Jorge, a medical doctor, was the opposition liaison with the military. Pinochet became the President of the country and ruled it for the next 17 years. Pinochet had received 44 to their 56 percent in the plebiscite. If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. Mostly, they felt betrayed. One patrician learned that I’d served previously in La Paz and asked me, “Well, how was Bolivia?” expecting that I was going to say, they live in caves, they eat off of the street. People knew that Pinochet had given up. The plebiscite was in October of ’88. Lagos talked back without hesitation and subdued the hecklers. How stood our policy towards Chile when you went there? Combination of those sources, our judgment was that the “no” vote would probably win some margin more than a narrow margin. He unexpectedly lost a plebiscite that would have extended his rule over Chile for an additional eight-year term. Few in the opposition knew how to best them. But the TV showed a little after that, a half an hour or so later, were pictures of the other commanders of the Armed Forces, that is, the Air Force, the Carabineros, the Navy going toward the Presidential Palace and obviously a meeting of the junta with Pinochet. The IB History examination is very keen that students learn to compare and contrast the methods and conditions which led to the rise to power of single party state rulers - sometimes insisting that they are from different parts of the world, and / or that one is a right-wing dictator whilst the other is a left-wing dictator! Following a legal battle he was released on grounds of ill health, and returned to Chile in March 2000. Educated by conservative Marist priests he was twice rejected by Chile's military college. It was gloomy, conflicted. With 1988 that was eight years later. People felt they had begun to overcome the darkest part of their recent history. It promised an eventual return to electoral “democracy,” beginning with a plebiscite in 1988 in which voters could say “yes” or “no” to the junta’s sole candidate. Harry Barnes served as Ambassador to Chile and recounts the efforts the U.S. made to establish contact with the democratic opposition and to ensure the plebiscite would be free and fair. He was faced with a disruptive group of Communists. They adopted those reforms on their terms. Pinochet, under pressure from other countries was forced to accept the results, and stepped down from power in 1990. Students then conclude this study by writing an essay on … Despite being charged first by a court in Spain in 1998 and then in his native Chile, Pinochet eluded prosecution by claiming he was mentally unfit to defend himself in legal proceedings. Even the pro-democracy conservatives began finding their voices. The opposition to Pinochet made itself felt through massive street demonstrations. I remember attending a dinner party that was top heavy with this group. As a result, I follow my detailed treatment of the Rise of Mao in China with a shorter"mini-unit" on Pinochet in Chile. And speaking of interference in another country: sending hit men to assassinate a foreign minister in the U.S. capital was about the limit …, Chilean society was fractured under Allende and even more so under most of Pinochet’s reign. It wasn’t a huge margin, but it was an adequate margin…. After 25 years in power, he was put under arrest, but died in 2006, before he … It was becoming ungovernable. A partial view of the National Stadium, which served as a jail for prisoners during Augusto Pinochet's dictatoship. Chileans felt frustrated and depressed. BARNES: If you can have flood gates that are good things, the flood gates opened. Q: Prior to the plebiscite, how did we see the vote going, provided there was no military interference? The case stayed red hot. He asked me to arrange a key part of the trip. He was interviewed by Kennedy beginning in April 2001. Junta members Stange and Matthei also said so publicly.…That killed any possibility of them subverting the process. In 2004, a Chilean judge placed him under house arrest. One sort of had to wonder what was going on. Ambassador Barnes kept the lines of communication open to both sides, playing such a deft game that Pinochet had to think twice before openly attacking the U.S. Pinochet’s military junta was a quasi-cabinet that also doubled as his legislative counsel. Augusto Pinochet is known for being the leader of a military junta that overthrew the socialist government of Pres. Learn how to update your browser. They resisted Pinochet’s moves to undermine his own constitution. The coup in which General Augusto Pinochet seized power in 1973 was the bloodiest in 20th century South America. A portion of the Congress was appointed, and the President could not remove the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The polls were pretty imprecise. After that they started running old sitcoms. The courts mandated fair, equal time and changed the rules of the game. You can impose them without worrying about the democratic political process. We opened up close channels with the democratic socialist wing of the opposition, which the U.S. had previously tended to equate with the Allende left. Pinochet hated and mistrusted us, but some elements in his government were moderating their stance, either to make a more presentable case to the world, or because they understood the imperative for change…. It’s very dark there.” I said, “There must be some rays of light or else people couldn’t cope.”…. BARNES: We thought it could be quite close, because Pinochet had and appealed still to people old enough to remember the Allende era and some of the problems of that era. When Chileans elected Patricio Aylwin president in 1989, his government and successive administrations kept in place the bulk of the economic reforms. The old elite were stuffy and overbearing. 2 decades ago. We support the goal of a transition to democracy. On hearing the news of the coup, Allende dashed to his seat of government in the capital. Late Chilean military leader Augusto Pinochet wanted to hold on to power when he lost a referendum on his rule in 1988, newly declassified documents in the US suggest. They knew he would be around for a year or two, before the first free elections in 20 years would take place. From a government that was elected by the people, the power shifted to the military officers. That decision built confidence. They’ve been through some real turmoil, but they have a lively free press. Pinochet rose to power following a U.S.-backed, violent coup by the Chilean army on Sept. 11, 1973, which ousted the country’s democratically-elected president, the … Augusto Pinochet, the son of a customs official, was born in Chile on 26th November 1915. They’ve been the tiger of Latin America. Please enable Cookies and reload the page. ©Copyright 1998-2021 Association for Diplomatic Studies & Training
I analyzed the implementation of political laws under the 1976 constitution, the emerging civil society organizations and political party dynamics. https://www.e-ir.info/2015/05/14/an-assessment-of-the-pinochet-regime-in-chile The people were asked whether Pinochet should rule for another eight and a half years. Generally, the Chicago Boys (CB) recipe for privatizing and removing trade barriers and balancing the macroeconomic variables was judged to be a success. Though Bolivia was also in turmoil, by comparison this felt like stepping into a cauldron. Q: We were deep into the Reagan period. The Europeans had been supporting the opposition financially, in a patchwork approach. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Instead I said, “It was a fascinating place. One of my close contacts was Jorge Jimenez, the brother of Monica Jimenez, who ran Cívitas. We’ll be watching closely to see how this process evolves…”. We thought the opposition could win as long as elections proceeded as planned. As hope rekindled, the opposition lightened up, making fun of Pinochet as a doddering old man. A national referendum was held on October 5, 1988 to determine whether the Junta, and its leader Pinochet, should stay in power for another eight years. how did Augusto Pinochet gain power with the "great Man" theory and the crisis theory? On September 11, 1973, a military coup forced the democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende out of power. The Congress and the NGO community kept up pressure in the effort to develop credible information for the Justice Department. Concertación candidate Patricio Aylwin (Christian Democrats) won decisively, heading the first democratically elected government in 16 years. Barnes met daily with key civic, political and intellectual leaders one on one at his residence. Under the leadership of Monica Jimenez, the head of Catholic University’s School of Social Work, Cívitas mounted a non-partisan voter education campaign to convince people their vote would be counted and to assist them in registering. The evolving national consensus and the eventual plebiscite victory grew out of tremendous suffering that Chileans had experienced. We were engaged, but more subtly than during the Allende period. It is said that Gen. Pinochet sought the support of his closest military allies to overthrow the results. To register, people had to pay the equivalent of nearly 5 dollars to get an ID card and then get on the electoral rolls. The new U.S. approach emboldened the opposition. The opposition leaders wanted the world to know they were not about vengeance or divisiveness. This was one of Lagos’ first rallies as president of PPD, the center-left party he founded in 1987. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. [Fernando] Matthei, the Air Force general was stopped by a reporter and was asked what had happed. I helped promote emerging women leaders through IVs [International Visitor program] and lunch sessions hosted by PAO Marilyn McAfee. Several years after stepping down, he was charged with war crimes concerning his time as president but died in 2006 before being convicted on any charges. The ’76 car bombing in Washington that killed Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier [who served during the presidency of Socialist President Salvador Allende and who, as a political refugee from Pinochet’s government, took an academic position in Washington, D.C.. Within a year of the plebiscite, key opposition forces moved from raw confrontation politics to a willingness to work through the political process. This changed after Ambassador Harry Barnes’s arrival. But they refused and Gen. Pinochet had to accept defeat. Pinochet was involved in Operation Condor, a cooperative effort by several South American governments to remove leftist opposition leaders, often by murder. ROE: Kirkpatrick’s 1979 article in Commentary magazine argued that the U.S. should work with authoritarian governments like those of Chile, Argentina and South Africa because they were more likely to lead to democracy than were revolutionary regimes of the left. If they wanted him to be replaced there would have to be a competitive election. Lagos, who was elected President of Chile in 2000, visited the U.S in the pre-plebiscite period. But I got wind of something that would have completely thrown the election. Pinochet was trying to say, “After me, chaos” in the style of Louis XIV, “Aprés moi, le deluge.”. In 1988, there was a plebiscite in Chile. One of the panelists they had on was one of the leading supporters of the “yes” vote. Answer Save. Your own constitution mandates better rules.”. The Pinochet regime undercut their efforts to get public service announcements and paid television advertising. It was supported by the government of the United States of America . They would bring out the soldiers and there would be massive confrontations and bloodshed. Barnes had a photographic memory. Five days before the plebiscite, Monica called me in Valparaiso where I was doing a pre-election assessment. At one point Juan Gabriel Valdez, who later became Chilean Ambassador to the UN, offered to provide sensitive information on the case and I connected him with Ambassador Barnes. He curried a reputation of being an uncorrupted dictator. During that panel discussion probably around eleven o’clock or so the panel came on and this particular individual who had been a minister in a previous government years back and had a good reputation, he said, “I think the “no” vote has won.” Still nothing on the government channels. A Chilean commission investigating human rights abuses under the former military leader Gen Augusto Pinochet says there are many more victims than previously documented. He covered all the demonstrations, worked closely with Solidaridad, the Catholic human rights agency, and visited imprisoned trade union leaders.…The political officer whom I replaced had formed relationships with most democratic political parties except the Socialists. Our policies and actions had deep resonance, but they were not the main story. The PDC, PPD, the radicals, conservatives and eventually the Partido Socialista won recognition. People would tell different things to the pollsters based on whether or not they trusted them or thought the balloting would be fair. In 1980, a new constitution was approved, which mandated a single-candidate presidential referendum in … Talking with people in the provinces, I saw a tremendous groundswell of support for the “no” side. Chile is a legalistic, constitutional country that prides itself on respecting the law. BARNES: Pinochet had, as I think he himself said from time to time, had made a gift to the people of Chile in the form of a new Constitution, having done away with the previous one, the Allende and earlier periods. The CB economists erred, for example, in pegging the peso to the dollar. Both the opposition and the shadow reform elements in the government wanted to build bridges not only with Europe but also with Southeast Asia. Of course, the pundits admitted that you can only implement severe fiscal austerity if you have an iron fist. The Constitution provided that after eight years there would be an election in which the people of Chile would have a chance to decide whether they wished to have Pinochet continue or be replaced. 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