Augusto Pinochet Ugarte

Dictator of Chile (1973–90)

• Born: November 25, 1915
• Birthplace: Valparaíso, Chile
• Died: December 10, 2006
• Place of death: Santiago, Chile

Pinochet seized power over Chile in a military coup in 1973 and headed the military junta until taking over as president. He won recognition in some quarters for employing free market policies in the transformation of Chile’s economy. Despite criticism from the global human-rights community, Pinochet continually referred to himself as a patriot who acted for love of country and hatred of communism.

Early Life

Born in the coastal city of Valparaíso, Chile, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte was the oldest of six children born to a middle-class family. His father, Augusto Pinochet Sr., worked long hours as a port customs official and was distant but largely benevolent. Pinochet’s mother, Avelina Ugarte, a homemaker, was extremely doting if often strict, and she favored the young Pinochet. Pinochet greatly enjoyed military games and was considered by many to be a bully who took up boxing and intimidated both the neighborhood children and his siblings. He seemed to be without close friends.

An unexceptional pupil, young Pinochet did poorly in classes at the local Roman Catholic school. He dropped out at the age of fourteen, repeatedly applying to the famous Escuela Militar General Bernardo O’Higgins (a military academy) until he was accepted in 1932. He entered the military school in 1933 and did well, responding to the order and regimentation and strict discipline of army life. It is probable that he admired leaders such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler from an early age.

Pinochet graduated in 1937 and continued his military career with the support and urging of his mother. He aspired to do well in the military, but there is no indication in his history of larger political ambitions. He married Lucía Hiriart, the daughter of a politician, in 1943. She encouraged his career and ambitions. They had two sons and three daughters.

Life’s Work

In 1949, Pinochet entered the Academia de Guerra (war academy), the military school for officers. Over the next two decades, he worked writing tracts on military history and geography and rose steadily through the ranks. Though now known to have been a virulent anticommunist, he kept his political views quiet during this time in his career.

Pinochet became a general in 1969 and was put in command of the Santiago garrison in that capital city. In August 1971, Pinochet was promoted by the democratically elected president Salvador Allende, and he was named commander in chief of the army by Allende in August 1973.

The political climate of Chile was becoming volatile. In September 1973, General Pinochet joined the US-backed plot against Allende and directed the armed forces in a coup that led to Allende’s apparent suicide. A military junta, or ruling committee, was established, with Pinochet clearly in charge. The junta established martial law and created a prison in the National Stadium in Santiago, holding several thousand people prisoner. The junta shut down the Chilean parliament, banned union activity, and censored the press. It abolished political parties deemed left of center or even centrist.

By June 1974, a special decree gave Pinochet executive powers. He soon formed the Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia (National Intelligence Directorate), or DINA, the secret police who murdered, tortured, or “disappeared” individuals in Chile and abroad. The former Chilean ambassador to the United States under Allende, Orlando Letelier, was killed by a car bomb in Washington, DC, in September 1976.

A constitution was written in 1980 at Pinochet’s direction. The majority of the violence had ended by this time, and a semblance of normalcy returned to Chile. Pinochet had been working with a number of economists who had studied in the United States and began employing free market capitalism during this time. Many state-owned institutions and industries were privatized, public spending was cut, and incentives were implemented for foreign trade. While mostly successful, these policies also were criticized for excluding the poorest sectors of Chilean society. The later privatization of Chile’s social security system proved problematic. The resulting growth, however, won Pinochet a number of supporters in Latin America and abroad, who considered Chile an “economic miracle.”

Pinochet endured the criticism, both domestic and global, for his repressive government. Protests continued, and he was nearly assassinated in 1986. Nonetheless, he continued to believe that he enjoyed the support of the majority of the country’s population. In 1988 he held a plebiscite, in which Chileans voted on whether Pinochet should become president; he was rejected. The general was therefore compelled by his own constitution to hold open elections. His chosen candidate, too, lost the election, and in 1990, centrist Patricio Aylwin Azócar assumed the presidency. Pinochet, however, remained in command of the armed forces, which continued to intimidate the populace and to influence government. Attempts were made to try a number of military officials for human-rights violations, but Pinochet succeeded in preventing their prosecution.

In March 1998, Pinochet gave up his post as commander of the armed forces and took his position as senator-for-life, per the constitution. Having enjoyed close diplomatic relations with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and with a standing invitation to visit and reside in England, Pinochet decided to travel to London for needed back surgery in 1998. He was arrested there on an extradition warrant created in the Spanish courts for the crimes of genocide and torture. That same year, the British high court ruled that Pinochet had immunity from the warrant as a head of state, but this ruling was quickly overturned.

In 2000, Pinochet was ruled too ill to stand trial and was allowed to return to Chile. Once there, he was indicted on human rights charges and held under house arrest. In 2001, the Chilean supreme court suspended his trial because of his poor health. He then resigned his position as senator-for-life. Allegations of corruption emerged against Pinochet after millions of dollars were found in secret accounts abroad. The case against him continued in the courts until his death from a heart attack on December 10, 2006, at the age of ninety-one. He was survived by his wife and children.

Significance

The legal case against Pinochet had wide-ranging legal ramifications in the area of international human rights. His prosecution affected procedures for foreign extradition of heads of state and for the prosecution of war crimes.

Although most agree that Pinochet’s government was oppressive, dictatorial, and a major violator of human and civil rights, some Chileans remained loyal to the general. They cited his free market economic policies as one major reason for their support, policies that favored the wealthier sectors of society and encouraged international companies to do business with Chile. He remained favored in other quarters for his law-and-order style of rule. In September 2007, a street in a wealthy suburb of Santiago was named for Pinochet.

To much of the world, however, Pinochet’s name is synonymous with violence and repression, and his regime is considered emblematic of the worst of Latin American dictatorships. His seventeen-year rule left more than three thousand people dead and thousands imprisoned, tortured, and exiled. Many Chilean citizens continued to grapple with the aftermath of the crimes of the Pinochet regime decades later. He remained, even in death, a highly controversial figure. Over the years, some argued further for transparency in US involvement in and knowledge of the coup as well as Pinochet's rule, resulting in the releases and requests for release of pertinent declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents such as that in 2016 related to the death of Letelier. At the same time, commentators referred back to Pinochet's organized policy of disappearing and its long-term influence on subsequent ruling parties' policies worldwide, and many called for greater effort toward finding and identifying the remains of those who had disappeared during that period. With only a few hundred identified up to that point, in 2023, as the fiftieth anniversary of the coup approached, the Chilean government announced a national plan to search for those who had still not been located.

Bibliography

Bonnefoy, Pascale. "Decades after Dictatorship, Chile Mounts Search for Hundreds Who Vanished." The New York Times, 30 Aug. 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/08/30/world/americas/chile-military-coup-disappeared-search.html. Accessed 9 Oct. 2023.

Burbach, Roger. The Pinochet Affair. New York: Zed Books, 2003.

Collier, Simon, and William F. Stater. A History of Chile, 1808-2002. 2d ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Dorfman, Ariel. Exorcising Terror: The Incredible Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002.

Kornbluh, Peter. "Chile: The Secrets the US Government Continues to Hide." The Nation, 31 Aug. 2023, www.thenation.com/article/world/chile-coup-classified-documents/. Accessed 9 Oct. 2023.

O’Shaughnessy, Hugh. Pinochet: The Politics of Torture. New York: New York University Press, 2000.

Roht-Arriaza, Naomi. The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.

Spooner, Mary Helen. Soldiers in a Narrow Land: The Pinochet Regime in Chile. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Verdugo, Patricia. Chile, Pinochet, and the Caravan of Death. Miami: North-South Center Press, 2001.