Policemen patrolled the flower
beds, soldiers in full battle dress
guarded palm trees and fountains.
General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte was
arriving at the Casino of Vifia del
Mar. Eleven years after his brutal mil-
itary coup, Pinochet’s casino speech
last November heralded the beginning
of a new ice age. “Our country is be-
coming a tropical dictatorship,” an
opposition magazine remarked acidly
in its last edition before being closed
down. The state of siege announced
only days later was like a golpe within
the regime, a return to the days fol-
lowing the September 11, 1973 mili-
tary takeover.
At the break of dawn on November
10, armed personnel carriers (Swiss-
designed Mowags) and trucks over-
flowing with troops roared into the
poblaciones, the slums surrounding
Chile’s capital, Santiago. While heli-
copters menacingly throbbed over-
head, the soldiers burst into the hum-
ble houses and arrested all men be-
tween 12 and 65 years of age. Herded
into trucks and taken to an abandoned
soccer stadium, most were set free
after a thorough ID check. Over 600, mostly medium-level cadre of left-
wing political parties and trade un-
ionists, have been relegado-sent into
internal exile for three months in re-
mote villages a thousand miles from
Santiago.
A “Day of National Protest” at the
end of November was a complete
flop. Unarmed demonstrations were
out of the question in the face of mas-
sive Army patrols. The protest was
the twelfth since Rodolfo Seguel,
president of the copper workers’
union, called on Chileans over 18
months ago to defy the regime by
banging on saucepans. To everyone’s
surprise, the action forced an “open-
ing” on the military.
Despite the November setback, the
feeling that Pinochet’s regime is
crumbling has become stronger.
“There will either be an end to the
state of siege and a political solution
soon,” a leader of the small left-wing
MAPU party told me, “or Chile will
sink into complete chaos.”
The signs of decomposition and the
servists for guard duty at bridges and
major crossroads.
Conflict With Church Denied
Signs that the Church too is pres-
suring the regime have prompted the
government to insist: “There is no
conflict with the Church.” But evi-
dence indicates otherwise. The Epis-
copal Conference has broken through
censorship in aggressive pastoral let-
ters that are read aloud at Sunday
mass. Church attendance has in-
creased significantly throughout the
country. Even the moderate Santiago
Archbishop Juan Francisco Fresno has
been hinting at the possibility of ex-
communicating the regime or some of
its members.
Of late, squabbles within the re-
Banging saucepans has become standard protest. Santiago, September 1983.
absence of any coherent government
policy are so evident that the detailed
accounts in some of the pro-govern-
ment newspapers seem more reveal-
ing and subversive than anything the
now closed-down opposition press
could print. Economic policy is non-
existent, yet Economy Minister Mod-
esto Collados continues presenting
wide-eyed fantasies he calls “peo-
ple’s capitalism.” “Everything is normal,” says a
government spokesman, who then
goes on to explain the necessity of
calling up several thousand Army re-
gime have taken on a touch of comic
opera. Air Force General Fernando
Matthei-who several months ago
withdrew his secret service personnel
from joint operations with the feared
intelligence agency, CNI-appeared
on television to announce that he is
not under house arrest. Matthei and
Pinochet are known to be locked in se-
vere conflict.
Even the base of Pinochet’s power
seems to be rotting away. “Our men
are ashamed to leave their barracks iin
uniform when off duty,” confessed an
Army general recently. The cara-
6 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
Walter Tauber, South America corre-
spondent for the German news
weekly, Der Spiegel, spent November
and December in Chile.
0
d
o C-
C-
6 REPORT ON THE AMERICASThe October 1984 protest days were among the most successful. Plaza de Armas, Santiago de Chile.
Christian Democrats Rodolfo Seguel, Andres Zaldivar, Gabriel Valdes. I bineros, or militarized police, are suf-
fering especially under the pressure of
being the main instrument of repres-
sion and thus in the front line of popu-
lar hatred. “The carabineros don’t
live in barracks, but among the
people, in the same poblaciones they
have to attack,” explains an official, who wishes to remain anonymous.
Increasingly, policemen are sub-
jected to acts of revenge. Some are
harmless-a bus driver suddenly
drives off, leaving a last-in-line
carabinero behind. Some are more
serious; groups of young slum dwell-
ers have seriously injured lone police-
men on their way home.
“Hatred for the people is increasing
among the troops,” says the official.
“They see the people as the im-
mediate reason for their suffering.
And the officer corp is seriously wor-
ried. They are sick of being used by
the Army-the regime’s favorite-to
carry the main load of repression. And
when budget time rolls around, the
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1985
7carabineros, moved by Pinochet from
the interior ministry to defense, al-
ways get the smallest piece of the
pie.”
Juice in Champagne Glasses
In recent months, according to
rumors in Santiago, the secret service-
men of the CNI have been shadowing
the armed forces more closely than the
opposition parties in their quest for
any sign of dissent. But now it seems
that even this last redoubt of
Pinochet’s regime is suffering a se-
vere attack of conscience. “I was not
subjected to any physical violence,”
says Fanny Pollarolo, a psychologist
and Communist leader in the left-wing
coalition Popular Democratic Move-
ment (MDP) about her arrest by the
CNI. She is now exiled in Maullin, a
beautiful fishing village near the
southern port of Puerto Montt.
Other relegados on the nearby is-
land of Chilo6 relate similar stories:
“They gave us orange juice in cham-
pagne glasses,” marvels Ivan Pob-
lete, a student leader from An-
tofagasta. “One of us even received
10,000 pesos ($80) with the comment:
share that with the others, you’ll need
it down there in the south.”
Many of the relegados who had
been imprisoned in earlier days knew
the CNI as brutal torturers. “It seems
that they are seriously worried about
the future,” explains Fanny Pollarolo.
“They kept telling me: now don’t go
and tell foreign journalists we mis-
treated you; or: We are not sadists!”
“Politics is like a horse cart that
can topple over,” one guard told Ivan
Poblete, “one day you are on top, the
next you are down under. So don’t
forget how well we treated you.”
He Knows Too Much
The number of similar stories and
anecdotes is seemingly endless. Cer-
tainly the most surprising was a con-
versation I overheard during lunch
time in a picada, a cheap popular res-
taurant near Santiago’s central mar-
ket. Three young men sat talking shop
two tables further down. At first it
was all theory: whether carabinero
training is better than Army training,
which books offer the best surveil-
lance techniques. Then, after a plate
of clams and before diving into their
steaks, the three-by now identified
as CNI members-went into detail.
“This Colonel Larafiaga is a danger
to the service when he loses all con-
trol. But we can’t throw him out, he
knows too much about that case when
we killed those guys.” Colonel Lara-
fiaga reportedly beat up former Chris-
tian Democratic Senator Jorge Lavan-
dero when he was conducting an in-
vestigation on corruption charges
against Pinochet.
The third agent was obviously from
another branch of the service. “I don’t
care about that. But I am worried
about what’ll happen to us when this
whole thing topples over.”
The main reason the “whole thing”
hasn’t toppled over after nearly two
years of continuous protest seems to
be the lack of a really coherent alter-
native. “The politicians have not been
up to their task,” is the sad summa-
tion of a Chilean journalist. “We
must force them to stop their ridicul-
ous political games,” demanded Ro-
dolfo Seguel on the day of the suc-
cessful October 28 protest strike. Jos6
Ruiz de Giorgio, union leader of the
petroleum workers and like Seguel a
Christian Democrat, had said almost
the same words during a protest-day
press conference six months before.
All to no avail.
The Christian Democrats, by far the
strongest party, lament the lack of de-
mocracy but seem far more worried
by a possible electoral victory by the
Left, whenever elections are held,
than by the problem of how to bring
about these elections and get rid of
Pinochet. The Communists, on the
other hand, seem only to gain terrain
the longer the crisis lasts. They quite
rightly demand recognition by all
other parties and full participation in
any future democracy. But they–
consciously, some say-scared the
Christian Democrats just before a
“constitutional pact” on the basis of
future democracy was to be signed by
all parties. The party issued a very
ambiguous statement on the possible
use of force in ending the dictatorship.
The pact was never signed.
In the meantime the Communists’
armed wing, the Manuel Rodriquez
Patriotic Front (which they lovingly
call “Manolito”), is slowly but surely
increasing the pressure with bomb-
ings. But according to popular wis-
dom in Santiago, the killing of four
carabineros in Valparaiso a few
weeks ago was the work of the CNI,
offering Pinochet a pretext for the new
hard line.
A Fragmented Opposition
In between the Left and the Right
are a collection of small parties: they
enjoy the same amount of relative
political freedom as the Christian
Democrats, holding press confer-
ences, negotiations, party council
meetings. They complain as loudly as
the Christian Democrats about hunger
in Chile, yet none pose viable solu-
tions. And they are incapable of ex-
plaining why the opposition is so di-
vided. The political spectrum from
moderate socialists to Social Demo-
crats is occupied not by the one or two
parties one might reasonably expect,
but by two dozen groups. “Historical
reasons” is the main excuse-a very
thin cover for what is often little more
than personal conflict at the leadership
level.
In the short term, Pinochet can only
be ousted by another general. Such a
general will only act if he can find
firm support for a coup among the few
remaining pro-government parties, as
well as in a large sector of the opposi-
tion-and explicit support from
Washington.
“We’ll offer the military an alter-
native,” declared Christian Demo-
cratic leader Gabriel Valdes recently.
As yet it is impossible to discern who
has what to offer. “Everybody wants
to be a Felipe Gonzalez,” sighs a
politician, drawing a parallel to the
Spanish transition from dictatorship to
democracy, “but nobody wants to
take up the burden of being Adolfo
Suarez. “*
Meanwhile the poblaciones around
Santiago are sinking ever deeper into
misery and disorder. Chaos seems
nearer than ever in Chile.
*Suarez was the first prime minister
appointed by King Juan Carlos after
Franco’s death. Tainted by associa-
tion with the dictatorship, Suarez res-
igned under pressure in early 1981.
