Friday, 22 August 2008 [The Santiago Times]
(Ed. Note: Monday’s ST reported that the film “The Judge and the General” about Chilean Judge Juan Guzmán’s prosecution of General Augusto Pinochet is being shown this week on U.S. public television. As we didn’t report, the film can also be seen online till September 2 free of charge at http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2008/judgeandthegeneral/fullfilm.html.
(The following review of the film is by our Feature Editor Bill Stott. His opinions are his own, but it is fair to point out that he is the author of a classic book on documentary, Documentary Expression and Thirties America.)
"The Judge and the General" is moving, impressive, and half-true. It "documents"—that is, shows with vivid, gruesome evidence—why Judge Juan Guzmán came to believe that General Pinochet as well as his followers were guilty of crimes against humanity including torture and murder.
It is only half-true because it doesn’t document, indeed doesn’t mention, why Judge Guzmán—and before-Allende Chilean President Eduardo Frei (1964-70) and after-Pinochet Chilean President Patricio Aylwin (1990-94) and some 80 percent of the Chilean people supported Pinochet’s 1973 coup against President Salvador Allende.
Here’s the part of the truth the film doesn’t give vivid evidence of: Allende and his followers were guilty of crimes against humanity including torture and murder. He reduced a moderately prosperous, democratic country to poverty, chaos, and violence and counter-violence bordering on civil war. He did this through ineptitude and because he wanted to make permanent an apparently totalitarian Marxist regime.
Like Pinochet, Allende was an autocrat; he violated Chile’s constitution and laws when he wanted to. The difference between the two men is one of degree, not kind. Directly and indirectly, Pinochet tortured and killed many more people. But whereas Allende left Chile in shambles, Pinochet—unlike any other dictator who comes readily to mind—left his country much better off for his tenure.
If the public-spirited Americans who watch PBS had been Chileans in the Allende years, 80 percent of them would also have supported his overthrow; more than 80 percent of them, like today’s Chileans, would support the economic and social changes Pinochet brought about; and I suspect that even knowing the crimes committed by Pinochet and his followers, more or less 50 percent of them, like today’s Chileans, would generally approve of his rule.
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3 comments:
Dear Dr. Stott:
With reference to your article published on Friday, August 22, 2008 in the Santiago Times: Chilean-American Allende-Pinochet Documentary Flawed:
I lived in Chile during the Allende years and was a supporter, as were many other idealistic Chileans who wanted to change the situation of poor people in our country.
Dr. Allende received 37% of the votes in 1970 and was elected president in accordance with the Chilean constitution: Allende got 36.7%, Alessandri 34.9% and Tomic 27.9%.
I will acknowledge that by March 1973, the political and economic situation in Chile grew to become very precarious. However, in spite of this, in the March 1973 parliamentary elections, Allend's party, Unidad Popula (UP) received 43% of the total votes. The required 2/3's vote needed by the opposition to get Allende out of office was not realized, setting the stage for the military coup of September 11, 1973. Many agree with me that it was this act that provoked the coup, i.e. Allende's popularity was growing and with time could continue to do so.
I am very much bothered by your statement that during Allende's presidency his government authorized torture and crime. Please be very clear, abuses did occur, but never as a result of a state-sponsored policy such as the human rights abuses sanctioned and approved by President Pinochet. If what you say has any validity, we must then applaud Hitler because he also revived the failing German economy during the years 1933 - 1940. However, let's forget about his crimes against humanity. Dr. Stott, during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, torture and repulsive crime were not committed by his followers, but rather were state policy, executed by the DINA, an organization comparable to the GESTAPO in Germany. You must also not forget that Allende was not only fighting his enemies in Chile, but also the powerful United States of America whose president at that time was the psychopath Richard M. Nixon and his sinister Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger. You seem to want to make the argument that it does not matter how many die (or get killed) if the end result is a better economy. Many countries in today's world are involved in changing their economic systems in order to give their citizens a better life, the difference being they are doing so in a climate of liberty and democracy. Finally, I want to remind you that when democracy was finally restored in Chile, the Pinochet regime left the country with more than 40 percent of its populace living in poverty. This number has been reduced during the last 18 years of democracy.
Dr. Stott, if you admire Pinochet so much, ask yourself this question: why are there no statues, museums or streets named after him commemorating his great accomplishments? Not even the right-wing party wants to be associated with Pinochet or his regime. They are not stupid; they know he was a murderer and a thief.
Renato E. Letelier
"JUDGE AND GENERAL" DISCUSSION CONTINUES
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
(Ed. Note: The ST erred yesterday in not inviting our colleague Bill Stott to reply to reader Renato E. Letelier's criticism of Stott's review of the recent documentary "The Judge and the General" about Chilean Judge Juan Guzmán’s prosecution of General Augusto Pinochet for crimes against humanity. Stott's response is below.)
Here are the facts as I understand them.
•Allende was an anti-democratic leader (Chilean House of Representative resolution, 22 August 1973: “The current Republic of Chile, from its very start, has been striving to obtain total power and use it to exert rigid economic and political control, thereby creating a totalitarian system.”)
•Under Allende, the Chilean left meant to make permanent a totalitarian regime (Patricio Aylwin, President of the Christian Democratic Party, 19 October 1973: “With the armed militants, who had the enormous firepower of (Allende’s) government at their disposal and the support of no less than 10,000 foreign radicals in the country, the left aimed to create a communist dictatorship and probably would have succeeded”).
•The left was using, and planned to use, violence to gain its end (Jorge Masetti, head of the Argentine guerrillas, in his book The Fury and the Delirium (1999): “Today I can say it is fortunate that we didn’t achieve victory, for if we had, taking into account our training and our dependence on Cuba, we would have drowned the continent in blood. One of our orders was to turn the Andes into Latin America’s Sierra Maestra (Fidel Castro’s home base in his rebellion), where we would first execute military officers, then the opposition, and then those who opposed our iron rule.”
•Centrist as well as rightist Chileans supported Allende’s overthrow (former President Eduardo Frei-Montalva, two months before Pinochet’s coup: “There’s nothing I can do, nor Congress, nor any civilian. Unfortunately, this problem can only be solved with guns.”) I’m indebted to José Piñera for presenting these quotes in a column he wrote for El Mercurio.
Mr. Letelier asks, "Why are there no statues, museums or streets named after Pinochet commemorating his great accomplishments?" There are several good reasons for this.
•Chileans, knowing the importance of tourism, don’t want to commemorate someone most of the rest of the world considers a murderer.
•Pro-Pinochet Chileans know that radical anti-Pinochetistas would deface any memorial just as they murdered Edmundo Pérez Zujovic and Jaime Guzmán.
•Pro-Pinochet Chileans realize that Pinochet’s ghost can say of today’s Chile what the ghost of Christopher Wren says of St. Paul’s Cathedral: “If you would know my works, look around you.”
By Bill Stott
On 15 February 2012, a reader, "Jeremy," wrote another criticism of my article. To read his comment, which, with an article he cites and my response, takes more than the 4900-odd words Blogger allows, please go to the new post, "Allende-Pinochet, the Debate Continued."
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