translated from Spanish: Spanish historian Mario Amorós warns about a possible “pinochetismo” without Pinochet

Historian and journalist Mario Amorós has warned of the emergence in Chile of a possible “pinochetism” without Augusto Pinochet (1915-2006), sponsored by certain sectors of the Chilean far right and grounded and grounded n a largely taxed idea of the doctrine of which he was a dictator of that country between 1973 and 1990.
Interviewed by Agencia Efe, after the recent publication of his voluminous work “Pinochet. Military and political biography” (Ediciones B. Alicante, 1973) states that “now, in the midst of this wave of reactionary conservatism that has come to light with characters such as (US President Donald) Trump, or (Brazil’s Jair) Bolsonaro, a trend has emerged of this kind in Chile.” This trend, according to Amorós, is embodied by the ultra-conservative politician José Antonio Kast, president of the newly created Republican Party (many of whose members come from the Independent Democratic Union, UDI, one of the classical forces of the Chilean right), who last June 24 met in Madrid with the main leaders of the ultra-right-wing Vox party, including its president, Santiago Abascal.
Kast’s idea “is openly pinochetist,” amorós says, noting that, for now, it “represents minority sectors but they are there,” while stating that the Chilean democratic right “has a conservative view of history.”
In this way, he emphasizes, “justifying the coup” that Pinochet gave on September 11, 1973 against the constitutional president Salvador Allende, and does so “by “taking weight away from the nefarious work” of his regime.
However, Amorós recognizes that, nevertheless, the Chilean democratic right has clearly distanced itself from the figure of Pinochet, particularly since 2004, “when it is discovered that it has multimillion-dollar bank accounts abroad”, which dismantles the image of austerity that the dictator had been striving to forge since his arrival in power and throughout his regime.
Amorós emphasizes that “Chile is the only Latin American country whose Constitution was drafted in the middle of dictatorship” in 1980, and still, although with the relevant reforms added, especially in 2005, to eliminate the authoritarian coordinates that appeared in it.
However, he points out, nothing has been touched of the economic model implemented in 1975, of a marked ultra-liberal character and that today “conditions the life of Chileans”.
Certainly, one of the characteristics of the Chilean economy is its stability and its solidity, both already defined by the model imposed by the Pinochet dictatorship and that in the macroeconomic field offers very positive figures.
“Pinochet hands over power in 1990 with 40 percent of the population in extreme poverty,” says Amorós, who nonetheless stresses that successive Chilean democratic governments “have made a great and successful effort to alleviate these inequalities and that extreme poverty.”
“It is very easy to appreciate the good side of the ultra-liberal model in Chile, with very good macroeconomic figures. However, that same model largely conditions the lives of Chilean citizens,” stresses the historian, who stresses that “Pinochet’s was also a class dictatorship”.
“The Pinochet dictatorship had the ability to install a political and economic project in Chile that has partly endured to this day,” says Amorós.
On the other hand, the author echoes the pirouette of chance that in Pinochet’s life his trip to London in September 1998 and the arrest warrant issued against him by the then judge of the Baltasar Garzón National Hearing for his alleged alleged involvement in the crimes of genocide, international terrorism, torture and disappearance of persons committed during the dictatorship.
Until that time “Pinochet was untouchable”, stresses the expert, for not in vain after handing over power and democracy restored he remained, first, commander-in-chief of the Army until 1998 and, since then and after his final retirement, senator for life in his status as former president of the Republic.
With regard to the similarities that have been established so many times between the figure of Pinochet and that of General Francisco Franco (for which the former did not hide his admiration and sympathy and to whose burial he attended in Madrid on November 23, 1975) Amorós above all highlights his coming to power with a coup that ends, in Chile and Spain, with a regime of democratic legality.
“The Franco regime destroyed the first democratic experience in the history of Spain”, the Second Republic, “and caused a setback of such a dimension that we do not yet know in its full magnitude”, emphasizes Amorós.
In the case of Chile, he states that Pinochet “ends the experience of Popular Unity, the first time in history that a Marxist socialist like Salvador Allende came to power democratically”.

Original source in Spanish

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