Published on Wednesday, January 3, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
How to Remember Pinochet
by Katherine Roberts Hite and Eliana Loveluck
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General Augusto Pinochet’s ashes have barely been scattered and already the debate in Chile has begun over how he should be
Even major US newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal counsel that while the man who ran Chile for seventeen years was no friend of human rights, he nevertheless “righted” the country. They ask us to consider a more “complicated” story of Pinochet’s place in history. These newspaper editorials claim that thanks to Pinochet, democracy now flourishes in Chile. According to their argument, somehow the renowned dictator paved the way for the democrats that followed his 17-year rule.
But consider the following:
The Chilean government denied Pinochet a state funeral because he was under indictment—and house arrest at the time of his heart attack—for the murders of Chilean men and women and for the embezzlement of tens of millions of dollars. Chilean president Michelle Bachelet said that a state funeral for Pinochet would be an assault on the Chilean conscience.
While Pinochet supporters mourned the dictator at his service at the Military College, thousands of other Chileans participated in an alternative commemoration and protest at the monument to Salvador Allende, Chile’s democratically-elected president overthrown by Pinochet in a bloody coup d’etat. As they mourned the death of democracy those many years ago, they also resurrected the memory of Pinochet’s victims.
Who were the victims? The musician, Victor Jara, whose hands were broken at the Chile Stadium, where thousands of prisoners were held in those first few weeks of terror after the coup, who was then shot and killed, his body dumped unidentified in a morgue. The university professor who taught subject matter incomprehensible to the military junta, subjects such as journalism, sociology, and political science. The schoolteacher whose student denounced her because he knew she was an Allende sympathizer. Doctors, professionals, workers, students.
In the press this week there was an image of a woman, a mother, kissing a skull. She was one of the few whose relatives’ remains had been identified, and she could kiss his skull to express her love. So many other Chileans will never be able to say goodbye to their loved ones even in this cruel manner, for there are still 1100 Chileans who remain disappeared at the hands of Pinochet’s men, including hundreds who were taken in helicopters, had their stomachs slashed open, and then were dropped into the Pacific Ocean.
More:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0103-50.htm