A force for good, now

Chile
A force for good, now

Sep 25th 2008 | SANTIAGO
From The Economist print edition

A newly streamlined army polishes its democratic credentials

TEN years after General Augusto Pinochet stepped down as commander-in-chief, Chile’s army is at last emerging from the shadow of its murky past. For a quarter of a century it laboured under the baleful influence of the man who came to power in a military coup in 1973, its once proud reputation sullied by the blood of thousands of innocents tortured and murdered under his 17-year dictatorship. The army was unable to start reforming itself until he finally stepped down as its leader another eight years later.

Despite hundreds of court cases (though few convictions so far), many questions about the army’s role in the human-rights abuses remain unanswered. The remains of some 3,000 people killed or “disappeared” by the regime have never been found. Many Chileans still wonder how such a highly disciplined force could have resorted to such appalling violence. “There is a weight of history,” admits José Goñi, Chile’s defence minister. “But the new generation doesn’t have to be held responsible.” Only six of those in the army at the time of the 1973 coup remain in service.

The bad memories are fading

Despite hundreds of court cases (though few convictions so far), many questions about the army’s role in the human-rights abuses remain unanswered. The remains of some 3,000 people killed or “disappeared” by the regime have never been found. Many Chileans still wonder how such a highly disciplined force could have resorted to such appalling violence. “There is a weight of history,” admits José Goñi, Chile’s defence minister. “But the new generation doesn’t have to be held responsible.” Only six of those in the army at the time of the 1973 coup remain in service.

General Óscar Izurieta, the army’s commander, says that the army will not be accepted fully as part of democratic society until questions over its past can finally be laid to rest. The courts have to do their job, he agrees, and it is legitimate for people who suffered at the army’s hands to want to keep the issue open. “But I don’t know if it’s good for them or the country,” he says. “Every day, they put me face to face with a problem of the past.”

The army has tried hard to regain legitimacy over the past decade. It has seized on natural disasters, such as earthquakes, to play an active civil-defence role. It has used its field hospitals to take medical services to remote areas and help the national health service cut waiting lists. And it has sought to reduce its social isolation by such measures as sending cadets from the Santiago military academy to one of the city’s universities for some of their courses.

Some of the excess fat has been shed, too. Currently 40,000-strong, down from around 70,000 in the mid-1990s under Pinochet’s command, it is leaner and more professional. Unpaid military service has been scaled down and, unlike General Pinochet’s conscript-packed army, all national-service places are now filled by volunteers. And under a law passed by Congress this summer their number will drop even further as they are gradually replaced by professional soldiers.

Thanks to record prices for copper, Chile’s main export, and an odd arrangement (predating Mr Pinochet) under which Codelco, the state copper producer, transfers 10% of its export revenues (amounting to $1.4 billion last year) to the armed forces for capital expenditure, there has been money to spend. The finance ministry has the last word, but the army has been able to shop extensively, with acquisitions including German tanks and better electronics. Today, Chile’s is the most modern and best-equipped army in Latin America, says Armen Kouyoumdjian, an adviser to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

But what exactly does the country need such an army for? In the 1970s Chile faced a real threat of war with Argentina and Peru, but relations with both have improved a lot since then. Indeed, Chile’s military ties with Argentina are so close that the two countries have created a joint standby unit for international operations. Although political instability in Bolivia is a worry, the main risk to Chile from that direction—an exodus of Bolivian refugees—is hardly a military problem. On the other hand, having a strong army may help to ensure that relations with Peru stay peaceful. Chile and Peru have had a long-standing dispute over maritime borders, and Ollanta Humala, the Peruvian populist who almost won his country’s most recent presidential election, found it convenient to stir up sentiment against Chile.

For its part, the army emphasises that it is available for international peacekeeping. It is already part of the United Nations force in Haiti—its first significant peacekeeping role. Some Chileans reckon that the army is still bigger than necessary for a peaceful country of only 16m people. But a rational plan for slimming should be based on the needs of the future, not the misdeeds of the past.

The Economist: The end of Allende

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Leader
The end of Allende
From The Economist print edition

Our leader on the death of Chile's President Allende, published in The Economist on September 15th 1973

The temporary death of democracy in Chile will be regrettable, but the blame lies clearly with Dr Allende and those of his followers who persistently overrode the constitution

President Allende did not become a martyr, even if it is true that he took his own life on Tuesday. The bombing and storming of his presidential palace and the seizure of power by the commanders of Chile’s armed forces put a bitter end to the first freely-elected marxist government in the west. And the fighting may have barely begun. With most of Chile’s links with the outside world still severed, it was difficult to take the full measure of the apparently continuing violence. But if a bloody civil war does ensue, or if the generals who have now seized power decide not to hold new elections, there must be no confusion about where the responsibility for Chile’s tragedy lies. It lies with Dr Allende and those in the marxist parties who pursued a strategy for the seizure of total power to the point at which the opposition despaired of being able to restrain them by constitutional means.

What happened in Santiago is not an everyday Latin American coup. The armed forces had tolerated Dr Allende for nearly three years. In that time, he managed to plunge the country into the worst social and economic crisis in its modern history. The confiscation of private farms and factories caused an alarming slump in production, and the losses in state-run industries were officially admitted to have exceeded $1 billion last year. Inflation rose to 350 per cent over the past twelve months. Small businessmen were bankrupted; civil servants and skilled workers saw their salaries whittled away by inflation; housewives had to queue endlessly for basic foods, when they were available at all. The mounting desperation caused the major strike movement that the truck-drivers started six weeks ago.

But the Allende government did more than wreck the economy. It violated both the letter and the spirit of the constitution. The way it rode roughshod over congress and the courts eroded faith in the country’s democratic institutions. A resolution passed by the opposition majority in congress last month declared that “the government is not merely responsible for isolated violations of the law and the constitution; it has made them into a permanent system of conduct”. The feeling that parliament had been made irrelevant was increased by violence in the streets (almost on a Belfast scale) and by the way the government tolerated the growth of armed groups on the far left that were openly preparing for civil war.

The armed forces moved only when it had long been clear that there was a popular mandate for military intervention. They had to move in the end because all constitutional means had failed to restrain a government that was behaving unconstitutionally. The trigger for the coup was provided by the efforts of left-wing extremists to promote subversion within the armed forces. Two leaders of Dr Allende’s Popular Unity coalition, Sr Carlos Altamirano, the former Socialist party secretary-general, and Sr Oscar Garretón of the Movement of United Popular Action, were named by the navy as the “intellectual authors” of plans for mutiny among the sailors at Valparaiso. The Valparaiso naval commanders were the first to move this week.

But the rapid success of the coup and the participation in it of all the armed services (including the paramilitary carabineros) suggest that the plans for it had been carefully laid. It remains to be seen whether the armed forces are now solid in their opposition to the ousted government. The disappearance of two commanders, Admiral Raul Montero and General Sepulveda, the carabineros’ chief, who were replaced by their anti-marxist subordinates on the day of the coup, shows that not all senior officers were in favour of it. The real danger of bloodshed will come if the armed forces split, or if there are serious mutinies among the lower ranks. That could produce a messy civil war. Strong resistance can be expected from the workers’ committees and paramilitary brigades that the Socialist party and the Movement of the Revolutionary Left are running in Santiago and from guerrilla groups in the south. But if they fail to get significant military backing, they can probably be contained.

No return to the old ways
Whatever government emerges from the coup cannot expect an easy time. There will also be a temptation now for those who have suffered from the Allende government to settle their accounts with the defeated side. Few people believe that Chile can now return to its old ways of doing things. The work of reconstruction will involve considerable sacrifice, just as it did in Brazil when Senhor Roberto Campos was responsible for economic planning in the years after the 1964 coup. This does not mean that Chile will become another Brazil; for one thing, it is probably a less violent place even now, and for another, its soldiers have a rather different conception of their role from the soldiers behind Senhor Campos. They accept that it is too late to reverse many of the changes brought about by Dr Allende; in trying to rebuild the private sector, for instance, they will lay more stress on coaxing back foreign investors and on creating new industries than on handing back what was taken away.

General Pinochet and his fellow officers are no one’s pawns. Their coup was home-grown, and attempts to make out that the Americans were involved are absurd to those who know how wary they have been in their recent dealings with Chile. The military-technocratic government that is apparently emerging will try to knit together the social fabric that the Allende government tore apart. It will mean the temporary death of democracy in Chile, and that is to be deplored. But it must not be forgotten who made it inevitable.