"I do not want any hypocritical acts"

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The progressive, socialist president Michelle Bachelet of the economic miracle that is Chile approved flying military flags at half mast for Pinochet. She also sent her defense minister, Vivianne Blanlot, to attend the military funeral. There are no reports of Ms. Blanlot giving the Nazi salute to the former dictator. In fact, I heard that she doesn't agree with the Pinochet dictatorship. She's not a Pinochetista! (What a relief). She was just going there as a formality, a state affair, a duty. And she's openly criticized Pinochet's grandson's unscripted comments on Tuesday.

The word "reconciliation" is heard a lot around here. It's a really beautiful concept. In Chile, however, it is a terrifying farce, tied directly to impunity laws for torturers, rapists, murderers and embezzlers, including Pinochet, who ran the country for 17 years.

Bachelet's olive branch to Pinochet supporters (which was rejected by the the booing Pinochetistas) is very consistent with this policy of reconciliation. It sends a loud signal of approval of Pinochet as a military officer. It is an insult to the families of the disappeared and all other victims of the dictatorship who are still waiting for justice.

Another passage from Marc Cooper's coverage of the Pinochet death:

We revisit the story of Carmen Gloria Quintana, who as a 19 year old student in 1986, was kidnapped by Pinochet's troops, taken to a remote location, beaten, doused with gasoline and set afire. (No doubt in some odd way opening up new avenues of Chilean trade and prosperity). She's still alive to tell her story, fortunately.

And re-reading it, I'm reminded of the year: 1986. I heard another account of a man who was tortured in 1989, the last year of the dictatorship. That was when they were saying torture had long since ended. Common knowledge consigns the worst of it to the dark few years in the early seventies, as if that was a smarting blow the country suffered, but quickly moved on from.

Not so.

The culture of fear continued to be cultivated, with opposition thought systematically targeted, and exterminated. Today, the culture of fear is going strong. From Tomás Dinges covering the death of Pinochet:

Last year's Valech Report confirmed the most disastrous yield of the violent and professionally repressive regime; 30,000 people tortured and a corresponding psychological wasteland today called Chilean society.

(A Chilean psychologist recently told me that over 50% of Santiago, Chile suffers from one or more stages of clinical depression, making it the most depressed city in the world).

And the good, simple words of Peter Tosh: "Everybody's talking about Peace, but nobody wants Justice/I don't want no Peace; I want Equal Rights, and Justice."

Another word is catharsis, which is something Chile needs. That's a big reason I wanted to join the anti-Pinochet revelers in Plaza Italia. Despite the tragedy of his having escaped justice, it was a chance for Chileans to openly celebrate the demise of a villain (while conservatives, of course, immediately got on the radio to caution that celebrating Pinochet's death was 'in bad taste').

But really Bachelet and the Concertación have failed so far to bring justice to those who deserve, and this has led not to a state of peace, but rather a tepid appearance of peace. Chile, however, is not a peaceful society. Law hardly functions, and the labor situation couldn't be worse. The top pay for a University Professor is less than $1,600 a month. Many earn only $12,000 a year. The majority of the working population earns about $1-2 an hour, for 12-14 hours a day.

It's hard for victims workplace hazards to sue. In 2001, a man suffering from mesothelioma (the asbestos condition) found he had no legal recourse to a settlement, chose to burn himself alive in front of Chile's white house, La Moneda.Gruesomely, this technique has caught on. Tens of protesters have followed suit since then, their causes diverse, but largely economically based.

Meanwhile I've heard intellectuals from abroad hail Chile as the ideal sort of free-market socialism that really works.

One local poet and musician who lives in our neighborhood, who was tortured and exiled to England during the dictatorship, describes the so-called "liberal," "socialist" Concertación government 'the second dictatorship'.

Can I really disagree? Behind official statements of non-approval for what Pinochet did, there lies a vast abyss of inaction that corrodes public confidence daily. My criticism of "hypocritical acts" comes not from the far right, like Marco Antonio's, but from the other direction.

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