Santiago

The Supreme Court position so strained credulity that even the Christian Democratic Party--itself a collaborator with the Pinochet regime after the coup--denounced it as "sad, disheartening, lamentable, and almost shameful"; and President Lagos openly criticized the judges for failing to admit that they had acquiesced in the atrocities of the military dictatorship. But when the government party newspaper, La Nación, published a cover story titled "La Cara Civil de la Tortura"--The Civil Face of Torture--along with photographs of what the paper called "los Top Ten" Chilean civilian elites who had facilitated Pinochet's repression, the editor was publicly berated by Lagos administration officials for practicing inflammatory journalism.

That action, as well as others, suggests that the Lagos administration is sensitive to rumbling on the right that the fallout of the Valech report be contained. "The government has undertaken a major challenge with uncertain consequences over which it could easily lose control," stated a December 10 lead editorial in Chile's conservative daily, El Mercurio (owned by Agustín Edwards, who is listed as numero uno on the Top Ten list of regime collaborators). The torture report, Edwards's paper complained, was supposed to "soothe the wounds, not reopen them."

What really rattles the Chilean right and the military is not an accounting but the prospect of being held accountable. In his televised speech releasing the torture report, President Lagos conspicuously avoided all references to identifying the torturers and prosecuting them. His administration soon announced that the testimonies and working papers of the Valech Commission would be kept confidential for fifty years--a decision that the commissioners oppose, and that has raised suspicions among Chile's human rights groups that the government is sequestering critical evidence to impede future judicial proceedings. Indeed, various associations and organizations representing Pinochet's many victims are indignant over the government's efforts to shift the focus away from prosecution of those responsible for human rights crimes while pushing a minimal financial compensation package--about $190 a month--for torture victims. "Justice is the principal method of reparation," insists Pedro Matta, a survivor of the infamous Villa Grimaldi torture camp.

It remains to be seen how, or even if, Chile's tribunals will process thousands of torture cases that could derive from the Valech report. But it is clear from several recent rulings that the momentum for justice that would bring to trial some of the worst human rights abusers under the Pinochet regime can no longer be suppressed. In November the Supreme Court ruled that the amnesty law passed by Pinochet to protect his officers from prosecution for human rights crimes did not apply to the case of Miguel Angel Sandoval, a leftist disappeared by the DINA, Pinochet's secret police. The decision clears the way for the imprisonment of former DINA director Manuel Contreras and sets a precedent for other cases involving officers who had hoped to hide behind the amnesty law. In December, Lieut. Col. Mario Manríquez Bravo was indicted as the "intellectual author" of the murder of Chilean folk singer Victor Jara following the September 11, 1973, coup. With his appeals rejected, Manríquez has been incarcerated pending trial. And earlier this month, ten high-ranking members of the DINA were indicted for disappearing eight Chileans, who became part of Operation Colombo--a crude, macabre effort to falsify the fates of 119 missing political prisoners by arranging the appearance of corpses on the streets of Buenos Aires and planting propaganda claiming that they had died in a battle between militant leftists in Argentina.

Beyond the Condor prosecution, Pinochet himself has been the target of significant legal proceedings that could lead to other trials on terrorism and corruption charges. In early December a Chilean court ruled that he could be prosecuted as the "intellectual author" of the 1974 car-bomb assassination in Buenos Aires of his immediate predecessor as Army commander, Gen. Carlos Prats, and his wife. On Christmas Eve a special investigation into Pinochet's illicit sources of wealth determined that between 1985 and 2002 he had secretly stashed $16 million--twice the previously reported amount--in several accounts at the Riggs National Bank in Washington, DC. And on January 6 authorities raided Pinochet's office in downtown Santiago, finding four false passports in his name and carting off computers and files containing potential evidence. A decision to prosecute Pinochet on charges of corruption, embezzlement and tax evasion is expected soon.

"He is a person who has finished his life in a miserable way," observes Elizabeth Lira. Indeed, as of January 5 the former dictator finds himself under house arrest, with military police guarding the doors of his country estate. At 89, he has lived long enough to read a recent cover story in La Tercera--"Government and Army Plan Funeral of Augusto Pinochet." There will be no official homage paid to the former dictator. State funerals, the Lagos administration has made clear, are reserved for presidents who were democratically elected.

• « Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 75 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.