The Wronging of a Dictator

his week the world mourns the death of one of the twentieth century’s most notorious leaders—General Augusto Pinochet of Chile. Pinochet rose to power in 1973 via a violent coup d’état and his tenure would eventually witness the deaths of over 3000 of his political enemies. He overthrew a democratically elected government, only to institute a ruthless totalitarian regime bathed in blood. He was a criminal, murderer, and thief—or so the headlines ubiquitous in the mainstream media would have us believe. Pinochet, however, is a man misunderstood by many, and the distortion of facts surrounding his rise to and fall from power is a great injustice of our times.

That Pinochet overthrew a democratically-elected government with CIA backing is common knowledge. What is often omitted from the news is that the government of Salvador Allende—which he deposed—came to power in 1970 with Soviet financing and a mere 36 percent electoral plurality, amid allegations of massive voter fraud that would later prove true. Allende turned Chile’s economy on its head, putting thousands out of work and home and expropriating the assets of the poorest of Chileans, who were left to stand starving in Soviet-style bread queues. Bands of revolutionary guerillas roamed the countryside, mercilessly evicting Chilean peasants from their land.

Allende was backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union, who sought to turn Chile into a despotic socialist state by providing him with money, man-power, and thousands of weapons. Fidel Castro toured Chile in early 1973, giving speeches in favor of Allende’s "revolution." Allende was accordingly condemned by the legislature, the judiciary, and three former presidents (including Eduardo Frei, a Marxist and former supporter of Allende) for his abuses. Finally, with many certain that a coup was inevitable given the hyperinflation (a paycheck from one week could not even afford bread in the next week), starvation, recession, and extreme civil unrest, General Augusto Pinochet took power on Sept. 11, 1973.

If Allende had been able to continue to advance his extreme socialist agenda, he could well have caused far more death and misery than the 3000 people Pinochet is responsible for murdering. Human rights groups have regularly denounced Pinochet’s torture and execution of his political opponents, yet the same organizations often overlook Cuba’s then routine torture of tens of thousands of its dissidents. Not to mention the atrocities committed in the Stalinist Soviet Union, Maoist China, or other socialist Latin American governments. It is important to remember that communism can be very dangerous—especially in South America, where communist revolutionaries were often backed by naïve electorates and armies of loyal guerilla fighters. Compared to other South American dictatorships—and many communist states worldwide—Pinochet’s killings were the most targeted and least widespread.

Pinochet successfully rescued Chile from the threat of violent communist revolution, and orchestrated one of the most dramatic economic turnarounds of the era—bringing a country from total economic chaos into immense prosperity. Pinochet’s 1980 constitution was voted on and approved by the people of Chile, and in 1988, after losing elections his constitution instituted, Pinochet ceded the presidency, only retaining his status as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Absolute control of the government had been necessary in the unstable years following the coup, as fierce communist opposition loomed. The disappearances and assassinations that continued well into the 1980s were at least in part a response to the communists’ continued efforts of insurrection against Pinochet’s government. The 1986 assassination attempt—killing five of Pinochet’s bodyguards—is an indication of the gravity of the communist threat. Sometimes the iron fist is a necessary prerequisite to peace, order, and even freedom—an unfortunate reality of human affairs. One has to look no further than the now very visible disaster in Iraq that followed the deposing of Saddam Hussein for an example of what can happen without it.

Pinochet’s human rights abuses are real, but they have also been played up by leftists in South America and their sympathizers in the West. In many cases, critics use Pinochet’s human rights abuses as convenient philosophical dressing to cloak the real reason for why they oppose him: He successfully proved the fallacies of the destructive ideology of statist socialism—an ideology void of morality, contrary to human nature, and totally dysfunctional in practice. It is ideologically opposed to the principles on which modern Western nations were founded, yet unfortunately still enjoys deep support at Harvard and throughout the Western intellectual establishment. Pinochet spent his political career fighting its evil, and for that his reputation is slandered.

The twentieth century saw more than its fair share of both wicked men, and individuals who countered their iniquity with crusades of justice. Pinochet, I believe, was a bit of both, but for the most part one of the latter. Pinochet—a devout and caring Christian man with an understanding of the dangers of radical socialism—deserves the respect from democrats the world around for his fight for freedom from tyranny in South America.

Ryan M. McCaffrey ’07 is a biochemical sciences concentrator in Quincy House. He is the editor-in-chief of the Salient.