Salvador Allende and Gen. Carlos Prats, both victims of Pinochet
Today on a CBC
Program called "The Current",
Ariel
Dorfman, a Chilean playwright (Death and the Maiden),
novelist and poet, exiled
in the 1970s, talked about his experience during the regime of the
brutal, sadistic, thieving US-supported fascist dictatorship of the late Augusto
Pinochet, and
his sense of what his country has been through and is going through now
in the shadow
of Pinochet’s recent death.
You
can listen to Dorfman speak on the CBC
site. Scroll down to Part 3. He’s an extremely
articulate man, and what is
so engaging is that he speaks so emotionally
(even in English that Latin
fervour and joie de
vivre is evident). We in the cold Anglophone nations need
to learn to speak this passionately and unhesitatingly.
He
tells the stories
of the two people who dared breach the
cautious protocol of compromise that allowed Pinochet a full military
funeral
but no state funeral. Despite the horrors that this man unleashed on
his
country, his opponents and supporters generally kept their distance
from each
other and avoided extremes of action or rhetoric. But two people did
not: The grandson of
Pinochet unleashed a tirade against the current government and
spoke in
glowing terms about what his grandfather had done to "save Chile from
the
Communists". And the grandson of General Carlos Prats, the
army leader
who supported Pinochet only to be betrayed and assassinated by
him, patiently made his way among the throngs of mourners until, upon
reaching the
coffin, he spat on it.
In
his remarkable telling of these stories, Dorfman brings
home three important lessons from this tragic period of Chile's
history that we would be
well-advised to heed:
- In order to be
able to make a transition from a despotic
regime to a democratic one, it is essential that the people themselves
be
empowered and in control of the overthrow and rebuilding of their
nation.
Other countries can and should help, but democracy can never be 'imposed'
by outside nations.
- The Chileans believed that the kind of ruthless
dictatorship common in many Latin American countries could never occur
in their peaceful
and democratic nation. They were wrong. Corrupt, criminal, repressive
dictatorship can happen anywhere.
- The existence
of truly international law and global
consensus about a regime's atrocity can bring justice to a nation seemingly unable or unwilling to achieve that justice for itself. Many Chileans were unwilling to acknowledge the extent of Pinochet's
criminality because to do so they would have had to admit to (at least
unknowing) complicity. It was the UK & European
courts, not Chile's,
that finally charged
Pinochet with war crimes and, although Pinochet ultimately cheated
justice with
his death (kinda like Slobodan Milosevic and Ken Lay), that combination of global consensus
and initiative finally gave
Chileans the courage to charge Pinochet themselves.
Dorfman
also makes the point that people
only seek revenge
when there is no opportunity for justice.
Revenge is always the last
resort.
And
he concludes that the only way to eliminate the spectre
of torture and terror forever from our planet is to eradicate the
underlying
root causes of it – inequality, poverty, greed, corruption,
scarcity and human
misery.
I had never
heard of Dorfman, but he spoke so eloquently, so
expressively, that I am rushing out to buy one of his books. Have a listen. Powerful,
inspiring, and important stuff.
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
