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REPORTS: CHILE |
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Saturday
13 September
2003
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The
Seemingly Interminable Transition to
Democracy
Gustavo
González
SANTIAGO, (IPS) - An incomplete
transition to democracy and
unattainable reconciliation, seasoned
by a range of interpretations of the
past, make up the political panorama
in Chile on the eve of the 30th
anniversary of the 1973 coup d'etat.
Sep. 11, 1973 marked the start of the
longest military dictatorship in the
history of Chile, which 30 years later
still finds itself in the midst of a
political transition that looks like
it will never end, according to
analysts like journalist Manuel
Cabieses, director of the leftist
magazine Punto Final.
In an international seminar on
''Journalism, Memory and Human
Rights'' which ended Wednesday in the
University of Chile in Santiago,
Cabieses and Argentine journalist
Horacio Verbitsky pointed to vestiges
of the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto
Pinochet that continue to stand in the
way of the country's complete
transition to democracy, which began
on Mar. 11, 1990.
They agree with President Ricardo
Lagos, a moderate socialist, that the
transition will not be complete as
long as relics like the designated
senators representing the branches of
the armed forces or an electoral
system that excludes small parties
from the legislature are still alive,
and until civilian authorities regain
the power to remove senior military
officers from their posts.
The ceremony held Wednesday in La
Moneda, the government palace, in
homage to former president Salvador
Allende, who died in the 1973 coup,
triggered debate about the Chile of
three decades ago and the country that
has taken shape after 17 years of
dictatorship and 13 years of
transition to democracy.
In the presence of Hortensia Bussi,
Allende's widow, parliamentary Deputy
Isabel Allende, his daughter and the
current president of the lower house
of parliament, and other special
guests, a commemorative plaque was
unveiled near the spot where Allende
apparently took his own life while the
palace was bombed.
Two enormous photographic images were
also unveiled. In the first, Allende
is waving from a balcony of La Moneda
on Nov. 4, 1970, the day he took
office. The second shows the same
balcony destroyed by the bombing of
the palace on the day of the coup.
The vindication and reappraisal of
Allende, the predominant theme of the
heavy media coverage that has
surrounded the 30th anniversary of the
collapse of one of South America's
strongest, most vibrant democracies,
has annoyed the right-wing opposition.
''The truth has been modified, and
what we've been seeing is an attempt
to revive the hatred and confrontation
of 30 years ago, while the country's
institutions are shamelessly used to
vindicate the figure of Allende in the
worst possible way,'' said Senator
Hernán Larraín of the rightist
Independent Democratic Union (UDI).
Lucía Pinochet Hiriart, Gen.
Pinochet's daughter, recently
complained that ''history is being
distorted. They are trying to turn one
(Allende) into a saint and the other (Pinochet)
into a demon.''
Pinochet's son Marco Antonio said
''the story is not being told in its
true context.''
Until 1998, acts of homage to Allende
on the anniversary of the coup were
limited to the left, while political
leaders and the media kept silent
about Pinochet and the human rights
crimes committed during the
dictatorship, when at least 3,000
people were killed or ''disappeared'',
and tens of thousands were tortured.
''In my view, the most significant
aspect of this year's anniversary is
the resurgence in Chilean society of
an enormous interest in Allende, and
in what happened'' in the early 1970s,
economist Manuel Riesco with the
independent National Research Centre
on Alternative Development (CENDA)
told IPS.
Like never before, Allende has been
the focus of debates and recitals and
other academic and artistic events not
only in Chile, but in other Latin
American countries and Europe as well,
particularly Mexico and Italy.
''The number of events being held
around the world to pay homage to
Allende and his (coalition) government
of Popular Unity, and to repudiate the
17 years of military dictatorship, is
just incredible,'' Lorena Pizarro, the
head of the Group of Families of the
Detained-Disappeared, said in a
conversation with IPS.
But businessman and former senator
Sebastián Piñera, the president of
the right-wing National Renovation
Party, complained that the Allende
commemorative plaque reads 1970-1976
-- which would have been the dates of
his presidential term if it had not
been cut short by the coup.
No matter where they stand on the
political spectrum, however, political
leaders agree that today's Chile is a
very different country than the one
that existed when the heady attempt to
transform Chilean society by the
leftist Popular Unity coalition
government led by Allende was abruptly
brought to an end.
''The most important thing that has
changed (in the past 30 years) is the
correlation of forces,'' said Deputy
Rodolfo Seguel with the Christian
Democracy Party, one of the political
forces that make up the ruling centre-left
Coalition for Democracy, along with
the Socialist, For Democracy and
Radical Social Democratic parties.
''Now there is one major political
bloc, the Coalition for Democracy, and
the old scenario in which the
political spectrum was broken up into
thirds -- the right, the centre, and
the left -- luckily does not exist
anymore,'' the lawmaker, a former
trade unionist, told IPS. ''Now we
have the Coalition and a right-wing
bloc.
''The extremist groups -- the extreme
right and the extreme left -- have no
representation in Congress, with the
exception of part of the extreme
right, which is represented by the UDI,''
he added.
''From a political, social and
economic standpoint, today's Chile has
nothing to do with the country that
existed in 1973,'' another Christian
Democratic Senator, Jorge Pizarro,
said in an interview.
The biggest change lies in ''the
functioning of a democratic system
today that is more unified, more
tolerant, and less tied to polarised
ideologies, one that allows degrees of
expression of the different
ideological, political, economic and
religious points of view,'' said
Pizarro.
The senator added that Chile today is
a modern country that is well inserted
into the world, although he said it
still has some way to go before it
achieves ''real tolerance, respect for
minority opinions, and full freedom of
speech.''
UDI Deputy Felipe Salaberry commented
to IPS that ''what matters'' at this
point are Chileans' plans and
expectations ''for the next 30 years,
with respect to the future of their
families, their children, education
and work -- not what happened 30 years
ago.
''What has changed is not only that
Chileans are different today in their
thinking and way of life, but that 70
percent of the population is under 40
and half of the population of the
country was not even born yet on Sep.
11, 1973,'' said the legislator.
But Juan Andrés Lagos, a member of
the political commission of the
Communist Party, which is opposed to
the centre-left coalition but is not
represented in parliament, sees things
in a very different light.
''Before the conspiracy and the coup,
Chile was one of the most pluralistic
and democratic countries on the
continent and in the Third World,'' he
said in a conversation with IPS.
''This was a country with a strong
democratic culture, and that culture
cut right across political, social and
cultural structures,'' he said.
''But today, Chile is a fragmented
country marked by great social
inequalities. It is a country with a
high degree of social schizophrenia,
burdened by the weight of a militarism
that has taken root in recent history,
in a threatening manner,'' he added.
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