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MAKING CONTACT Transcript: #05-99 Lasting Rule: Dictator to Democracy in the Southern Cone Phillip Babich: Welcome to Making Contact, an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas and important information. This week on Making Contact- Claudio Duran: The change from dictatorship to democracy has created a situation where the economic plans are on automatic pilot. Nothing had really, really fundamentally changed but structurally the economics in Chile are still intact. Phillip Babich: With the arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet last year, there’s been added momentum among international human rights groups to bring human rights violators to justice. But even as high profile figures such as Pinochet are being judged, the legacy of repressive dictatorships in South America endures, say some activists. The interests of the economic elite are now being served by what’s described as democracy, not military dictatorship. On this program we take a look at two countries of the Southern Cone, Chile and Argentina, and how the sheen of democracy and the weight of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund effectively carry out what was once accomplished through violence and repression. I’m Phillip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact. Argentina’s military dictatorship lasted from 1976 to 1983. During this period, known as the "dirty war," a series of military leaders murdered, tortured and disappeared thousands of Argentines. In the final year of the dictatorship, the military government passed amnesty laws, granting immunity to all military officers accused of crimes during the war. Soon afterwards, the new democratically elected government of Raul Alfonsin promised to prosecute war criminals and proceeded with trials. Eventually, pressure from the military, a series of prison uprisings by former officers, and a desire among economic interests for so-called stability stifled more steps toward justice. With the election of Carlos Menem in 1989, it was all but assured that official impunity would be bestowed upon the country’s military officers. Correspondent Travis Lea has more from Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires. Travis Lea: Democracy advocates across the Americas finally began to pick up steam in the 1980s. One dictatorship after another crumbled, and recently liberated people saw initial signs of hope for bringing their torturers and oppressors to justice. But they had to contend with the wave of impunity that washed over nearly all the de facto leaders, many of whom continue to live luxuriously today. In Argentina, however, 1998 was a good year for justice, says Tati Almeida, a 19-year member of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. The group of mothers began a march to the government building in April of 1977, and have demonstrated every week since then, demanding a full accounting of their disappeared children. The mothers and their many supporters have broadened their message to include more sweeping changes. Adolfo Perez-Esquivel: Only revolution will bring about true a democracy with social justice and dignity for our people. Because the lack of a job is a crime, they want to make us into slaves. Because state terrorism is always organized by functionaries working for economic interest. Because the unemployed are the new disappeared of the system. Phillip Babich: In June of 1998 the first of the generals who previously enjoyed amnesty was imprisoned, and the Mothers are finally claiming real progress. Many dirty war leaders now face new scrutiny and trials, thanks to their persistent work. When Chile’s Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London last fall, says Tati Almeida, the Mothers regained some hope for justice. Tati Almeida: We’ve never taken the law into our own hands. We’ve demonstrated that. What we are asking for is legal justice, and we’re getting it. So what’s happened with Pinochet opens the eyes of all these perpetrators of genocide to the fact that we are uprooting this impunity. They realize it’s over for them. So that’s why I say that it is a marvelous precedent, that of Pinochet. And the others from here? Well, they can’t leave Argentina because Judge Garcon is already calling for their capture and extradition. So it’s really a new thing that’s happening at the international level. We are showing that international justice is superior to the justice in each country, and that is very significant. Travis Lea: Many human rights groups seized on political opportunities that have presented themselves in the wake of recent legal precedents, like the arrest of Augusto Pinochet and former Argentine dictator Jorge Videla. But some, like Argentine Nobel Peace laureate Adolfo Perez-Esquivel, are skeptical to claim that justice has made significant progress. Perez-Esquivel was imprisoned in 1977 for his opposition to the military government, and was tortured during more than two years of captivity. His dissidence earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 when the Argentine dictatorship collapsed. Adolfo Perez-Esquivel: If you want to look at dictatorships, the most responsible party is the government of the United States. The U.S. trained more than 80 thousand Latin American soldiers in the School of the Americas in Panama, and in the military academies in the United States. They were instructed, trained, and financed via the so-called national security doctrine, and they were the ones responsible for bringing about the coup d’etats to protect against fears and to safeguard the economic interests of the United States. It’s regrettable, but I make an important distinction between the politics of the U.S. government and its people. From the American people, we’ve received much solidarity. Not from the government. And I think that the people of the United States ignore what its government is doing regarding Latin America. And that is a very grave situation. Travis Lea: Perez-Esquivel says justice will take an important step forward when the general public looks at the systematic nature of state terrorism and the economic factors that drive it. Adolfo Perez-Esquivel: How do dictatorships establish themselves? Because we talk about Pinochet, Videla. We talk about a lot of dictators from Latin America. But who trained them? Who prepared them? How do they pull off a coup d’etat? Pinochet, during the government of Nixon, began a permanent boycott against the government of Salvador Allende in Argentina. The U.S. government financed the ITT, the teamsters strike, and groups that aimed to topple the government of Salvador Allende, the Secretary of State being Henry Kissinger. They didn’t ignore what was happening. Actually they promoted the coup against Salvador Allende for fear that a new social concept should take root. So Pinochet takes advantage of this. Pinochet did not just go and do what he did because he didn’t like Salvador Allende. He had precise, coordinated, perfectly outlined instructions...like Massera here, Vidala, Agosti. When they perform the coup, they implement politics of terror. And then the Operation Condor begins, which creates interrelations, what I call the "Terror International" between Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia. Military and paramilitary groups operate in coordination in various countries, in transporting prisoners and carrying out assassinations, like the case of General Pratt in Argentina; the case of General Torres in Bolivia; assassinated in Argentina. So it always seems dreadfully wrong to put the facts together and say there were some bad soldiers who committed crimes against their people. This is serious stuff. Because if we think that Pinochet is one lone madman, that Videla and Massera committed crimes here because they were messed up in the head, that’s not how it is. Here, there was complicity of businesses. The Ford Motor Company, during the dictatorship, had installed a battalion of soldiers inside the factory to control the workers. All the companies that were operating in Argentina had military personnel in their upper management. Travis Lea: Adolfo Perez-Esquivel says that a top priority is to identify the economic mechanisms that drive state oppressions and intrusive foreign policy. He laments the attitude held by many Latin Americans that democracy has brought about weak economies, and says this thinking contributes to continued support for destabilizing neo-liberal policies and even military rule. Adolfo Perez-Esquivel: In the 1970s, practically all of Latin America had military dictators, and the foreign debt grew tremendously, due to the extraction of resources and the enrichment of the financial system with national capital. Later this money was tacked onto our foreign debt and it is capital that never reached the people. In the 1980s begins that I call the "Spring Flu." All the countries begin to democratize. Neither is this coincidence. Because at that time in the 80s, there are precise policies coming from the Pentagon. To confront the atrocities of the dictatorships, they had to install controlled and restricted democracy. So this whole process of democratization begins, but accompanied by judicial impunity, whereby no military personnel would be tried. The period came with another serious problem. If you read the memos by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, they say that the 80s were the lost decade for development and represents the most serious impoverishment in Latin America. As if democracy arrives and we grow poor from it. Clearly they had already stolen everything. So when we talk about this, what are we really talking about? In the 1990s comes the decade of capitalization and privatization. We pay more, we have less. We pay more and we owe more. Because we haven’t paid one cent of this huge, immoral and unjust foreign debt that was acquired through terror, blood, disappearances and through kidnapped children. We haven’t paid a single cent. Every day we owe more. But we have to transfer money to the IMF and the World Bank. What are the consequences? More poverty, more exclusion, lack of resources for healthcare and education, and the lack of jobs. Travis Lea: Human rights groups in Argentina say that they will have to do a lot more struggling to broadly expose the true nature of repressive governments. To do so, they’re finding new tools and strategies to help them in their struggle. Tati Almeida says Argentine lawyers had to find crimes that weren’t covered by amnesty laws, and use them to corroborate systematic abuses. This strategy has already led to the arrests of many old generals for kidnapping charges, figures like Emilio Massera, former head ot the most famous torture center, the Naval Mechanics School, and Jorge Videla, the first dictator during the "dirty war." Tati Almeida: Take Al Capone in the United States. All the crimes he committed and they couldn’t bring him to trial. And they finally put him in jail for tax evasion! And he was a criminal. In the case of Massera who’s being tried for the kidnapping of children...which in itself is disgusting...it’s only two incidents. But these two kidnappings reveal all the motives for the crimes he’s been accused of. So, it’s not about the kidnapping of one child, no! It corroborates all the crimes he committed. Travis Lea: With old military operatives being brought to trial, some of those facing charges have gone into hiding or are on the run, like Jorge "the Tiger" Acosta. But run too far and they’ll be facing extradition warrants from Switzerland, Spain and other countries, seeking international justice. For Making Contact, I’m Travis Lea in Buenos Aires. Shereen Meraji: You are listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. If you want more information about the subject of this week’s program, or you would like to learn how to get involved with Making Contact, please give us a call. It’s toll free: 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tape and transcript orders. Phillip Babich: When Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile in 1970 he became the first socialist head-of-state of that country. His platform included nationalizing key sectors of the economy. His plans were met with opposition from the U.S. government, which actively worked to undermine his Popular Unity government. In September 1973 a military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet overthrew Allende, who died in the coup. Pinochet’s dictatorship ended in 1990. And now Chile is often held up as an "economic miracle" by free trade advocates. Chile was one of the first countries to undergo austerity measures prescribed by the World Bank, leading to the privatization of numerous sectors of the economy. Supporters of privatizing Social Security here in the United States, for example, point to Chile as a success story in funneling public funds into financial markets. The Clinton administration is also strongly pushing for an expanded North American Free Trade Agreement to include Chile. To discuss this transition from dictatorship to democracy, I spoke with Claudio Duran. A Chilean political prisoner during the Pinochet years, he is a visiting scholar at the Center for Latin American Studies at Stanford University. Duran begins by talking about the U.S. involvement in undermining the Allende government. Claudio Duran: One of the big problems that the United States had, in relation to Chile, was the election of Allende, because Allende was the first socialist president in the history of the twentieth century elected by popular vote. And the main problem was that Allende committed himself to further democratize Chilean society, economically and socially. That meant the rescuing of national resources by nationalizing the strategic industries and the national resources, like copper. And that, of course, created tremendous tension between the United States government and Chile, because a lot of the huge investments and those who own most of the national resources in Chile, were foreign capital, specifically American companies. When Allende was elected, he nationalized copper, nationalized 91 strategic industries, and that created tremendous tension. And the United States created a boycott in order to suffocate and stifle Allende’s plan. Of course, this didn’t succeed, because by 1973 Allende’s coalition went to the vote again. Allende was elected at first in 1970 with 37 percent of the popular vote, by 1973 his coalition got 44 percent of the vote, even though with the boycott, even though with the general strategy of destabilization, this government kept being more and more popular. And therefore more dangerous for United States’ interest in the area. Phillip Babich: And so the United States began making plans to overthrow that government? Claudio Duran: Yes, and I think it’s been widely documented. Now we know that the CIA was involved in the destabilization of the government of Allende. One of the, the important aspect of the regime was the silencing the opposition. Silencing the opposition not only in terms of the public media, meaning newspapers, radios, from the public sphere, but also the physical annihilation of its opponents. They created secret services at the most Nazi style. Created torture centers, and started to disappear people and torture people and send them into exile. I think that was an important aspect, and I think the primary aspect, of constructing a new Chile, under the regime of Pinochet. Phillip Babich: When Augusto Pinochet was arrested last year in 1998, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher came to his defense. And you write that Augusto Pinochet was her partner in the construction of the unfair neo-liberal economics. Claudio Duran: What was really behind the coup d’etat in Chile was economics. In the end I would have to say it was economics, because the whole entire economic structure of the country has been changed. Phillip Babich: And what did they see in Augusto Pinochet? Someone who was going to be brutal enough to reinstall a government that would be favorable to neo-liberal policies? Claudio Duran: Well, I think you know that neo-liberal policies was just an idea at that time. The Chicago School of Economics had started training people from the Catholic University of Santiago, bringing people in 1958 with the idea of creating a school of thought of neo-liberal politics. So when Pinochet arrived in power, he didn’t arrive with an economic plan. It took like two years until 1975, when the Chicago boys, those who had been trained in Chicago by Milton Freedman and his entourage, finally took over and started to change Chilean economics as we knew it then. Neo-liberalism is not just a sickness that affects Chile, I would say, economically. Chile was the fertile ground for the experiment. As Chile becomes an example, it’s a very dangerous example, because it’s one of the most unequal societies in the world. All economic statistics will tell you that in Chile, people work more for less money. Even though there are jobs, people are employed, they work for very, very little money and longer hours. So if Chile becomes the paradigm for development -- then I will say there is something wrong about how we’re looking at this miracle. Because the miracle is based on inequality, and is based on a constant repression of the forces that try to further democratize the economics and that try to further the benefit from the wealth that the countries produce, and the laborers produce. Chile wants to get into NAFTA, and every time that the big businesses of Chile are knocking on the doors of the big businesses of the United States, we have to worry, because in the end, who is really benefiting from the NAFTA projects? We know they are not the great masses in Mexico, we know they won’t be the great masses in Chile. But a few who are controlling the International capital, have been benefiting since ever. Phillip Babich: Now you, Claudio Duran, were arrested, you were a political prisoner in 1975. If you don’t mind talking about that, would you mind telling our listeners what that time was like for you? Claudio Duran: Well, my case is not a very unique case. Within the thousands, I am just a microcosm. Maybe my experience serves to tell your audience what Chileans experienced at that time. First of all, you have to imagine a society that is under siege, and citizens have no rights. It is a Kafka-an situation. You are "citizen K." You don’t know where you are. One day they come at night and they take you. You go blindfolded to a secret center. You are kept there being tortured for days, day and night, with different arts learned by tortures, I have to mention, in some of the schools in the United States, like the School of Americas, in the Panama Canal. You are with lots of people there in the same situation. It was nightmarish. In a way, looking at it after so long in time, I never thought of myself as a survivor. But now I think that those who endured those difficult times survived a terrific experience over state terrorism. Phillip Babich: Were you tortured? Claudio Duran: Oh, yes we were, everybody that was in the hands of the Dina, the secret police created by Pinochet himself, were subject to different kinds of torture. And I am lucky, because I was in a place called Via Arimaldi, and not a lot of people who went through Vijarimaldi made it. A lot of people are, we don’t know still, where some of my friends are. Phillip Babich: Would you say that a codified economic model is now replaced by military rule in order to maintain a social order favorable to the elites? Claudio Duran: Well, you know, it’s an interesting question, because why how can you undo history. You see, the strategy of elimination of opposition, it was systematic, and greatly achieved. When you have thousands of people who get killed, thousands of people who you terrorize, and a generation of people who you send to exile, you kind of change the social components of society. Memory and experience are disseminated through the world, or terrorized. So it will take a long time for that society to acquire, now, the know-how and to have the tools for further democratizing itself, because power has never given you anything in the history of humanity. More or less, the change from dictatorship to democracy has created a situation where the economic plans where the changes that took place in the dictatorship are now on automatic pilot. Nothing has really, really fundamental had changed, but certain parts of the social, but structurally the economics in Chile are still intact. Phillip Babich: Interesting. I wonder if there is some sort of residual, or even more present than that, consciousness of colonialism that is somehow subsumed by populations in the Southern Cone to allow this to happen. Claudio Duran: Well, you know this theory about the living museum, this theory that the colonial past of Latin America never really died. That there is, as you say, not only a residual, but I think there is a lot more than a residual that is present in the social, and in the politics of Latin America. Specifically in Chile, in the oligarchy or ruling class that never wanted to give up power, that never wanted to democratize the society, that always resisted the idea that the national wealth of the country should be repartido, should be shared by the majority. I think that’s a great, great problem in our society. Phillip Babich: I wonder if looking at the history of the Chilean government and Chilean society, and for that matter Argentina’s, that, if we may be looking at a kind of prolonged tension between socialist values and the ever-dominant capitalist values. This has been such a... this dichotomy has been defined more than anything else in the last half of the twentieth century... politics, world power, etc. How long do you see this tension continuing, or it forever locked? Claudio Duran: Well, I cannot recall Chilean history without having dissension. I cannot recall Chilean history even in colonial times, when the people who were invaded, for example, the Mapuche, that didn’t resist this idea of being unfairly used by a minority. And so, in the twentieth century, came this, I’ll say, this fake dichotomy of socialism versus capitalism. But the essence of the problem hasn’t changed. We still have people struggling for a better salary. We still have people struggling for a free education, and the right to be taken care of in times of problems. So I think that dichotomy hasn’t disappeared. As long as there will be a minority of the people, ten percent of the population who control more than sixty percent of the national income, you will have problems, you will have Zapatismo, you will have insurrections. Because insurrections in Latin America is nothing new if you read Latin American history. It’s a continuing narrative of people trying to democratize and have a space and have a share of the great wealth that these countries have. Phillip Babich: Claudio Duran, thanks for joining us on Making Contact. Claudio Duran: Thank you very much. Phillip Babich: Claudio Duran is a visiting scholar at Stanford University. That’s it for this edition of Making Contact, a look at dictators and democracy in the Southern Cone. Thanks for listening, and a special thanks this week to Ann Blackshaw, David Babich, and Fernando Torres for voiceover and translation assistance. We had production assistance from Fred Cook. Laura Livoti is our managing director. Our national producer is David Barsamian. Norman Solomon is senior advisor. Peggy Law is executive director. Our production assistant is Shereen Meraji. And I’m your host and managing producer, Phillip Babich. If you want more information about the subject of this week’s program, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts. Making Contact is an independent production. We’re committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. If you have suggestions for future programs, we’d like to hear from you. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter Trio. ‘Bye for now. |