Human Rights in Chile: Remeberance and Reckoning

“Who was party to the decision?” The hand removes itself from my mouth. My tongue’s rigid, the skin of the roof of my mouth shriveled, dry like a nutshell. I barely hear what I say, hoarsely. I give a few names and, in my concern to leave someone out, name someone else who wasn’t there. “And he said he was collaborating in the international Marxist campaign against Chile?” Yes, of course, whatever they want. “And to think you made all that fuss over a little thing like that, you son of a bitch!” They give me a last, farewell [electrical] discharge in the penis. They untie me. “Get dressed, you fucking queer.” I slide off the stretched and grope all around the floor. I can’t remember where I got undressed. “Hurry up, you shit.” They kick me in the right direction. There’s no time for the pain to register. I get the clothes all jumbled up, I can’t find the trouserlegs. “Put your pants on first, you shit! Get yourself dressed properly.”
(Hernan Valdes, Diary of a Chilean Concentration Camp, O’Shaughnessy, 68)

In Chile, transitioning into democracy included the formation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1990. One goal of such an institution was to provide accountability for human rights abuses that had occurred. In attaining accountability there was an acknowledgement of physical realities— that no matter what the abstract moral or political situation, that so many people had died, that such-and-such physical abuse had occurred, that this number of people had disappeared.

The military coup in Chile and the move back into democracy may both be understood as examples of institutional crises. Correspondingly, however, are the actions of “human agencies,” that allow or promote construction or deconstruction:

"Societies undergoing deep institutional crises are forced to reflect on the roots of such crises in connection with the ways in which their collective tenets were constructed. Throughout history there has been a continuous process of construction and human agency in the shaping of collective identities and public life." (Roniger and Sznajder, 225)

The role of the worker in Chile changed tremendously during the years of the coup, perhaps most significantly politically in the abolition of powerful unions and other organizations that were basically prohibited during the first years of the dictatorship. Indeed, the role of the worker is a fact that is often ignored by economists who buy into upholding the Chilean economy as an example of “miracle” economics, as is discussed more later. In implementing its economic “shock treatment” to reverse the socialist reforms of previous presidencies, the dictatorship repeatedly terrorized the population:

"...to prevent political consequences of such a shock, the Pinochet regime began cracking down on potential opposition leader. Many just “disappeared”... suffice to say, workers “accepted” the austerity program at gunpoint. (“Chile: the laboratory test”)

In the late ‘70s, when Pinochet started to allow for more political freedom, labor unions and political parties were once again legalized, although the under tight restrictions and often with the leadership appointed by the dictatorship.

Manuel Bustos Huerta is a Chilean activist and worker who was arrested in September, 1973 and taken to the National Stadium. In his account of life in modern Chile, given in the early ‘80s, Huerta concludes that “the union movement is practically dead, and he realizes that many workers have stopped reacting because they fear oppression, unemployment, and finally the violence involved in protest.” (Politzer, 174) He describes the scene of institutional transformation that began on September 11, 1973 when he and fellow workers on their way to a textile factory saw soldiers in the streets and “had no idea about the coup.” They thought it could have been a military operation searching for illegal weapons:

"A few blocks ahead there was a large group of soldiers with tanks, and the bus couldn’t get by, so we got out and walked. The soldiers hadn’t got to the factory yet, but everything there indicated that there had been a coup: some radio stations had been shut down and others were carrying army broadcast...I was president of the workers’ union. We quickly organized a meeting to try to gather information from the supervisor of the factory, who had had a separate meeting with people from Popular Unity...Finally, after much discussion, we decided that people should go home, but that a group of volunteers would stay to prevent any sabotage." (Politzer, 175-6)