Pinochet Attempting to Portray Himself as Martyr

by Gustavo Gonzalez

But last week, under arrest in London, he took on a new endeavour: to become the martyr of a world crusade against Marxist socialism.

The Chilean right stressed the price which the 83-year-old retired general offered to pay in his "political testament," released last Friday, in which he declares his willingness to make a sacrifice in order for Chileans to become at last a "united and reconciled people...at the dawn of a new century."

The local weekly Que Pasa said the text, presented as a "letter to the Chilean people," was written and distributed by a team comprised of Pinochet's last interior minister, Carlos Caceres -- who read the document to the press Friday -- and deputies Pablo Longueira and Alberto Espina, president of two right-wing political parties.

Also on the team were the attorneys who are coordinating Pinochet's defense with British lawyers; General Carlos Salgado, on army commander-in-chief General Ricardo Izurieta's advisory committee; and two of the former dictator's children, Lucia and Marco Antonio Pinochet.

Although the final text was ready on Dec. 8, the team agreed to release it on Friday to coincide with Pinochet's appearance in London before Judge Graham Parkinson, who notified him of the extradition process -- which according to legal experts could drag on for up to two years.

After the first draft was completed, Longueira, Espina and Caceres reportedly recommended that more emphasis be placed upon Pinochet's pain and sacrifice, and on "the democratic, and not only economic, legacy" of the 17-year military regime (1973- 1990).

An extensive body of literature bears Pinochet's name, but only his first Geography and Geopolitics manuals, which date back to the 1950s, were written in his own handwriting.

The thick volumes of memoirs of the dictatorship published under Pinochet's name were written by teams of writers and scribes, according to historian Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt, the author of "El Chile Perplejo" (The Perplexed Chile), a recent essay on the country's political transition.

Pinochet's "political testament" thus has the heterogenous style characteristic of collective texts, although it takes up political objectives agreed on by all of its drafters, Jocelyn- Holt adds.

The sacrifice proclaimed by Pinochet is a political wager mainly aimed at updating the anachronistic Cold War struggle between East and West, lashing out against "the international socialist plot" that led to the former dictator's arrest.

The document's main political objective is to cut short the rise of socialist Ricardo Lagos -- a strong contender for the co- governing socialist party's presidential candidacy and the favorite in opinion polls for the December 1999 elections -- who is attacked on a daily basis by the UDI and PRN as the chief promoter of Pinochet's current situation.

Pinochet lent himself to the game because the drafters appealed to his vanity and his messianic pretensions, key elements of his personality.

Facing a long stay in London as the extradition proceedings unfold, Pinochet has tried to compare his situation with the prolonged exile of the father of Chilean independence, Bernardo O'Higgins, in Peru from 1823 until his death in 1842.

Jocelyn-Holt says the comparison does not fit, but does admit one similarity: O'Higgins could have returned from exile, but his self-declared followers kept that from happening.

The right has refused to facilitate accords that would allow the transition to democracy to progress and enable formulas to resolve pending cases of human rights violations -- and especially to clarify the fate of around 1,500 people "disappeared" by the security forces.

Another key to understanding Pinochet's "sacrifice" lies in "Chile Actual. Anatomia de un Mito" (Present-day Chile; Anatomy of a Myth), an essay by sociologist Tomas Moulian on the transition process. Published in June 1997, the book was last year's best-seller.

Somewhat prophetically, Moulian said the general was getting ready to step down as army chief -- a post he held since August 1973 -- to swear in as senator-for-life and work on leaving behind his image as a dictator with bloody hands to become a statesman.

The sociologist characterized Chile's changes as designed to maintain the status quo, and a "whitewashing" of Pinochet through his passage from "tyrant" to "patriarch."

The former de facto leader swore into the Senate on Mar. 11 with a list of bills to promote in benefit of education and youth. And in August he negotiated the elimination of the Sep. 11 holiday commemorating the 1973 coup -- which he himself declared in 1974.

But the entire whitewashing operation came to an abrupt halt on midnight Oct. 16, when Scotland Yard agents burst into the London Clinic to arrest Pinochet as he recovered from surgery on a slipped disc.

Pinochet was instantly thrown back into his role of a former dictator responsible for crimes against humanity not only in the eyes of the international community, but also for 63 percent of Chileans, according to a survey carried out two weeks ago.

"Martyr" status looks like the only option left to Pinochet, in a manuevre which fits in with the aims of his advisers, who in his "political testament" induced him to declare himself innocent of the repressive crimes of which he is accused.