a part of repressive campaigns against the left-wing political forces in the Southern Cone undertaken by South American military regimes, including that of Chile, in the 1970s. According to declassified CIA documents, Operation Condor consisted of three levels. The first consisted in cooperative activities between military and intelligence services of the countries involved, in particular, political surveillance and exchange of intelligence information. The second one involved cross-border operations aimed at detaining and killing (‘disappearing’) the known opponents of the Southern Cone regimes; these operations were carried out by special operations multinational units. Finally, the third level of Operation Condor (or “Phase III”) was designed for the purposes of attacking left-wing political leaders who were feared to be involved in ‘conspiracies’ against the military governments16. In total, Operation Condor led to the deaths of about 60,000 political dissidents in the nations of Southern Cone and abroad. The Chilean government actively participated in its arrangements, as can be seen from the aforementioned assassination of Orlando Lettelier, Allende’s former ambassador to the USA, and from other cases, including the murders of dissident General Carlos Prats in September 1974 and Bernardo Leighton, Chile’s Christian Democrats’ leader, in 197617. Other victims included the members of Chile’s Socialist and Communist parties and those of the MIR, a far left guerilla movement. Operation Condor allowed the military dictatorships of the region to stifle left-wing opposition to their rule, and created atmosphere of fear in the region. NEOLIBERALISM AND PINOCHET’S REGIME The coup d’état that brought Pinochet to power was driven by fears of Communist takeover that were fuelled by radical policies of Allende’s Popular Unity coalition. The business circles that opposed Allende’s redistributive and nationalization policies embraced Pinochet’s anti-socialist measures wholeheartedly, generally ignoring their human costs18. The economic policies of Pinochet included the deregulation of price formation, the privatization of majority of state enterprises and creation of the investment climate favorable to foreign companies. The “shock treatment” of 1973-1975, with artificially induced economic recessions that brought economic growth to -12.5% in 1975 alone, together with repressions, broke the power of the organized labor and led to the massive fall in living standards19. The results of the short-lived economic boom of the late 1970s were reversed by the economic collapse of 1982, when Chile registered the steepest decline in GNP among all Latin American nations20. The social marginalization also reached unprecedented levels: while under Allende unemployment was down to 3%, in 1975 the number of officially unemployed amounted to 18.7% of the workforce21. The real wages and social spending dropped to 63% of their 1970 levels22. The neoliberal “reforms” of Pinochet, contrary to his supporters, did not lead to stable economic growth. It was only after 1982, with the effective dismissal of monetarist doctrine, that the stable development of Chilean economy resumed23. The legacy of economic inequality brought about by Pinochet’s neoliberalism, nevertheless, still continues to plague Chile. CONCLUSION In general, Pinochet’s dictatorship was an integral element of the chain of right-wing regimes in the Southern Cone that obtained the support of the USA and pursued harsh neoliberal economic policies. His regime was not a simple continuation of previous tradition of military authoritarianism, presenting a new combative spirit of neoliberal authoritarianism that deeply affected the development of the Chilean society. Notes 1. Chilean government entered into mutual defense agreements with Argentina and Brazil after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, with an aim of thwarting further advance of Soviet influence in the region (Constable and Valenzuela 47). 2. Constable and Valenzuela 47. 3. Gareau 70. 4. General Horacio Toro, who was part of the training program at the School of the Americas, observed that the trainees were told that their historic mission was to “destroy Marxism” (Gareau 70). 5. See testimony of Juan Ricardo, a former Bolivian Army captain and graduate of the School of the Americas, for greater perspective (qtd. in Gill 97). 6. The DINA was implicated in extrajudicial murders of at least 119 political opponents of the Pinochet regime during the Operation Colombo in 1975, and in the killings of such prominent figures of Chilean opposition in exile as Bernardo Leighton (5 October 1976) and Orlando Lettelier (21 October 1976). 7. Menjivar and Rodriguez 35. 8. Ibidem. 9. Constable and Valenzuela 99. 10. See Constable and Valenzuela 103-106 for more detail on this story. 11. Trento 400. 12. The U.S. financial aid to Chile was reduced from $260.4 million in 1967 to $3.8 million in 1973, while the U.S. corporations were discouraged from business deals with the Popular Unity government. Total costs of the CIA covert operations in Chile amounted to $8 million in 1970-1973 (Constable and Valenzuela 26). 13. Meiertons 131. 14. Constable and Valenzuela 193. 15. Ibidem. 16. Menjivar and Rodriguez 36. 17. Constable and Valenzuela 103. 18. Constable and Valenzuela 221. 19. Yovanovich 92. 20. In 1982 Chilean GNP registered negative growth of -14.2% (Constable and Valenzuela 195). 21. Constable and Valenzuela 223. 22. Ibidem. 23. Constable and Valenzuela 197-199. Works Cited Constable, Pamela and Valenzuela, Arturo. A Nation of Enemies: Chile under Pinochet. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1991. Print. Gareau, Frederick H. State Terrorism and the United States: From Counterinsurgency to the War on Terrorism. London: Zed Books, 2004. Print. Gill, Lesley. The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in The Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. Print. Meiertons, Heiko. The Doctrines of US Security Policy: An Evaluation under International Law. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print. Menjivar, Cecilia and Rodriguez, Nestor. When States Kill: Latin America, the U.S., and Technologies of Terror. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2005. Print. Trento, Joseph J. The Secret History of the CIA. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005. Print. Yovanovich, Gordana. The New World Order: Corporate Agenda and Parallel Reality. Quebec City: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003. Print. Read More