Former Chilean dictator Pinochet dies at 91

[MaNuMaNiAc]

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/12/10/pinochet.ap/index.html


SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) -- Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who overthrew Chile's democratically elected Marxist president in a bloody coup and ruled the Andean nation for 17 years, died Sunday, dashing hopes of victims of his regime's abuses that he would be brought to justice. He was 91.

Pinochet suffered a heart attack a week ago and underwent an angioplasty, and the brief announcement by the Santiago Military hospital said his condition worsened suddenly on Sunday.

Dr. Juan Ignacio Vergara, spokesman for the medical team that had been treating him, said his family was with him when he died.

Police ringed the hospital, but a small group of Pinochet supporters remained at the entrance, shouting insults at people in passing cars. The supporters, including some weeping women, repeatedly called out "Long Live Pinochet!" and sang Chile's national anthem.(Watch history of Pinochet reign (javascript:cnnVideo('play','/video/world/2006/12/10/vassile.chile.pinochete.obit.aprtv','2006/12/17');) http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/.element/img/1.5/main/icon_video.gif (javascript:cnnVideo('play','javascript:cnnVideo(' play','/video/world/2006/12/10/vassile.chile.pinochete.obit.aprtv','2006/12/17');','2006/12/10');))

As the mustachioed Pinochet crushed dissent during his 1973-90 rule, he left little doubt about who was in charge. "Not a leaf moves in this country if I'm not moving it," he once said.

Pinochet, born November 25, 1915, as the son of a customs official in the port of Valparaiso, was commander of the army at the time of the 1973 coup, appointed 19 days earlier by the president he toppled.

The CIA tried for months to destabilize the Allende government, including financing a truckers strike that paralyzed the delivery of goods across Chile, but Washington denied having anything to do with the coup.

In the days following Pinochet's seizure of power, soldiers carried out mass arrests of leftists. Tanks rumbled through the streets of the capital.

Many detainees, including Americans Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, were herded into the National Stadium, which became a torture and detention center. The Americans were among those executed by the Chilean military, their deaths chronicled in the 1982 film "Missing."

Other leftists were rounded up by a death squad known as the "Caravan of Death." Victims were buried in unmarked mass graves in the northern Atacama desert, in the coastal city of La Serena and in the southern city of Cauquenes.

Pinochet pledged to stay in power "only as long as circumstances demand it," but soon after seizing the presidency, he said he had "goals, not deadlines."

He disbanded Congress, banned political activity and started a harsh anti-leftist repression. At least 3,197 people were killed, more than 1,000 others are unaccounted for, and thousands more were arrested, tortured and forced into exile.

Within years, Chile and other South American countries with right-wing governments launched Operation Condor to eliminate leftist dissidents abroad. One of Operation Condor's victims was former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, who was killed along with his American aide, Ronni Moffitt, when a bomb shattered their car in Washington in 1976.

In May 2005, some of the strongest evidence against Pinochet emerged, when Gen. Manuel Contreras, the imprisoned head of the former dictatorship's secret police, gave Chile's Supreme Court a list describing the fate of more than 500 dissidents who disappeared after being arrested by the secret police. Most were killed, their bodies flung into the sea.

Contreras, who is serving a 12-year sentence for the disappearance of a young dissident in 1975, said Pinochet was responsible. Pinochet blamed all the abuses on subordinates.

"Justice has been too generous with Pinochet," said Viviana Diaz, whose father was among the disappeared. She said the fact that Pinochet was never punished "is the impotence that we have, and the reason for the fight we have waged all these years to eliminate impunity in our country."

Pinochet defended his authoritarian rule as a bulwark against communism -- and even claimed part of the credit for the collapse of communism. He repeatedly said he had nothing to ask forgiveness for.

"I see myself as a good angel," he told a Miami Spanish-language television station in 2004.

With his raspy voice, he often spoke in a lower-class vernacular that comedians delighted in mimicking. But his off-the-cuff comments sometimes got him into trouble.

Once, he embarrassed the government by saying that the German army was made up of "marijuana smokers, homosexuals, long-haired unionists." On another occasion, he drew criticism by saying the discovery of coffins that each contained the bodies of two victims of his regime's repression was a show of "a good cemetery space-saving measure."

Shrewd and firmly in command of his army, Pinochet saw himself as the leader of a crusade to build a society free of communism. Amid the upheaval in 1973, the economy was in near ruins, partly due to the CIA's covert destabilization efforts.

Pinochet launched a radical free-market economic program that, coupled with heavy foreign borrowing and an overvalued peso, triggered a financial collapse and unprecedented joblessness in the early 1980s. Eventually, the economy recovered and since 1984 Chile has posted growth averaging 5 percent to 7 percent a year.

Key to the economic recovery was a group of mostly young economists known as the "Chicago Boys" for their studies under University of Chicago professor and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman. They lifted most state controls over the economy, privatized many sectors and strongly encouraged foreign investment with tax and other guarantees.

Since the mid-1990s, Pinochet led a mostly secluded life between his heavily guarded Santiago mansion and his countryside residence. He rarely appeared in public other than for checkups at the Santiago army hospital.

He is survived by his wife, Lucia, who headed a volunteer women's organization dedicated to helping the poor, two sons and three daughters.


about motherfucking time!

[Bob Lanier]

Friedman, Kirkpatrick, Pinochet - I guess Kissinger's up next with Maggie Thatcher on deck.

[PixelPusher]

Castro, Pinochet...why do 3rd world Latin American dictators have such longevity?

[ATX Spur]

Santiago is celebrating.

[xrayzebra]

Castro, Pinochet...why do 3rd world Latin American dictators have such longevity?

They live the good life and clean living.
:lol

[ATX Spur]

Castro, Pinochet...why do 3rd world Latin American dictators have such longevity?

They just appear to have longevity compared to their past opponents who have been mysteriously done away with.

[Ya Vez]

I read somewhere .. that pinochet gave chile the most stable economy in south america?

[Ya Vez]

Pinochet launched a radical free-market economic program that, coupled with heavy foreign borrowing and an overvalued peso, triggered a financial collapse and unprecedented joblessness in the early 1980s. Eventually, the economy recovered and since 1984 Chile has posted growth averaging 5 percent to 7 percent a year.

[exstatic]

I read somewhere .. that pinochet gave chile the most stable economy in south america?
I'm sure that's a great comfort to the families of The Disappeared.

[Ya Vez]

so are you saying the leftist revolution in south america was peaceful...? Didn't the communist in cuba and other parts of south america .. do just about the same to people on the other side of the aisle.. ?

[exstatic]

so are you saying the leftist revolution in south america was peaceful...? Didn't the communist in cuba and other parts of south america .. do just about the same to people on the other side of the aisle.. ?
How "revolutionary". They elected a Leftist regime.

[exstatic]

so are you saying the leftist revolution in south america was peaceful...? Didn't the communist in cuba and other parts of south america .. do just about the same to people on the other side of the aisle.. ?
Pinochet didn't rule Greater South America or Latin America. He usurped a legitimately elected regime in Chile with great violence and loss of life.

[ATX Spur]

I read somewhere .. that pinochet gave chile the most stable economy in south america?

I think Brazil and Argentina have much more stable economies. Having a stable economy in Chile doesn't help anyone when prices are similar to the US (due to the extreme devaluation of the Chilean peso) and wages are scraping the barrel.

[Yonivore]

I read somewhere .. that pinochet gave chile the most stable economy in south america?
I read somewhere that Hitler made sure the trains ran on time.

[PixelPusher]

I read somewhere that Hitler made sure the trains ran on time.

That was Mussolini. Hitler built the autobahns.

[smeagol]

I think Brazil and Argentina have much more stable economies. Having a stable economy in Chile doesn't help anyone when prices are similar to the US (due to the extreme devaluation of the Chilean peso) and wages are scraping the barrel.
False.

Chile is by far LatAm's most economic and political stable country. It's less risky ad more stable than Mexico, which would be as shitty country as Argentina if it weren't for its proximity with the US.

[xrayzebra]

That was Mussolini. Hitler built the autobahns.

And the peoples car, Volks Wagen. What a guy!

[smeagol]

I read somewhere .. that pinochet gave chile the most stable economy in south america?
Although the left will never admit it, this is a true statement.

[ATX Spur]

False.

Chile is by far LatAm's most economic and political stable country. It's less risky ad more stable than Mexico, which would be as shitty country as Argentina if it weren't for its proximity with the US.

Okay, tell me why it's less risky. Not that I don't believe you.

It's just that you said what I wrote is false and I just want to know why it's false.

[PixelPusher]

And the peoples car, Volks Wagen. What a guy!
Yeah, Hitler was definitely a friend to the german corporations.

[smeagol]

I will give you one quantitative reason.

There are two major Credit Rating Agencies, which asses countries' (and also states, municipalities and even companies) credit risk, i.e. the probability that when people lend money to these countries, they will pay you back. These agencies are Standard & Poors and Moody's Investor Services.

The less riskier a country is, the higher its credit rating.

S&P's rating scale is as follows:

AAA
AA+
AA
AA-
A+
A
A-
BBB+
BBB
BBB-

Up to BBB- you are considered Investment Grade, meaning you are considered a "good" risk. AAA is the best rating possible, BBB- is the worst within the Investment Grade group.

The scale continous as follows:

BB+
BB
BB-
B+
B
B-

These six categories are consideres sub-investment grade. Debt instruments from countries or companies rated sub-investment grade is considered speculative.

Anything rated below B- (CCC+, CCC, CCC-, etc) is considered "in default", i.e. not honoring its obligations.

A few examples:

The US is rated AAA. Most developed countries (Japan, UK, Germany, Italy, Australia, Canada) are all rated AA or better. Mexico is rated BBB.

Now, answering your question: Brazil is rated BB, Argentina is rated B+.

Chile is rated A, six notches above Brazil and 8 notches above Argentina. Chile has the best credit rating in LatAm. Chile has been Investment Grade since the 80s; Argentina has been in default, Brazil has bever been Investment Grade.

There are many other reasons why Chile as a country is mile away from Brazil and Argentina (and Mexico) in terms of economic stability.

[Bob Lanier]

Return on debt investment gives a highly distorted view of a country's total economy (and credit ratings are, by definition, not quantitative). But, that said, Pinochet's régime did do a very nice job managing certain aspects of the economy during the mid 80s. I and companies I've worked for made handsome profits investing in his country.

I just don't pretend that I don't have blood on my hands. I do, and I'm perfectly content with that. In that light, the hypocritical protests of Americans in general and others like smeagol ring a bit hollow.

[Trainwreck2100]

I'm sure that's a great comfort to the families of The Disappeared.


Can't make an omelet.........

[smeagol]

Return on debt investment gives a highly distorted view of a country's total economy

Sovereign Credit Ratings are not simply a measure of return on debt. They take into consideration many factors related to the real economy and the political environment, such as economic growth, unemployment, political stability, etc.


(and credit ratings are, by definition, not quantitative).

They are based on a scale and it’s easy to see which country is doing better, that’s what I meant. Furthermore, these ratings are based on tangible aspects of the economy.

In any case, there are many reasons why Chile is a more stable economy than Brazil or Argentina. It shows ignorance to state otherwise (this is not meant on a derogatory manner). Credit Ratings simply put in a scale the reasons and makes it easy to compare any country’s rating vs another.


But, that said, Pinochet's régime did do a very nice job managing certain aspects of the economy during the mid 80s. I and companies I've worked for made handsome profits investing in his country.

I know Chile did well on the economic front under the Pinochet regime.


I just don't pretend that I don't have blood on my hands. I do, and I'm perfectly content with that. In that light, the hypocritical protests of Americans in general and others like smeagol ring a bit hollow.

Why am I hypocritical?

[Kori Ellis]

False.

Chile is by far LatAm's most economic and political stable country. It's less risky ad more stable than Mexico, which would be as shitty country as Argentina if it weren't for its proximity with the US.

This doesn't have much to do with this thread. But we are going to Chile this summer (probably for a month). So it's good to know that it's (relatively) stable and safe.

[nkdlunch]

It's less risky ad more stable than Mexico, which would be as shitty country as Argentina if it weren't for its proximity with the US.

No way. The proximity to US actually hurts mexico more than helps IMO, drug dealers are the kings in Mexico thanks to US.

[pppp]

Pinochet didn't rule Greater South America or Latin America. He usurped a legitimately elected regime in Chile with great violence and loss of life.

With US support & CIA backing...way to "spread democracy & freedom" back then....

[smeagol]

This doesn't have much to do with this thread. But we are going to Chile this summer (probably for a month). So it's good to know that it's (relatively) stable and safe.
With regards to crime rate, Chile is the safest Lat Am country (again ahead of the pack with respect to Brazil, Argentina and Mexico).

You should visit the South of Chile.

Its beatiful. You will not be disappointed.

[smeagol]

No way. The proximity to US actually hurts mexico more than helps IMO, drug dealers are the kings in Mexico thanks to US.
The economic benefit of having the US as your neighbor and trading partner outways by far the drug problem.

[MaNuMaNiAc]

This doesn't have much to do with this thread. But we are going to Chile this summer (probably for a month). So it's good to know that it's (relatively) stable and safe.I come from the southern part of Argentina which is a lot like Chile is terms of natural beauty. I have to agree with smeagol here, Chile is a beautiful country, its people are friendly and it is relatively safe compared to other South American countries. Good place to visit

[MaNuMaNiAc]

by the way smeagol, I do agree Chile's economic stability is due in no small part to Pinochet, but at what cost? I'm sorry, but the man was a cold blooded son of a bitch and should have been executed long ago... but instead the SOB lived to be 91. Talk about the mother of all injustice

[smeagol]

by the way smeagol, I do agree Chile's economic stability is due in no small part to Pinochet, but at what cost? I'm sorry, but the man was a cold blooded son of a bitch and should have been executed long ago... but instead the SOB lived to be 91. Talk about the mother of all injustice
I don't disagree that the guy was a ruthless dictator. But at least he did something to make the Chilean economy better. Look at the idiots who rules Argentina between 1976 and 1983. They were ruthless too and left the country in a worst economic position than what they recieved it in.

[Nbadan]

PINOCHET: A Declassified Documentary Obit

Archive Posts Records on former Dictator's Repression, Acts of Terrorism, U.S. SupportNational Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 212


WASHINGTON - December 12 - As Chile prepared to bury General Augusto Pinochet, the National Security Archive today posted a selection of declassified U.S. documents that illuminate the former dictator's record of repression. The documents include CIA records on Pinochet's role in the Washington D.C. car bombing that killed former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Moffitt, Defense Intelligence Agency biographic reports on Pinochet, and transcripts of meetings in which Secretary of State Henry Kissinger resisted bringing pressure on the Chilean military for its human rights atrocities.

"Pinochet's death has denied his victims a final judicial reckoning," said Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Archive's Chile Documentation Project. "But the declassified documents do contribute to the ultimate verdict of history on his atrocities."

Most of the documents posted today are drawn from a collection of 24,000 declassified records that were released by the Clinton administration after Pinochet's October, 1998, arrest in London. Many of them are reproduced in Kornbluh's book, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability.

Documentary link (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB212/index.htm)

[Kori Ellis]

With regards to crime rate, Chile is the safest Lat Am country (again ahead of the pack with respect to Brazil, Argentina and Mexico).

You should visit the South of Chile.

Its beatiful. You will not be disappointed.

LJ's family goes there all the time for business reasons. This summer we will likely go with them for a month or so. I'm looking forward to it.

[Nbadan]

Pinochet and The Miracle that wasn't
...


Tinker Bell, Pinochet And The Fairy Tale Miracle Of Chile
by Greg Palast
Sunday, Dec. 10, 2006
Chile’s former military dictator General Augusto Pinochet died today at the age of 91.


Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother, Tinker Bell and General Augusto Pinochet had much in common.

All three performed magical good deeds. In the case of Pinochet, he was universally credited with the Miracle of Chile, the wildly successful experiment in free markets, privatization, de-regulation and union-free economic expansion whose laissez-faire seeds spread from Valparaiso to Virginia.

But Cinderella’s pumpkin did not really turn into a coach. The Miracle of Chile, too, was just another fairy tale. The claim that General Pinochet begat an economic powerhouse was one of those utterances whose truth rested entirely on its repetition.

Chile could boast some economic success. But that was the work of Salvador Allende - who saved his nation, miraculously, a decade after his death.

In 1973, the year General Pinochet brutally seized the government, Chile’s unemployment rate was 4.3%. In 1983, after ten years of free-market modernization, unemployment reached 22%. Real wages declined by 40% under military rule.

In 1970, 20% of Chile’s population lived in poverty. By 1990, the year “President” Pinochet left office, the number of destitute had doubled to 40%. Quite a miracle.

Pinochet did not destroy Chile’s economy all alone. It took nine years of hard work by the most brilliant minds in world academia, a gaggle of Milton Friedman’s trainees, the Chicago Boys. Under the spell of their theories, the General abolished the minimum wage, outlawed trade union bargaining rights, privatized the pension system, abolished all taxes on wealth and on business profits, slashed public employment, privatized 212 state industries and 66 banks and ran a fiscal surplus.

Freed of the dead hand of bureaucracy, taxes and union rules, the country took a giant leap forward … into bankruptcy and depression. After nine years of economics Chicago style, Chile’s industry keeled over and died. In 1982 and 1983, GDP dropped 19%. The free-market experiment was kaput, the test tubes shattered. Blood and glass littered the laboratory floor. Yet, with remarkable chutzpah, the mad scientists of Chicago declared success. In the US, President Ronald Reagan’s State Department issued a report concluding, “Chile is a casebook study in sound economic management.” Milton Friedman himself coined the phrase, “The Miracle of Chile.” Friedman’s sidekick, economist Art Laffer, preened that Pinochet’s Chile was, “a showcase of what supply-side economics can do.”

It certainly was. More exactly, Chile was a showcase of de-regulation gone berserk.

The Chicago Boys persuaded the junta that removing restrictions on the nation’s banks would free them to attract foreign capital to fund industrial expansion.

Pinochet sold off the state banks - at a 40% discount from book value - and they quickly fell into the hands of two conglomerate empires controlled by speculators Javier Vial and Manuel Cruzat. From their captive banks, Vial and Cruzat siphoned cash to buy up manufacturers - then leveraged these assets with loans from foreign investors panting to get their piece of the state giveaways.

The bank’s reserves filled with hollow securities from connected enterprises. Pinochet let the good times roll for the speculators. He was persuaded that Governments should not hinder the logic of the market.

By 1982, the pyramid finance game was up. The Vial and Cruzat “Grupos” defaulted. Industry shut down, private pensions were worthless, the currency swooned. Riots and strikes by a population too hungry and desperate to fear bullets forced Pinochet to reverse course. He booted his beloved Chicago experimentalists. Reluctantly, the General restored the minimum wage and unions’ collective bargaining rights. Pinochet, who had previously decimated government ranks, authorized a program to create 500,000 jobs. In other words, Chile was pulled from depression by dull old Keynesian remedies, all Franklin Roosevelt, zero Reagan/Thatcher. New Deal tactics rescued Chile from the Panic of 1983, but the nation’s long-term recovery and growth since then is the result of - cover the children’s ears - a large dose of socialism.

To save the nation’s pension system, Pinochet nationalized banks and industry on a scale unimagined by Communist Allende. The General expropriated at will, offering little or no compensation. While most of these businesses were eventually re-privatized, the state retained ownership of one industry: copper.

For nearly a century, copper has meant Chile and Chile copper. University of Montana metals expert Dr. Janet Finn notes, “Its absurd to describe a nation as a miracle of free enterprise when the engine of the economy remains in government hands.” Copper has provided 30% to 70% of the nation’s export earnings. This is the hard currency which has built today’s Chile, the proceeds from the mines seized from Anaconda and Kennecott in 1973 - Allende’s posthumous gift to his nation.

Agribusiness is the second locomotive of Chile’s economic growth. This also is a legacy of the Allende years. According to Professor Arturo Vasquez of Georgetown University, Washington DC, Allende’s land reform, the break-up of feudal estates (which Pinochet could not fully reverse), created a new class of productive tiller-owners, along with corporate and cooperative operators, who now bring in a stream of export earnings to rival copper. “In order to have an economic miracle,” says Dr. Vasquez, “maybe you need a socialist government first to commit agrarian reform.”

So there we have it. Keynes and Marx, not Friedman, saved Chile.

But the myth of the free-market Miracle persists because it serves a quasi-religious function. Within the faith of the Reaganauts and Thatcherites, Chile provides the necessary genesis fable, the ersatz Eden from which laissez-faire dogma sprang successful and shining.

In 1998, the international finance Gang of Four - the World Bank, the IMF, the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Bank for Settlements - offered a $41.5 billion line of credit to Brazil. But before the agencies handed the drowning nation a life preserver, they demanded Brazil commit to swallow the economic medicine that nearly killed Chile. You know the list: fire-sale privatizations, flexible labor markets (i.e. union demolition) and deficit reduction through savage cuts in government services and social security.

In Sao Paulo, the public was assured these cruel measures would ultimately benefit the average Brazilian. What looked like financial colonialism was sold as the cure-all tested in Chile with miraculous results.

But that miracle was in fact a hoax, a fraud, a fairy tale in which everyone did not live happily ever after.



******

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, “Armed Madhouse”. Read his reports at www.GregPalast.com

[Nbadan]

One more trip down memory lane....

Pinochet's Death Spares the Bush Family
By Robert Parry
December 12, 2006


Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s death on Dec. 10 means the Bush Family can breathe a little bit easier, knowing that criminal proceedings against Chile’s notorious dictator can no longer implicate his longtime friend and protector, former President George H.W. Bush.

Although Chilean investigations against other defendants may continue, the cases against Pinochet end with his death of a heart attack at the age of 91. Pinochet’s death from natural causes also marks a victory for world leaders, including George H.W. and George W. Bush, who shielded Pinochet from justice over the past three decades.

The Bush Family’s role in the Pinochet cover-up began in 1976 when then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush diverted investigators away from Pinochet’s guilt in a car bombing in Washington that killed political rival Orlando Letelier and an American, Ronni Moffitt.

The cover-up stretched into the presidency of George W. Bush when he sidetracked an FBI recommendation to indict Pinochet in the Letelier-Moffitt murders.

Over those intervening 30 years, Pinochet allegedly engaged in a variety of illicit operations, including terrorism, torture, murder, drug trafficking, money-laundering and illicit arms shipments – sometimes with the official collusion of the U.S. government.

In the 1980s, when George H.W. Bush was Vice President, Pinochet’s regime helped funnel weapons to the Nicaraguan contra rebels and to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, an operation that also implicated then-CIA official Robert M. Gates, who will be the next U.S. Secretary of Defense.

Consortium News (http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2006/121106.html)