Democracy in Chile: The Legacy of September 11, 1973

DEMOCRACY IN CHILE THE LEGACY OF SEPTEMBER 11, 1973 DEMOCRACY IN CHILE THE LEGACY OF SEPTEMBER 11, 1973 Edited by Silvia Nagy-Zekmi and Fernando Leiva Silvia Nagy-Zekmi and Fernando Leiva nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page iv Editorial organization and editorial introductions of this volume Copyright © Silvia Nagy-Zekmi and Fernando Leiva, 2005. “Sustainable Development or Sustained Conflict? Logging Companies, NeoLiberal Policies and Mapuche Communities in Chile”, Copyright © Diane Haughney. All other chapters © Sussex Academic Press, 2005. The right of Silvia Nagy-Zekmi and Fernando Leiva to be identified as Editors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 First published 2005 in Great Britain by SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS PO Box 2950 Brighton BN2 5SP and in the United States of America by SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS 920 NE 58th Ave Suite 300 Portland, Oregon 97213–3786 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Democracy in Latin America : Thirty Years after Chile’s 9/11 (2003 : University of Albany) Democracy in Chile : the legacy of September 11, 1973 / edited by Silvia NagyZekmi and Fernando Leiva. p. cm. “Most of the contributions collected here were presented . . . at the October 10–12, 2003 international conference Democracy in Latin America: Thirty Years after Chile’s 9/11 organized by the editors of the present volume at the University at Albany”—Introduction. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-84519-081-5 (h/c : alk. paper) 1. Chile—Politics and government—1973–1988—Congresses. 2. Chile— Politics and government—1988—Congresses. 3. Democracy—Chile— History—Congresses. 4. Chile—History—Coup d’état, 1973—Influence— Congresses. 5. United States—Foreign relations—Chile—Congresses. 6. Chile—History—Coup d’état, 1973—Literature and the coup d’état— Congresses. 7. Chile—History—Coup d’état, 1973—Motion pictures and the coup d’état—Congresses. 8. Chile—Relations—United States—Congresses. 9. United States—Relations—Chile—Congresses. I. Nagy, Silvia, 1953– II. Leiva, Fernando Ignacio. III. Title. F3100.D45 2003 983.06’5—dc22 2005013609 Typeset and designed by G&G Editorial, Brighton Printed by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall This book is printed on acid-free paper. nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page v contents Preface by Marjorie Agosín viii Introduction: Three Decades After the “Other” 9/11 Part I 1 USA / Chilean Relations Empire, Intervention and Historical Memory 1 Finding the Pinochet File: Pursuing Truth, Justice, and Historical Memory Through Declassified US Documents 14 Peter Kornbluh 2 Chile and the United States Thirty Years Later: Return of the repressed? 24 Steven Volk 3 Small Earthquakes and Major Eruptions: Anglo-Chilean Cultural Relations in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 41 Kevin Foster Part II Legacies Neoliberal Reconstructing of the Economy and Society 4 Integration without Real Participation: The Chilean Labor Movement 59 Volker Frank 5 From Pinochet’s State Terrorism to the “Politics of Participation” Fernando Leiva ✩ v ✩ 73 nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page vi Contents 6 Sustainable Development or Sustained Conflict? Logging Companies, Neoliberal Policies and Mapuche Communities in Chile 88 Diane Haughney 7 Higher Education in Chile Thirty Years After Salvador Allende: Privatization, Mass Education, Profits and Exclusion 99 Patricia Tomic and Ricardo Trumper Part III Challenges Human Rights, Impunity and Democratization 8 Pinochet: A Study in Impunity 116 Mark Ensalaco 9 Alternative “Pasts” in Post-Pinochet Chile: the Relation of History/Fiction and the Subjectification of History 131 Ornella Lepri Mazzuca 10 Ephemeral Histories: Public Art and Political Practice in Chile, 1970–1973 142 Camilo Trumper 11 Remembering the Future: The Narrative Politics of José Miguel Varas 154 Gregory J. Lobo 12 The Marginal on the Inside: Nannies and Maids in Chilean Cultural Production (1982–2000) 163 Julia Carroll Part IV Cultural Representations Repression and Shifting Subjectivities 13 Exporting Chile: Film and Literature After 1973 178 Amy A. Oliver 14 Me moría: Aesthetics, Documentary and the Creation of Nostalgia in Patricio Guzmán’s Chile, memoria obstinada Jeffrey R. Middents ✩ vi ✩ 185 nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page vii Contents 15 Reception and Censorship of a Chilean Documentary: The Plight of Fernando Is Back 192 Kristin Sorensen 16 Re/coiling Inscription: Incisive Moments in Diamela Eltit and Jacques Derrida 202 Andrea Bachner Epilogue: The Struggle for Truth and Justice in Chile and the Challenges of Democracy 214 Fabiola Letelier 218 223 Contributors Index ✩ vii ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page viii preface Marjorie Agosín Chile, as a country and a historic site, occupies a privileged space in the U.S. imagination. Chile was for a long time the only stable democracy in the Southern part of the Americas. The democratically elected Allende government, however, lasted only one thousand days and was ended abruptly by a military coup on September 11, 1973 led by General Pinochet aided by the CIA. The Pinochet dictatorship lasted until 1990 and it was believed that the General would go unpunished for the atrocities many Chileans suffered during his government, until his arrest in London and his subsequent arrest back in Chile. These events resulted in a continuing interest in that faraway country, a country almost at the end of the world. Perhaps the history of these thirty years since the bloody coup can be read as a narrative of unusual fables of which the history of a civil society can emerge steadfastly building a solid democracy and a memorializing conscience. Interest in Chile has been generated not only due to political events, but also by its Nobel Prize winning poets, such as Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda. Isabel Allende is the author of the international bestseller The House of the Spirits, which narrates the political history of Chile from the 19th century to the violent defeat of Salvador Allende’s government. Together with other writers, she has formulated a peculiar mythology for Chile, a country that has emerged peacefully from one of the most ill fated dictatorships of the 20th century. During 2003 academics, artists, and politicians have dedicated countless publications, conferences and lectures to Chile. Some focused on the country’s history over the three decades since the coup, some explored the phenomenon of democratic transition, and yet others have celebrated Pablo Neruda’s 100th birthday. History, poetry, and memory came ✩ viii ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page ix Preface together to reflect on the incredible paradigm that is Chile today. However, to restore a long-lasting democracy it is necessary to uncover the events that led to the coup and to expose those forces that operated in the background and maintained the dictatorship in power for almost two decades. Two important books appeared recently that did just that: The Pinochet Files by Peter Kornbluh and The Condor Years by John Dinges, two texts that bring to light the conspiracy led by the CIA. It is a privilege for me to write these initial words dedicated to this elegantly edited book by Silvia Nagy-Zekmi and Fernando Leiva. The chapters herein come from literary critics, writers, historians, sociologists, and political scientists. Each one of them explores from diverse perspectives the Chilean experience during the last few decades. The writings in this collection explore the cultural production from and about Chile from literature to film and visual productions produced before the military’s overthrow of the government in 1973. Each essay helps us to create a provoking and passionate image of a country that seems to be constantly reforming itself. Amy Oliver and Ornella Lepri Mazzuca scrutinize the relationship between Chile’s history, memory and conscience through Isabel Allende’s books, The House of the Spirits and Mi país inventado, a collection of vignettes that intersperse the exploration of the personal history of a writer and the history of Chile. These pieces, as well as many others in this collection, examine the complexity of memory, its ambiguity and its uncertain textures. The essay dedicated to the political narrative of José Miguel Varas, whose novel echoes the concerns in Isabel Allende’s writing, addresses much the same issues. Both authors, Varas and Allende, transmit the preoccupation with clarifying historical memory and being able to live with the results. They represent one of the most intense obsessions in Chile today: remembrance, an obsession causing fragmentations, divisions, and polarizations between those having made a pact with oblivion and those creating an uncertain past out of memory. The essays about filmic production in Chile also treat the reelaborations of the fragile threads of memory. In her study, “Exporting Chile Film and Literature After 73,” Amy Oliver lucidly illuminates the historic avatars of the visual memory of generations of spectators who forget or remember. Kristin Sorensen’s essay about Caiozzi’s movie, Fernando Has Not Returned, follows the history of a boy’s corps, one of the “disappeared” and relates this journey with memory and history. Perhaps the title of another movie, Obstinate Memory, helps to elucidate this passion for Chile as lived by the exiled population, their search for justice and the international movements that help them in that search. Diamela Eltit, one of the most renowned and original voices of contemporary Chilean literature, exemplifies the endeavors of writers and artists that courageously kept creating works during the dictatorship inspired by the idea of an open and pluralist society. ✩ ix ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page x Marjorie Agosín The cultural production in Chile serves as a guide to the exploration of political structures in the country in multiple cultural contexts in the Chile of the past and present. Camilo Trumper’s essential article deals with Chilean mural art, its ephemeral and transitory qualities by conjuring images of a country immersed in historical turmoil. The essay by Ricardo Trumper and Patricia Tomic studies the condition of Chilean higher education over the last thirty years, illustrating what the authoritarian government of Pinochet has meant for the Chilean University culture. In addition to the analysis of the past, it is important to address the present as well: Mark Ensalaco’s contribution details the saga of Pinochet’s arrest in London and its consequences for international and internal Chilean politics. This article complements Kevin Foster’s, which describes the repercussions of Pinochet’s arrest in London in the English press and the event’s influence on the ever ambiguous relationship between Chile and England. This volume gives an overall view of Chile today and it offers the reader an instructive glimpse into what the future might hold for this country. TRANSLATED BY JENNIFER C. ROWELL ✩ x ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page xi acknowledgments It is with great pleasure that we thank the contributors of this volume for working with us on successive rounds of amendments and the preparation of their chapters. Their essays were carefully selected from among many papers given at the international conference “Democracy in Latin America: Thirty Years After Chile’s 9/11” held in 2003 at the State University of New York at Albany. It is our sincere hope that this volume will help to create an intellectual community that pays homage to those who for the past three decades have given their life to the struggle for democracy and human dignity in the Americas. We hope that the spirit of honesty, solidarity and optimism experienced during the conference has remained embedded in these pages. Many have contributed to make this book possible, and we wish to thank them all. The co-editors are indebted to the sponsors of this volume, namely, the Department of Latin American, Caribbean and US Latino Studies at the University at Albany and the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures at Villanova University. We also want to thank United University Professions (UUP) and their Professional Grants program. Special thanks go to Jill Blackstone for her help with the formatting and editing of the articles, to Susan Salomon for the thorough indexing, and to the editors at Sussex Academic Press for their professionalism. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to our institutions (University at Albany and Villanova University, respectively), and to our colleagues and students. We also thank our respective families for their unwavering patience and emotional support. SILVIA NAGY-ZEKMI FERNANDO I. LEIVA ✩ xi ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 ✩ xii ✩ Page xii nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 ✩ xiii ✩ Page xiii nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 1 introduction Three Decades After the “Other” 9/11 Silvia Nagy-Zekmi and Fernando Leiva On September 11, 1973 fighter jets bombed Chile’s presidential palace setting in motion the bloody military coup that would place General Augusto Pinochet in power for the next seventeen years. That date marks the overthrow of Chile’s democratically-elected president, Salvador Allende, as well as the moment that shattered the lives, families and dreams for millions of Chileans. The image of billowing orange flames engulfing La Moneda, the emblem of Chile’s democracy, seared into the public mind the notion that Chilean society had reached a historic crossroads. In the subsequent days, months, and years, the unbridled forces of State terror, neoliberal economics and globalizing markets, fundamentally transformed Chile’s socio-economic, political, intellectual and cultural life. From September 11, 1973 onwards, repression, unemployment, exile, privatization, liberalization of markets and dictatorial rule, would radically realign power relations in every level and interstice of Chilean society. With the return to a civilian elected regime in 1990, Chile along with the rest of Latin America commenced to emerge from the horror of systematic human rights violations and the “savage capitalism” associated with the Pinochet era. Many hoped that elections and the transition to democratic rule would bring significant political, economic and cultural changes: the rebuilding a more democratic order based on a “culture of human rights,” a reinvigoration of democratic practices, and the restoration of social and economic rights to revert the appalling inequalities engendered by the Pinochet regime. Despite change in the political regime, such aspirations have repeatedly crashed against the “recalcitrant realities” of enduring military enclaves demanding impunity for past crimes, the persistence of neoliberal economics, as well as the ✩ 1 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 2 Silvia Nagy-Zekmi and Fernando Leiva seemingly insatiable demands of private domestic and international capital for “flexible” labor, unrestricted access to natural resources and unregulated capital flows. This volume traverses the many ridgelines where democratic aspiration and recalcitrant realities come against one another, examining how democracy is experienced today in Chile’s social, cultural, and intellectual realms. This book assess the current contradictory nature of Chile’s democratic life by examining the lasting legacy of September 11, 1973 as a historically and symbolically charged event, that thirty years after Pinochet’s seizure of power, and fifteen years following the March 1990 formal return to civilian democratic rule, continues to shape perceptions and outcomes. Most of the contributions collected here were presented at the October 10–12, 2003 international conference Democracy in Latin America: Thirty Years after Chile’s 9/11 organized by the editors of this volume at the University at Albany. The event brought together close to one hundred academics from both the social sciences and the humanities, alongside artists, musicians, and human-rights advocates, in order to reflect and commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the military coup in Chile. In the course of two and a half days, sixteen panels, plenary sessions, film screenings, poetry readings, concerts, and a final keynote address by Fabiola Letelier sought to assess the lasting impact of 9/11/73 upon livelihoods, culture, politics, public discourse and subjectivities of Chileans and Latin Americans. From the approximately 80 papers presented at the conference, and constrained by space considerations, we have culled those papers best representing an interdisciplinary approach and contributing understanding the multiple legacies of Chile’s 9/11. US–Chilean Relations: Empire, Intervention, and Historical Memory Few informed observers dispute the pivotal role of the US government and its Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the overthrow of President Allende and consolidation of Pinochet’s power. In Part I of this volume Steve Volk, Peter Kornbluh, and Kevin Foster examine some of the unexpected links arising from imperialist interventions such as that carried out in Chile. From the vantage point of the historian, and drawing from his own lived experience, Steve Volk uses the metaphor of the gothic horror novel to explore how the wanton destruction of Chile’s democratically elected government periodically resurfaces to haunt US policymakers, people throughout the world, and particularly the citizens of the United States. Such links have grown stronger in the wake of “the other” 9/11, the one experienced by the US on September 11, 2001. As Volk carefully ✩ 2 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 3 Introduction documents and cogently argues, there is a long history in which attempts to project US power abroad increasingly erode democratic values in the United States. This argument is echoed in Gergory Lobo’s careful analysis of José Miguel Varas’ novel, Correo de Bagdad, in Part III. On the other hand, Peter Kornbluh, director of the Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archive and author of The Pinochet File, in turn, explores a different facet of this relationship. Since 1970, the Nixon administration did all it could to de-stabilize the democratically elected Allende government. The CIA was instrumental in the success of the bloody coup d’état. Kornbluh reviews over 30 years of direct US involvement in Chile’s internal politics and scrutinizes the reasons for the violence unleashed by the coup, which lasted throughout the years of dictatorship Kevin Foster suggests that “indifference-cum-arrogance-cum-ignorance” – as he puts it – is not a US monopoly or a late twentieth century exclusive in imperial relationships. Bi-directional intellectual and political influences have also linked Britain and Chile during the 19th and 20th century in complex ways. These connections have created surprising situations between Chile and the erstwhile imperial power: Foster argues that Chile and Britain have not only functioned “as each other’s political subconscious” (Beckett qtd. by Foster), but that more recently, in the wake of neoliberal restructuring, it has become often hard to know “where Britain ends and where Chile begins.” Legacies: Neoliberal Restructuring of the Economy and Society In Part II, Volker Frank, Diane Haughney, Patricia Tomic and Ricardo Trumper examine specific dimensions of Chilean society in which the continuities from the past dictatorial regime are most salient. Frank analyzes the dismal situation of workers and the labor movement after the return to democracy. Haughney explores the role of Mapuche resistance to transnational capital and to new forms of governmental domination aimed at denying Mapuches their autonomy and control over economic resources. Tomic and Trumper scrutinizes of the impact of the privatization on the higher education in Chile, an area traditionally shielded from private profit, which has become a hunting ground for Chile’s economic conglomerates and their transnational allies. Each of these authors painstakingly documents how fundamental characteristics of the Pinochet era continue to thrive under the present civilian democracy. These authors suggest that such extension of the Pinochet era into the present – the intractability of the Pinochet labor code, the subordination of indigenous demands to transnational corporate profits, and the commodification of higher education – stem from specific policies ✩ 3 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 4 Silvia Nagy-Zekmi and Fernando Leiva imposed under the military regime as well from the complicit and sometimes enthusiastic political endorsement on the part of the center-left coalition in power. Challenges: Human Rights, Impunity, and Democratization The prospects for breaking the restraints of the past are examined in Part III. Contributions by Mark Ensalaco, Ornella Lepri Mazzuca, Camilo Trumper, Gregory J. Lobo, and Julia Carroll explore different dimensions of the obstacles that Chilean society faces. Ensalaco uses the 1998 arrest of Pinochet in London to construct an “actionable theory of impunity,” carefully tracing the factors that sustain as well as undermine impunity over time. His exploration of the role played by fear, by Chilean and international law, institutions such as the Courts, Armed Forces and Secret Police, as well as the governments of Chile, Spain, Britain, the US and the Vatican, highlights ways in which impunity can be defeated and the rule of law strengthened. Ornella Lepri Mazzuca and Gregory Lobo explore the role of historical memory in the recuperation of democracy. On the other hand, Camilo Trumper stresses the powerful role of public visual art in creating a shared imaginary. Trumper examines the role of visual arts (posters, murals) in social and political mobilization under Allende during the 1970–73 period as well as during the anti-Pinochet 1988 plebiscite campaign. Finally, Julia Carroll explores the persistence of profound inequalities embedded in recent representations of the domestic servant. Carroll insightfully stresses that like Chile’s own post-dictatorial history, the represented figure of the domestic servant is caught between the survival of a “patrimonial authoritarian past” and the desire for future justice. Cultural Representations: Repression and Shifting Subjectivities In Part IV Amy Oliver, Jeffrey Middents, Kristin Sorensen, and Andrea Bachner offer the possibility of seeing how a younger generation of scholars read the cultural legacy of September 11, 1973 in recent Chilean cultural production. Amy Oliver comments on “global memory” that retains some events in the forefront, while relegating others to oblivion. Oliver ponders about the same question Marjorie Agosín raises in the preface: “How has the Chilean story managed to remain in the spotlight?” She offers several alternatives by examining the role of selected literature and film in transmitting to the world the coup d’état, Chile’s abrupt ✩ 4 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 5 Introduction change from democracy to dictatorship, and a painstaking transition from dictatorship back to democratic rule. For his part, Jeffrey Middents reflects on the role of a filmmaker, in this case Patricio Guzmán, who recorded the last images of a convulsed country on the edge of a military dictatorship in his trilogy, The Battle of Chile. Middents’ analysis centers on the cinematographic techniques the director uses to present his subjects in Guzmán’s later film, Obstinate Memory. The use of large frames and erratic camerawork create an ambience of post-factum calm, as opposed to the chaos viewed in The Battle of Chile. Kristin Sorensen’s analysis of the reception and posterior censorship of the documentary Fernando is Back highlights the irony in the position of filmmakers in Chile facing such censorship. Nevertheless, the country is endowed with directors of world class-documentaries, such as Patricio Guzmán (La Batalla de Chile, La Memoria Obstinada, El Caso Pinochet), Silvio Caiozzi (Fernando ha Vuelto) and Pedro Chaskel, Gastón Acelovici, and Orlando Lübert, among many others, whose works deal with memory and reclaim the voices of silenced individuals. Thus filmmakers threaten the status quo of the political elite, because they expose the myth that Chile has returned to full democratic normalcy. Sorensen documents how market forces and a constructed collective will to ignore the past, or at least construct carefully scripted and sanitized versions of it, combine to prevent their works from gaining the wide distribution and circulation in the public sphere that they deserve. Finally, Andrea Bachner uses the metaphor of inscription to connect the works of the late French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, and Chilean novelist Diamela Eltit, to explore the different forms of inscription, resistance, and reenactment that her reading of the Derrida–Eltit connection offers. Epilogue as an Invitation to Action Like a modern version of Ariadne’s thread, four recurrent themes run through the contributions in this volume. These themes enable us to traverse the maze of Chile’s experience, to extricate ourselves from seemingly hopeless dead ends, and connect efforts to bury past, contest the present, and imagine a desired future. These are the symbolic power of twinned September 11s, electoral versus full citizenship democracy, and the conflict between oblivion and memory. All of these strands are brought together in the volume’s epilogue by Fabiola Letelier, one of Chile’s renowned human rights lawyers and an untiring figure in the struggle for truth and justice for more than three decades. Blending personal experience with a structural analysis of the transformations operated upon Chilean society, she poses and answers three key questions: What have we learned in these thirty years of struggle ✩ 5 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 6 Silvia Nagy-Zekmi and Fernando Leiva for human rights? What can the human rights movements contribute to the forging of democratic societies in Latin America? How can we overcome the challenges posed by the struggle for a democratic society? Bringing Down the Wall of Impunity, Exercising Historical Memory In late 2004 and the first quarter of 2005, a sequence of events connected to the core themes addressed by this volume and the questions raised in its epilogue, shook Chilean public opinion, galvanized political leaders, and energized activists. In a rapid-fire sequence, the veil of silence and half-truths imposed upon Chilean society by complicit civilian political class and the poderes fácticos (the military, national and transnational corporate elites, and the media monopoly under their control), was ripped to shreds. On November 4, 2004, the Commander in Chief of the Army, General Juan Emilio Cheyre, formally acknowledged institutional responsibility for human rights violations and announced the dissolution of the Army Intelligence Batallion (BIE), responsible for political intelligence gathering in the post-dictatorship period. Up until then, the Army and the rest of Chile’s armed forces had maintained the charade that human rights violations had been committed by a few “bad apples.” Then, on November 10, 2004 the Comisión Valech released its findings, officially listing close to 30,000 Chileans who had been unjustly imprisoned and tortured, and who would be eligible for compensatory payments. Thirty-one years had to pass for finally discarding the myth that Pinochet’s repression resulted in 3,100 victims killed. With the report, tens of thousands of living victims finally found that their story received official acknowledgment. The report alerted the younger generations and Chileans still in denial about the country’s dark past, namely that Pinochet and the Chilean Armed Forces had, indeed, emplaced a massive machinery for terrorizing the population. In early 2005, the top leadership Pinochet’s secret police, the DINA and its successor the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI), was sentenced to jail terms for human rights violation. On January 28, 2005 General Hugo Salas Wenzel was condemned to life imprisonment for having directed “Operación Albania,” an intelligence operation that resulted in the execution style death of 12 members of the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez (FPMR). On that same date, General Manuel Contreras, and 14 members of the DINA leadership, were sentenced to prison terms up to 12 years for other human rights violations. These three events evidenced that the carefully maintained wall of impunity and denial had begun to inexorably and finally crumble. ✩ 6 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 7 Introduction Chileans would receive two sets of jolting news: On November 20, 2004 the Washington Post published reports announcing that – during a relationship lasting more than two decades – the Riggs Bank had helped the Chilean dictator to illegally launder and manage between 8 and 16 million dollars. A series of subsequent stories provided evidence of the correlation between the activities of international bankers and political repression. A long-standing collaboration and active servicing of the dictator and the repressive apparatus revealed that the systematic violation of human rights in Chile and the region has been linked to the establishment of a particular economic order and policies favoring transnational productive and financial capital. Riggs agreed to pay a $25 million fine to the US government, and $9 million settlement to victims of Pinochet.1 In mid February 2005, Judge Guzmán indicted General Benavides and Montero Marx, thereby opening the way to prosecute the civilian accomplices of human rights violators in Chile. These are not only those landowners that provided transportation, intelligence and directly participated in the detention and execution of peasant union leaders, but also the ministers that headed the apparatus of repression for more than 19 years. These events have been greeted with tremendous joy by human rights activists and Chilean public opinion in general. Great progress has been made, but much remains to be done. As Fabiola Letelier so eloquently argues in the epilogue to this volume: “We have the right to know the truth, the entire and complete truth of what happened to our relatives and loved ones. Only then will we be able to demand full justice – without qualifiers – determining the specific responsibilities of the authors, bringing legal sanction to each case by the corresponding authorities. In this manner, we will be able to build a future in which these cruel and illicit acts will never again happen.” Organization of the Book This volume is divided into four parts, each with its respective brief introduction, which aims to offer an overview of the chapters in each part; throughout, a panorama of richly textured analysis is offered by the contributors from the perspective of both the social sciences and the humanities. This volume provides the readers with a set of materials that will allow them to explore the seemingly contradictory legacies of September 11, 1973, aware that the twin challenges faced by Chilean society, as well as that of Latin America – the struggle against impunity and the construction of a democratic society with a fully participating citizenry – pose ✩ 7 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 8 Silvia Nagy-Zekmi and Fernando Leiva tremendous challenges for the future. We can only hope that in the near future, all will be able to live without having to divorce their political citizenship from their social citizenship, the price that Chileans and other Latin Americans have had to pay to enjoy the limited benefits of a formal, electoral democracy. By examining the multiple legacies of 9/11, we wish to contribute to a greater understanding of how different sectors in Chile continue to process, challenge and re-signify the harrowing and lifechanging events that, unfolding over the last three decades, continue to influence their society today. ✩ 8 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 9 P art I USA/Chilean Relations Empire, Intervention and Historical Memory nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 10 nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 11 introduction to Part I The concept of “blowback” – the unintended consequences of US imperial policies kept secret from its citizens (Johnson 8) – has become indispensable for re-examining how the trajectory of US–Chilean relations has influenced and continues to influence the quality of democratic life in both countries. The historical record clearly reveals how actions designed at the highest levels of the US government destroyed Chile’s democracy. However, to suggest the existence of a feedback loop, namely, that the democratic destiny of the United States, the only remaining superpower, has become somehow entangled with that of a small country lodged in the confines of South America, appears as an altogether improbable, if not ludicrous proposition. Yet, the authors in Part I echo concerns that “monsters midwifed by the United States abroad” – like the overthrow of President Allende and Operación Cóndor – return to trouble democracy’s domestic cottage” (cf. Volk). The US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq (i.e. Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, Patriot Act I and II), maneuverings to extricate Pinochet from London, or more recent scandals regarding the role of US banks in laundering Pinochet’s illegal bank accounts, suggest that Volk’s suggestions have solid footing. After all, the “National Security Doctrine” with which US planners so zealously indoctrinated Latin America’s military in the 1960s and 1970s, is becoming the all encompassing world view of the current US administration. In Part I, Peter Kornbluh, Steve Volk, and Kevin Foster methodically explore the theme of the unintended consequences that emerge in the wake of imperial interventions. In “Finding the Pinochet File: Pursuing Truth, Justice, and Historical Memory Through Declassified US Documents,” Peter Kornbluh, director of the Chile Project at the National Security Archive, analyzes the hopeladen implications that declassification of US official documents has for the present and future well-being of Chilean and US democracy. Tragically, the declassified documents show that it was precisely the democratic nature of the model for change headed by Salvador Allende ✩ 11 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 12 Introduction to Part I that was perceived as a threat by Kissinger and other US planners. “The example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely have an impact on – and even precedent value for – other parts of the world, especially in Italy; the imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it” (National Security Council Meeting 1970 qtd. by Kornbluh). Access to official documents like this, contributes to revitalize debates about the morality and objectives of current US foreign policy. They also have become critical in the struggle to build a genuine democracy in Chile by contributing to establish truth and justice, thereby neutralizing the corrosive effects of impunity. Steve Volk’s article “Chile and the United States Thirty Years Later: Return of the Repressed?” probes how a historic trajectory of consistently disregarding and undermining democracy abroad, has contributed to directly and indirectly undermine democratic life in the United States. Volk’s essay is particularly relevant in the aftermath of the United States’ own tragic September 11. The legacies of the two September 11s entwine Chilean and US political and cultural life in unforeseen manners. Revelations about US intervention in Chile during the 1970s punctured the myth of the US as a paladin of democracy. As Volk demonstrates, Pinochet’s Chile is held up in US political circles as a neoliberal success story. The tone of a press conference on globalized US National Security offered to the visiting Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, eerily mimics the tone and politics of the Pinochet years. In examining the role that Pinochet’s privatization of social security is playing to promote the same policies in the US, Volk suggests that the “US policy elites have drawn important lessons from the destruction of the liberal state in Chile – the Pinochet years – for the destruction of the liberal state in the US” (cf. Volk). Hence, lessons learned from its support of authoritarian experiments abroad are being incorporated in the shaping of current US domestic policies. Finally, Kevin Foster’s “Small Earthquakes and Major Eruptions: Anglo-Chilean Cultural Relations in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries” examines how a tradition, which he characterizes as “indifference-cum-arrogance-cum-ignorance” on the part of Britain, has had deleterious consequences for Latin Americans throughout the ages. With such an attitude, different sectors of British society have been constructing images of Latin America, Latin Americans and Chile that existed only in their minds and was far from reality. Foster traces how over the span two centuries erroneous or outright falsified images were concocted and inscribed with meanings designed to serve particular narrow political and material interests linked to a fading and downwardly mobile imperial project: “assuaging moral anxieties” in the early 19th century, fanning the fears of a looming “communist threat” to British society in the 1970s, ✩ 12 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 13 Introduction to Part I sanitized exaltations of the Pinochet regime and the “Chicago Boys” by conservative neoliberal admirers during the Thatcher era are exampled. The final result of this two-century long relationship has been that Great Britain and Chile have become “mirror images of each other,” where each one reflects the desired political resolution of the other, to the point where as he puts it, “it has often been hard to know where Britain ends and where Chile begins” (Foster). If in the past, studies of imperial intervention sought mainly to diagnose the roots of this “disease,” the three authors in Part I offer us an antidote that can perhaps be found in “historical memory”. Treasuring and restoring the historical, collective memory in Chile that the dictatorship attempted to obliterate, as well as nurturing and strengthening historical memory within US society, so that the citizens can thwart the destructive effects that empire has on democracy by holding their government accountable, would be necessary steps in reaching a real and lasting democracy in both countries. Works Cited Johnson, Chalmers. Blowback: The Cost and Consequences of American Empire. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2000. ✩ 13 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 1 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 14 finding the pinochet file Pursuing Truth, Justice, and Historical Memory through Declassified US Documents Peter Kornbluh As the 30th anniversary of the Chilean military coup approached in the summer of 2003, Henry Kissinger invited a conservative scholar to review his still secret “telcons” – classified transcripts of his telephone conversations while in government – relating to US policy and operations in Chile in the early and mid 1970s. The purpose was to facilitate an article that would preempt and counter new, forthcoming, research on the extent of US involvement in overthrowing the elected government of Salvador Allende and supporting the consolidation of the repressive Pinochet dictatorship. The fact that Kissinger held very few phone conversations on Chile demonstrated that it was not of significant interest to US policy makers, as Mark Falcoff argued in his article, “Kissinger and Chile: the Myth that Will Not Die.” To prove that the US had no complicity in the coup, Falcoff cited a key telephone conversation (to which he had been given exclusive access) between Kissinger and Nixon on September 16, 1973, in which the President asked: “Well, we didn’t – as you know – our hand doesn’t show on this one through.” According to the article Kissinger replied, “We didn’t do it” (Falcoff 48). In truth, Kissinger’s answer was more extensive. Here is his full response to Nixon: “We didn’t do it. I mean we helped them. [. . . . .] created the conditions as great as possible.” To which Nixon then added: “That is right.” In May 2004, when my organization, the National Security Archive, forced the declassification of this pivotal telcon, among thousand of others,1 it became crystal clear that the Falcoff article had blatantly misrepresented the Kissinger–Nixon conversation on the US contribution to the coup. Far from exposing the “myth” of US culpability in Chile, the telcon reinforced hundreds of other recently declassified CIA, ✩ 14 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 15 Finding the Pinochet File Defense Department and White House records, which reveal that it was explicit US policy to undermine the Allende government, to create conditions of instability conducive to a coup, and then to provide secret and substantive support for the new military regime in Chile – despite its ongoing acts of repression – after General Augusto Pinochet took power on September 11, 1973. The Meaning of Chile More than three decades after that infamous coup, Chile and its history remain a subject of intense interest and controversy. The country that Chilean poet Pablo Neruda described as a “long petal of sea, wine and snow” continues to hold a special place in the hearts and minds of the United States, and the international community. Since the early 1960s, Chile has been a focal point for a number of utopian political projects and economic and social experiments. In 1964, Chile became a designated “showcase” for the Alliance for Progress – a US effort to stave off revolutionary movements in Latin America by bolstering centrist, middle-class, Christian Democratic political parties. In Chile, President Lyndon Johnson announced, lay “our hopes for a very bright future in the Americas.” With the election of Salvador Allende on September 4, 1970, Chile became the first nation to democratically elect an avowedly Socialist president. The Chilean “vía pacífica” – peaceful road to reform – captured the imagination of progressive forces around the globe, while provoking the consternation of imperial-minded US policy makers. The declassified documents reveal that it was precisely the democratic nature of Allende’s model for change that US officials feared. Among the “very serious threats to our interests” that Henry Kissinger listed in a SECRET/SENSITIVE memorandum to the President on November 5, 1970, two days after Allende’s inauguration, was that the example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely have an impact on – and even precedent value for – other parts of the world, especially in Italy; the imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it. (NSC Meeting) “We set the limits of diversity,” Kissinger was heard to tell his staff. At Kissinger’s urging, the Nixon administration initiated a series of covert actions against Allende which “at a minimum will either insure his failure,” according to SECRET White House memoranda, “and at a maximum might lead to situations where his collapse or overthrow later may be more feasible” (Kornbluh 80). The sharp contrast between the peaceful nature of Allende’s program ✩ 15 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 16 Peter Kornbluh for change, and the violent coup that left him dead and Chile’s longstanding democratic institutions destroyed, truly shocked the world. The Pinochet regime’s dictatorial bent, and abysmal human rights record, quickly became a universal political and humanitarian issue. Revelations of CIA involvement in Allende’s overthrow, and Washington’s unabashed embrace of the Junta, raised Chile’s worldwide profile even further, to a point where US policy makers could no longer ignore the condemnation. “Chile,” the US Embassy noted in a 1974 Country Analysis and Strategy Paper stamped SECRET, has become something of a cause célèbre in both the Western and Communist worlds. What happens in Chile is thus a matter of rather special significance to the United States. Distant and small though it is, Chile has long been viewed universally as a demonstration area for economic and social experimentation. Now it is in a sense in the front line of world ideological conflict. (Kornbluh xiv) Indeed, in the United States, Chile joined Vietnam as a catalyst for national debate over the corruption of American values in the making and exercise of US foreign policy. During the mid 1970s, events in Chile generated a major political reevaluation on human rights, covert action, and the proper place for both in America’s conduct abroad. The Kissingerian disregard for Pinochet’s mounting atrocities prompted an outraged Congress to pass precedent-setting legislation curtailing foreign aid to his regime, and to mandate human rights criteria for all US economic and military assistance. Public revulsion of Washington’s ongoing association with Pinochet’s brutality prompted a widespread political effort to return US foreign policy to the moral precepts of American society – creating a groundswell that helped elect Jimmy Carter as “the human rights president.” As one internal State Department memo conceded in June 1975, “Chile is just the latest example for a lot of people in this country of the United States not being true to its values.” Long after committed Chileans organized a pro-democracy movement that with the strong support of the international community and the US public brought an end to Gen. Pinochet’s 17–year dictatorship in 1990, Chile remained the ultimate case study of morality – the lack of it – in the making of US foreign policy; Chile continues to resonate today in the intense debate over Washington’s pursuit of regime change in the 21st century. “With respect to Chile in the 1970s,” then-Secretary of State Colin Powell conceded in February 2003 when asked how the United States could consider itself morally superior to Iraq when Washington had backed the overthrow of Chilean democracy, “it is not a part of American history that we are proud of” (Kornbluh xi). ✩ 16 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 17 Finding the Pinochet File Chile Declassified With Gen. Pinochet’s stunning detention in London in October 1998, Chile once again became the focus of international attention – this time for pioneering legal efforts to provide an accounting and accountability for the atrocities that took place during the dictatorship. Although Pinochet escaped extradition to Spain for crimes against humanity and initially evaded prosecution after he returned to Santiago in March 2000, Chilean authorities belatedly began a slow but steady campaign to pursue justice and truth for human rights crimes committed under his leadership. Over the next five years, judicial investigations progressed in almost all categories of human rights abuses. In January 2005, the former head of Pinochet’s secret police, DINA, along with four of his deputies, was sent to prison for twelve years. General Pinochet himself became the target of several major prosecutions; on December 13, 2004 he was actually indicted and placed under house arrest on charges related to acts of international terrorism. Declassified US documents contributed a clear historical record of evidence for the pursuit of justice in Chile, as well as for creating an enduring memory of the past as it related to Pinochet’s repression and the actions of those who supported him. The drama of US involvement in Chile – between 1970 when US intervention escalated against the election of Allende, and 1990 when Pinochet was finally forced to step down, two decades which encompassed covert operations, assassinations, political scandals, cover-ups and controversies over human rights violations – generated massive amounts of top-secret documentation. But before the late 1990s, only a handful of the thousands of US documents hidden in the secret vaults of the national security agencies had been declassified and made available for public scrutiny. Pinochet’s arrest in London renewed national and international interest in the vast secret US archives on Chile. Those records – White House meeting minutes, CIA intelligence reports, State Department cables, Defense Department analysis, NSC memoranda among other documentation – were known to contain extraordinarily detailed coverage of Pinochet’s atrocities, the inner workings of his internal repression and acts of international terrorism, as well as Washington’s policies toward his regime. US documentation would provide a wealth of evidence to prosecute Pinochet and his subordinates – if only the Clinton Administration could be persuaded to declassify thousands of files containing tens of thousands of pages of secret information compiled during Chile’s military dictatorship. The Clinton White House had already pioneered a process of declassifying US documentation to advance the cause of human rights. During his ✩ 17 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 18 Peter Kornbluh first term, President Clinton authorized major declassifications on El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala in response to scandals over US misconduct and repression in those countries. On Chile, the Administration faced a chorus of strong and poignant voices from the families of Pinochet’s US victims, as well as pressure from Congress to release evidence that would assist Spain’s efforts to bring Pinochet to justice. Both publicly and privately, human rights and right-to-know groups lobbied Administration officials to declassify the documents – in the name of human rights, justice, and the creation of an archival monument to historical memory. The Clinton administration faced a dilemma: White House officials did not want to assist Spain’s unprecedented application of universal jurisdiction to Pinochet’s crimes, presumably because such a precedent could eventually be applied to efforts to prosecute US officials in other countries. Doing nothing, however, would be perceived as protecting the vilest of Latin American dictators in recent history. Eventually, the Administration agreed to conduct a “Chile Declassification Project” – not to provide documents to Spain but for the benefit of Chilean and US citizens. The National Security Council drew up a “tasker” that was distributed to the key agencies which kept records on Chile. “On behalf of the President,” the tasker directed, “we now ask your cooperation in undertaking a compilation and review for release of all documents that shed light on human rights abuses, terrorism, and other acts of political violence during and prior to the Pinochet era in Chile” (Kornbluh 472). The declassification review, the State Department announced in February 1999, would “respond to the expressed wishes” of Congress and the families of Pinochet’s American victims, and encourage “a consensus within Chile on reinvigorating its truth and reconciliation process” (Kornbluh xvi). To its credit, the Clinton administration pulled, prodded and pushed the secrecy system into divulging significant amounts of information. Under the leadership of Secretary Madeleine Albright, the State Department appreciated the need for thorough declassification to advance human rights and historical honesty; the National Archives (in charge of presidential papers), the National Security Council, Pentagon and Justice Department in descending degrees also cooperated in the project. But the “securocrats” in the CIA – the agency with the most revealing documentation to offer, but also the most secrets to hide – proved to be particularly recalcitrant. For months, Agency officials sought to withhold any document demonstrating covert US involvement in the death of democracy and rise of dictatorship in Chile. Only significant public pressures from human rights groups, key members of Congress and dedicated officials inside the Executive Branch, including President Clinton himself, forced the CIA to partially open its secret files on covert American ties to the violence of the ✩ 18 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 19 Finding the Pinochet File coup and, in its aftermath, to the military and secret police institutions that systematically carried out Pinochet’s abuses. The Chile Declassification Project yielded some 2,200 CIA records. In addition, approximately 3,800 White House, National Security Council, Pentagon and FBI records were released, along with 18,000 State Department documents that shed considerable light on Pinochet’s seventeen-year dictatorship as well as US policies and actions in Chile between 1970 and 1990. Stamped “TOP SECRET/SENSITIVE,” “EYES ONLY,” “NODIS” [no distribution to other agencies] “NOFORN” [No Foreign Distribution], and “ROGER CHANNEL” [high urgency, restricted dissemination], among other classification categories, they included White House memoranda of conversation [memcons] recording the private commentary of US presidents and their aides; decision directives and briefing papers prepared for Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan; minutes of covert action strategy meetings chaired by Henry Kissinger; high level intelligence reports based on informants inside the Pinochet regime; and hundreds of heavily redacted but still revealing CIA Directorate of Operations communications with agents in its Santiago station that detail massive covert action to change the course of Chilean history. In all, the Declassification Project produced 24,000 never-before-seen documents – the largest discretionary Executive Branch release of records on any country or foreign policy issue. History and Memory Since the final release of the Chile Declassification Project, reporters, historians, judges, lawyers, and even some of Gen. Pinochet’s many victims, have consulted these documents for evidence of a dark and sordid past. Between June 1999 when the first “tranche” of records was declassified, and November 2000 when the final records were released, the documents generated hundreds of news articles and media stories – in the United States, Chile and across the world. Articles such as “EE.UU. Abrio Archivos Secretos Sobre Chile” appeared in the Chilean press; and “Documents Show U.S. Knew Pinochet Planned Crackdown in ’73” in the Washington Post. The documents created an informational foundation for new books on the United States and the southern cone, including John Dinges’ The Condor Years, and my work, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. Massive coverage of the revelations contained in the documents made a significant contribution to informing Chileans about the secret structures, decision making and violent actions of the military dictatorship – information that continues to be withheld from them by their own post-Pinochet civilian governments. In the United States, a new generation of citizens, activists, ✩ 19 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 20 Peter Kornbluh scholars and students gained access to a dark chapter of US foreign policy operations that were conducted in their name but without their knowledge. Numerous cables and memoranda shed considerable light on the already known efforts to destabilize the government of Salvador Allende between 1970 and 1973; but the documents also revealed considerable new information on the long hidden history of US secret support for the bloody regime once it took power. CIA memoranda with titles such as “Chile: Initial Post Coup Support,” and “Western Hemisphere Division Project Renewals for FY 1975,” recorded covert operations to help Pinochet consolidate his rule. “The USG [United States Government] wishes to make clear its desire to cooperate with the military junta and assist in any appropriate way,” stated a previously unknown State Department cable sent 48 hours after the coup took place (Kornbluh 201). From the first days of the military regime, US intelligence reporting also documented the junta’s machinery of repression – providing a clear chronology of what Washington knew and when it knew it regarding General Pinochet’s campaign of terror. The initial bloodshed was so widespread that the CIA’s own sources could not accurately tally the casualties. “Thus far,” the CIA’s station in Santiago reported on September 20th, “4000 deaths have resulted from the 11 September 1973 coup action and subsequent clean-up operations” (Kornbluh 153). That figure turned out to be high, but in late October 1973, CIA agents did intercept a “highly sensitive figures” on post-coup repression that had been prepared secretly for the junta, that recorded approximately 1500 civilian deaths in the month following Allende’s overthrow. Among those were at least 320 civilians who had been “either executed on the spot or killed by firing squads after military trials.” As the CIA made clear in its cable traffic to Washington: “severe repression is planned” (Kornbluh 154). Even more dramatically, the declassified documentation records the response of US officials to such atrocities. According to the once secret transcript of Henry Kissinger’s first staff meeting as secretary of state, on October 1, 1973, his top deputy informed him of the massive bloodshed and asked what the US response should be. “I think we should understand our policy,” Kissinger told his officers, “that however unpleasant they act, this government is better for us than Allende was” (Kornbluh 203). The declassified transcripts of Secretary Kissinger’s various meetings – with his staff, the President, and even Pinochet himself – reveal not only his attitude toward human rights as an issue, but his singular advocacy of sustaining avid support for the Chilean regime, even as Congress, the American public, the international community and officials in the State Department pressed for an end to the US aid to the Chilean military. “If we cut off arms, the military government will fall,” he told President ✩ 20 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 21 Finding the Pinochet File Gerald Ford on December 3, 1974 in the Oval Office. Two weeks later, as the documents record, he told the President that “I want to do everything possible to get arms to Chile” (Kornbluh 225). The documents provide ample evidence that Secretary Kissinger opposed any kind of diplomatic pressure on the Pinochet regime related to its worsening human rights record. At the height of the junta’s repression, Pinochet sent his foreign minister, Admiral Patricio Carvajal, to Washington to discuss multilateral bank loans to Chile. The secret memorandum of conversation, dated September 29, 1975, records for posterity how their conversation began: Foreign Minister: I want to thank you for giving us this opportunity to talk to you. Secretary Kissinger: Well, I read the Briefing Paper for this meeting and it was nothing but Human Rights. The State Department is made up of people who have a vocation for the ministry. Because there were not enough churches for them, they went into the Department of State. (Secretary’s Meeting) When Kissinger met with Pinochet in Santiago on June 8, 1976, he commiserated with him over the pressures that the US Congress was putting on Chile for its gross violations of human rights. “My evaluation is that you are a victim of all left-wing groups around the world and that your greatest sin was that you overthrew a government which was going communist,” the secret transcript records Kissinger confiding to Pinochet. “In the United States, as you now, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here. We wish your government well” (Kornbluh 233). Accounting and Accountability In the United States, the declassified record on Chile provides an historic accounting of the making and misconduct of US foreign policy – a voluminous record that will inform citizens for generations to come. In Chile the documents offer not only an accounting which contributes to a collective historical memory but, perhaps more importantly, an invaluable body of evidence that empowered efforts to bring legal accountability to human rights criminals. The memory generated by these cases would be not only of crimes committed, but also of convictions obtained. Indeed, in the five years between 2000 and 2005, a new generation of courageous and activist judges, among them Juan Guzmán Tapia, Alejandro Solís, and Sergio Muñoz, dramatically accelerated the pursuit of justice in Chile. As of mid 2005, a number of judicial investigations and prosecutions had drawn on US declassified documents. Among them: In December 2003, Judge Muñoz indicted Rafael Gonzalez, a former ✩ 21 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 22 Peter Kornbluh intelligence agent, for the murder of American journalist Charles Horman, who was seized and executed in the days following the coup. His case, which was made into the Hollywood movie, “Missing,” generated hundreds of internal US documents, some of which were used to initiate the legal case in Chile, as well as for the investigation and prosecution. In March 2005, Paul Schafer, the fugitive leader of Colonia Dignidad, a cult-like German enclave known for its close collaboration with the Chilean secret police, was tracked down by Interpol detectives in Argentina, arrested and expelled to Chile. Drawing on dozens of declassified US records that strongly implied that a missing hiker named Boris Weisfeiler – the one US citizen among the 1100 Chilean desaparecidos – had been held prisoner and killed at the Colonia, Judge Alejandro Solís was able to interrogate Schafer as part of the Weisfeiler investigation. In December 2004, Judge Guzmán indicted General Pinochet on nine charges of disappearances and one homicide relating to Operation Condor – the network of Southern Cone secret agencies, led by Chile, that collaborated in tracking down, kidnapping, and eliminating their political opponents. The judge used a number of declassified CIA and Defense Department intelligence reports on Condor as evidence and for investigative leads in his prosecution. In addition, the declassified documents played a key role in the attempt by Chilean victims to hold US policy makers, in particular Henry Kissinger, legally accountable for crimes committed in Chile before and after the coup. Dozens of declassified CIA memos and cables provided the basis for a “wrongful death” lawsuit filed in US District Court in Washington D.C. by the sons of General René Schneider, the former commander-in-chief of the Chilean armed forces who was killed as part of a CIA-sponsored coup attempt in October 1970. Similarly, declassified records provided the basis for a civil suit filed by eleven families of Chileans killed following the coup that sought to hold US officials accountable for supporting Pinochet’s repression. Both suits were eventually dismissed, on the grounds that Kissinger was immune from prosecution for acts committed within the scope of his employment. But the documents nevertheless provided a permanent record of this human rights history. “If, in the end, we are unable to take to trial those who were responsible, at least memory will provide a historical trial for them,” one survivor of Pinochet’s torture camps concluded with simple eloquence (Kornbluh 490). In the case of Chile, the declassified documents offered evidence of truth for both the trials of memory as well as for actual judicial proceedings. As a paper monument to the past, the US documentation contributed to much needed court room verdicts, as well as the eternal verdicts of history. ✩ 22 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 23 Finding the Pinochet File Works Cited Dinges, John, The Condor Years, New York: The New Press, 2004. Falcoff, Mark, “Kissinger & Chile: The Myth That Will Not Die” Commentary, November 2003. Kornbluh, Peter, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, New York: The New Press, 2003. “NSC Meeting, November 6 – Chile, November 5, 1970.” In: Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, New York: The New Press, 2004: 121–128. “Secretary’s Meeting with Foreign Minister Carvajal,” September 29, 1975. Internet. 9 March 2005 <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/ NSAEBB110/#doc8> Note 1 In 1999, the National Security Archive initiated legal efforts to force the US government to retrieve 30,000 pages of “telcons” that Kissinger had claimed as “private papers” and taken when he left office in January 1977. The suit was drawn up, but never filed, as both National Archive and State Department lawyers agreed that legally the documents needed to be returned to government control. Eventually Kissinger agreed to allow the collection to be copied. In May 2004, the transcripts relating to his tenure as National Security Advisor were declassified. The Kissinger–Nixon conversation on the coup in Chile can by found on the Archive website: <www.nsarchive.org> ✩ 23 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 2 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 24 chile and the united states thirty years later Return of the Repressed Steven S. Volk September 11 has become a bond that capriciously (and unintentionally) joined Chile and the United States. The day begat twins, born on the same day and date 28 years apart, two children of horror arriving on the wings of airborne terror – Hawker Hunters diving to bomb the Moneda in Santiago, commercial jets crashing into the World Trade Center in New York; twin progeny invoking the same sense of the incredulity– how can this be happening here? Yet Chile and the United States have been linked by far more than coincidence, and we are challenged to understand in what fashion these two histories have shaped or flowed into each other. Henry Kissinger once famously lectured Gabriel Valdés, Chile’s Minister of Foreign relations to the United States, on the direction of history. “You come here speaking of Latin America,” he chided Valdés, “but this is not important. Nothing important can come from the South. History has never been produced in the South” (Hersh 263). Indeed, Washington’s impact on Chile has been profound, whereas neither Chile nor any other Latin American country, with the possible exceptions of Cuba and Mexico, can claim to have left an equal mark on the United States. The Nixon Administration encouraged, countenanced and aided the overthrow of the government of Salvador Allende in 1973, helping to manufacture the “first” September 11. US support was vital to the establishment and maintenance of the 17–year long dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. But how these actions may have shaped events and cultures in the United States itself remains largely unexplored. The return of the repressed is a familiar feature of the gothic horror novel, the reemergence of dark elements from our past that we have buried in our unconscious. As a metaphor for the wanton destruction of a democratically elected government, Chile periodically resurfaces to haunt US ✩ 24 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 25 Chile and the United States Thirty Years Later policymakers, as when Secretary of State Colin Powell, attempting to win Chile’s support for the Iraq war at the UN, conceded that it “is not a part of American history that we’re proud of” (“Secretary of State,” 2003). An examination of events that have flowed from the paired 9/11’s provides us with a good case to explore whether monsters midwifed by the United States abroad return to trouble democracy’s domestic cottage. The Operation Condor murders of Orlando Letelier and Ronnie Karpen Moffitt in Washington D.C., provide dramatic evidence that terror spawned abroad does work its way back (Dinges, chapter 11). As significant as these specific cases are, I am more interested in probing how an historic disregard for democracy abroad may serve, explicitly or subtly, to undermine democracy at home. The Tranquil Maintenance of Our Distinctive Form of Government US political leaders have long invoked the promotion of democracy at home as a rationale for their foreign policy goals. Most recently, George W. Bush incorporated this thesis into his second inaugural address, insisting that “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands” (“There is No Justice,” 2005). This association goes back at least a century. While the drafting and expansion of the Monroe Doctrine over the course of the 19th century addressed Washington’s longing to remove European influence from Latin America, policymakers at the end of the century turned the document to a different purpose. In 1895, Grover Cleveland’s Secretary of State, Richard Olney, thrust the United States into the center of a border dispute between Britain and Venezuela, asserting that it could intervene wherever its “integrity, tranquility, or welfare,” were at stake, and adding as a postscript that US intervention was warranted as it entertained “a vital interest in the cause of popular self-government” in Latin America (Olney 65). Neither of these points was particularly manifest in this dispute, but Britain’s eventual acquiescence to US demands signaled the displacement of British power in the Caribbean just as it announced the full birth of Yankee might in the region. President Cleveland soon incorporated Olney’s arguments into his foreign policy doctrine, insisting that US intervention in Latin America was “essential to the integrity of our free institutions and the tranquil maintenance of our distinctive form of government” (Ishmael, 1998). By the end of the century, a group of political theorists and historians had turned their sights to the potential of physical, economic, and cultural expansion beyond the previously defined continental borders of the United States. Frederick Jackson Turner explicitly coupled the expansion ✩ 25 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 26 Steven S. Volk of the US frontier to the development of a vigorous sense of individualist democracy since it was on the border, where “savagery and civilization” met, that “Americanization” was forged. Turner made democracy, not to mention the industrial future of the United States, dependent on expansion abroad.1 Expansionist political leaders at the turn of the 20th century, like their early 21st century counterparts, often conflated expansionist theories with a religious insistence that the United States was called by a higher power to spread its doctrine to the world. Indiana Senator Albert Beveridge, campaigning in 1898, asked rhetorically, “Shall free institutions broaden their blessed reign as the children of liberty wax in strength, until the empire of our principles is established over the hearts of all mankind?” (Beveridge). Theodore Roosevelt’s annual message to Congress in 1904 provided a somewhat more modest answer, arguing the case for the United States to exercise “international police powers” the Caribbean, warning that “freedom is not a gift that tarries long in the hands of cowards” (Roosevelt). The Cold War provided further opportunities for US interventions in Latin America, but previously expressed anxieties about “popular selfgovernment” now explicitly took a back seat to security concerns. In 1950, George F. Kennan concluded that “[W]here the concepts and traditions of popular government [in Latin America] are too weak to absorb successfully the intensity of the communist attack, then we must concede that harsh governmental measures of repression may be the only answer . . . ” (“Memorandum by the Counselor” 598–624). Elections were dismissed if they produced unwanted results, embraced it they were likely to return an agreeable outcome. When Chilean voters elected Salvador Allende in 1970, Henry Kissinger rejected the outcome, blasted the voters as “irresponsible,” and helped establish Allende’s demise as the “firm and continuing policy” of the United States (Kornbluh Doc. 12). The Nixon Administration strongly backed the subsequent military dictatorship although Pinochet ruled without the benefit of elections. When later Administrations finally nudged Pinochet to legitimize his rule by electoral means, Washington backed his constitutional ban on Communists, worried that Communist voters might return “another Nicaragua” (Gwertzman A1+). Underlying the twists and turns of US policy was the century-old argument that democracy at home was directly dependent on active intervention abroad. To the extent that democratic success often directly correlates with economic vitality and a healthy standard of living, and that the extension of US power (not “liberty”) abroad has historically provided the material basis for a vigorous expansion of the US economy, there is an undeniable logic to this argument.2 Yet the dual tendencies of neoliberal globalization, one of whose primary success stories unfolded in Chile ✩ 26 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 27 Chile and the United States Thirty Years Later after September 11, 1973, and the demands of a globalized US security state, propelled forward by the events of September 11, 2001, not only have weakened democratic projects abroad but now, portentously, in the United States itself. The US-supported “experiment” in Chile only unfolded with the prior destruction of the liberal state. It is fair to ask whether the attacks by foreign terrorists on September 11, 2001 succeeded in their goals as they allowed the US government to begin to dismantle its own liberal state. Chile’s 9/11 did not cause America’s 9/11 – but it is possible to argue that it helped lead to it. And in that respect we need to explore what US policymakers have learned from the Chilean experiences and whether the results of the “experiment” of September 11, 1973 encouraged US political leaders to implement a similar project at home in the wake of September 11, 2001. To answer this we need to assess the impact of the twin 9/11’s on the quality of democracy in both Chile and the United States. Transitional Democracy in Chile Chile has realized three presidential elections since the 1988 plebiscite that dislodged Pinochet from the Moneda. They are significant indicators of a return to formal democratic procedures, but the years of dictatorship have distinctly shaped democracy in post-authoritarian Chile. Chile’s “pacted” transition, tied in by the so-called amarres (“mooring lines”) that Pinochet wrote into the 1980 Constitution, produced a passive political system. The persistence of “authoritarian enclaves” (designated senators, a binomial electoral system that favors conservatives and discourages constitutional change, the fiscal autonomy of the armed forces and their elevation to the role of legitimate political actors), has worked against significant political change. Other measures such as the incorporation of CNI secret police into military intelligence, the destruction of secret police and military archives, the civilian governments’ reluctance to challenge the 1978 self-amnesty law, and the continuation of military-appointed Supreme Court justices, have worked, until quite recently, to restrain legal attempts to address the violation of human rights under Pinochet. Taken together, these limitations in the formal democratic system underscore the fact that Chile returned to civilian rule on terms that continued to favor strong elite control. Still, elite dominance of Chilean politics, the acuerdo de caballeros, has been a long-standing phenomenon in Left, as well as conservative, politics. What is more notable than elite control in the transition from military dictatorship is the way that political apathy has replaced activism, and consumer culture has replaced the ✩ 27 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 28 Steven S. Volk involved political society of the pre-Pinochet years. This is not to say that the turmoil that often comes with an intensely politicized society is always productive, or that an economy unable to support a consumer market is somehow beneficial. And yet the violent depoliticization of Chile under authoritarian rule and its frustrating persistence after the departure of Pinochet have resulted in a return to civilian rule marked by a greater adherence to the formal rules of democracy than to a vibrant democratic culture.3 To the extent that post-authoritarian Chile has replaced citizens with consumers, the institutions that embodied political culture in the pre-1973 era have withered. Social institutions central to political debate and decision making prior to 1973 have struggled to remain consequential since the return to civilian government in 1990. Labor unions are most notable in this respect. Since 1990, only 7–12 percent of workers have engaged in collective bargaining. Not only has Chile’s neoliberal economy shifted from unionized, industrial jobs to lower paid, temporary work, but employers continue to feel empowered to stifle unions when they emerge. A 1996 survey of union leaders representing more than 5,500 firms found that nearly one-third of all workers who participated in collective bargaining – not strikes – had been dismissed within three months of the negotiations (Frank 103–108). Political parties, which have effectively articulated connections between citizens and the State for more than a century, also suffered a substantial deactivation not just under Pinochet, but since the return to civilian rule (Garretón, A Chilean . . . 11–13). A number of scholars have concluded that politics is far less important for a large majority of the Chilean population that it was in the past. Not surprisingly, the prestige and value of politics, politicians, and political institutions in the eyes of the public, particularly the young, has suffered a dramatic decline (Silva, cf. also: Moulian; Arriagada; Stillerman; and Jocelyn-Holt Letelier). Such a development is troubling to the extent that public misgivings about politics and politicians are cycling back into a lack of concern for democracy itself. A 2004 Latinobarómetro poll found that only 35 percent of Chileans were “very” or “fairly” satisfied with the way that democracy worked in their country while only 57 percent agreed that “democracy is preferable to any other kind of government.” A United Nations Development Program survey conducted in May 2001 disclosed that 32 percent of Chileans did not care if the political system was democratic or authoritarian (qtd. in Silva 67) in a country frequently touted as having one of the healthiest democracies in Latin America (Latinobarómetro 2004). Fully assessing the causes for this swing is beyond the scope of this chapter, but one can signal a number of factors including the “cautious politics of elite consensus building” which produced the “pacted” transi- ✩ 28 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 29 Chile and the United States Thirty Years Later tion process, the persistence of “authoritarian enclaves,” and the desire of political elites to avoid painful reminders of the past and to foster the illusion of a broad-based, consumerist-oriented consensus (a project that has been shaken since Pinochet’s 1998 detention in London). (Cf. Wilde, Garretón, Incomplete . . . , 149–155; and Boeninger). The most important factor, I would suggest, lies in understanding the relationship forged under Pinochet between the individual, the economy, and political society – a relationship which has continued under civilian government. Pinochet threatened that he would not leave power until Chileans “thought differently.” To that end, the military violently uprooted the collective structures and communal identities that sustained Chilean political culture for generations, leaving in their place a neo-liberal economy and a model of the citizen as consumer, both of which worked to privatize social relations. Patricio Silva argues that “the expansion of consumerist behavior in Chile generated a kind of passive conformism among the population, who eventually accepted the individualistic tenets of the neoliberal economic model based on the search for private satisfactions” (Silva 69). In Chile the economy, now one of the most unequal in the world in terms of income distribution, has pulled away from the political system to such an extent that it undermines notions of a social good. Margaret Thatcher understood this point when she insisted that “there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families” (Women’s Own).4 Pinochet could only attempt to destroy society by brute force and by removing elections themselves, the mechanisms through which, under the liberal state, economic rewards were deployed to gain political support, thereby encouraging competing visions of social goals. The post-authoritarian state in Chile has returned to elections, but by replacing the notion of the citizen with that of the consumer, political elites have succeeded in preserving Pinochet’s vision. Marketbased models have spilled over into the political sphere; political “consumers” are expected to make individual decisions based on what will produce the best outcome for them, much as they might buy shoes in a store, in total disregard of any notion of a social good, and without the input of political mediators such as unions, cooperatives, or parties. The battle over the privatization of social security in Chile – a process which was implemented under Pinochet at the point of a bayonet and now has been imported directly into the heart of Bush’s second term presidency – is a good example of this development. Wage earners, as consumers, are encouraged to consider only what would be best for them. Even if we leave aside the question of whether the market will reward their desires, the consumerization of political choices means that question of whether society has a responsibility to its elderly remains unanswered, and likely ignored, as had in fact been the case in Chile (Rohter A1+). Garretón reminds us that “without society the political regime is a delusion,” and ✩ 29 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 30 Steven S. Volk the result of the consumerization of politics in Chile has been the weakening of democracy itself (Garretón, Incomplete . . . 153). The Chilean Laboratory Transitional processes in Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe in the latter part of the 20th century have generated significant scholarship (cf. O’Donnell et al.; Collier; Pridham). At the heart of the “transition” debate is the question of the metrics one uses to measure “democraticness,” as Guillermo O’Donnell calls it, or the quality of democracy, as I have put it, borrowing from Larry Diamond and Leonardo Morlino (O’Donnell, ”On the State . . . ” 1361; Diamond and Morlino 20–31). On most scales, Chile appears near the top, as one of the few transitional countries “clearly en route to becoming successful, well-functioning democracies . . . ” (Carothers 9). With its thriving economy, a history of three orderly presidential elections as well as a number of parliamentary and municipal contests since the return to civilian rule, and growing indications that the judiciary is willing to pass judgment on those responsible for criminal actions undertaken during the dictatorship, Chile’s is regarded as a thriving transition from authoritarian rule. A critique of such a process, much as a critique of the booming Chilean economy, can appear both factually suspicious and mean spirited. And yet as the data presented above would suggest, while the formal aspects of Chile’s democracy seem healthy, its democratic culture, coming out of 17 years of dictatorial rule, has become anemic, occupied by “dormant” citizens, depoliticized or politically apathetic, concerned largely with the problematics of consumption (Silva). This result, I have argued, flowed directly from events unleashed on September 11, 1973. By 1975 Chile had become a laboratory of sorts, where observers could scrutinize what would happen when capital no longer faced serious social or political obstacles to its accumulation plans, nor the opposition of sectors of the nationalist capitalists who supported import substitution models and pushed for domestic protections from foreign investment. “In this societal desert,” Guillermo O’Donnell concludes, “huge social costs were incurred, and although with various changes and accidents, the neoliberal program was mostly implemented” (O’Donnell 1366). September 11 and the Quality of Democracy in the United States Washington paid close attention to the results of Chile’s experiment given its role in overturning the Allende government, a series of on-going ✩ 30 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 31 Chile and the United States Thirty Years Later congressional inquiries as to that role, and the direct part played by US economists who helped shape the radical neoliberal economy which unfolded under “controlled” conditions (i.e., by force). A number of Chilean innovations would later find their way back to the United States where, much as in Chile, they began to modify the nature of democracy and the democratic culture, particularly after the “second” September 11 further opened the door to this possibility. The availability of democratic rights in the United States historically has correlated with factors such as race, gender and class. Yet the weakening of democratic protections that has occurred since September 11, 2001 has impacted all sectors of society, even though Muslim and Middle Eastern populations have come under particular scrutiny. As with any nation threatened with attack, the United States has faced a series of difficult tradeoffs between liberty and security since September 11. But, as I will argue, the attack on civil liberties and democratic rights in the past three years has been sustained, and most often unrelated to legitimate security concerns (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks).5 My intention here is to apply to the United States those measures frequently used to measure the transition to democracy in formerly authoritarian regimes, specifically, (1) use of unjustified detention, terror, or torture; (2) challenges to the rights and guarantees of Western constitutionalism; and (3) ascendance of an apolitical, “dormant” citizenry which is increasingly indifferent to a larger political society and the concept of the social good. Torture and the Adoption of Authoritarian Methods A central value of liberal democracy rests in the protections it provides individuals from unjustified detention, terror, or torture (Diamond). Among the most disturbing developments in the United States since 2001 has been the revelation that the Bush Administration has rewritten internal guidelines and abandoned long-standing precepts of international law to create a new category of criminal (“enemy combatants”) who can be detained without charge, denied access to legal counsel, or trial, and brutalized by “interrogation” methods which were often developed by US-supported military dictators in Latin America. Administration officials, including the recently confirmed Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez, and the man slated to head the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Cernoff, redefined “torture” so as to provide legal cover for agents employing a variety of violent procedures that most authoritative bodies have long considered to be torture, including simulated drowning (“waterboarding”), sodomy with a broomstick, and electric shock.6 Evidence has also come to light that US officials are “outsourcing” ✩ 31 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 32 Steven S. Volk torture, sending detainees to countries that systematically engage in the practice (Mayer). The Administration’s decision to detain and hold so-called “enemy combatants” indefinitely and outside of the framework both of the US Constitution (as regards American citizens) and the Geneva Conventions is equally disturbing. Administration lawyers have argued that the President has “unquestioned authority” to detain enemies during wartime and hold them without legal protection. In a time of a borderless and potentially limitless war, the practice of indefinite detention (not to mention the significant abuses to which prisoners are subjected) surpasses some of Pinochet’s methods. In dictatorial Chile prisoners who made it to jail (and many were killed before that step, to be sure) received fixed sentences once they had been declared enemies of the state. In neither case were prisoners offered anything approaching fair trials. The Supreme Court has challenged some, but not all, of the Administration’s most far reaching claims, but Bush’s advisers continue to search for ways to assert unlimited presidential authority in a time of war, not an uncommon practice in dictatorships around the world. The fact that presidential authority derives from a popular suffrage does not weaken the analogy. The comparison is only challenged to the extent that in the United States a court system exists to protect citizen’s (and non-citizens) rights. Here, too, there is cause for concern. Challenges to the Rights and Guarantees of Western Constitutionalism – Creating the “Grey Area” Democracy is a “legal system [that] includes the rights and guarantees of Western constitutionalism”, including freedom of belief, opinion, discussion, speech, assembly, and petition (O’Donnell 1360). While the United States can boast a strong record in these areas for many decades, along with some historic blind spots and periodic weaknesses, legislation passed in the United States since September 11, 2001 has begun to undermine some of these basic rights. The Patriot Act, passed shortly after the attacks, authorizes non-disclosed wiretaps and secret searches in criminal investigations without probable cause of a crime. It permits government employees to conduct searches of private library, medical, and student records, as well as undisclosed searches of private premises. Peaceful protesters can be charged with the new crime of “domestic terrorism” if their demonstrations are defined as an attempt to “influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion,” a standard that leave remarkable room for interpretation (USA PATRIOT Act). Freedom of expression and associational autonomy are among the seven characteristics of “polyarchy” as defined by Robert Dahl (Dahl ✩ 32 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 33 Chile and the United States Thirty Years Later 221). Freedom of association and long-observed practices of cultural, ethnic, and religious tolerance have been challenged by government policies targeting Muslim men for detention based on minor immigration violations. More than 1,000 Muslim men were rounded up and detained for prolonged periods shortly after September 11, 2001. By mid-2004, that number had grown to more than 5,000. Not a single one has been convicted; most were never charged. Nor are the associational rights of Muslims the only ones to be affected. In the summer months preceding the Republican National Convention in 2004, the FBI visited or subpoenaed dozens of activists to question their intentions. New York City police assigned teams of six officers to follow those designated as “primary anarchists” around the clock. The right to vote freely, and to have one’s vote counted fairly, is at the heart of literally every definition of democracy. Accepting that all largescale elections will likely manifest some irregularities, US electoral practices in the past two presidential elections have raised fundamentally serious questions about the quality of democracy in the United States. The final vote tally in Florida in the 2000 election and the eventual decision by a sharply split Supreme Court to close down the counting of votes is well known. Other irregularities are as significant. A report by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University found that in the 2000 election, whether a vote counted depended on where it was cast, that spoilage rates for ballots varied directly with the percentage of minority voters, that spoilage could not be attributed solely to technological factors, and that approximately 2 million votes (2% of the total) went uncounted (Civil Rights Project). “Dormant” Citizenship in the United States As in Chile, the drive to privatize social functions in the United States is both furthered by and in turn helps encourage the development of a an apathetic and disengaged citizenry. Participation in US elections declined significantly and continuously from 1960 to 2000. Whereas 65% of the adult population turned out for the Kennedy-Nixon contest, only 51% voted in 2000. In the 2002 congressional elections turnout dipped to 39%, with only 18% voting in congressional primaries.7 While that trend was reversed in the hotly contested 2004 election, troubling signs remain. Turnout for the 2004 Republican primary was the lowest ever recorded (including other non-contested elections), and the third lowest ever on the Democratic side (Patterson 2004). At least part of the problem can be attributed to the fact that most Congressional races are simply not races at all. According to Richard Pildes, an election expert at New York University, “There are now about ✩ 33 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 34 Steven S. Volk four hundred safe seats in Congress,” leaving only 35 with any degree of competitiveness (Toobin).8 In the 2004 Congressional races, only 13 seats in the House changed hands. As Nathaniel Persily, an election law expert at the University of Pennsylvania Law School drolly noted, “There is a problem when the turnover in the United States House of Representatives is lower than it was in the Soviet Politburo” (Nagourney A1+). Aggressive redistricting plans, such as those pushed by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in Texas in 2004, only solidifies a practice that is supported by Republicans and Democrats alike. Ironically, while most adults in the United States don’t vote in elections, and while most congressional elections are not “real” contests, 60% of those polled in a November 2003 Gallup poll still define elections as “crucial” to their own sense of freedom (Carlson). Strong majorities of those questioned continue to find that the basic “Bill of Rights” guarantees are “very important” to democracy, but polls show a significant decline in support when asked whether certain rights, particularly those most closely associated with an active citizenry, are “crucial” to their freedom. Only 44% of those polled thought that the right to petition the government was crucial; only 52% defined the right of free speech as crucial; and only 36% thought a free press was crucial to their own sense of freedom. These trends, which hint at a public increasingly apathetic to its citizenship rights and responsibilities, are even more clearly evident among young people. A 2005 Knight Foundation poll of more than 100,000 high school students found that only 51% of respondents thought that newspapers should be allowed to publish without prior government approval of stories (Knight Foundation). As in Chile, collective identities and the organizations that represent them have atrophied in the United States. Statistics on union membership in Chile and the United States are strikingly comparable. Only 12.5% of US wage and salary workers belonged to unions in 2004 (down from 20.1% in 1983); only 7.9% of private industry workers are unionized (United States Department of Labor). As in the Chilean case, there are many factors behind this dramatic decline, and many are similar including the long decline in industrial employment, government hostility to organized labor, labor laws that don’t encourage collective bargaining, and the historic preference of many large unions to steal away other groups of unionized workers rather than organizing among unrepresented workers. Ideologically, there are also similarities between the two countries as conservatives in the United States and neoliberal elites in Chile have focused on redefining workers as “owners,” claiming that in an “ownership society . . . individuals are empowered by freeing them from dependence on government handouts and making them owners instead, in control of their own lives and destinies” (Boaz). President Bush’s high-stakes push to privatize social security, another page taken ✩ 34 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 35 Chile and the United States Thirty Years Later from Chile’s playbook, is rooted in the political conviction that as labor abandon its identity and working-class culture and comes to see itself as “owners,” not only will the Republicans solidify their grasp on political power for decades to come, but it will allow them to remove the state from the areas of social responsibility that they have occupied for over 50 years. In many ways, this is what Pinochet accomplished, albeit with great violence, in Chile. In both countries talk of an “ownership society” generally ignores the vast income inequalities that have expanded in the past 20 years. Guillermo O’Donnell has argued that “extreme disparity in the distribution of (not only economic) resources, goes hand in hand with low-intensity citizenship” (O’Donnell 1360). According to recent statistics, the top 20% of American households control 83% of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 80% only enjoy about 17% of wealth. Ownership of stocks and bonds is even more concentrated. The wealthiest 1% of taxpayers currently receives more than half of all corporate profits; the bottom 60% gets approximately 8% (Krugman). Income inequality ratios in the United States already resemble those of far poorer countries. Completing the Circle: Neither Tranquility nor Democratic Maintenance at Home In his 2002 National Security Strategy doctrine, President Bush promised, “In the war against global terrorism, we will never forget that we are ultimately fighting for our democratic values and way of life” (Bush 2002). In the United States as in Chile, as I have argued, it has become increasingly apparent that those democratic values have eroded significantly. If at the turn of the 20th century Washington could suggest that the extension of American power abroad would enhance democratic rights at home, we are now in an era when attempts to further project US force abroad will likely only further undermine democratic rights at home. In anything, Washington seems to be learning from authoritarian experiments abroad and shaping internal policies in their fashion. In a recent and provocatively titled article, “Supremacy by Stealth: Ten Rules for Managing the World,” Robert D. Kaplan makes the point starkly, if unintentionally (Kaplan 66–83). Kaplan’s vision is dominated by the looming presence of state-less terrorists, able to strike the United States at will. The only successful way to counter such a threat, he argues, is by rapid response, stealth, aggressive “manliness” and decisiveness. The reality of the wars that must be fought leaves “no time” for Congressional consultation; and even if did, politicians are too “timid” and “hamstrung” by public opinion to be effective. Nor can diplomats respond successfully ✩ 35 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 36 Steven S. Volk to fast-developing crises. The “element of surprise [has] become the dominant variable” if we are to thwart terrorists, and the military – the Special Forces in particular – is the only institution capable of conceiving, waging, and winning those conflicts. In brief, the key to the US ability to manage the world, for Kaplan, is held by “young majors, lieutenant colonels and other middle-ranking officers.” These, not elected officials, foreign service professionals, or the media, are the people who “will need to make lightning-quick decisions” to defend American democracy. If Kaplan’s vision seems extreme, even apocalyptic, it is useful to remember that even before September 11, 2001, small teams of Special Forces were carrying out thousands of operations yearly in nearly 170 countries (Kaplan 68). Recent press reports have disclosed a small group of “super secret commandos” operating inside the United States in “extra-legal missions to combat terrorism”(Schmitt A1+). So the idea that decision-making has been put in the hands of commando teams operating at home and abroad is not a conservative daydream. At the same time it is hard to know what democratic values will remain after democracy’s most instrumental characteristics (including the constitutional role of elected representatives) have been stripped away and placed in the hands of civilian and military elites. In the end, democracy itself withers away in Kaplan plan when insists that the “highest morality . . . must be the preservation – and, wherever prudent, the accretion – of American power” (Kaplan 68). The repressed have certainly returned when conservatives lobby for a “Chilean” solution to the challenges faced by the United States in a world at least partially shaped by its own practices in Chile and similar countries. Significantly, Kaplan himself turns to Chile, highlighting the importance of learning from that “experiment.” US actions have not “always been pretty and, frankly, not always moral,” he admits, but they can produce desired results at a relatively low cost, and for Kaplan Chile was a cheap success. Chile succeeded, in Kaplan’s view, because the United States “defeated a belligerent Soviet and Cuban campaign at its back door”– even though Nixon Administration aides themselves denied that Chile was as a national security problem. The true cost of that victory was paid by Chile’s democratic system, and just as Washington did not stop to consider the costs of imposing a dictatorship of Chile on September 11, 1973, so now it seems unwilling to calculate the true costs of abandoning its own democratic values in the wake of September 11, 2001. When the Nixon Administration crafted its plans to overthrow Salvador Allende shortly after his election in 1970, Henry Kissinger’s top aide for Latin America, Viron Vaky, argued that its plan was “patently a violation of our own principles . . . ”(Kornbluh 11). 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Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Diamond, Larry and Leonardo Morlino. “The Quality of Democracy: An Overview,” Journal of Democracy 15:4 (October 2004): 20–31. Dinges, John. The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents. New York: New Press, 2004. Frank, Volker. “Politics without Policy: The Failure of Social Concertation in Democratic Chile, 1990–2000.” Victims of the Chilean Miracle: Workers and Neoliberalism in the Pinochet Era, 1973–2002. Ed. Peter Winn. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004: 71–124. Freedom House. “Freedom in the World 2004: Tables and Charts.” 15 September 2004. 13 January 2005 <http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/freeworld/2004/tables.htm>. Garretón, Manuel A. The Chilean Political Process Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989. Garretón, Manuel A. Incomplete Democracy: Political Democratization in Chile and Latin America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Gwertzman, Bernard. “Mediation in Chile Termed Essential by U.S. Officials.” New York Times 2 December 1984: A1+. ✩ 37 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 38 Steven S. Volk Hersh, Seymour M. “The Grey Zone: How a Secret Pentagon Program came to Abu Ghraib.” The New Yorker (24 May 2004). 15 May 2005 <http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa_fact>. Hersh, Seymour M. The Price of Power. Kissinger in the Nixon White House. New York: Summit Books, 1983. Ishmael, Odeen. “The Trail of Diplomacy. A Documentary History of the Guyana- Venezuela Border Issue.” 1998 <http://www.guyanaca.com/ features/trail_diplomacy_pt2.html>. Jelin, Elizabeth and Eric Hershberg, eds. Constructing Democracy: Human Rights, Citizenship, and Society in Latin America. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. Jocelyn-Holt Letelier, Alfredo. El Chile perplejo: del avanzar sin transar al transar sin parar. Santiago: Planeta/Ariel, 1998. Kaplan, Robert D. “Supremacy by Stealth: Ten Rules for Managing the World.” The Atlantic Monthly July/Aug 2003: 66+. Knight Foundation, John S. and James L. “Survey Finds First Amendment Is Still Being Left Behind in High Schools.” 31 Jan 2005 <http://www.knightfdn.org/default.asp?story=news_at_knight/releases/2005/20 05_01_31_firstamend.html>. Kornbluh, Peter. The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. New York: New Press, 2003. Krugman, Paul. “Bush’s Own Goal.” New York Times 13 August 2004, final ed. Latinobarómetro, “Informe-Resumen: Latinobarómetro 2004: Una Década de Mediciones.” 13 Aug. 2004. 20 Jan. 2005 < http://www.latinobarometro.org/>. Lijphart, Arend. “Unequal Participation: Democracy’s Unresolved Dilemma.” American Political Science Review 91 (1997): 1–14. Mayer, Jane. “Outsourcing Torture” The New Yorker (14 Feb 2005). 7 Feb 2005 <http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050214fa_fact6>. “Memorandum by the Counselor of the Department (Kennan) to the Secretary of State (29 March 1950).” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, 2: The United Nations, The Western Hemisphere. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1976. 598–624. Moulian, Tomás. Chile actual: Anatomía de un mito. Santiago: LOM-ARCIS, 1997. Nagourney, Adam. “States See Growing Campaign to Change Redistricting Laws.” New York Times 7 Feb. 2005, late ed.: A1+. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The 9/11 Report. New York: St. Martin’s 2004. O’Donnell, Guillermo. “On the State, Democratization and Some Conceptual Problems: A Latin American View with Glances at Some Postcommunist Countries.” World Development 21 (1993): 1355–1369. O’Donnell, Guillermo, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. Olney, Richard. “The Olney Memorandum.” Latin America and the United States: A Documentary History. Ed. Robert H. Holden and Eric Zolov. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000: 64–67. O’Sullivan, John L.“The Great Nation of Futurity.” The United States ✩ 38 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 39 Chile and the United States Thirty Years Later Democratic Review 6.23 (1839): 426–430. Patterson, Thomas E. The Vanishing Voter: Public Involvement in an Age of Uncertainty. New York: Vintage, 2003. Patterson, Thomas E. “Young Voters and the 2004 Election.” 2 Feb. 2005. <http://www.vanishingvoter.org/Releases/Vanishing_Voter_Final_Report_200 4_Election.pdf>. Piven, Francis Fox. Why Americans Still Don’t Vote: And Why Politicians Want It That Way. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000. Pridham, Geoffrey, ed. Transitions to Democracy: Comparative Perspectives from Southern Europe, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Aldershot: Brookfield, 1995. Rohter, Larry. “Chile’s Retirees Find Shortfall in Private Plan.” New York Times, 27 Jan. 2005, final ed.: A1+. Roosevelt, Theodore. “The Duties of American Citizenship. January 26, 1883.” 21 July 2004 <http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/historicspeeches/ roosevelt _theodore/dutiesofcitizenship.html>. Schmitt, Eric. “Commandos See Duty on U.S. Soil in Role Redefined by Terror Fight.” New York Times, 23 Jan. 2005, final ed.: A1+. “Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Interview on Black Entertainment Television’s Youth Town Hall.” 20 February 2003. 20 January 2005 <http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2003/02/dos022003.html>. Silva, Patricio. “Doing Politics in a Depoliticised Society: Social Change and Political Deactivation in Chile.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 23:1 (2004): 63–78. Stillerman, Joel. “Disciplined Workers and Avid Consumers: Neoliberal Policy and the Transformation of Work and Identity among Chilean Metalworkers.” Victims of the Chilean Miracle: Workers and Neoliberalism in the Pinochet Era, 1973–2002. Ed. Peter Winn. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004: 164–208. “There is No Justice Without Freedom.” Washington Post 21 January 2005, final ed.: A24. Toobin, Jeffrey. “The Great Election Grab.” The New Yorker (Dec. 8, 2003). 1 Dec. 2003. 22 Jan. 2005 <http://www.newyorker.com /fact/content/ ?031208fa_fact>. United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Union Member Summary.” January 27, 2005. <http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2. nr0.htm>. USA PATRIOT Act. “H.R. 3162 in the Senate of the United States, October 24, 2001.” 20 Jan. 2005 <http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html>. Wattenberg, Martin. Where have all the Voters Gone? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Wilde, Alexander. “Irruptions of Memory: Expressive Politics in Chile’s Transition to Democracy.” Journal of Latin American Studies 31 (1999): 473–500. Women’s Own (London), Oct. 3, 1987. World Institute for Development Economics Research. “WIDER World Income Inequality Database.” 3 Dec. 2004. 20 January 2005 <http://www.wider. unu.edu/wiid/wiid.htm>. ✩ 39 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 40 Steven S. Volk Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Turner’s approach competed with arguments rooted in the noxious soil of US moral superiority, assertions that God had placed the United States on earth with the task of defeating the “powers of evil” (O’Sullivan 430). In its latest report on “Freedom in the World” Freedom House correlates “freedom” and per capita income. While parts of its methodology and terminology can be questioned, the findings are significant. Only 16% of low-income countries were classified as “free” or “partly free,” in 2004, whereas 90% of high- income countries were in that category (Freedom House). There is an extensive bibliography on these points. See, among others, Garretón, 2003; Jelin and Hershberg 1996; and Wilde, 1999. On income inequalities, see the Gini index rankings in the World Institute for Development Economics Research. It is notable that the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the “9/11 Commission”) concluded that analysis and intelligence failures created vulnerabilities in the United States, not an “open” society with abundant civil liberties. This policy was first uncovered with the publication of photographs of prisoners taken at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. We now know that torture policies were formulated in the Pentagon and were transferred first to Afghanistan, then to the Guantanamo prison, and finally to Iraq. Under the new standard, torture applies only to “abuse that causes pain equivalent to organ failure or death” (cf. Hersh; Danner). See, among others, Patterson, Piven, and Wattenberg. While some argue that turnout should not be used as a definition of democracy, others insist on its importance to the quality of democracy, as I have been suggesting. See Lijphart. The importance of competition in a political democracy is also hotly debated. I agree with Altman and Pérez-Liñán who argue that a “more competitive democracy is a better democracy” (Altman and Pérez-Liñán). ✩ 40 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 3 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 41 small earthquakes and major eruptions Anglo-Chilean Cultural Relations in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Kevin Foster In the 1930s, sub-editors at The Times of London held a competition to concoct the most boring headline possible. The winner was “Small Earthquake in Chile: Not Many Dead” (Beckett 87). As disrespectful as this may seem it does offer a fair reflection of Chile’s failure to register on the Richter Scale of British cultural consciousness during this period. As Andy Beckett notes, the few stories about Chile that made it into British newspapers “suggested a colourful but insignificant country of impossible remoteness” (Beckett 87). Chile’s inconsequentiality, it should be noted, reflected no special mistreatment on its part but extended to British visions of Latin America as a whole. To most Britons in the 1930s, as The Times’s mischievous competition implied, Latin America meant, quite literally, nothing. It did not matter to them because it was, again literally, immaterial. In 1932, preparing for a journey through British Guyana and into Brazil, the only map that Evelyn Waugh could secure of the country was a patchwork of “blanks and guesses” (Waugh 13). As the country slowly began to take shape in his mind, it assumed an accumulated formlessness, its distinctive featue was a striking array of things it did not have: a country chock full of nothing: a large empty territory stretching up three great rivers and their tributaries to shadowy undefined boundaries; most of it was undeveloped and unsurveyed, large areas quite unexplored . . . there was no railway or road into the interior . . . the greater part of the colony had no permanent inhabitants . . . except on the coast there had been practically no European settlement and little enough there (Waugh 13). For oblivion embodied, Waugh, and many Britons of his generation clearly felt, one need look no further than Latin America. ✩ 41 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 42 Kevin Foster Yet there was nothing particularly 1930s about this indifference-cumarrogance-cum-ignorance. It was the natural outcome of a long and venerable tradition of British cultural disinterest in Latin America stretching back to the revolutionary movements of the early 19th century and well beyond. This in itself is worthy of remark as Britain exercised a profound cultural influence over the liberation movements. From the final decade of the 18th century when Juan de Miranda brought what Karen Racine has called his “continental consciousness-raising campaign” to Britain, the list of visitors who passed through his fashionable rooms in Grafton Street, Bloomsbury, reads like a who’s who of the Latin American liberation struggle – Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, Carlos María de Alvear, Simón Bolívar, José de San Martín, Bernardino Rivadavia and Bernardo O’Higgins (Racine 4). Britain had obvious attractions for the so-called independence generation. Not only had its inveterate opposition to Napoleon’s continental expansion, but also its aggressive opposition to Spain’s commercial monopolies with its empire made it a de facto proponent of Latin American liberation. Its own program of domestic, political, economic and industrial modernisation made Britain both a paragon of and an ideal partner for the continent’s projected republics. “Although,” as Karen Racine notes, “the United States and France both offered fascinating experiments for Spanish Americans’ consideration, it was early 19th century Britain, the home of Adam Smith and the Industrial Revolution, that most captured their collective imagination.” (3–4). In search of financial aid, political recognition or military assistance, the fathers of Latin American liberation took the time out to dine with Jeremy Bentham, visit Robert Owen’s model farms and factories, and to discuss the merits of the monitorial system of education with one of its founders, Joseph Lancaster (Racine 5).1 Accordingly, when they made their way back to South America, whatever goods they stowed in the ship’s hold, agricultural machinery, educational pamphlets, the odd constitution, arms and uniforms, it was their mental baggage and the vision of Britain as a ‘free society of law, order and material progress’ which it enshrined that, it can be argued, and exercised a most pervasive influence over the subsequent forging of the Latin American Republics. Britain’s first recruits for the Spanish American Wars of Independence left London for Venezuela in December 1817, followed over the next three years by a further fifty sailings which carried more than 8,000 men – and their families.2 This sudden influx of British military personnel into the towns and ports of Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and Chile engendered new and intimate contacts between the two cultures at all social levels, providing a vital beachhead from which British goods, manners and ideas could spread their influence throughout the continent. While “the most visible influence of the increasing British presence in Spanish America was the introduction of new kinds of machinery, weapons and consumer ✩ 42 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 43 Small Earthquakes and Major Eruptions goods to everyday usage,” it was “the tastes, habits and preferences formed in Europe” which these men and women brought with them, that subsequently exercised such a profound influence over “local consumption and design patterns” (Racine 16–17). The Creole elites adopted British innovations in architecture, interior design, table manners, dress, recreation, education and print publications.3 To adopt British dress, décor, manners or hobbies was seen not only as the last word in fashion, but also, during the long struggle for independence, as a bold affirmation of one’s political colours. Growing more confident of their victory with each passing day, the patriotic Creole upper classes literally wore their allegiances on their person; English-manufactured calicoes and jerseys, Irish linens and Scottish woollens . . . Even the poorer classes, who admired some of the exotic imported colours they were not able to produce locally, purchased Manchester flannel, picked it to pieces, respun the wool yarn and wove it sparingly into their own hand-produced fabrics to approximate the desired colour. (Racine 20) This image of the poor unpicking the imported cloth and weaving it in with their own designs, fashioning it to their own traditions and needs provides a compelling metaphor for just how pervasive British influence was throughout all levels and all aspects of Spanish American society during the liberation period and how, despite the adoption and adaptation of British ideals, forms and practices to local uses, the original patterns remain clearly discernible through the local cut. Yet notwithstanding this all-pervasive British influence on the emerging republics it would seem that Latin America – particularly in the early years of the liberation movements – made little reciprocal impact on Britain. When one turns to British literary culture of the early 19th century, besides the occasional travel narrative one finds not a single treatment of the revolutionary struggle – indeed hardly any mention of Latin America at all. Edmund Burke, José Blanco White and Robert Southey all made passing reference to events in South America in their letters, poetry and political writings. Notably, Ian MacCalman’s state of the art An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture 1776–1832 contains not a single entry dedicated to South America.4 The greatest liberation movement of the century thus made barely a ripple in the world of English letters, leaving scarcely a mark on the imaginative culture of early-mid 19th century Britain. There is a range of opinion as to why this might be so. In the early years of the 19th century British forces were engaged on multiple fronts in Europe, the US, India and beyond. With so much of the nation’s military resources engaged elsewhere it is little wonder that politicians, the press or the public had little time for events that seemed to lie so far beyond the ✩ 43 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 44 Kevin Foster realm of its political or material interests. The nation’s one unauthorised endeavour to establish a colonial presence in South America (with the exception of Guyana), was Popham and Whitelocke’s raids on Buenos Aires in 1806–7, which ended in humiliation for the British forces who were routed in the streets of the Argentine capital by the Creole militias and the public (cf. Rock, 71–3). Thereafter, as Alan Knight notes: “Britain in the main avoided formal empire in Latin America,” preferring to “exercise a kind of informal paramountcy” through its domination of trade and commerce (Knight 4). One of the central consequences of this reluctance to take on a more overtly political role in Spanish America was the deepening of British ignorance about the continent and its peoples, the reinforcement of its prejudices and the further entrenchment of the degrading stereotypes that sustained them. The practical considerations of government and religious conversion that the Spanish confronted in Latin America had compelled them “to widen their field of vision (sometimes in spite of themselves) and to organize and classify their findings within a coherent frame of thought.” Accordingly, as J. H. Elliott observes: Officials and missionaries alike found that, to do their work effectively, they needed some understanding of the customs and traditions of the people entrusted to their charge . . . The visitas of royal officials to Indian localities therefore tended to turn into elaborate inquiries into native history, land tenure and inheritance laws; and the reports of the more intelligent and inquiring of these officials . . . were in effect exercises in applied anthropology, capable of yielding a vast amount of information about native customs and society. (Elliott 33) Unencumbered by the burdens of “formal empire,” the British in early 19th century Latin America had no compelling reason to seek or to pretend to have any further understanding of the “natives” than what was necessary for the conduct of trade. As such, while it was felt that Spanish America lay beyond, or more pertinently beneath, the sphere of British interest, there was little to be found there to sustain or reward cultural engagement. Yet ironically, the complacent conviction that Latin America was an irrelevance gradually brought it into the mainstream of British literary culture. The failure of British writers and intellectuals to engage with the early 19th century liberation movements had a profound effect on Britain’s subsequent discursive relations with South America. Their failure to examine the origins, goals and conduct of the differing revolutions, to profile their leaders – many of whom spent long periods in the United Kingdom – the strategies they employed, the obstacls they surmounted, their achievements, as well as the causes and outcomes of their failures, denied these events an explanatory context and robbed their architects and main actors of explicable motivation.5 Their failure ✩ 44 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 45 Small Earthquakes and Major Eruptions to acknowledge the moral and political substantiveness of the revolutionary struggles, and their readiness to deny or simply ignore their historical and human import, meant that for the better part of two centuries thereafter Latin America served Britain as a locus of the imaginary, a theatre of the possible, and was regarded thereby as more a mental than a geographical space. Signifying nothing, Latin America could be made to mean just about anything. In this space, the political, economic, social and moral concerns of importance to Britain at any given time might be identified and explained, responses to them trialed, and their consequences played out in a neutral and hygienic environment. The British refusal to engage in the political, social and cultural transformation of Latin America thus made it an ideal, if not the obvious, locus for fantasy and speculation about the perils and processes of its own social and political transformations. A little less than 150 years later and the situation had barely altered. As Chile worked its way back into the mainstream of British public consciousness, it did so less out of any disinterested curiosity about Chilean politics and society. Allende’s turbulent presidency and Pinochet’s brutal putsch were of interest to the British because of the perceived relevance of their economic, political and social consequences to Britain itself undergoing rapid even revolutionary transformation in the 1970s and ’80s. Britain in the early 1970s was a nation displaying all the hallmarks of decline: its imperial possessions dwindling, its military in retreat abroad and under pressure at home from the IRA’s bombing campaigns, its once formidable political clout on the world stage now more of a petulant slap, its economy in free fall, its manufacturing industries bloated and uncompetitive, soaring inflation, fissile industrial relations, deeply entrenched antagonisms of race and class – the kingdom disunited and Britain, patently, no longer great (cf. Clarke 358–400, Marwick 184–392). In 1973, Edward Heath’s Conservative Government was battered by industrial action from, among others, power workers, dockers, dustmen, post office employees and miners. Rolling power cuts forced the country to adopt a three-day week, and the Government was finally defeated at the polls in February 1974, replaced by Harold Wilson’s Labour administration. Britain was clearly in need of radical economic, industrial and social reform and the new Government looked, however hesitantly, to be moving in that direction. Within weeks of its election it increased corporation tax to fund more generous welfare benefits and set up the National Enterprise Board to take over failing private companies. These modest reforms sparked panic in a right-wing press that had found even Heath’s gentle, patrician Conservatism a cause for grave concern. To at least one observer, the Daily Mail’s Chile correspondent, the projected reforms in Britain called to mind the upheavals of Allende’s final year in office when ✩ 45 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 46 Kevin Foster inflation hit 304% and industrial strife among the workers was matched by a middle-class revolt. Allende’s experiment, the Mail’s man in Santiago averred, has “pointed up the dangers a relatively prosperous country faces when it seeks to reform overnight. And Britain has stood on the brink of just such rapid change frequently since World War II” (qtd. Beckett 116). Consequently, it is not difficult to see why Wilson’s reforms sparked panic, even visions of the apocalypse, on Britain’s political right. As Peter Wright’s Spycatcher (1986) revealed, the reforms convinced certain members of the security services – à la Kissinger – that Wilson was a Russian agent intent on selling out the country to the Kremlin, while elsewhere on the right doomsday suddenly reared into view. In September 1974 the Financial Times columnist Samuel Brittan predicted the collapse of the British parliamentary system within a lifetime. The Times warned of what it called a ‘last chance parliament,’ while a year later Robert Moss, director of the Economist Intelligence Unit published The Collapse of Democracy (1975), a warning of what was to come for Britain unless stern countermeasures were adopted. Recent events in Chile played a prominent role in the book as Moss portrayed present-day Britain as a mirror-image of pre-coup Chile. The middle class was the victim of economic genocide, with inflation the as the active agent; while ‘Trotskyist school teachers’ brainwashed the nation’s children. Without robust and aggressive action, Britain, Moss affirmed, would fall to “the next Allende.” If creeping Allendism was the threat, Britain needed an appropriately Pinochetista response – the mobilisation of the middle class, carefully targeted “counter-violence,” the curbing of militant trade unionism ‘by whatever means are necessary’ and the emergence of ‘a strong new national leader’ (qtd. Beckett 186–7). In Pinochet in Piccadilly (2002) Andy Beckett traces the speculative rumblings on the right wing of the Conservative Party, in the military and intelligence services around the possibility of armed intervention in the event of an unacceptably leftward, Allendist drift in the Labour Government of the mid 1970s. This inchoate reaction found its most forceful and prominent pronouncement in the work of the nation’s preeminent right-wing scribe of the day, Peregrine Worstehorne. In March 1974, the Sunday Telegraph dispatched Worstehorne to Chile for a tenday visit to see how, six months after seizing power, the Pinochet regime was shaping up. After visits to Santiago, Valparaiso and a gulag on Dawson Island in the far south of the country, Worstehorne concluded that ‘the junta enjoys very widespread popularity among all classes’ (qtd. Beckett 185). Evidently, not included in Worstehorne’s schedule, were either the National Stadium, or the clandestine torture centre at Villa Grimaldi in Santiago. How and why he arrived at this extraordinary judgment is implied in his appraisal of the role and perception of the Chilean military. They were, he noted: ✩ 46 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 47 Small Earthquakes and Major Eruptions Everywhere to be seen, just as in Northern Ireland . . . But they appear relaxed and friendly, and there is certainly no air of tension in the towns; still less in the country . . . In talking to senior officers, including members of the junta, there is no hint of that kind of fanatical ideological commitment out of which true horror springs. Their language is painfully reminiscent not of Hitler, but of Field-Marshal Montgomery. (qtd. Beckett 185) These men, like Montgomery and his troops in the Second World War have, in Worstehorne’s opinion, fought the good fight, defeated the forces of (left) totalitarianism and so guaranteed the liberty of the people and the nation. They are, as such, no more oppressors than are, say, the British army in Ulster. Well, yes. Worstehorne may have visited Chile, but what he saw there and what he is describing here is a vision of Britain, as it may yet need to be. It is less the tragic denouement in Chile that concerns him than what he takes to be the ominous patterns in the political drama at home. The conclusion to his final article on Chile demonstrates that the real value of his journey lay not in anything he had learned about Pinochet’s Chile but in what the conditions precipitating its advent and entrenchment augured for mid-1970s Britain. “All right,” he conceded, a military dictatorship is ugly and repressive. But if a minority British Socialist Government ever sought, by cunning, duplicity, corruption, terror and foreign arms, to turn this country into a Communist State, I hope and pray our armed forces would intervene to prevent such a calamity as efficiently as the armed forces did in Chile (qtd. Beckett 185–6). The coup, of course, never eventuated. The economy struggled back onto its feet, the Government and unions arrived at an uneasy if sustainable compact, and inflation was gradually reeled in. As the right’s visions of impending apocalypse proved illusory and extreme action became as improbable as it was indefensible, Chile too faded from Britain’s front pages. In 1979, however, Britain underwent its own electorally instigated revolution and Chile returned to the mainstream of British media and political debate. The election of Margaret Thatcher, the type of “ strong new national leader” that Robert Moss and company had fantasised about just a few years earlier, ushered in the kind of radical reforms in society, politics and the economy that had right-wing journalists in the mid-1970s prognosticating the twilight of democracy. Yet on this occasion it was the Left’s turn for consternation. Right-wing journalists queued up for the guided tour of free-market Chile, no more an admonitory example of the strong medicine that Britain might need to swallow, but now a shining example of the good health of the patient subjected to such a course of political and economic treatment. Chile had been the laboratory for the shock therapies now unleashed on British society and the economy by ✩ 47 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 48 Kevin Foster Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government. It had, as a pamphlet in defence of General Pinochet conceded, “been Thatcherite before Thatcher, though with a tougher stance towards the trade unions,” a “stance,” which, it should be noted, incorporated torture, disappearance and extra-judicial execution (qtd. Beckett 168). In Britain, the Government’s recourse to carrots, sticks and riot police in its efforts to enforce its industrial and economic policies brought opposing visions of Chile, Allende and Pinochet back at the centre of British political and media discourse. Unions were legislated into impotence, labour market flexibility enshrined in law, state enterprises sold off and a whole array of once sacrosanct public enterprises privatised. Unemployment mushroomed, access to social security more rigorously controlled, and the National Health Service, the emblem of Britain’s post-war political and social consensus, was subjected to a degree of actual if not grievous bodily harm. For those on the right, Thatcher’s reforms had rescued Britain from the slow, almost imperceptible slide towards economic stagnation, social chaos and political repression as witnessed under Allende. They promised the sort of spectacular economic recovery that unrestrained monetarism had brought to Pinochet’s Chile. For those on the left, the reforms in Britain brought with them all the social horrors that Chilean workers had endured under the Pinochet regime, falling wages, rising prices for staple goods, the sudden withdrawal of the social safety net and the collapse of the state pension system, as well as unsettling echoes of the junta’s authoritarianism in the assault on trade unionism and the Government’s preference for confrontation over consensus. Chile’s renewed prominence thus provided a convenient context for and a language, within which the reforms in Britain might be imagined, analysed and debated. Little known in and of itself, Chile was deployed as a symbolic battlefield for the political and moral extremes in British politics. It offered a convenient means of enabling the radical right, the emerging force in British politics, to push its agenda for economic reform, while simultaneously furnishing the communitarian left with a nightmare vision of what was to come, prompting an extended elegy for the demise of the post-war dream of equality of opportunity, social security and political consensus. Seen and used in this way, Chile emerges more as a perennially polarised landscape of moral extremes than a complex and nuanced polity with its own sophisticated history of social compacts, class antagonism and traditional rivalries and associations. Indeed, in an otherwise sober analysis of Anglo-Chilean cultural relations, Andy Beckett repeatedly insists that political loyalties in Chile are the product not of rational, informed or enlightened choices but have their origins in “instinctive, almost tribal” allegiances (Beckett 97, 107). This discourteous analysis of Chilean politics was given further impetus after the arrest of General Pinochet in October 1998. As the decision whether or not to extradite ✩ 48 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 49 Small Earthquakes and Major Eruptions Pinochet to Spain in accordance with the warrant issued by the Spanish magistrate, Baltasar Garzón dragged through the British court system, and pro and anti-Pinochetistas took up their places outside the court of the day, Bow Street Magistrates Court, the Court of Appeal and finally the House of Lords. Waving flags, toting posters deifying or damning the former dictator, and hurling abuse at one another, the British public was treated to a demonstration of what – the popular press averred – passed for political debate in Chile. Entrenched antagonisms, inflexible opposition, this was visceral hatred masquerading as political process, a clear demonstration of what Britain had been so nearly reduced to by the excesses of one of Pinochet’s staunchest defenders, Margaret Thatcher. As such, every rowdy demonstration for or against the General or the latest verdict, every clenched fist, every contemptuous sneer, every expression of irreconcilable hatred, one could hear the faint but fervent echo, ‘there, but for the grace of God . . . ’6 Beckett’s overarching argument is that over the past 150 years and more, Britain and Chile have functioned “as each other’s political subconscious. Britain, to a certain sort of Chilean, has always looked desirably stable and mild. Chile, to a certain sort of Briton, has always looked desirably extreme and volatile” (Beckett 13). Yet, as I have argued here, through its provision of an ideal environment for the identification, trialing and resolution of determinedly domestic concerns, it has often been hard to know where Britain ends and where Chile begins. Works Cited An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture 1776–1832. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Balborín, Manuel and Gustavo Opazo Maturano. Cinco mujeres en la vida de O’Higgins. Santiago: Aranciaba Hermanos, 1974. Beckett, Andy. Pinochet in Piccadilly: Britain and Chile’s Hidden History. London: Faber, 2002. Clarke, Peter. Hope and Glory: Britain 1900–1990. London: Penguin, 1996. COI, (1982) Britain and Latin American Independence Movements London: HMSO Elliott, J.H. The Old World and the New 1492–1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Knight, Alan. Latin America. What Price the Past? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Lynch, John. The Spanish American Revolutions 1808–1826. New York: Norton, 1973. MacCalman, Ian. An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture 1776–1832. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Marwick, Arthur. British Society Since 1945. 2nd Edition. London: Penguin, 1990. ✩ 49 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 50 Kevin Foster Moss, Robert. The Collapse of Democracy. London: Temple Smith, 1975. Racine, Karen. “A Community of Purpose: British Cultural Influence during the Spanish American Wars for Independence.” English-Speaking Communities in Latin America. Ed. Oliver Marshall. London: Macmillan, 2000. Rock, David. Argentina 1516–1982. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Southey, Robert. Madoc. [1805]. The Poetical Works of Robert Southey, 10 Volumes, London: Longmans, 1837–49. ——. A Tale of Paraguay. [1825]. The Poetical Works of Robert Southey, 10 Volumes, London: Longmans, 1837–49. Storey, Mark. Robert Southey: A Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Waugh, Evelyn. Ninety-two Days: A Journey in Guiana and Brazil, 1934. London: Penguin, Ltd. 1986. Wright, Peter. Spycatcher. New York: Viking, 1987. Notes 1 2 3 4 In 1810 Jeremy Bentham drafted a ‘Proposed Law for securing the Liberty of the press against persons having exclusive command of the printing presses of a new country when small in number’ which he gave to Miranda on his return to Venezuela. In the spare time left to them they cut a dash with the local ladies. De Miranda, Andrés Bello, Juan García del Río and Vicente Pazos Kanki all married British women, while poor Bernardo O’Higgins, Chile’s first Supreme Director, found his would-be father-in-law, a Mr Eels of Surrey, made of far sterner stuff than the Spanish cavalry or the Andes and was forced to return to South America without his beloved Charlotte, who later sickened and died. For more on Charlotte Eels’ relationship with O’Higgins see Balborín and Opazo Maturano, 102–5. For more on this and how the troops fared when they got there see COI, (1982) and John Lynch. Perhaps the most notable of these British recruits to the South American cause was Admiral Lord (Thomas) Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, who was recruited by O’Higgins to establish and lead a Chilean naval force. Cochrane’s successes were as dramatic as they were improbable, harassing Spanish ships up and down the Chilean coast, blockading Callao and in 1819 capturing Valdivia, thus providing Chileans with a first, secure naval base from which they could liberate the coast and the country as a whole. In late 1820 Cochrane’s navy transported San Martín’s troops to Callao from where they marched on Lima, taking the viceregal capital in July 1821 and declaring Peruvian independence. (For further bibliographical info on Cochrane see Beckett 259–60). Elsewhere on the battlefields of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, the British legions acquitted themselves valiantly, most notably in the decisive battles of Boyaca in August 1819 that secured Colombian independence, and two years later at the battle of Carabobo which brought an end to Spanish rule in Venezuela. For a more detailed account of British influence on these and other areas of Latin American life in the liberation period, see Racine14–28. For example, Robert Southey, “was conscious,” notes Mark Storey, that he should be attending to events in Spanish America, but that he was too busy ✩ 50 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 51 Small Earthquakes and Major Eruptions 5 6 to do so, preferring “to concentrate . . . on more immediate concerns than on what was happening on the other side of the world” (Storey 308–9). However, Southey did write two ostensibly South American poems, Madoc (1805) and A Tale of Paraguay (1825). Apart from Miranda, San Martín and the Uruguayan independence leader Artigas both spent many years and eventually died in Britain. For more on this see The Guardian’s coverage of the court process and the demonstrations through the latter part of 1998 and the greater portion of 1999. ✩ 51 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 52 nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 53 P art II Legacies Neoliberal Reconstructing of the Economy and Society nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 54 nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 55 introduction to Part II In 2004, the United Nations Development Program published Democracy in Latin America: Towards a Citizen’s Democracy, a groundbreaking cross-country study documenting how, a quarter of a century after the retuning to elected civilian governments, Latin American democracies faced a deep crisis of confidence. Comparative empirical data and public opinion polls collected from 18 countries evinced widespread political disenchantment, interpreted by UNDP specialists as a warning that the region’s democracy was in trouble (La Democracia en América Latina). The expectations that return to civilian rule would solve the socioeconomic problems faced by the vast majority of Latin American had been dashed. To avert the looming crisis, UNDP analysts assert that a second transition from the current “electoral democracy” to a “democracy of full citizenship” is required. As one of its authors stated during the study’s launch at the XXXV LASA Congress, the current situation can be characterized as one in which “Democracy is of no value to the market, and the market is of no value to democracy.” Any critical observer of Chile’s own, particular transition to electoral democracy would not have been surprised by the tone of this conclusion. On the contrary, for the past fifteen years Chileans have lived under a limited electoral democracy that has consistently failed to deliver full citizenship. Chilean democracy has been hostage to the pressures exercised first by the military seeking impunity, and later by the requirements of national and international productive and financial capital, which the civilian governments have been only too happy to serve (Petras and Leiva). Thus, for Chile the legacy of September 11, 1973 has been much more than the unhealed wounds left on the social fabric by past massive human rights violations. In fact, these were part and parcel of a broader transformation in class and power relations encompassing the economy, society and the state. Part II examines the legacies of neoliberal restructuring in three ✩ 55 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 56 Introduction to Part II important aspects: labor–capital relations, the environment and the rights of indigenous peoples, as well as the education system; each one of these pivotal for reproducing the status quo. The Misplaced Illusions of the Labor Movement Volker Frank’s assessment of the experience of the Chilean labor movement under the new democracy is that, despite promises to the contrary, the situation of workers has not significantly improved. On the contrary, numerous indicators attest to a progressive weakening of the labor movement and its main organization, the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT). During the post-Pinochet years, organized labor has gained no significant political leverage, influence over economic decision, or progressive reforming of Pinochet labor code. Despite the return to democracy, Frank concludes that “time has run backwards for the Chilean labor movement and Chilean workers, and the balance of power is where it was almost a century ago” (cf. Volker Frank, in this volume). Such a situation severely questions the alleged success of Chile’s redemocratization. To explain such a dismal outcome, Frank compares the labor legislations of 1924, 1979 and 1990, examining their historical context, the purported aims, as well as the outcomes sought. His conclusion is that all three Concertación governments have failed in their attempt to bring about a fairer and more equal industrial relations system. The labor code, an enduring legacy of the Pinochet era, continues to curtail workers’ ability to challenge employers’ prerogatives over the production process. The High Cost of Mapuche Right to Autonomy Diane Haughney’s article, on the other hand, focuses on the reemergence of indigenous peoples, specifically Mapuches, as a key social and political actor today. Indeed over the last decade, Mapuche struggles have experienced a dramatic shift, from geographically circumscribed land claims, to broader demands for collective territorial rights. Egged on by comprehensive and unrelenting threats to their livelihood, property, cultural practices, and legal capacity to exercise their voice, Mapuche organizations have enacted a significant shift in their demands and strategic patterns of raising claims. Haughney’s piece traces how these new demands challenge corporate profits of transnational lumber multinationals, the neoliberal orientation of government policies, as well as one of the oldest myths propagated by Chilean elites and political actors: “the traditional conception of Chile as ✩ 56 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 57 Introduction to Part II an ethnically homogenous national society.” In the course of their struggles, Mapuche organizations have unmasked the limited nature of Chile’s current democracy. Concertación governments have resorted to the same repressive anti-terrorist legislation applied by Pinochet against the legitimate resistance struggle for democracy, in order to repress current indigenous demands and their organizations. As Haughney points out, three Concertación governments have unsuccessfully tempted to channel Mapuche demands “into small-scale targeted assistance programs, while repressing organizations, leaders and activists who call for political autonomy and territorial control of economic resources on lands claimed by Mapuche communities.” The conflict between the logging companies, the Concertación government, and Mapuche communities highlights the contradiction between the government’s neoliberal priorities and Mapuche demands for collective rights. The consistent subordination to and enforcement of the rationality of profits over social demands seems to be a second legacy of September 11, 1973 that has survived the formal termination of the Pinochet regime. Haughney concludes that “[a]ctors representing corporate capital assert that demands for autonomy, and granting indigenous peoples the legal status of ‘a people,’ pose threats both to private interests and national security. Finally, economic elites’ objections to collective rights claims of indigenous peoples follow historic patterns of state policy and national ideologies that equate national homogeneity with national security.” Higher Education in Service of Profit and Dominant Ideologies Patricia Tomic and Ricardo Trumper’s chapter offers a detailed analysis of how the education system has been thoroughly revamped by the neoliberal logic of the Pinochet dictatorship and the operation of market forces unleashed after 1990. The accelerated expansion in the number of private for profit higher education institutions over the last decade, reflect in part the race for new sources of profits as well as new sources of ideological and political power on the part of Chile’s business elites. This expansion reflects both an intense process of commodification of Chilean social life, as more and more previously prohibited areas are opened up to the profit motive. Taking advantage of such policies, the last decade has seen increased competition and penetration of the Chilean higher education market by transnational corporations operating in this sector. Tomic and Trumper trace the privatization of Chile’s educational system to the market-based “modernizations” of 1979 and the 1980 Constitution, both seen by Pinochet and his advisors as pivotal policies ✩ 57 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 58 Introduction to Part II for bringing about market supporting cultural change. Paradoxically, the low intensity democracy of the Concertación and their adherence to the political pacts that they signed with the dictatorship, gave new impetus to neoliberalism, including the “private” university system. The growing discursive legitimacy of private interests, the economic boom of the nineties, and multiple ideological, political, religious and economic projects, contributed to produce a system of more than sixty universities. The civilian regime, inaugurated in 1990, embraced the discursive deployments that represent the privadas and a capitalist market for higher education as innovative and capable to solve the lack of seats in postsecondary education. No Institutional Paths to a Democracy of Full Citizenship The authors in Part II convincingly argue that the deeply embedded continuities surviving from the Pinochet era in the realms of labor–capital relations, indigenous rights and higher education, cannot be explained as mere remnants from the military regime. Such continuities have also been facilitated and actively endorsed by the political choices and development strategy embraced by the governing Concertación coalition. What needs to be teased out from their sectoral analysis is the broader conclusion: the end of such continuities can only come from establishing a different set of priorities and from the existence of political will in society that actively seeks to break with these neoliberal legacies. This is evidently absent from Chile’s civilian political class and has no space in its tightly controlled binomial political system, where the posts of designated life senators are today shared not only by those appointed by Pinochet, but also by two past civilian presidents. For these reasons it would seem that social and political forces seeking a genuine political democracy for Chile, seeking a democracy of full citizenship as the one endorsed by the UNDP, are condemned to an arduous march as outsiders of the current system of political representation vetted by Pinochet’s 1980 Constitution and the elitists political pacts along with bringing the end of military rule, ensure its survival of an increasingly discredited and limited electoral democracy. Works Cited Petras James, and Fernando I. Leiva. Democracy and Poverty in Chile. The Limits of Electoral Polics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994. La Democracia en América Latina. Hacia una democracia de ciudadanos y ciudadanas. Ideas y Aportes. Programa de Naciones Unidas (PNUD). New York: U.N., 2004. <http://democracia.undp.org/Default.Asp> ✩ 58 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 4 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 59 integration without real participation The Chilean Labor Movement Volker Frank Fifteen years into Chile’s new democracy and the recent commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of military coup that brought to a bloody end the socialist government of Salvador Allende represent two important milestones in the country’s history, and especially in the history of Chile’s labor movement. Officially, Chile returned to democracy on March 11, 1990, with President Patricio Aylwin receiving the presidential sash handed to him – via a third person – by the former dictator Augusto Pinochet, who had been in power since September 11, 1973, all in all sixteen and a half years. Today, the two dominant parties in the governing coalition are the Socialists (PS and PPD), and the Christian Democrats (DC). This same coalition has been in power since 1990: what has changed over the years are ministers and cabinets, and while the first two presidents were Christian Democrats (Aylwin 1990–1994, Eduardo Frei 1994–2000), the current president – Ricardo Lagos – is a Socialist. The fact that a Socialist could once again assume the nation’s highest office may say something about the degree of democratic consolidation, however, one would have to add that today’s Socialists – and Chilean socialism in general – are very different from those during Allende and the Unidad Popular (UP). This chapter briefly examines some of the experience of the Chilean labor movement in the new democracy. In so doing, it argues that the role and influence of the organized working classes in Chile’s economy and politics is not altogether that different from the one it occupied during the 20th century – with the exception of the Unidad Popular years. In other words, despite all promises of the new democratic governments to the contrary, “things” have not improved much for labor in democracy. Specifically, perhaps one of the biggest objectives of the Chilean labor ✩ 59 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 60 Volker Frank movement remains an illusion: little or no participation has been granted the labor movement and its top organization, the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), in the elaboration of relevant labor policies, the reform of the Pinochet labor legislation being the most prominent example. If that is the case, CUT and its affiliated unions – the vast majority of all unions in the country – find themselves in an ambiguous position. On the one hand, they enter the 21st century facing tremendous challenges, such as NAFTA, a globalizing and entirely restructured economy in which mining remains an important sector, though agriculture, construction, service, and finance sectors are today the most dynamic sectors in which both foreign and domestic capital invest heavily. At the same time, industry and textile, two sectors that were historically very important, still employ a considerable number of workers, yet they have not benefited from the same amount of investment as the previously mentioned sectors, and thus are ever more ill-equipped to face the challenge of foreign competition. On the other hand, despite major modernizing processes underway in the Chilean economy (most scholars agree that this began in 1975 with Pinochet’s implementation of neoliberal economic policies), Chile’s industrial relations system remains archaic at best and unfair or even undemocratic at worst. Paradoxically, in a very real sense, Chile’s workers today are perhaps in a weaker position vis-à-vis employers than they were between the 1930s and early 1970s. Thus, time has run backwards for the Chilean labor movement and Chilean workers, and the balance of power is where it was almost a century ago. Not only does this situation cast a long shadow of doubt on the presumed success of the Chilean redemocratization. It also makes the experience of the labor movement during the UP government all the more interesting and important: what was so different about the Chilean industrial relations system compared to today? What lessons can be drawn from the Chilean case of labor movement integration and participation in periods of democratization? The Labor Movement’s Experience in the New Democracy The Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT) had played an important role in what O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986) have called the “resurrection of civil society” after years of repression by the dictatorship.1 Thus, beginning in 1983, labor unions had started to stage the first massive protests demanding an end to the regime. Later, when Center and Left political parties had once again gained a high public profile but were unable to overcome their differences over how to defeat Pinochet, it was the labor movement headed by CUT that demonstrated the need to be ✩ 60 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 61 Integration without Real Participation united politically. Finally, while the same parties were still divided over what to do in the 1988 plebiscite, CUT had already called upon its affiliated unions and workers to vote no in that plebiscite. These important contributions to the return of democracy led many CUT leaders, as well as many rank and file members, to believe that once the new democratic government was in place (which, would include historic allies), the organized working class would continue to play a significant role in the elaboration of socio-economic policies. Indeed, the second major agenda item of the Aylwin government after the tax reform was the reform of the Pinochet Plan Laboral of 1979. The new government’s formula became known as “Social Concertation” (not to be confused with the name of the governing coalition, which is “La Concertación”). Through this social concertation, the Aylwin government promised labor organizations the creation of a new industrial relations system in which labor itself (i.e. CUT and its affiliates) was to play a fundamental role as “equal partner alongside with employers.” In fact, the coalition government promised to “stimulate a social concertation . . . between employers and workers . . . so that policies [which labor and employers themselves propose] will be considered legitimate by all groups and [in this way] conflicts can be limited . . . ” Thus, the new government had called for the creation of a social concertation that would enable the country to pursue a “simultaneous commitment to economic growth and social justice” (“Concertación de Partidos” 11). However, for such a concerted effort at “growth with equity” to happen, and thus for social justice to come about, the government needed to reform the labor legislation inherited from the Pinochet regime. Over the course of the next fifteen years, all three democratic governments (Aylwin, Frei, and Lagos) promised to deliver reform, yet only Aylwin and Cortázar (Labor Minister from 1990–94) were able to somewhat reform the Plan Laboral. Nothing happened during Frei’s six years in office, and after two years of wrangling with his own Concertación parties as well as the opposition, Lagos and Solari (his Labor Minister) brought the reform to a sudden and altogether disappointing end (see Frank 2002). From the beginning, i.e. 1990, it soon became evident that contrary to what was said and promised, the Concertación was not going to give CUT the type of participation the latter had expected. To be sure, union leaders were at times consulted, and at times encouraged to negotiate directly with employers, but sooner rather than later the Concertación took the reform out of CUT’s hands and presented a much scaled down version to Congress. It should be recalled that while the Concertación had a majority in the lower House, due to Chile’s electoral law, the opposition controlled the Senate and did so up until the 2000 elections. Thus, an oft mentioned argument was that due to the political realities of the transition, the Concertación could not give labor more, even though this is what the ✩ 61 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 62 Volker Frank Concertación would have liked to do. Yet the government also defended its behavior by arguing that it could not and would not return to the days prior to the 1973 coup. In other words, this time, it would no longer allow itself to be held hostage by civil society’s demands, call it populism or clientelism. Foxley, Finance Minister under Aylwin, liked to point out that the “state needed to be decongested” and civil society strengthened so that the government and the state would not have to constantly intervene on behalf of a very weak civil society and weak social actors. This scenario came to an unfortunate climax in 1970–73, and thus one of the major lessons the Concertación parties drew from history was to avoid making the same mistake again. This, then, is what the government had in mind with social concertation, although the reader may notice that this interpretation lacks an important item previously mentioned: civil society’s freedom to design and propose policies on its own. Concretely, workers’ and employers’ ability to directly participate in the formulation of a new industrial relations system. To return to the reform of the labor legislation, under Aylwin CUT once again became legal, which does constitute a very significant change. The reform also established a new severance pay in which workers receive payments for a longer period of time. Unions were once again allowed the right to stage an unlimited strike (under the Plan Laboral the limit was 60 days). This, too, marks an important change from the past. Unfortunately, the item most important to unions was not amended. Then as now, employers still enjoy the right to replace and ultimately (i.e. after two weeks) fire striking workers, provided they offer wage readjustment that meets anticipated inflation. Thus, throughout the 1990s, plant level union as well as CUT leaders attempted to convince the government to change this provision, yet to no avail. At the same time, they constantly told the authorities that employer abuse in this and other aspects of the law were rampant, yet there was little the government (and specifically the Dirección del Trabajo) could do about it, even though the latter institution may have been inclined to end employer abuses. Because they are relatively well known, brief mention should be made of the “Acuerdos Marco,” the so-called Agreements on Fundamentals. The first Acuerdo took place during the first three months of the Aylwin government and through it, labor, employers and the state established a new minimum wage. In addition, some other benefits such as family assignments were also established. Most importantly, labor abandoned its historic view of employers as the class enemy, and capital, in turn, recognized workers’ legitimate interests as well as their right to defend these through collective action. Undoubtedly, this agreement is of fundamental importance, given Chile’s history of labor–capital relations and more so in light of what happened between 1970–73 and 1973–1990. There were three more such Acuerdos; however, apart from establishing ✩ 62 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 63 Integration without Real Participation an annual new minimum wage level, nothing else came out of them, for which CUT decided to no longer participate in them after 1994. This is yet another example of the failed social concertation, since the original idea behind the Acuerdos was more than the creation of agreements on fundamentals. In fact, the government claimed in 1990 that the Acuerdos should serve as a departure to profoundly redesign industrial relations, among others through the creation of permanent bi-partite and tri-partite commissions. And even though the government never explicitly said any agreement reached in these commissions would have binding character, it is understandable that this is how CUT leaders interpreted it, more so if important governmental documents state that, to repeat, the Acuerdos Marco (should) “stimulate a social concertation . . . between employers and workers . . . so that policies [which labor and employers themselves propose] (my emphasis) will be considered legitimate by all groups.” Historic Worker Integration into Chile’s Industrial Labor Relations System Let us approach the reform of the latest labor legislation (or better: the outcome of it) from a comparative perspective that includes all three major legislations of the 20th century: the first, written in 1924 and implemented around 1928, the second, the already mentioned Plan Laboral, implemented in 1979, and the last one, implemented between 1990 and 2002 (with the Aylwin reform being the more encompassing when compared to the one produced by Lagos and Solari in 2000–2002). In addition to severely restricting unions’ ability to defend workers’ interests by making use of the strike weapon, the Plan Laboral of 1979 drastically limited the scope of collective bargaining by making subject to negotiations only the initial wage readjustments, the time period for inflationary adjustments (usually every three to four months) and the levels of inflation adjustments. Unions were strictly prohibited from including other topics in the negotiations that pertained to the “organization, direction and administration of the firm” (Article 82). Such narrowly defined collective bargaining did not always exist in Chile. In fact, the pre-1979 legislation allowed unions to discuss promotions, work crews, machinery, and other production-related issues (Valenzuela 1979: 257). What is more, the state was much more involved in industrial relations. For instance, between 1968 and 1974 trilateral commissions2 fulfilled an important function. In the aftermath of the military coup, the Pinochet regime canceled the binding character and reduced the commission’s influence to “advisory” status3. Prior to 1973, the state also exercised an important role in other areas. For example, labor legislation stipulated that in case the union stages a ✩ 63 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 64 Volker Frank legal strike, the firm was not allowed to continue production (Valenzuela 1976: 151). Moreover, employers were not allowed to hire a new labor force. Employers’ power to continue production during a strike was established only with the 1979 legislation, as could have been expected. And while the legislation prior to the Plan Laboral also included incentives for workers to disaffiliate themselves from their striking colleagues, it made their reinstatement to the workforce once the strike was over obligatory for employers (article 348). In sum, the changes brought about by the new labor legislation of 1979 put great limitations on workers’ ability to negotiate favorable contracts with their employers, forced them to follow extremely complicated and narrowly defined bargaining processes, and decreased their possibilities for creating a strong network of organized unions. The Aylwin labor legislation has important differences and parallels to the first labor laws enacted after 1924 and to the 1979 Plan Laboral of the military regime. First, one of the fundamental reasons for reforming the labor laws in the 1990s was to institutionalize a legitimate legislation that would help avoid a dangerous polarization of antagonistic interests that separated employers and workers. Fearing (or perhaps knowing) that employers would not fundamentally alter their behavior towards workers and unions without the control of the state, government authorities in 1924 as well as in 1979 and during the 1990s were fully aware that labor unions, then and now, would sidestep the legal constrictions and attempt to defend their interests and demands by other means. Hence, the 1990–92 Aylwin reform was also an intent by the new democratic government to create an instrument that would allow the state to regulate and oversee labor–management relations despite the government’s statement to the contrary (i.e. the de-congestion of the state). The primary purpose was to obtain, or to induce, social peace. The greater the legitimacy of the labor laws, the greater the likelihood that employers and unions would abide by them, and the better the chances for peaceful coexistence. Second, there are also interesting aspects that separate the new legislation (Aylwin’s and Lagos’s) from previous ones. The 1924 laws were enacted by the Arturo Alessandri regime under pressure from rebellious military officers who were not so much interested in solving the social question as in improving their own lot and in depriving the hostile working classes a fertile soil for their increasing agitations. The Pinochet regime decreed the laws in 1979 under an authoritarian regime. This leaves the reforms of the 1990s as the only ones implemented during a democratic regime. This distinction makes them all the more meaningful. The 1924 and certainly the 1979 legislation were created in the spirit of acquiring more state control over the laboring classes, limiting their capabilities of disturbing or threatening social peace, and, most importantly, reconciling their perceived hostile interests by integrating them into an ✩ 64 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 65 Integration without Real Participation institutionalized system of labor–management relations. The 1990s legislation presumably intended to open up a very closed and unequal industrial relations system to strengthen workers’ organizations, and to make this system fairer and more equal. Thus, from a historical perspective, the 1990s reforms to the labor legislation included elements that were difficult to reconcile with each other. The dilemma for the new democratic governments was thus, on the one hand, to rewrite labor laws that would maintain state control over the organized working classes and, on the other, to receive employers’ and workers’ legitimate recognition and support for social concertation and to provide workers with a more effective weapon to defend their interests. The previous brief description of the trajectory of Chilean labor legislations complements and at the same time represents the more general process of labor movement and worker integration into the industrial relations system. This process has been characterized by an imbalance of power between state, labor and capital. From the origins of the Chilean labor movement at the turn of the 19th century, the state has always enjoyed control over the pace and scope of labor integration into and participation in the economy and the political process. The very fact that labor was originally excluded from socio-economic and political processes resulted in labor’s perceived need to not only express vindicative grievances but to also challenge the very political and social order on which this exclusion was based. Hence the radical rhetoric of Chile’s early labor movement leadership. Yet to the degree to which the system granted labor some concrete concessions, workers and unions soon discovered that this type of integration did have its advantages even though it implied fairly little or no labor participation and undermined the potential for revolutionary action. And yet, as scholars of the Chilean labor movement pointed out, the great majority of workers has always been more interested in day to day affairs (wages, working conditions, benefits, social security, etc.) than revolutionary or radical transformation of Chilean society (Valenzuela, Barrera, Zapata, Angell, Landsberger et al).4 The emergence of political parties of the left did not fundamentally change the type of “labor movement articulation” put in place by conservative and liberal elites while they were in control of Congress and the Presidency. Even the rise of the Popular Front and the CTCH as the successor to FOCH in the mid and late 1930s did not bring about “new rules of the game,” instead it led to the “full incorporation of unionism into the legal apparatus” (Valenzuela 156). Thus, as Valenzuela continues the integration of leftist labor leaders (into agencies and ministries of the government) resulted in its legitimation (as) labor legislation was no longer to be perceived as an instrument of fascism, a tool of the bourgeoisie, but rather a series of complicated procedures containing some beneficial and some negative aspects for workers. The task of the labor movement was to ✩ 65 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 66 Volker Frank perfect it by means of congressional action (Valenzuela, Chilean Labor 156). However, this type of party-union “transmission belt” also made the labor movement even more “dependent” on the political system, hence its high degree of politicization which often challenged union autonomy5 from the parties of the left, and, as the Christian Democrats gained ground in the 1950s and 1960s, from the center as well. Thus, the remarkable aspect of this part of Chilean history is that to the degree to which all sides accepted the rules of the game (e.g. executives, Congress, employers, the labor movement), everybody perceived to be able to make gains from the system, hence no revolutionary challenge arose for almost three decades and the country witnessed a high degree of political stability.6 Yet the second time the Left came to political power, in 1970, the above scenario became far more complicated and complex. In a paradoxical turn of events, it was the Left that had to constrain the workers and the labor movement while the Center (and sometimes even the Right) buttressed labor movement demands7. While excluded from political power in the first decades of the 20th century up until the 1930s, the Left could give full support to the demands (vindicationist as well as revolutionary) of an incipient labor movement. This in turn gave the Left strong popular electoral support which allowed it to seize power in the late 1930s (with the help of the Radical Party, it must be said). Thus, one experience of the 1970–73 UP period is that the historic “roles had reversed” (Valenzuela 1976:164). The Left in power needed to combat inflation and be in charge of fundamental economic and political decisions that affected the entire nation. How would workers respond to this dilemma? Had they not been “socialized” to challenge and, if possible politically, to change the industrial relations system?! To what degree would workers’ or rank and file union members’ ideological ties to the Socialist or Communist party shape and induce revolutionary labor activism? What would keep workers from seizing the historic opportunity, more so since the very UP government was about to nationalize the economy and create entire so-called Social Ownership Areas (Area de Propiedad Social)? Worker Participation in the Unidad Popular Government 8 The previous section indicated that labor movement integration in Chile’s industrial relations system was a historic process in which above all the state and political parties were the major players. To the degree to which workers and unions could benefit from this system, few if any fundamental challenges to it – as well as to the political system that gave rise to ✩ 66 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 67 Integration without Real Participation the industrial relations system – emerged. Thus, participation was by and large understood by workers as participation in the fruits of industrialization, i.e. better wages, improved working conditions, social security, and so forth (see Barrera, Valenzuela 1976). To be clear, then, participation was not understood as directly participating in the design or redesign of the industrial relations system or in the economic system in which the industrial relations system was embedded (for example as producermanager). This scenario changed fundamentally with the Unidad Popular. The interesting aspect of the UP experience is that while worker participation – as well as plant level union and even CUT participation – was ultimately still granted by the government, the idea was that once the system was set up, workers would indeed enjoy unprecedented autonomy from state control and participate directly in the production process (as producers) as well as in decisions regarding production, such as productivity, investment, organizational aspects of the factory, and more. Thus, during the UP government the existing industrial relations system was not simply abrogated. Instead, representatives of the UP government together with CUT leaders met in December 1970 to draw up a plan how to modify the existing labor legislation and how to implement worker participation in management and enterprise decisions (see Zapata Las relaciones 48). Interestingly, the role of unions in the APS was secondary and clearly separated from the new participatory structure put in place – which explains why throughout 1970–73 unions frequently challenged workers’ and management committees in charge of production. But unions continued to play an important role in industrial relations as the workers’ representative organ that negotiated wages, working conditions and so forth. The novelty of the APS resided in the power it was designed to yield to workers on the shop floor. It is not possible to go into a discussion of the reasons why the experiment with the APS failed, nor is it possible to even begin an analysis into the reason for why the UP government failed, although it is possible that the former (i.e. failed APS) has something to do with the latter (failed UP). Instead, the significance and thus the exceptional and intended transformative character of the UP’s APS need to be pointed out. In this sense, the APS represented “more than a change in the organizational character of the firm” and participation obtained indeed an entirely new meaning regardless of the fact that it may nor may not have been “understood correctly” by the majority of workers for reasons that may be found in the historic articulation of labor movement and worker interests in Chile. Thus, “the main aim was to give a new economic class access to the control of the economic apparatus and hence to the overall political process beyond the confines of the labour organizations”. In short, the APS was “the embryo of a future socialist state” (Barrera 25). ✩ 67 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 68 Volker Frank Conclusions Roughly a century has passed since the Chilean labor movement began to organize workers and demand an integration of their organizations into the country’s emerging industrial relations system. Over time, they were integrated and gained important concessions from employers and the state. In turn, they were willing to postpone their desire for a more immediate transformation of economy and society. Thus, by and large, the Chilean industrial relations system evolved incrementally and the initial “shock” witnessed by economic, political and social elites in light of the “sudden” social unrest disappeared. The social question could be managed. And managed it was for roughly 70 years, regardless of the fact that the Left did come to political power. The labor movement, by then a close ally of the Communist and Socialist Parties, after having been socialized by these same parties as well as a powerful state, did not attempt to “rock the boat” to bring about a new industrial relations system in which participation would mean more than economic demands (wages etc.) or in which participation would challenge the core of the capitalistic economy: private property and who decides over production, investment, management, and so forth. The election of Salvador Allende and the UP in 1970 was therefore a watershed in Chilean politics, economics and society. Together with the top labor organization CUT, the government began to dismantle the industrial relations system in place until then, though initially the idea was to move slowly. The very fact that the experiment at socialism failed should not be ignored, and reasons for it also have to be found among workers and unions alike. Nevertheless, the UP government stands out among Chile’s governments not because it failed (others have done that as well), but because it was the only one to attempt a different approach to worker participation. Seventeen years later, the first democratic government attempted to rectify an industrial relations system that, in the eyes of the government as well as labor, gave employers unprecedented power of workers. Hence the idea was to move towards a balance of power in which employers and workers were “equal.” The most important instrument to accomplish that was the labor legislation. Yet, all three Concertación governments failed in their attempt to bring about a fairer and more equal industrial relations system precisely because the reform of the Pinochet labor legislation did not improve workers’ ability to challenge employers’ prerogatives over the production process. This is all the more important in light of the fact that these governments not only claimed to “correct a historic mistake.” Elsewhere I have argued that democratization is not well served if important institutions remain basically undemocratic, and important social players have little or no say in the modification of these institutions. ✩ 68 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 69 Integration without Real Participation It is furthermore significant because workers and the labor movement itself had once again “returned” to their original, historic position, within the industrial relations system. It was thus as if the UP period between 1970–73 had never existed. Today the Chilean labor movement emphasizes autonomy and “apoliticalness” even though history shows that in today’s situation, the labor movement may indeed be more autonomous but it is also more abandoned if not ignored by parties and the government. Today, Chile is once again governed by a coalition government at the head of which we find a Socialist. As this chapter intended to show, the reality and experience of the Chilean labor movement shows that this is anything but a return to the past, i.e. that of the UP. In fact, today and perhaps tomorrow, the Chilean labor movement may yet have to fight its biggest struggle of all. Works Cited Angell, Alan. Politics and the Labour Movement in Chile. London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. Barrera, Manuel. “Worker Participation in Company Management in Chile: A Historical Experience.” United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva 1981. —— and J. Samuel Valenzuela, “The Development of Labor Movement Opposition to the Military Regime.” J. Samuel and Arturo Valenzuela (eds.), Military Rule in Chile. Dictatorship and Oppositions. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986: 230–269. Collier, Ruth Berins and David Collier, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, Trade Unions, and the State in Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia. Programa de Gobierno. Santiago, 1989. ——. Compromiso Económico y Social de la Campaña por el No. Santiago, 1988. Cook, Maria Lorena. “Toward Flexible Industrial Relations? Neo-liberalism, Democracy, and Labor Reform in Latin America.” Industrial Relations 37, 3 (1998): 311–337. Cortázar, René. Política Laboral en el Chile Democrático. Avances y Desafíos en los Noventa. Santiago: Dolmen, 1993. Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT). “Las Reformas Laborales. Un Desafío Para Los Trabajadores.” Mimeo. Santiago, 2001. ——. La CUT frente a la Situación Política del País, Santiago, 1990. ——. Propuesta de la CUT para la Transición a la Democracia. Santiago, 1989. ——. Unión y Trabajo. Informativo de la Central Unitaria de Trabajadores, No. 1 (March 1990) – No. 22 (April 1992). ——. Confederación de la Producción y el Comercio (CPC) y Gobierno. Acuerdo Marco, Santiago, (April 1991) ✩ 69 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 70 Volker Frank ——. Acuerdo Marco, Santiago, May 1990. CUT and CPC. Marco de Referencia para el Diálogo, Santiago. January, 1990. Foxley, Alejandro. La Economía Política de la Transición. El Camino al Diálogo. Santiago: Ed. Dolmen, 1993. ——. “Bases para el Desarrollo de la Economía Chilena: Una Visión Alternativa.” Colección Estudios CIEPLAN, 26 (1989): 175–186. ——. Latin American Experiments in Neoconservative Economics. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983. ——. “Algunas Condiciones para una Democratización Estable: el Caso de Chile.” Colección Estudios Cieplan, 9 (1982): 139–170. Frank, Volker. “The Labor Movement in Democratic Chile, 1990–2000.” Working Paper # 298, June, The Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, IN, 2002. ——. “The Elusive Goal in Democratic Chile: Reforming the Pinochet Labor Legislation.” Latin American Politics and Society 44, 1 (Spring 2001): 35–68. ——. “Labor Movement Strategies in Democratic Chile, 1990–2000. The Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, IN, mimeo, Spring 2000. Frías, Patricio. “Perspectiva del Estado de las Relaciones Laborales en Chile: Del Gobierno Autoritario a la Transición Democrática.” Dirección del Trabajo, Departamento de Relaciones Laborales, Santiago, mimeo, 1998. ——. “Sindicalismo y Desarrollo de Acción Contestataria.” PET Economía y Trabajo 5o Informe Anual, 1994–1995, Santiago (1995): 57–74. Landsberger, Henry, Manuel Barrera, Abel Toro. “The Chilean Labor Union Leader.” Industrial Relations and Labor Review 17, 3 April 1964. O’Donnell, Guillermo; Philip Schmitter; Laurence Whitehead (eds.), Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, 4 vols. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. Segundo Gobierno de la Concertación. “Un Gobierno para los nuevos Tiempos: Bases Programáticas del Segundo Gobierno de la Concertación”, n.d. Valenzuela, Arturo. The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes. Chile. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Valenzuela, J. Samuel. “Labor Movements in Transitions to Democracy: A Framework for Analysis.” Comparative Politics 21, 4 (1989):445–472. ——. “Labor Movement Formation and Politics: The Chilean and French Cases in Comparative Perspective.” Diss., Columbia University, NY, 1979. ——. “The Chilean Labor Movement: The Institutionalization of Conflict.” Arturo and J. Samuel Valenzuela (eds.), Chile: Politics and Society. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1976: 135–171. Winn, Peter. Weavers of Revolution: The Yarur Workers and Chile’s Road to Socialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Yanes, Lara Hugo. “Las Comisiones Tripartitas.” Serie Documentos, CIASI, Santiago, No. 4, 1990. Zapata, Francisco. Las relaciones entre el movimiento obrero y el gobierno de ✩ 70 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 71 Integration without Real Participation Salvador Allende. Cuadernos del CES, 4. México D.F.: Centro de Estudios Sociológicos. El Colegio de México, 1976. ——. “The Chilean Labor Movement under Salvador Allende, 1970–1973.” Latin American Perspectives 3,1 Winter (1976): 85–97. Notes 1 2 3 4 5 Elsewhere I have discussed this and other issues pertinent to labor’s experience at length. See Frank 2001 and Frank in Winn (ed.) 2004. Due to space and time limitations, I can only focus on the reform of the legislation and on CUT, ignoring other elements of the labor movement, such as federations and confederations and plant level unions. A good historic review of these is given by Hugo y Lara. “Las Comisiones Tripartitas.” Serie Documentos, CIASI, Santiago, No. 4, 1990. These tripartite commissions lasted for two years, were paritary (3 worker and 3 employer representatives plus 1 labor official), and had binding character. Prior to ratification in Congress, any new project had to be approved by an absolute majority. The task of these commissions was to prevent, or solve, labor conflicts through the creation of sector wide norms. Any side could initiate the creation of such commissions. In many interviews with this author during 1990–92, union leaders remembered these commissions and expressed hope for their return. One should also not forget that CUT itself pushed for their reintroduction after 1990. These commissions should not be confused with sector wide agreements between a few union confederations (such as COMACH, FONACC) and their respective employers during the late ’60s and early ’70s, which are briefly discussed in Alan Angell, Politics and the Labour Movement in Chile. Their purpose was to simply study economic conditions and propose to the labor ministry – which was under no obligation to act upon the recommendations of these commissions. They only had a duration of two years, and their permanent status was canceled; they were called only into session when it seemed necessary. Workers and employers could delegate four representatives, the government appointed one president who had also four votes. This system was once again slightly changed in 1977 before it was dissolved two years later. This is the general scenario, despite the existence of sometimes contradictory statements that seem to depict a different scenario. For example, while originally rejecting the labor reform (of 1924), and recognizing in Justicia (the official publication of both the Communist Party and the FOCH) that some or many workers may think that the reforms are “mere scraps of food thrown at the workers,” Luis Víctor Cruz (Recabarren’s successor) later nevertheless endorsed the reforms and called upon workers and unions to use them for their own benefit, emphasizing that if anything, the laws were the fruit of “revolutionary activities of the proletariat.” Quotes taken from Valenzuela 1976:153. Union elections at all levels of the labor movement structure are perhaps the best yardstick to measure the degree of politicization and autonomy from parties and party ideology. See here also Angell (1972). ✩ 71 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 72 Volker Frank 6 7 8 I do not mean to ignore the critical period under Gonzales Videla from 1946 to 1952, which included the outlawing of the Communist party. See here, for example, the miners’ strike in El Teniente in 1972, which is well documented in Zapata. This has been superbly documented by Zapata and Barrera. The discussion here (specifically on the Public Ownership areas APS) only focuses on aspects pertinent to the argument of this chapter and must necessarily ignore many other aspects of labor’s experience in the UP. ✩ 72 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 5 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 73 from pinochet’s state terrorism to the “politics of participation” Fernando Leiva In the fifteen years following the negotiated end to the Pinochet military dictatorship, three successive Concertación1 governments have creatively managed social conflicts within parameters prescribed by the neoliberal economic model and Chile’s restrictive political democracy. Whereas Pinochet’s regime aimed to reshape the social conduct of Chileans by coupling the untrammeled forces of the market to State terrorism, the Concertación has sought to produce Chile’s “new market citizens” (Schild) through less savage mechanisms. In its effort to establish a new ensemble of institutions and behaviors supportive of open markets and restrictive electoral politics, the Concertación has enacted a powerful new political vocabulary heavily reliant on the strongly evocative if not contested concepts of “civil society,” “citizen participation” and “social capital” (cf. Leiva, Schild, Paley, Greaves, and Posner). Chile’s incoming third Concertación administration, in office since March 2000, proclaimed urbi et orbi that “[o]ne of the distinctive traits we want to give to the third Concertación government is that of more and better citizen participation” (MSGG 1 [emphasis added]). The InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) endorsed such a goal via a US$ 15 million loan to fund a pioneering “Program to Strengthen Alliances Between Civil Society and the State.” Post-Pinochet Chile has been transformed into a key site where the nascent “politics of participation” – an explicit concern for the symbolic and material incorporation of non-State and non-market actors into varying degrees of consultation and decisionmaking – are deployed in Latin America with the financial and technical support of international development agencies. The emergence of this novel discourse stressing the “strengthening of civil society,” “citizen participation,” and the need to draw upon the “social capital” of the poor, raises a number of critical questions for the ✩ 73 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 74 Fernando Leiva future of democracy in both Chile and Latin America. Does this emphasis on “participation” announce the arrival of a “new epoch,” characterized by a reshaping of State–Civil Society relations and, as some have argued, the appearance of “multiple points of leverage” for “new, associative, forms of popular representation” (cf. Chalmers)? How can such emphasis on “participation” be reconciled with the consolidation the “neoliberal” economic model and a deepening of corporate led globalization? This chapter probes these questions by exploring the historically-contingent character of the Concertación’s “politics of participation.” I trace below how “participation” has been conceptualized and redefined over the past fifteen years in response to a changing set of very concrete economic and political challenges faced by Chile’s governing coalition. I specifically focus here on the shifting conceptualizations of Chile’s Ministerio Secretaría General de Gobierno (SEGEGOB). For the past decade and a half, SEGEGOB and its División de Organizaciones Sociales (DOS) has been the leading State agency entrusted with the design, implementation and evaluation of government relations with social organizations, civil society and the citizenry at large. Prominent Concertación intellectuals such as Eugenio Tironi, Enrique Correa and Jose Joaquín Brunner have occupied key posts in SEGEGOB, thus tracking how “participation” has been redefined by this specialized State agency and thereby offering valuable insights into how the Concertación’s intellectual elite has envisioned the changing relationship between the state, markets and civil society in the post-Pinochet era. Trajectory of the Politics of Participation, 1990–2005 The three Concertación governments that followed the Pinochet regime – Aylwin (1990–1994), Frei (1994–2000), and Lagos (2000–2006) – provide valuable insights into how the transition from “domination to hegemony” (cf. Vilas) has been accomplished in Chile. When the evolution of “participation” during the past fifteen years is examined, one finds three different, shifting and contending formulations.2 For the sake of exposition, I argue that such a shifting trajectory can best be understood as attempts to deal with successive challenges confronted by legitimating capitalist restructuring in Chile after 1990: (a) the challenge of governability under Aylwin (Concertación I), (b) the challenge of sacralizing the market under Frei (Concertación II), and (c) the challenge of producing legitimacy under Lagos (Concertación III). ✩ 74 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 75 From Pinochet’s State Terrorism to the “Politics of Participation” “Participation” and the Challenge of “Governability” under Aylwin (1990–1993) In the name of a “protected democracy,” the Pinochet military regime created a political system “expressly designed to prevent social actors from tampering with private property rights and the free functioning of market forces” (Petras and Leiva 55). To ensure the success of the negotiated transition, the Concertación had to provide ample evidence of its commitment to both the neoliberal economic model as well as Pinochet’s 1980 Constitution. Well before the end of the military regime, Concertación leaders came to understand that the end of the military dictatorship could very well lead to increased instability, pitting the reemergence of an autonomous civil society against the basic class power relations built around the neoliberal economic model imposed by Pinochet’s Chicago boys. This remained a major concern of leading Concertación intellectuals in the early and mid 1980s. The dangers of an “uncontrolled” transition, perhaps were most starkly summed up by Alejandro Foxley: the consolidation of democracy in a post-authoritarian setting simultaneously demands the development of civil society, implying greater autonomy for social organizations, and, at the same time, the development of participation and consensus building mechanisms [Concertación] at the level of those public decisions that directly affect the living and working conditions of the population, that is, regarding economic policies. (Foxley qtd. by Petras and Leiva 56) Consequently, if the development and greater autonomy of civil society constituted part and parcel of the return to democracy, then the renewal of citizen participation could have serious destabilizing consequences for post-dictatorial governments: Once the autonomy of social organizations expands – a prerequisite for strengthening civil society vis-à-vis the state – these organizations may do nothing more than reproduce the main conflicts in society. If these conflicts involve class contradictions or antagonistic ideological currents, each autonomous organization will but passively mirror such conflict. As a result, these conflicts will be strengthened and amplified, increasing society’s polarization instead of reducing it. The system becomes more unstable. (Foxley 161 qtd by Petras and Leiva 56) During the transitional Aylwin administration, the solution offered by the Concertación to this dilemma was simple and effective: la “democracia de los acuerdos.” To prevent the autonomy of social organizations from reaching critical levels, those political parties vetted by the military ✩ 75 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 76 Fernando Leiva had to previously agree on “fundamentals.” More importantly, ways of encasing unmet popular demands within parameters fully acceptable to international investors, local economic conglomerates and the Officer Corps of the Armed Forces had to be found. The mechanisms chosen were “Concertación social” and the deployment of an innovative social policy that co-opted the survival strategies of the organized urban poor, the main social base of the combative antidictatorial mobilizations that rocked the Pinochet regime after 1983. Concertación social, expressed in a series of “Acuerdos Marcos” in the early 1990s, successfully subordinated labor demands to the requirements of a natural resource-based export economy. With respect to the urban poor, the innovation in social policy under Aylwin’s administration lay in its capacity to “identify and tap the energy of popular grassroots organizations, particularly the energies deployed by shantytown women in pursuit of ensuring the social reproduction of the urban poor” (Petras and Leiva 124). During the military regime, Concertación-affiliated social scientists systematized the experience of social movements, NGOs and community organizations, and underlined “the necessity that women incorporate themselves into the provision and participate in the delivery of community-based services, supporting such tasks as the delivery of health, education, childcare, care for the elderly and the sick, and cultural and recreational activities” (Raczynski 87). Heavily doused with the rhetoric of “participation,” both such mechanisms – Concertación social aimed at labor, and a novel social policy that consciously sought to appropriate and re-channel the social energy of subsistence organizations – proved themselves to be relatively successful in preventing significant levels of autonomy on the part of social movements, allowing the Concertación to effectively meet the challenge of “governability” it faced immediately after the end of the Pinochet regime. “Participation” and the Challenge of “Sacralizing the Market” under Frei (1994–1999) The electoral slogan of the second Concertación government promised that, if elected, Eduardo Frei Jr. would ring in the “New Times” for Chile. With a widespread sense of economic triumphalism fueled by almost a decade of high GDP growth rates, the Concertación leadership in 1993 became convinced that its second government signaled the “end of the transition.” Human rights as well as “governability” issues were deemed to have been successfully resolved under the previous Aylwin administration. If it was to successfully confront the challenges posed by the increasing internationalization of the Chilean economy, then the nation would have to be able “to turn the page,” leave behind the “ghosts of the ✩ 76 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 77 From Pinochet’s State Terrorism to the “Politics of Participation” past” and engage in “forward-looking” public debate. “Governability” no longer was conceived as a mere “consensus on fundamentals” among key political forces; rather, it was envisioned as Enrique Correa, a former SEGEGOB Minister under Aylwin, explained, as the “perception of shared benefits by all sectors rooted on the existing economic model. Or stated in negative terms, as a shared sense of the catastrophic damage that would come to pass from either the end or significant modifications in the economic model” (Correa [emphasis added]). Within this newly emerging perspective, an “optimal level” of governability would be accomplished only if it was based on a “genuine competitiveness” (Calderón). Thus, with the beginning of the “New Times” under Concertación II, the concept of “participation” was retooled, moving away from concerns about the excessive autonomy of civil society, towards the construction of a “new synthesis between market and the state,” all at the service of deepening Chile’s international competitiveness (Correa). The re-crafting of “politics of participation” undertaken under Frei enabled the ascendancy of a new policy discourse aptly described by a DOS researcher as “sacralization of the market” (Martínez, Modernización). The glorification of the market and economic model, carried out under the Frei administration of President Frei, would be a two-step affair. Initially, between 1994 and 1997, the power of the market was celebrated as the mechanism that would forcefully incorporate Chile’s poor into modernity (Leiva). After 1996, however, key Concertación intellectuals posited that globalization and market forces were not only uplifting the poor, but also were bringing about a veritable “cultural revolution” in Chilean society (Brunner, Tironi). Globalization and Chile´s Market-Based “Cultural Revolution” Three “center-left” Concertación intellectuals, Eugenio Tironi, Enrique Correa and Jose Joaquín Brunner, each one prominent post holders in SEGEGOB, played a decisive role within the Concertación in articulating the notion that markets and globalization contained not only the power to alleviate poverty but to also revolutionize all aspects of Chilean society, including culture and politics.3 By the mid-1990s, markets, modernization and globalization were seen as having transformed Chilean society into a more fluid and complex entity, bringing about significant changes in the form of participation, association, belonging and identity of social and political actors (Brunner). According to Eugenio Tironi, the storming of society by the consuming masses was engendering profound changes in Chilean society, increasing individualism and the retreat of politics: “Consumers generally act in a solitary manner. This is the reason why in ✩ 77 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 78 Fernando Leiva the emerging society, one cannot find evidence of the presence of the large collective organizations of the past. Consumers’ weapon of choice is not politics . . . ” (Tironi 226–7).4 In this market consecrating perspective, rising consumption rendered ‘futile’ or ‘romantic’ any attempts at promoting change through collective action. True, Chilean society was experiencing widespread feelings of frustration and dissatisfaction, but according to these three intellectuals, discontent was to be understood either as a reflection of the psychological costs of the transition to modernity or, on the other hand, as conservative reactions to the uncertainties inherent in a market economy (Martínez, Modernización). This second, totalizing, market sacralizing, liberal perspective reconceptualized “participation” within the Concertación. Enrique Correa, who had been SEGEGOB Minister under Aylwin, warned that the “profound changes” experienced by the State and society as a result of globalization, led to significant changes in their relationship: “That is why we must not identify participation with organized participation, which is only one of the genres that participation can take” (Correa, emphasis added).5 Not to be outdone by his FLACSO colleague and ministerial predecessor, Frei´s SEGEGOB Minister José Joaquín Brunner, countered rising critiques of the Frei administration, even from within the Concertación’s own ranks, by rejecting the notion that “participation” was in crisis. According to Brunner, those who criticized Concertación policies remained mired in the traditional associative model in which political parties represented, mediated and mobilized popular demands. According to Brunner, such critics neglected to acknowledge emergent, new forms of participation sweeping Chilean society: First of all, they tend to overlook those forms of participation which have the market as a foundation. As long as they fail to accept that consumption practices are vitally important modes of making oneself part of society, one mode of speaking society’s language, it will not be possible for them to adequately asses the new forms that social participation is taking (Brunner 12). With SEGEGOB Minister Brunner arguing that consumption and watching CNN6 constituted vitally important new forms of social participation, the ‘New Times’ Frei government could confidently delegate to the realm of market forces, concerns which had previously fallen under the purview of politics. Fashioned by Brunner, Correa and Tironi, this conceptualization consummated the “politics of participation” as “sacralization of the market”. The rhetoric glorifying the market and the rosy image portrayed was mercifully short-lived however. This overtly optimistic view was cruelly punctured by a series of events unfolding toward the end of 1998. General ✩ 78 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 79 From Pinochet’s State Terrorism to the “Politics of Participation” Pinochet´s arrest in London for “crimes against humanity” evidenced the wishful thinking behind government assertions that Chile´s transition had successfully concluded in 1993. Mass human rights protests and combative mobilizations by indigenous communities, workers and students, indicated insufficient schooling in the “futility of collective action.” Furthermore, globalization showed its ugly face even to Chile’s triumphalist elites: in the wake of the Asian financial crisis, the ‘contagion effect’ brought Chile’s thirteen-year-long economic boom to a screeching halt. Clearly, the post-1998 context called for yet another cycle of reconceptualizing “participation.” The Challenge of Producing Legitimacy Under Conditions of Globalization under Lagos (2000–2006) The Concertación III government headed by Ricardo Lagos promised Chileans a “New Deal” (Nuevo Trato). As the Concertación III electoral program reasoned, [i]n order to Grow with Equity, we need to grant greater power to the citizenry, so that it can more actively participate in decisions that pertain to their neighborhood, their community, their region, with a style of government closer to the people and with a policy more committed to an equitable distribution of resources” (“Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia, Programa de Gobierno” 48). Following-up on these campaign promises, on December 7, 2000 President Lagos signed the Instructivo Presidencial laying out the government’s plan to ensure participation in public policies at all levels of the executive power. On May 2, 2001, President Lagos announced the Compromiso para el Fortalecimiento de la Sociedad Civil, committing the government to new legislation, training, and funding mechanisms for strengthening civil society. Many of the concrete proposals contained in the Compromiso were the outcome of the Consejo de Fortalecimiento de la Participación Ciudadana, a consultative body made up of selected NGOs, political think tanks, private volunteer organizations and business foundations (Medioli). Both initiatives enjoyed political support from Chile’s largest NGOs, as well as technical and financial support of the Inter-American Development Bank. Indeed, Chile became the first country where the Inter-American Bank funded something like the US$ 15 million CH-0165 project, or “Program to Strengthen Alliances Between Civil Society and the State” (Yamada). This program was specifically designed for “providing support for generating favorable conditions so that the citizenry participate more actively in the design and implementation of actions aimed towards the common good” (IDB 7). ✩ 79 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 80 Fernando Leiva Seemingly reflecting Concertación III’s greater commitment to deepening Chilean democracy such a shift was based on less lofty concerns. Towards the end of the 1990s, Chile’s governing coalition and international development agencies arrived at a worrisome shared diagnosis: “[d]espite the efforts of these past years to resolve the main problems of the citizenry, recent research indicates a growing distancing between existing institutions and individuals” (MSGG 1 [emphasis added])7. Thus, under Lagos, we were to see the Concertación perform an elaborate discursive “double movement”: While on the one hand, it acknowledged the growing gap between individuals and institutions, on the other, it theorized such distancing was rooted outside the realm of Chilean politics, locating its source in the “epochal change” brought by the process of globalization sweeping the planet. Hence, the mirror upon which Chile’s political class every morning checked its image became “globalization,” not its own tortuous past. Hence, with the help of the Concertación III conception of “participation,” the root causes of increasing disenchantment with politics and political institutions were effectively displaced beyond Chile’s borders.8 The Instructivo and the Compromiso con la Sociedad Civil undertaken by President Lagos, therefore, reflected the quest for new forms of producing legitimacy within the governing coalition, but also echo shifts in the social policy concerns of international development institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank, transforming Chile once again into the laboratory for testing policies that – if successful – could be later generalized to the rest of Latin America.9 The new politics of participation or “Nuevo Trato” (New Contract) unfurled by the Lagos administration was produced by a broad array of ideological and politico-economic factors. On an intellectual level, its formulation can be explained by the sway held by Europe’s “Third Way” over Ricardo Lagos´ close advisors (Martínez, Ottone). The formulation of the Nuevo Trato was also informed by surveys carried out by the UNDP in preparation for the 1998 and 2000 Chile Human Development Reports. Both publications explored the marked “asynchronicity” between Chilean “modernity” and “subjectivity,” evidenced by an increasing sense of personal insecurity and mistrust detected in the midst of a booming economy. Additionally, the Nuevo Trato discourse also gained prominence because it contributed to establishing a common ground between two Concertación factions, increasingly divided between “auto-complacientes” (Brunner, Tironi, Correa, Foxley) and the “autoflagelantes” (Ominami, Escalona and others). This new discourse accomplished this feat by displacing the State/Market debates of the 1990s, towards a new axis: discussions on “civic values”, trust, associability and the strengthening ‘social capital’ needed in 21st century Chile. It is within such a context that Marcelo Martínez, chief in 2001 of ✩ 80 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 81 From Pinochet’s State Terrorism to the “Politics of Participation” SEGEGOB’s Division for Social Organizations’ Research Unit, and one of the main proponents of Nuevo Trato, argued that, given the epochal change under way, the only means available for saving the legitimacy of the State would be an alliance with a strong civil society, conceived as the articulation of actors capable of building horizontal and relatively stable networks of trust and cooperation (Martínez, “Nuevo Trato”). On a political level, then, Nuevo Trato emerged as the last best attempt at countering declining support for Chile’s economic and political institutions. To prevent the emergence of potentially problematic responses to the uncertainties and risks created by globalization, Jorge Navarrete, head of DOS, warned that individuals “need a reference line, an explanatory and argumentative horizon, a proyecto país” (Navarrete 4). The Lagos government’s politics of participation, the Nuevo Trato, sought precisely to provide such a horizon by fostering an “ethos of trust.” By enhancing the capacity to cooperate, it becomes possible for individuals “to acquire the skills enabling them to . . . live modern life” (4). To achieve such an objective, the State’s “politics of participation” has to draw on society’s “social capital,” namely that “set of social relations based on trust and cooperation that enable people to plan common actions for achieving socially valued objectives” (p. 4). In the context of globalization, therefore, political intervention by the State becomes crucial in the “battle to manage the so-called uncertainties and created risks attributable to the cultural process of present day modernization” (Navarrete 5). The new “politics of participation” adopted by the Lagos administration were designed to produce legitimacy for political institutions and the State under conditions of globalization by symbolically – not materially – reducing individual uncertainty.10 Thus, under Lagos, the “politics of participation” were fully displaced onto the psycho-cultural level of trust, cooperation, sociability, and individual management of “lifestyle” choices. In other words, the shaping of subjectivity, not the material conditions of existence, became rhetorically the preferred arena for State intervention. Conclusion: Contradictions in the Politics of Participation Notwithstanding the vast array of intellectual and material forces behind their conceptualization, launching and management, this latest incarnation of the “politics of participation” evidences serious internal tensions and inconsistencies. ✩ 81 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 82 Fernando Leiva Strengthen “Civil Society” or the Profits Rate: While rhetorically emphasizing the principles of democracy, transparency and accountability, the current “politics of participation” do not promote their extension to key sites of the economy such as the point of production, property relations or the sphere of reproduction. The nature of Chile’s export-oriented model, in which profits are tied to the export of natural resources with low levels of processing produced by cheap and unprotected labor, places structural limitations to the ultimate plausibility of the “politics of participation.” “Citizen participation” is banned from all sites – workplaces, markets, corporations, the private pension companies that manage the savings of Chilean workers, or institutions like the Central Bank – where the exercise of such principles could threaten the rights of international productive and financial capital, the concentration of power by local economic conglomerates or a labor legislation that guarantees an ample supply of cheap, malleable male and female labor (cf. Volker Frank’s chapter in this volume). Destroying the Social Fabric Through “Participation”: The most salient inconsistency is to be found at the level of policy outcomes. In their evolving formulation, the “politics of participation” have contributed to destroy, not strengthen, the social fabric of Chilean society, particularly in popular sectors. Under Aylwin and Frei, massive governmental programs sought to transform community-based organizations (communal soup kitchens, talleres, health groups, etc.) into micro-enterprises. Drawn out, internationally funded micro-enterprise training programs sought to eradicate traditional values of solidarity, democracy and collective identity from the consciousness of the membership, replacing them with individualism, competition, hierarchy and profit-driven rationality that is the mark of the successful entrepreneur. The outcome has been the destruction and cooptation of the majority of these community organizations (Petras and Leiva, Leiva, Schild, Paley). Towards the mid 1990s, the “politics of participation” revolved around governmental Competitive Funds (Fondos Concursables) tailored for separate target populations (indigenous people, youth, neighborhood associations, disabled, cultural workers, etc.). The idea was that leaders from each of these sectors, in competition with each other, would present funding proposals for specific community-improvement projects (paving streets, building a soccer field, establishing a rehab center, etc.). By 1996, fifty-five different Competitive Funds set up by the State and the Fondo de las Americas operated in Chile.11 This new mechanism for the allocation of funds – pioneered in Chile under FOSIS – required again extensive training programs, so that community leaders could become intermediaries – creators and managers – of the “participatory projects” deemed presentable for funding. However, instead of strengthening the local social fabric, in many instances the Competitive Funds have had the opposite effect. The director of CORDILLERA, a well-respected Santiago ✩ 82 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 83 From Pinochet’s State Terrorism to the “Politics of Participation” NGO that has pioneered work on issues of municipal democratization, local government and local development, considers that “participatory policies rain down on people,” but policies like the Fondos Concursables “have led to the destruction of sociability” in many communities (de la Jara). First, the Competitive Funds promote a task, project, and efficiencyoriented mentality. “People work in the Participatory Pavements. The celebration inaugurating the finished work comes, and that’s the end of social participation. Everybody then goes home” (de la Jara). Individualistic “User” or Citizenship/Popular Sovereignty: The “politics of participation” rhetorically emphasizes “civil society” and “citizen involvement.” Upon closer examination, the “politics of participation” do so in a ways that hollow out traditional liberal representative democracy. Participation and accountability are exulted only in the limited realm of selected public policies and programs. At the same time, the new discourse recasts the political identity of Chileans fundamentally as consumers and/or the individualistic “users” of limited public services. As a result, participation is delinked from broader, foundational, collective concepts of popular sovereignty and socio-economic citizenship. The persistence of “designated” and “life-long” senators, a binomial political system under the permanent tutelage of the military, a 1980 Constitution under the guardianship of a National Security Council and Constitutional Tribunal that trumps popular sovereignty, make Chile, at best, a “procedural democracy” quite limited by international standards. The Concertación’s fifteen-year long endorsement of the 1980 Constitution and of the resulting “low intensity” democracy cannot be ignored explaining the eroding legitimacy of political institutions. In the December 2001 elections, for example, 40 percent of all Chileans with the right to vote expressed their discontent with the political system, either by not registering in the electoral rolls, casting a blank vote, or annulling their vote. In sum, the “politics of participation” embraced by the Concertación and international development agencies should be understood in the context of consolidating and legitimizing neoliberal restructuring, inoculating against “reform fatigue,” and addressing the loss of legitimacy of political institutions inherent to the new export-oriented and internationally integrated pattern of accumulation. In such a context, they constitute part of a hegemonic project of legitimizing neoliberal restructuring, rather than of strengthening of a genuine democracy where Chile’s popular sectors have voice and effective decision-making over key variables of socio-economic life. Overcoming such a constraint remains one of the main legacies and challenges of September 11, 1973. Works Cited ✩ 83 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 84 Fernando Leiva Brunner, José J., “Participación y democracia: viejos y nuevos dilemas,” Mimeo., Santiago: Ministerio Secretaría General de Gobierno. División de Organizaciones Sociales, 1996. Cáceres D., Viviana and Jeri, Tamara. “Participación y estado: viejos y nuevos discursos para el “Nuevo Trato,” Documento de Discusión No. 1. Santiago de Chile: División de Organizaciones Sociales, Ministerio Secretaría General de Gobierno, 2000. Calderón, Fernando. “Governance, Competitiveness and Social Integration,” CEPAL Review 57 (1995): 45–56. Chalmers, D., et al., eds. The New Politics of Inequality in Latin America: Rethinking Participation and Representation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia. Programa de gobierno Concertación III. Santiago: 1999. ——. Más sociedad y más participación. Programa del segundo gobierno de la Concertación sobre participación social. Santiago, 1994. Correa, Enrique “Participación ciudadana y gobernabilidad,” Primer Seminario Conceptual Sobre Participación Ciudadana y Evaluación de Políticas Públicas. Segunda Sesión. FLACSO, 30 de Junio de 1997, Santiago Chile. <http://www.eurosur.org/FLACSO/confere2.htm#part4> de la Jara, Ana María. Executive Director, CORDILLERA. Personal Interview. August 10, 2001, Santiago. Foxley, Alejandro “Algunas condiciones para una democratización estable: el caso de Chile,” Colección Estudios CIEPLAN No. 9 (December). Santiago: CIEPLAN, 1982. Greaves, Edward F. “Municipality and Community in Chile: Building Imagined Civic Communities and Its Impact on the Political” Politics and Society, Vol. 32 No. 2, June (2004): 203–230 Inter-American Development Bank “Chile Country Paper,” February 21, 2001. ——. “Chile: Préstamo de innovación. Programa para fortalecer alianzas entre la sociedad civil y el estado” (CH-0165). Leiva, Fernando. Los límites de la lucha contra la pobreza y el dilema de las ONGs. Santiago: Ediciones PAS, 1995. Martínez K., Marcelo. “La sociedad civil en Chile. Precisiones conceptuales y rol de las elites,” El Utopista Pragmático, 2001. Internet. 15 March 2005. <http://www.primeralinea.cl> ——. “Nuevo Trato: alcances políticos y conceptuales para una política nacional y transversal de participación ciudadana,” Documento de Discusión No. 2. Santiago de Chile: División de Organizaciones Sociales, Ministerio Secretaría General de Gobierno. 2000. ——. “Compresión de la cultura no ciudadana en Chile,” Ciudadanía en chile: el desafío cultural del nuevo milenio. Ed. Daniel Farcas. Santiago: Ministerio Secretaría General de Gobierno. División de Organizaciones Sociales. Departamento de Estudios, 1999. ——. “Modernización, modernidad y participación en Chile: límites y perspectivas para una situación epocal,” Documento de Trabajo No. 3. Santiago 1999 Medioli, Ana María. President of the Asociación Nacional de ONGS, Acción AG, 5. Personal Interview. August 2001, Santiago de Chile. ✩ 84 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 85 From Pinochet’s State Terrorism to the “Politics of Participation” MIDEPLAN. Participación de la comunidad en el desarrollo social. Logros y proyecciones. Santiago: MIDEPLAN, 1992 Ministerio Secretaría General de Gobierno. División de Organizaciones Sociales. “Plan para el fortalecimiento de las organizaciones sociales de la sociedad civil,” Mimeo, Santiago, 2 de Mayo de 2001. ——. “Fondos y programas gubernamentales concursables para organizaciones sociales,” Documento de Trabajo. Santiago, SEGEGOB, 2001. ——. Balance 2000. Santiago: Ministerio Secretaría General de Gobierno. División de Organizaciones Sociales. Departamento de Información, 2000. ——. “Participación social y estado: elementos conceptuales y programáticos relativos al rol de la división de organizaciones sociales,” Documento Interno de Trabajo No. 1 (Agosto de 1994) Navarrete, Jorge. “Presentación” Confianza Social en Chile: desafíos y Proyecciones. Santiago: Unidad de Investigación y Desarrollo. DOS. MSGG, 2001 Ottone, Ernesto. “Algunas reflexiones sobre la tercera vía: a propósito de la reunión de Berlin” Colección Ideas No. 1 (Julio 2000) Paley, Julia. Marketing Democracy: Power and Social Movements in PostDictatorship Chile. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001. Petras, James and Fernando I. Leiva. Democracy and Poverty in Chile: The Limits to Electoral Politics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994. Posner, Paul W. “Local Democracy and the Transformation of Popular Participation in Chile” Latin American Politics and Society, 46, 3 (2004). Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD). Informe de desarrollo humano sobre Chile 2000: mas sociedad para gobernar el futuro. Santiago: Naciones Unidas, 2000. ——. Informe de desarrollo humano sobre Chile 1998; Las paradojas de la modernización. Santiago: Naciones Unidas,1998. Raczynski, Dagmar. “Apoyo a pequeñas unidades productivas en sectores pobres: lecciones de políticas,” Notas Técnicas CIEPLAN No. 133 (September) Santiago: CIEPLAN, 1989. Schild, Verónica. “Neoliberalism’s New Gendered Market Citizens: The ‘Civilizing’ Dimensions of Social Programmes in Chile,” Citizenship Studies 4, 3 (2000): 275–305. Tironi, Eugenio. La irrupción de las masas y el malestar de las elites. Santiago de Chile: Grijalbo, 1999. Vilas, Carlos. “Participation, Inequality, and the Whereabouts of Democracy.” The New Politics of Inequality in Latin America: Rethinking Participation and Representation. Ed. Douglas Chalmers et al. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Yamada, Gustavo. “Reducción de la pobreza y fortalecimiento del capital social y la participación: la acción reciente del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo.” Paper presented to the Regional Conference on Social Capital and Poverty, ECLAC, Santiago de Chile (2000) 24–26. Notes 1 Refers to the political coalition Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia, ✩ 85 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 86 Fernando Leiva 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 originally formed in early 1988 and conformed today by the Socialist Party (PS), the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), the Party for Democracy (PPD) and the Radical Social Democratic Party (PRSD). It played a key role in Chile’s negotiated transition and has been elected to office on three occasions since 1989. A 1994 internal SEGEGOB document, for example, acknowledged that attempts to define the limits and scope of the concept of ‘participation’, its ‘operationalization’, and more broadly, “its links with public policies and the government’s action over civil society” reveal that, “such concepts have remained an object of debate and continuous change within the Concertación government” (MSGG, Participación social 2). Eugenio Tironi was Director of Communications and Press from 1990–1994; Enrique Correa was Minister of SEGEGOB from 1990–1994; J. J. Brunner was Minister of SEGEGOB from 1994 to 1998. All translations are mine, unless otherwise indicated. The rejection of “organized participation” leads Correa, a member of the Socialist Party, to champion privatization particularly in the health field for ensuring citizen participation (Correa). Correa´s increasingly liberal views, his lobbying activities on behalf of transnational corporations, led to his abandonment of the Socialist Party in August 2004 due his unwillingness to antagonize clients and support the Lagos government in the failed efforts to raise taxes paid by foreign mining multinationals. Minister Brunner indicates that consumption, “Además de servir una función vital, el consumo constituye una escenificación de la sociabilidad; una manera de estilizar la vida en común. De allí que sea en torno a esta experiencia de participación –la del consumo- donde crecientemente se estructuran nuevas formas asociativas, que buscan proteger los derechos ciudadanos dentro del mercado, en términos medioambientales, o de calidad y precio de los productos, o bajo diversas otras modalidades” (Brunner 12–13). The 2001 Third Survey on Chilean Youth determined that only 39% of those in the 18–29 age range had registered in the electoral rolls (La Tercera, September 2, 2001). This suggests that roughly only two out of every five 18–29 year olds are interested in exercising the “citizenship” offered by the political system based on Pinochet’s 1980 Constitution. For a country with historically high rates of electoral participation, these figures caused concern and public debate. A report by the Ministerio Secretaría General de Gobierno stated as much: “Even though the causes for such phenomenon [the distancing between institutions and individuals] are explicable within a global process that encompasses not only our country, the current government has the conviction and the will to bridge such gap” (MSGG, Plan para el Fortalecimiento 1). An insufficiently studied factor in the evolution of Chilean politics over the past decade is the intensely symbiotic relationship established between the high level staff of international development agencies such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the IMF, the United Nation’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the United Nations Program for Development (UNDP) and Concertación ✩ 86 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 87 From Pinochet’s State Terrorism to the “Politics of Participation” political advisers, leaders and policymakers. Such a relationship facilitates the circulation, virtually without delay within the Concertación’s intellectual policy elite of the latest policy discourses elaborated by the international development establishment. Likewise, it has also allowed for the “lessons of Chile” to be continually incorporated into the policy formulation of international development agencies. 10 As Marcelo Martínez, chief of the Research Unit of the División de Organizaciones Sociales, emphasizes: “This is why both the proposals of this international body [the UNDP] as well as the policies of the Chilean government, what has been called Nuevo Trato, is a proposition that seeks to strengthen civil society, social capital, care for and deepen the different forms of sociability, promote relations of trust and cooperation; in sum, to strengthen social bonds among individuals” (Martínez, “Nuevo Trato” 16). 11 The Fondo de las Americas was set up jointly by the US and Chilean governments as part of the 1991 Bush Initiative for the Americas, the precursor of NAFTA and the FTAA. ✩ 87 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 6 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 88 sustainable development or sustained conflict? Logging Companies, Neoliberal Policies, and Mapuche Communities in Chile Diane Haughney Chile has been considered an example of successful economic restructuring and democratic transition.1 Its neoliberal growth strategy and legal framework, however, have fostered an increase in inequality and concentration of wealth and resources. Moreover, the emphasis on the exploitation of natural resources has had deleterious economic, social, and cultural impacts. The threats to subsistence and cultural integrity of Mapuche communities have helped promote a shift in Mapuche organizations, from demands focused on the land claims of specific communities, to demands for collective territorial rights. These new demands challenge corporate profits, neoliberal priorities of the government, and the traditional conception of Chile as an ethnically homogenous national society. Furthermore, some of the most militant Mapuche organizations have broken with past strategic patterns by adopting an autonomous stance from partisan alliances. The Center-Left Concertación government, for its three administrations since the transition from military rule, has attempted to channel Mapuche demands into small-scale targeted assistance programs, and has repressed organization leaders and activists who call for political autonomy and territorial control of economic resources on lands claimed by Mapuche communities. The conflict between the logging companies, the Concertación government, and Mapuche communities highlights the contradiction between the government’s neoliberal priorities and Mapuche demands for collective rights. The Concertación has defined development as the simultaneous achievement of three goals: ✩ 88 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 89 Sustainable Development or Sustained Conflict? 1 the highest rate of growth possible; 2 equal opportunities and equitable development; and 3 protection of the environment.2 Government policies, however, have favored the goal of high growth. The rapid, deregulated, industrial exploitation of natural resources has led to the demographic collapse of some marine species, the depletion of native forests and water resources, and the degradation of the environment (Arnold, Claude 83–87, CODEFF). Chile’s dynamic growth intensifies existing inequalities of income and wealth. Neoliberal principles and the concentration in ownership negate social claims to resources vital to life and the functioning of natural ecosystems. Indigenous peoples’ demand for the right to pursue their own development model conflict with the tendencies of large capitalist enterprises to exert control over factors of production: land, resources, labor, investment decisions, and capital. The Logging Sector: Protagonist of the Neoliberal Growth Model Neoliberal development strategy calls for a reduction of the state’s redistributive, regulatory, and productive roles in order to allow market forces to promote the most efficient use of resources. Chile’s logging sector, however, has become one of the leading economic sectors because of state support, and, indeed, is a prime example of the extreme concentration of wealth and resources fostered by the military regime’s neoliberal restructuring. Before the mid 1970s, the Chilean state had promoted the logging sector by special incentives beneficial to industry and property holders, large and small, as well as through state enterprises. After the coup in 1973, the military regime sold state-owned enterprises and lands at “firesale” prices to private investment conglomerates of national and foreign capital, leading to concentrations of wealth and resources that surpassed pre-1973 levels (Dahse, Fazio, Rozas and Marín). In addition, and contrary to neoliberal principles, the military regime gave logging companies enormous subsidies for establishing tree plantations and tax exemptions for maintaining them. By the 1980s, the logging sector had become the third most important earner of foreign exchange, after mining and export agriculture (Banco Central 2000; Instituto Forestal 1992: 10; 1997). Three conglomerates dominate the logging sector, controlling numerous subsidiaries and subcontractors with a mostly seasonal, lowpaid work force. Approximately 75 percent of the work force in the forestry sector is hired on a contract basis, with little or no benefits or ✩ 89 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 90 Diane Haughney union organization; the organized labor force is in the paper mills and wood pulp factories (Seguel).3 This structure exemplifies the neoliberal production pattern, and reproduces the concentration of wealth and the “socialization” of negative impacts on local and regional economies. In comparison to the large agricultural and cattle estates, tree plantations provide much fewer seasonal jobs and no tax revenues to local governments. Yet the logging sector is a “price-taker” with respect to the world market. The volume of Chilean forestry exports is miniscule in comparison to other world producers. Chile produces only 3 percent of the world’s wood pulp exports. The sector concentrates on a few products (wood pulp, wood chips, and logs) and exports primarily to a few countries (the United States and Japan are the most important markets), leaving the sector very vulnerable to fluctuations in price and demand. Chile’s economy suffered a 2–year recession when the Asian markets fell into recession in the late 1990s. Government deregulation has weakened or eliminated legal mechanisms for monitoring and correcting negative social and environmental impacts caused by the use of chemicals, the depletion of water tables by fast-growing non-native trees, and the loss of native plants used by Mapuche communities. Mapuche Demands for Land The Mapuche have raised demands for land and other concrete benefits since 1910, through ethnic organizations linked to the full range of Chilean parties, from the Right to the Left of the political spectrum. For the most part, however, these demands have been the claims of specific communities for the return of reservation lands granted to them by the state after the Chilean Armed Forces defeated the Mapuche in 1883. Since the 1930s, Mapuche communities have filed claims in courts demanding the return of lands granted to them by the state that neighboring estates had usurped. Generally the courts stalled action on these lawsuits, or ruled against Mapuche claims. In some cases, rulings favorable to the Mapuche communities were never carried out because of the political influence of large landlords. During the era of Agrarian Reform (1964–1973) many communities regained lands by taking them over, thus forcing the government to expropriate the estates. This period of mobilization encouraged by the far-left represents a peak and surpassed efforts by the Allende government to control the pace of expropriations. These takeovers pressured the Chilean Congress to pass a new indigenous law in September 1972 that reflected in part proposals of Mapuche organizations. At the same time, political conflict increased in Chile. Even before the coup, the military carried out ✩ 90 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 91 Sustainable Development or Sustained Conflict? a campaign of physical repression of Mapuche and Chilean activists, and once in power, the dictatorship returned expropriated estates to former owners. Many of these landlords later sold their properties to logging companies, as their traditional agricultural activities became less profitable with the lowering of tariffs on imports. In addition, in 1978, the military regime imposed individual titles on Mapuche lands, and decreed that in twenty years indigenous lands would no longer be protected from sale.4 The intention was to promote the end of communal forms of ownership, thereby facilitating the transfer of indigenous lands to large estates or corporate owners. Mapuche organizations protested this decree-law, rallying communities throughout the three regions of historic settlement, but the movement could not stop the subdivision of the communities. Indeed, some Mapuche willingly accepted private title, hoping for subsidies to improve housing and more secure landownership. The Mapuche movement, however, succeeded in getting the issue of the protection of indigenous land on the political agenda of the democratic coalition, the Concertación, which became the new democratic government in 1990. The Concertación succeeded in having Congress pass a new indigenous law in 1993 that recognized indigenous communities and prohibited the sale of indigenous lands to non-indigenous. The Concertación, however, did not undertake a comprehensive review of land conflicts, relegating them instead to the courts and offering subsidies for purchase of more lands. Expropriation had been on the political agenda during the 1960s and early 1970s; it no longer was in the 1990s – except for major industrial projects or public works. Natural Resources, Social Claims, and Neoliberal Property Regimes Neoliberalism restricts the scope of public oversight and decision-making, and enlarges the range and jurisdiction of private sector actors. Although the Chilean state continues to “own” subsoil resources, it sells the right to explore for and exploit mineral resources and water. The military regime amended the mining and water codes to promote private exploitation, and reduced or eliminated the state’s power to supervise or regulate private use of these “national” resources. The neoliberal property regime promotes individually held title, but overlooks inequalities among property owners that leave smallholders vulnerable. The military regime imposed individual title on Mapuche living in reservations, but they were not informed about the need to secure private water rights or mineral concessions. Once communal lands were divided and individual property rights established, land conflicts would be considered settled. ✩ 91 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 92 Diane Haughney The Concertación has trumped its own reforms of indigenous and environmental laws by supporting major industrial and infrastructure projects over the rights of indigenous communities. Logging companies reject the land claims of Mapuche communities, and assert that the companies’ prosperity contributes to national development and regional wealth. In fact, while the logging sector produces roughly 11% of the foreign exchange, the establishment of tree plantations and wood processing plants correlates with increases in local unemployment, continued high percentages of poverty, and migration from those localities (Unda and Stuarda). Attempts to resolve land conflicts in the courts or through negotiations under the auspices of the new state indigenous development agency, the Comisión Nacional por el Derecho de la Identidad (CONADI), mean slow, piecemeal resolution of some of the most difficult situations, but leave many others unresolved. By the 1990s, many of the plantations of pine and eucalyptus had reached harvest size, but their rapid rate of growth had also depleted water tables. Pesticides and herbicides had contaminated soil and water. Small game animals, livestock, and sometimes humans suffered from toxic poisonings. The logging companies planted trees over their entire properties, eliminating remnants of native forests and plants that Mapuche communities used in traditional medicine and religious ceremonies (Catalán Laborías and Ramos Antiqueo, Grupo de Investigaciones Agrarias, Identidad Territorial Lafkenche). Innovations in Mapuche Demands and Strategies These comprehensive threats to subsistence, property, cultural practices, and the ineffectiveness of the new indigenous law, have helped promote a shift in Mapuche demands and in strategic patterns of raising claims. Beginning in the early 1980s, Mapuche activists reevaluated their demands and strategies. Some activists began to demand territorial political autonomy and constitutional recognition of the status of “a people.” These ethno-national demands clashed with party priorities that aimed at ending the dictatorship. The Mapuche movement, united in one organization when it first re-emerged in 1978 to protest the Pinochet decree law, split several times during the 1980s in disagreements over the ethnic versus partisan priorities, as well as over strategies to end the dictatorship. In 1988, on the verge of the plebiscite over the continuance in power of General Pinochet, a sector of the Mapuche movement (later known as the organization Consejo de Todas las Tierras) began a series of land occupations to assert not only demands for the return of specific lands, but also territorially-based political autonomy.5 A Mapuche non-governmental institution, the Centro de Estudios de Documentación Mapuche ✩ 92 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 93 Sustainable Development or Sustained Conflict? Liwen, also called for political autonomy, but unlike the Consejo, Liwen’s proposal called for a statute of regional autonomy and a regional parliament and executive popularly elected by all the population, Mapuche and non-Mapuche. By the time of the transition, the fourteen party coalition called the Concertación had promised a new indigenous law, but rejected demands for territorial political autonomy. Some party leaders of the Concertación also objected to demands for the constitutional recognition of the status of “a people” (for example, current President Ricardo Lagos said “we are 13 million Chileans” in 1990). The Concertación might promote the recognition of a “multi-cultural” society within the Chilean nation, but party elites from the Right to the Left opposed the recognition of a “multinational” society or collective political or economic rights. The new democratic government reacted harshly to the direct action campaign of peaceful takeovers organized by the Consejo de Todas las Tierras, eventually detaining and charging 144 members of communities and activists under the Law of Internal Security of the State.6 Moderate Mapuche organizations linked to the Concertación, as well as independent Mapuche organizations and Chilean academics, protested the use of this law, even as they denounced the land takeovers as ill-advised at such a sensitive moment in the transition. Mapuche activists and organizations continued to voice demands for broad, collective political and territorial rights during the 1990s. In the first half of the 1990s, new organizations worked quietly at the grassroots, calling for the defense of community lands and territory, or culture and territory.7 Organizations that had emerged under the dictatorship and had ties to the parties of the Concertación withered away during the democratic era, while the Consejo suffered a loss of grassroots support. Consejo would recover some of its base support toward the second half of the 1990s, and in the interim, its colorful, articulate leader, Aucán Huilcamán, would make a name for himself internationally in forums for indigenous organizations. The new, autonomist Mapuche organizations aimed at the revitalization of cultural practices and the affirmation of values such as reciprocity, solidarity, and the sustainable use of resources, in opposition to the individualistic, consumption-driven values of neoliberalism. These new claims put concrete material demands in a context of a broader solution – collective rights to territory and political autonomy (Coordinadora, Identidad Territorial Lafkenche, Naguil, Toledo).8 Such demands called for innovations in strategy as well. Militant Mapuche organizations espousing these new demands distanced themselves from their former partisan allies in the Concertación. For these militants, sympathy with, or membership in, a Concertación party means subordinating Mapuche claims to government and party priorities, ✩ 93 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 94 Diane Haughney which these militants reject as an unacceptable sell-out of principles. Some oppose neoliberal capitalism outright and use direct action tactics; others pressure the government in a variety of ways but remain open to negotiation. The nature of cultural revival implies a participatory process, not a vanguard or elitist strategy. Mapuche activists of these organizations meet with supporters in assemblies in which communities decide upon actions; they revive traditional ceremonies and incorporate them into protests and land occupations. Mapuche student organizations and urban organizations join protests and land occupations in solidarity with rural communities. In this way, younger generations and urban Mapuche who perhaps never learned traditional ceremonies, practices, or languages from their parents, have begun to learn them from their rural relatives. This dynamic – not always easy – has begun to bridge distrust caused by differences in the level of education, everyday habits, age, and closeness or distance from “traditional” culture. New forms of organizations have arisen, based upon traditional territorial settlement in rural areas or on the reality of second- and third-generation urban residence.9 At times, these organizations establish coordinating organizations that link grassroots organizations without denying them autonomy.10 There is a continual effort among activists to find common ground for confronting the state and the economic model. To date, however, the movement remains ideologically and tactically divided. Some militant organizations also asserted their rights in new, extra-institutional ways – in “productive takeovers” – in which community members planted crops on land they claimed or harvested trees and sold the wood (in some cases, the communities had actually planted those trees under government programs in the late 1960s). All age groups participated in the land occupations that generally included traditional religious ceremonies. Government Response: Repression and Attempts to Divide and Co-opt The burning of three logging trucks on December 1, 1997 marked the beginning of the radicalization of conflict. Logging company officials immediately contacted the Regional Executive, demanding the invocation of the Law of Internal Security of the State and police protection (Lillo). The Regional Executive (who is appointed by the Chilean President) complied, and asserted that the burning of the trucks constituted an act of terrorism. The Minister of Interior claimed that subversive groups were involved. Police rounded up twelve individuals, held them incommunicado longer than the law permitted, and intimidated them during ✩ 94 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 95 Sustainable Development or Sustained Conflict? interrogation into signing confessions. Only some of the twelve knew how to read and managed to alter their statements. They were eventually sentenced under the Internal Security Law for having committed “actions contravening the normal activity of private business and transport” (Informe). The severity and speed of the government’s response and the tenor of the statements of public officials and logging company representatives point to a coincidence of interpretation and interests. Both government officials and logging executives found threatening the increasing strength of these militant autonomous Mapuche organizations. Demands for collective rights as “a people” including territorial control over resources and political autonomy challenge corporate profits and escape efforts by the Concertación to channel Mapuche demands into targeted subsidies and individual legal arbitration. Since that incident, the Concertación, first under Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, and later under the social-democratic (Party for Democracy, PPD) Ricardo Lagos, tried to repress militant organizations and co-opt moderates. Police contingents guarded logging camps and trucks; violently broke up land occupations with busloads of special forces; placed intercepts on telephones of activists and lawyers of defendants; and imprisoned and charged numerous activists under both the Law of Internal Security of the State and, since September 11, 2001, also under the Anti-Terrorist Law (Castro et al., Coordinadora, El Diario Austral, 20 January 1998; Human Rights Watch 2004; La Tercera, 19 January 1999: 9). In an effort to isolate radicals and on the eve of the general elections of 1999, the Concertación launched a series a “dialogues” with Mapuche communities to hear their demands “directly” without the intermediation of organizations. Concertación presidential candidate Ricardo Lagos announced a program of subsidies for productive and social projects, more student scholarships, promises of more land for Mapuche communities, and a commission that would study the history of Mapuche demands and make recommendations for “recognition of historic debt” of the Chilean state. Privately, a top Socialist party official told a group of Mapuche professionals that the business leaders and the military consider demands for collective rights and direct action tactics to be threats to national security. This party leader told the Mapuches that they should not press for these rights, but rather allow party and government leaders to set the pace and scope of reform, or they risked losing the newly won democratic regime. The conflict remains at a stalemate. Currently, the Concertación has detained over a hundred activists, and condemned several leaders and activists under the Law of Internal Security of the State and the AntiTerrorist Law. Government policies aim at addressing problems of ✩ 95 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 96 Diane Haughney poverty and improving access to education, markets, and subsidies for purchase of land or starting micro-enterprises. These programs have not resulted in a lessening of poverty among Mapuche, nor offer sufficient benefits to establish clientelist ties. In an era of strict fiscal policies and the promotion of growth via conglomerates, the Concertación’s commitment to neoliberalism undermines its own efforts to placate Mapuche organizations or co-opt support. All three administrations of the Concertación have rejected demands for territorially based political autonomy as a threat to the integrity of the unitary Chilean state. Militant Mapuche activists reject the neoliberal model and demand the right to pursue alternative development paths. In contrast to historical demands raised in the period before 1973 for the restoration of community lands, Mapuche activists now stress collective political and economic rights, on the grounds of being a distinct people – not Chileans. Mapuche activists argue that territorial rights over natural resources and land, and political autonomy at regional or provincial levels, are necessary to flourish as a distinct culture and people, and point to international norms regarding the rights of indigenous peoples. Actors representing corporate capital assert that demands for autonomy, and granting indigenous peoples the legal status of “a people,” pose threats both to private interests and national security. Finally, economic elites’ objections to collective rights claims of indigenous peoples follow historic patterns of state policy and national ideologies that equate national homogeneity with national security. Works Cited Arnold, Franz. Sustitución de Bosque Nativo en Chile. Destrucción de un valioso patrimonio natural. Santiago: CODEFF and Amigos de la Tierra – Chile,1998. Banco Central. Boletín Mensual, 2000. Castro, Milka. Debbie Guerra, Roberto Morales, Eduardo Parry, Rodrigo Sepúlvedra. Informe de la Comisión de Observadores de la Comunidad ‘Temulemu.’ Santiago:Colegio de Antropólogos de Chile, A.G.,1999. Catalán Laborías, Rodrigo and Ruperto Ramos Antiqueo. Pueblo Mapuche, Bosque Nativo y Plantaciones Forestales. Las causas subyacentes de la deforestación en el Sur de Chile. Temuco, Chile: Ediciones Universidad Católica de Temuco,1999. Claude, Marcel. Una Vez Más la Miseria: ¿Es Chile un País Sustentable? Santiago: LOM, 1997. CODEFF. El Futuro del Bosque Nativo Chileno: Un Desafío de Hoy. Santiago: CODEFF, 1992.11 Dahse, Fernando. El Mapa de la Extrema Riqueza. Los grupos económicos y el proceso de concentración de capitales. Santiago: Editorial Aconcagua, 1979. Fazio, Hugo. Mapa Actual de la Extrema Riqueza en Chile. Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 1997. ✩ 96 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 97 Sustainable Development or Sustained Conflict? Grupo de Investigaciones Agrarias. “Transformación forestal y medio ambiente.” Agricultura y Sociedad 4, 42–44 (1986). Haughney, Diane. “Neoliberal Restructuring, Regime Transition, and Indigenous Peoples in Chile: The Mapuche Movement in the 1990s.” Diss. The City University of New York, 2001. Human Rights Watch. “Undue Process: Terrorism Trials, Military Courts, and the Mapuche in Southern Chile.” Human Rights Watch and the Observatorio de Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas Human Rights Watch 16 (5 B), 2004. Identidad Territorial Lafkenche. De la Deuda Histórica Nacional al Reconocimiento de Nuestros Derechos Territoriales. Tirúa, Provincia de Arauco, VIII Region, Chile, 1999. Informe de la Comisión Especial de Observadores de la Sociedad Civil para Conocer de los Hechos Ocurridos en las Comunidades Mapuche de Lumaco, 1997. Senén Conejeros, et al.12 Manuscript, 1997. Instituto Forestal (INFOR). El Sector Forestal en Chile. Santiago: INFOR, 1992. ——. Estadísticas Forestales. IX Región. Santiago: INFOR, 1997 Lillo V, Rodrigo. “Aspectos jurídicos: Rol del Estado en el conflicto del Pueblo Mapuche” Pueblo Mapuche y Expansión Forestal. (Speech delivered at the conference “Pueblo Mapuche y Expansión Forestal” at the Catholic University of Temuco, July 1998). Santiago: Programa Chile Sustentable (1999): 13–17. Naguil Gómez, Víctor. “Desarrollo Mapuche y Derecho de Autodeterminación,” Liwen 4 (June). Temuco, Chile: Centro de Estudios y Documentación Mapuche Liwen, (1997): 8–35. Rozas, Patricio and Gustavo Marín. 1988: El Mapa de la Extrema Riqueza 10 años después. Santiago: Cesoc-Pries-Cono Sur, 1989. Seguel, Alfredo. El Poder Fáctico de las Empresas Forestales en Chile. ¿A quién se enfrenta el Pueblo Mapuche? September 2003. Posted on the web page of Ñuke Mapu <www.mapuche.info.scorpionshops.com/fakta/reportaje030129. html> Toledo Llancaqueo, Víctor. “Todas las aguas. El subsuelo, las riberas, las tierras. Notas sobre las (des)protección de los derechos indígenas sobre sus recursos naturales y contribución a una política de defensa,” Liwen 4 (June), Temuco, Chile: Centro de Estudios y Documentación Mapuche Liwen, (1997): 36–79. Unda, Alfredo and Alejandro Stuarda. Expansión Forestal en la Novena Región y Desarrollo Sustentable. Study conducted in conjunction with the International Labor Organization. Santiago: Instituto Forestal, División de Estudios Ambientales, 1995. Notes 1 2 This chapter condenses analysis contained in two chapters of a book in preparation by the author, based upon her doctoral dissertation, “Neoliberal Restructuring, Regime Transition, and Indigenous Peoples in Chile: The Mapuche Movement in the 1990s,” to be published by the University Press of Florida. The author spent eight years in Chile from August 1992 to November 2000. See the testimony by then Secretary General of the Presidency, Juan Villarzú (DC) in the Actas of the Eighth Session of the Chamber of Deputies, 12 June 1997: 12. ✩ 97 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 98 Diane Haughney 3 Jorge González, president of the Chilean Federation of Forestry Workers in July of 2000 qtd. byAlfredo Seguel. 4 The Chilean state had granted lands in common title to groups of Mapuche, who then worked the land as individual households, although they often cooperated in times of harvest, to prepare ground for planting, or pooled resources. For example, someone with more land but fewer livestock might offer land as grazing area to another who had less land but more animals. Relatives and grown children who left to find work in the cities might return for holidays or to help with work, thus retaining active claims to land and membership in the community. Subdivison of Mapuche lands threatened these customs. 5 The Consejo called for autonomy over all the lands “from the Bíobío River to the south,” because during the colonial era the Spanish crown recognized the river as the boundary between autonomous Mapuche territory and colonial territory. The Consejo originated in a split from radical leftist parties in 1989. 6 By the late 1990s, the Consejo de Todas las Tierras had brought a lawsuit against the Chilean government before the Human Rights Commission of the Organization of American States, which ruled that basic due process had been violated. 7 Some of these efforts later produced organizations such as the Asociación Comunal Ñankucheo (now Identidad Nagche), the Coordinadora AraucoMalleco, and Identidad Territorial Lafkenche. 8 The demand for the right to control the natural resources in indigenous lands was part of the draft law elaborated by Mapuche organizations in 1991 that was later deleted by the Concertación from the proposal sent to Congress. 9 Identidad Territorial Lafkenche, Identidad Nagche, Identidad Wenteche, Identidad Williche, Warriache, some of which represent transformations of organizations that emerged in the early 1990s; others are more recent. 10 For example, the Coordinación de Organizaciones e Identidades Territoriales. 11 Coordinadora de Comunidades en Conflicto Arauco-Malleco, José Huenchunao Mariñan, Aliwen Antileo Navarrete, Pedro Cayuqueo Millaqueo. April 1999: Informe de Derechos Humanos en las Comunidades Mapuches en Conflicto de Arauco y Malleco, Arauco,VIII Región de Chile. Presented at the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations. 55&deg. Session Period, Geneva, Switzerland. 12 Et al.: President of the Colegio de Periodistas and the Federación de Colegios Profesionales of Chile; Manuel Baquedano, President of the Instituto de Ecología Política; José Bengoa, Rector of the Universidad Académica Humanismo Cristiano; Nelson Caucoto, Human Rights Lawyer; Fabiola Letelier, Lawyer and President of CODEPU; Adrián Fuentes, representative of the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores, CUT; Monseñor Jorge Hourton, Bishop and Rector of the Catholic University of Temuco; Sara Larraín, Executive Secretary, Programa Chile Sustentable; Hilda Llanquinao, member of The Consejo Académico of the University of the Frontier; Luis Mariano Rendón, Coordinator of the Red Nacional Acción Ecológica-RENACE. ✩ 98 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 7 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 99 higher education in chile thirty years after salvador allende Privatization, Profits, and Exclusion Patricia Tomic and Ricardo Trumper “Como si no bastara con todas las negaciones que te dio la vida, cuando postulaste a esa universidad privada y el ‘tanto tienes, tanto vales,’ del mercado académico te dijo: Tú no eres de aquí Conchalí, – No te alcanza Barrancas A otro carrusel Pudahuel – a la U. del Estado Lo Prado.” Lemebel, 41 In the 1960s, although parallel private and public systems of education responding to class segregation existed, public education was hegemonic particularly for secondary and higher education. As more middle and working class youngsters completed secondary schooling, the demand for higher education increased. This demand transformed into political pressure and eventually into a larger university system. Thus, between 1967 and 1973 the number of university students in Chile doubled (Castro150). By1973 there were 100,000 students in eight universities, two of them public and six private, all publicly funded. The public ones, the Universidad de Chile (UCh) and the Universidad Técnica del Estado (UTE), educated 70 percent of all students, distributed in campuses throughout the country. University fees were nominal. Faculty and students participated in university and public politics. Student unions at the universities UCh and UTE were controlled by the Communist Party. The Rector of the UTE favoured the Unidad Popular, while at UCh the Rector was a Christian Democrat supporter of the military coup. The Secretary General of UCh, a communist, was assassinated immediately after the coup. The Rector of the Pontificia Universidad Católica (PUC) ✩ 99 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 100 Patricia Tomic and Ricardo Trumper was a progressive Christian Democrat with links to the left, but the student federation and many in the university senate were right-wing. The coup reversed Chilean democratization at all levels. Repression hit post-secondary institutions hard. The torture and death of prisoners taken from the UTE immediately after the coup were emblematic of the violence in store for the country. This violence foretold the first seven years of a military-intervened university system, a system informed by paranoid policies under the doctrine of ‘National Security’. The dictatorship killed 306 students (117 disappeared and 89 were executed), fired 25 percent of the faculty and 15 percent of the staff, and expelled 18 percent of the students. Universities were placed under military control, under Pinochetdesignated presidents and prosecutors, to persecute the potential enemies of the regime. Student unions also came under strict vigilance. Democratic processes and institutions were eliminated, academic freedom stifled, free speech suppressed. Curricula were purged, academic standards eroded and the university infrastructure deteriorated dramatically. Enrollment declined and state-financing was soon replaced by self-financing (Lagos, Brunner, Informe). In 1979, new changes were introduced. While the doctrine of ‘National Security’ remained pivotal, universities were neoliberalized. Although neoliberal policies had begun in 1975, the year 1979 marks the initiation of the ‘seven modernizations’, a code for hegemonic neoliberalism. ‘Modernization’ came to guide politics, economics, culture, education, and ethics. Under this code language the welfare state existing before 1973 has been overhauled. Simultaneously, capitalists have been given access to earn profits in areas previously out of bounds for them. The ‘modernization’ of education was one of the targeted areas. Privatization became dominant in elementary and secondary education. Post-secondary education was also reformed under new ‘legislation’ permitting the creation of private universities. In 1981, the Ministry of the Interior published the framework to neoliberalize post-secondary education (Sanfuentes). While upholding and justifying past repression, this document simultaneously invoked “freedom” to justify the neoliberalization of universities: “a close scheme and virtually a monopoly of eight universities . . . [all] . . . funded by the state . . . discriminatory, as it left out . . . other private actors . . . curtailing . . . the practical existence of academic freedom” (Sanfuentes) This reform was part of the “Washington Consensus,” a term describing the convergent opinions of the IMF, World Bank, US Department of the Treasury, Federal Reserve Bank, lobby groups and think-tanks financed by transnational corporations to foster neoliberalism (Bond). In fact, until 1979 Latin American governments and international agencies had met periodically to coordinate educational policy with the aim of expanding and democratizing education for the ✩ 100 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 101 Higher Education in Chile Thirty Years After Salvador Allende region (Reimer). In 1979 the meeting drastically metamorphosed discourse and strategy, prioritizing “structural adjustment.” Since then, educational policy in many countries has favoured the private sector, affirming the ideal to eliminate structural limitations to “free competition.” The Chilean central government transferred public elementary and secondary schools to municipalities. A three strata system was created, formed by municipal schools, private-but-subsidized schools, and private-wholly-paid-by-users schools. The students in municipal and subsidized schools are streamed to powerless and alienated futures. The wholly paid private system leads upper-middle- and upperclass students to power, reinforcing a habitus for effecting domination with ease (Bourdieu). Even apologists of Chilean neoliberal education recognize its regressive nature (Gauri). Simultaneously, large profits have been garnered from the private-wholly-paid and private-but-subsidized systems. Ideological, political and religious projects have also resulted from the privatization process. Chilean post-secondary education was also reformed following the neoliberal logic of the “Washington Consensus.” By 1980 state funding had been reduced, falling to 1.05 percent of GDP (Brunner, “Políticas . . . ” 25fn). The UCh and the UTE were weakened by granting independence to their regional branches, creating new publicly owned regional universities. The UTE became the University of Santiago, at the same time that the UCh’s Faculty of Education was transformed in 1985 into a separate professional institute. The eight old universities, plus the new regional universities, became known as the “traditional universities” or universities affiliated to the Consejo de Rectores (the council that includes all universities receiving government funding). These continued to absorb most of the demand. The 1981 legislation allowed for new private post-secondary institutions under the logic that privatization bred competition, and competition bred efficiency. These were to be identified as “private” universities – “privadas” – separate from the private “traditional” ones. The only limits imposed on free competition were “national security” and what turned out to be nothing more than a euphemistic prohibition of profits. Three “private” universities were immediately established by people linked to the Pinochet’s regime Ministry of Education: the universities Gabriela Mistral, Diego Portales, and Central. They did not have direct state funding, nor state financing for their students. In 1983 strong resistance to the newly created “private” system ensued from “traditional” universities, their faculty and professional colleges. Neoliberalism found itself in the midst of an economic crisis. This decreased demand for “private” universities and reduced interest in their development. Although the system was halted temporarily, these three new universities were to serve as model and trial for the future. In the ✩ 101 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 102 Patricia Tomic and Ricardo Trumper “private” system, owners chose the board of directors which, in turn, chose a Rector(a). Academic credentials were not an essential requirement for this post. Although legislation forbade profits, these universities were administered as commercial enterprises. In general, the strategy was to establish cheap programs, staffed with poorly paid part-time faculty. The goal was speedy capital accumulation, leaving more prestigious and expensive programs to be developed later in the process. By 1987, demand for seats in private universities was lower than supply, despite the low scores they required in the Prueba de Aptitud Académica (PAA). For wealthier students who failed to meet the admission standards of “traditional” universities, the privadas were their last resort. For other prospective students, they were too expensive. That year, the number of students in privadas reached only 7,652 (Sanfuentes). Eventually the economic crisis subsided and neoliberalism repositioned itself in the ideological spectrum, relaunching the privatization of postsecondary education. Small entrepreneurs as well as powerful economic groups invested in postsecondary institutions for profits and/or for pushing ideological agendas. To make this system legitimate, the dictatorship passed Law 18962, the Organic Constitutional Law of Education (LOCE), which came into effect the day before Pinochet left office. LOCE created the Higher Education Council to oversee private post-secondary institutions. This Council was essential for the accreditation process of “privadas” (Soto). Private universities must go through a cursory examination or accreditation by other universities until granted autonomy. Once autonomous, they operate freely, creating new campuses and programs at will. Campuses have sprung up in small towns, while existing programs and careers are duplicated, many of them with poorly trained faculty and little resources. Before the “transition to democracy,” ideological groups and economic conglomerates rapidly involved themselves in developing higher education institutions. In 1988, opposition groups started the Universidad de la Academia de Humanismo Cristiano, the Freemasons opened the Universidad de la República and other progressives the Universidad Bolivariana. The right-wing Universidad Finis Terrae also started. In 1989, the Universidad Mayor, associated to pro-Pinochet groups, and the left leaning Universidad Arcis, were opened. Financial capital from a supermarket venture was used by a family, the Antillos, to open Universidad de las Américas (Ampuero y Palacios). “Private” universities exploded during the governments of the Concertación. The low intensity democracy of the Concertación and its adherence to pacts signed with the dictatorship gave new impetus to neoliberalism, including the expansion of “private” higher education. The economic boom of the nineties and the discursive legitimacy of private interests in education have contributed to the rapid growth of a univer- ✩ 102 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 103 Higher Education in Chile Thirty Years After Salvador Allende sity system currently composed of around seventy institutions. Civilian neoliberalism has embraced the neoliberal discourse of the dictatorship, legitimizing a capitalist market for higher education where privadas appear as an innovative project that responds to the demand for postsecondary education. The Concertación governments have conformed to this discourse (Brunner “Políticas”), disregarding that “privadas” are power enclaves (Zegers), and that, contrary to legislation, have become significant for-profit operations. Before the dictatorship, secondary and post-secondary public education was hegemonic. During the dictatorship, private secondary education supplanted the public system in quality, resources and prestige, while PUC dislodged the UCh. However, still in the mid-nineties, private universities were no competition for the “tradicionales.” Since then the privadas have acquired legitimacy with the backing of a state. The Concertación governments have encouraged the commodification of higher education and the growth of a system that lacks resources and qualified faculty. While in 1990, 82 percent of students enrolled in traditional universities, in 2001 the privadas had outnumbered the tradicionales in first-year enrolments, and in 2002 they had attracted 54.5 percent of the student population (MINEDUC). At the center of the creation of a new university institutions is religion. Traditionally the Catholic Church has been attentive to education as an ideological project and as a source of profits. Until the nineties, the Church was associated with “traditional” universities. Between 1991 and 1992, three new regional Catholic universities were formed in addition to the existing ones. However, “private” Catholic ventures have been also created: Universidad Católica Cardenal Raúl Silva Henríquez, Universidad Jesuita Alberto Hurtado, and Universidad Internacional Sek, which has a “moderate religious origin” (Soto). This is not all. Ultraconservative Catholic universities have also prospered: Legionarios de Cristo´s Universidad Finis Terrae and the Opus Dei´s Universidad de los Andes. These developed as ideological enterprises to mould overarching views of the world in their students, as well as being profit-making enterprises. They belong to owners of large economic and financial conglomerates who collaborated with Pinochet. Both universities have grown at phenomenal rates, offering medicine, dentistry, and engineering, among other careers. Some of Pinochet’s accomplices control Universidad Mayor, and Universidad del Desarrollo uses its connections with Pinochet-linked politicians as a marketing strategy. These two enterprises are also formidable profit machines for economic groups and for prominent members of right-wing parties. Another interesting case is Universidad Andrés Bello (UNAB), part of Alvaro Saieh’s economic empire. Saieh was a faculty member at UCh during the military regime, later becoming a powerful ✩ 103 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 104 Patricia Tomic and Ricardo Trumper tycoon (Puente, 2000). He owns Grupo Copesa, one of the two newspaper chains in the country, the bank Corpbanca and has a stake in Clínica Indisa, the clinical hospital for UNAB. In 2003, 80 percent of UNAB was sold to the transnational corporation Laureate, formerly Sylvan Learning Systems Inc. Sylvan offers tutorial services, distance education, and other semi-academic programs worldwide. In 2000, Sylvan bought a majority stake in Universidad de las Américas from the Antillo family. In 2003, Sylvan became Laureate Education Inc. focusing on university education with 130,000 student-clients in a global network of campus-based and online universities. That year, Laureate and the Antillo family invested US$ 70 million in UNAB, becoming the main operator among the privadas, the second in enrolment after the UCh (“Desarrollo del mercado universitario,” 11 de junio de 2003). These are only the most striking examples of private university ventures. However, there have been a number of smaller entrepreneurs who have also profited from the system. In addition to the Antillo family, there are the owners, for example, of Universidad de Artes y Ciencias de la Comunicación (UNIACC), Universidad Santo Tomás and Universidad San Andrés. These are small capitalists who have made large fortunes. The 1981 legislation established that private universities must be notfor-profit. However, private universities do generate large profits. Only an Orwellian language makes it possible for those earlier enemies of profit-making education to be its facilitators today. Among the latter is Senator Fernando Flores, from the Partido por la Democracia (PPD). He controls an important amount of stocks of a university, while groups associated with the Christian Democratic Party own another. The prominence of Laureate operation recently prompted open revelations about profitmaking in university ventures, although no action has followed from them (Tamblay, 2003). Laureate’s CEO acknowledges that “Chile is a prime example of how we can profitably expand our campus-based business in the most attractive post-secondary education markets worldwide” (Laureate Education Inc., 2003). Laureate’s global revenue was US$ 472,806 million. Of this, US$ 97,585 million were made in Chile. Laureate is by no means the only for-profit “private” university. The loopholes used by these enterprises are simple. Buildings are constructed by parent companies at large profits (Tamblay). Profits are disguised as stretched salaries and universities are sold and bought with great gains. University owners, who also own other companies, receive large taxbreaks from “donations” made by their companies to their universities (Padilla, 2003). State subsidies consisting of a lump-sum per student are granted through “Indirect Government Contributions” to universities attracting the 27,000 highest scores in entrance examinations. In the end, ✩ 104 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 105 Higher Education in Chile Thirty Years After Salvador Allende the rate of return for privadas is 22 percent (“Desarrollo del mercado universitario,” 11 de junio de 2003). Not surprisingly, without adequate funding the tradicionales have been compelled to join in the “market” model. The government finances around 20 percent of the budget of the UCh (Fischer, 2003), forcing it to introduce and legitimize the market language, competition and individualism in public higher education and to hustle for self-financing. Still the “tradicionales” keep qualified faculty, support research, and strive for sound library collections; their students unions are also able to press for financial aid. While they struggle to survive, private universities make profits. “Privadas” often do not allow student unions. Their libraries are pitiful. The Universidad Bolivariana has 16,000 books in four campuses; the Universidad Tecnológica Vicente Pérez Rosales holds 8,000 books for 1,200 students. Academically they are also lacking. They rely on “profesores taxis,” poorly part-time faculty who run from university to university to meet their teaching schedules. At Laureate’s Universidad de las Américas, a minority of the faculty work half-time or more (34 percent), while only 29 percent hold post-graduate degrees. At Universidad Andrés Bello, where Laureate also has interests, 73 percent of the faculty work less than half-time and 66 percent lack graduate degrees. Most “privadas” do not stress research and some snub it. Universidad Gabriela Mistral’s owner, Alicia Romo, argues: a university that concentrates only in teaching is as much a university as one that conducts research. And, to not publish does not detract from their work . . . the funding system [for research] in this country is perverse because professors who are financed by a government agency . . . use the time and installations of the organization that pays for their work. That is the conception of a company and we are private companies (FONDEF). Privatization would not work if universities were to hire faculty with graduate degrees or if their libraries were required to meet university standards. Simply, costs would rise and profits would decrease. Worse, there are not enough people with graduate degrees to meet a labour demand that has tripled in a short period. Market rules conveniently ignore these variables, while millions are spent in marketing campaigns to attract new students (“Rector Riveros”). During 2004, competition massive campaigns were carried out on television, the written press, billboards, subways and buses to entice prospective student-clients. Some ads aimed at the middle- or lower-middle classes, others towards higher income families. Many wanted to capture students in regions, even small cities. And, despite the marketing gimmicks and despite “tradicionales” having lost some ground, they still are the first choice for prospective students seeking admission. ✩ 105 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 106 Patricia Tomic and Ricardo Trumper As a general rule, few of the poor attend university. In Chile, while 60 percent of the wealthiest youth attend university, only 14 per cent of the poorest do (Zúñiga). In 2002, 181,455 students completed secondary education, 52,477 from municipal schools, 44,812 from subsidized schools and 19,144 from fully-paid private schools. From the last group, 83.5 percent obtained more than 450 points in the PAA, the minimum score required by “tradicionales.” From subsidized schools only 51.4 percent achieved 450 points or more, while from the municipal system just 38 percent did. More significantly, just one half of its graduates sat the exam. In late 2003, the PAA was replaced by the Test of University Access (PSU) designed to measure knowledge rather than cultural capital as the PAA did. In practice, little has changed. Of those taking the test, only a minority (15.4 percent) had graduated from fully-paid private high schools, but that system fed the largest number of students entering university. Of the 100 schools with the best scores in the PSU in 2003, only two were municipal and six subsidized (Universidad de Chile, 2004). Paradoxically, the “clients” of “traditional” universities are graduates from fully-paid high schools, despite the aggressive marketing campaigns of privadas and their vast regional reach. The trend, though, is changing as privadas have begun to attract prospective students with higher scores. Forced to compete for clients, tradicionales emphasize their leadership in research, knowledge and faculty credentials. Generally, students are supported by their parents to attend university but lately fees have increased dramatically (41.7 percent between 1997 and 2003) (Rojas). Thus, even if the poor obtain scores high enough to attend university and their families are willing to help, they simply cannot afford them. In 2003, 53.6 percent of students who sat the PSU came from homes with monthly family incomes below $278,000 pesos (Zúñiga). In 2002, 56.2 percent of all families in Chile received incomes under $3,000,000 pesos a year, 70.7 percent made less than $4,200,000, and 82.3 percent had incomes below $7,200,000 pesos (PNUD, 2002). In fact, university education is out of reach for many youth, in particular private universities, as state loans are not a possibility in this sector. Medical and dentistry students in private universities pay fees of about 3.5 million pesos a year (or about US$ 5800). The average fee at UNIACC is three million pesos (US$ 5000), while at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez it is 2.4 million (US$ 4000). Other “private” universities target the market of lower-middle and working-class youth. (Pérez Villamil). For example, Laureate bought Universidad de las Américas because it caters to this market. Students who graduate from these institutions end up in powerless positions or unemployed. A similar phenomenon occurs within universities through the differential fees they charge by career. The programmes of study with lower fees reflect the salaries and the social standing that graduates from ✩ 106 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 107 Higher Education in Chile Thirty Years After Salvador Allende these cheaper careers should anticipate. There are other low cost post-secondary institutions, the “Institutos Profesionales” (IP) offering “technology” courses and the Centros de Formación Técnica (CFT) with short vocational programs leading to diplomas. The main reason for choosing these options is lack of financial resources. In 2000, almost 40 per cent of university students originated in the 20 per cent population with higher income (first quintile), a further 19 per cent came from the second quintile. Only 14 per cent of university students came from the forth and fifth quintiles. Among the IP and CFT students, very few are from the first quintile; 28 per cent originate in the second quintile; 22 per cent of the students come from the lowest two. This distribution has been similar for a decade. (Uribe: 139–40). There are 48 IPs in total, educating over 100,000 students, and over one hundred CFTs with 62,070 students (MINEDUC). These numbers are a clear indication of how education reproduces class. The IPs and the CFTs are frequently owned by universities that see in them another lucrative market. Laureate bought AIEP, as a move to “extend our reach beyond our current middle-market focus in Chile. Now we will serve the full range of student needs, from vocational training all the way to the most demanding and prestigious university education” (Laureate Education Inc., 2003). The Universidad de las Américas owns the Instituto Profesional Campvs with 1,775 students and Campvs College, a secondary school. In turn, the owner of Universidad Santo Tomás also owns the Instituto Profesional Santo Tomás with campuses in 17 cities, the Centro de Formación Técnica Santo Tomás and the Centro de Estudios Paramédicos de Santiago (CEPSA), serving, in total, 27,633 students. In the pursuit of profits, exploiting low income students through the provision of devalued skills are as good a market as higher income students preparing for more prestigious positions. To conclude, Chilean education changed dramatically since September 11, 1973. Most prominent has been the privatization of post-secondary education, complying with the neoliberal framework shared by the dictatorship and the Washington Consensus. The educational system has contradictorily adjusted, emphasizing neoliberal ethics, a habitus of power for the dominant classes and a streaming process funnelling students into pre-set class categories from primary school to university education. Yet, the mass of high-school graduates sees in post-secondary education the means for social mobility, as it used to be the case prior to the 1973 coup. Of all high school graduates, half was unable to even apply for post-secondary education in 2003. Many were unable to achieve the minimum entrance scores. Lack of funding to pay for higher education is another hurdle at the present time. Yet, demand for entry places is considerable, a fact that for-profit private institutions exploit to the maximum. ✩ 107 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 108 Patricia Tomic and Ricardo Trumper Since 1981 private higher education has grown spectacularly, in particular after 1990. The number of students in “private” universities grew from 2,708 in 1983 to 148,662 in 2003; in IPs from 25,244 in 1983 to 101,674 in 2003; and in CFTs from 39,702 in 1983 to 62,070 in 2003 (MINEDUC, 2004). The number of institutions increased accordingly. However, post-secondary education does not cover demand and is a highly segregated “service”. Many youngsters do not sit the entrance examination, or if they do, obtain scores that are too low to qualify for entry in universities where they can get state-funded student loans. Profits, as well as the advancement of ideological/religious projects, make the university business an attractive endeavour. The large majority of the private university ‘market’ is in the hands of right-wing institutions, where people associated with the Pinochet regime proliferate. Their academic connection is even used to legitimize the regime and vice versa. Some of the institutions of higher learning are secular; others are associated with extreme fundamentalist Christianity, while some are associated with more “moderate” Catholic creeds. All follow the logics of capital accumulation that forces them to constantly grow. Careers and programs are created in the pursuit of economic gains, overpopulating segments of the job market with their graduates. In the search for profits, careers and programs, poorly staffed and with scarce resources, universities emerge even in small and isolated cities. When youth do gain access to higher education – especially those who lack financial, cultural and social capital, and for whom this is the only chance for social mobility – they end up in programs that are expensive and mostly irrelevant. The Chilean post-secondary system is out of control. It is oriented by profit and aggressive marketing, with weak supervision and authority to oversee it. A new method of accreditation has been negotiated. Perhaps this change will put limits to exclusive market control. It may also end up re-invigorating the legitimacy and power of the existing private firms. Works Cited Ampuero, L. y Palacios, I. “Junto a la familia Antillo, se convierte en la mayor oferta privada con la compra de la UNAB. Sylvan: el gigante detrás de la oferta universitaria en Chile”, El Diario Financiero 13 de junio 2003 (Internet). Bond, Patrick. “Beyond both the ‘Washington Consensus’ and the ‘PostWashington’ in Zimbabwe and South Africa?” 8 March 2005 Internet Source <www.globalalternatives.nl/site/voorstudies/docs> Bourdieu, Pierre, “The forms of capital.” Hashley, A. G. et al. eds. Educación, Culture, Economy and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997: 46–58. Brunner, José Joaquín, Informe sobre la Educación Superior en Chile, Santiago: FLACSO (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales), 1986. ——. “Políticas y mercado de educación superior: Necesidades de información.” En Brunner, José Joaquín y Meller, Patricio comp. Oferta y demanda de profe- ✩ 108 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 109 Privatization, Profits and Exclusion sionales y técnicos en Chile. El rol de la información pública. Santiago: Ril Editores, 2004: 19–86. Castro, Pedro, La Educación en Chile de Frei a Pinochet, Salamanca: Ediciones Sígueme, 1977. “Desarrollo del mercado universitario,” El Mercurio, 11 de Junio de 2003 (Internet Source). <http://www.elmercurio.cl/> Fischer, Ronald, “La crisis y las posibilidades de renovarse: El dilema de la Universidad de Chile,” El Mercurio 25 de Mayo de 2003 (Internet) FONDEF, “Investigadores privados” 22 Febrero 2004 <www.Fondef.cl/noticias>, Gauri, Varun. School Choice in Chile. Two Decades of Educational Reform. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998. Lagos Lira, Claudia, “Universidades bajo arresto.” Rocinante 6. 56 Junio (2003): 15–16. Laureate Education Inc., Investor Relations, News and Information, “Sylvan Learning Systems, Inc. Acquires Controlling Interest in University and Institute in Chile,” June 2, 2003 Lemebel, Pedro, “Carta a la dulce juventud (Por su incansable güeveo transhumante).” Siete + 7, (14 de Marzo 2003): 38–40. MINEDUC, Compendio de Educación Superior. 3 December 2004. <www.mineduc.cl/superior/compendio>. Pérez Villamil, Ximena, “Rocha imbatible.” Capital (2–7 mayo 2001): 79–82. Padilla, Marcelo, “Dar sin que duela. Secretos del Sistema de Donaciones a Universidades e Institutos Profesionales.” La Nación (5 de enero de 2003): 4–5. PNUD, Desarrollo humano en Chile. Nosotros los chilenos: un desafío cultural 2002, Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo, 2002 Puente, Osvaldo, “Uno de cada tres universitarios en Chile es formado por entidades privadas. Los empresarios de la educación superior.” SurDA, X (junio–julio 2002): 24–26. “Rector Riveros: ‘Fuerte publicidad de universidades particulares es preocupante,’” La Tercera, (10 de enero de 2004) Edición Internet <http://www.tercera.cl/> Reimers, Fernando. “The Impact of the Debt Crisis on Educational Development in Latin America.”, Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society, Anaheim, CA, Marzo 1990. Rojas, Erick, “El negocio de la educación chilena. Industria de profesionales.” La Nación, (5 de enero de 2003): 23–25. Sanfuentes, Andrés, “Desarrollo de las universidades privadas en Chile. 1981–1988.” Apablaza, Viterbo y Lavados, Hugo eds. La Educación Superior Privada en Chile. Antecedentes y Perspectivas. Santiago: CPU, 1988: 171–210. Soto, Rodrigo, “El libre mercado de las Universidades Privadas en Chile: Una tríada de poder económico, político y religioso,” Revista El Periodista, 21 de diciembre de 2001 Edición Internet <http://www.elperiodista.cl/newtenberg/1722/channel.html> Tamblay C., María Eugenia, “El lucro de las universidades,” El Mercurio (15 de Junio, 2003) Universidad de Chile, Vicerrectoría de Asuntos Académicos, Resultados Proceso de Admisión 2004, Nómina de Establecimientos Científica Humanista Diurno ✩ 109 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 110 Patricia Tomic and Ricardo Trumper con Promedio PSU (Lenguaje y Comunicación y Matemática) igual o superior a 513,79 (Promedio Nacional), Santiago: Author, 2004 Uribe J., Daniel, “Oferta educativa y oferta de graduados de educación superior.” Brunner, José Joaquín y Meller, Patricio comp. Oferta y demanda de profesionales y técnicos en Chile. El rol de la información pública Santiago: Ril Editores, 2004: 131–70. Zegers V., María Angélica, “Nuevas Universidades. El saber y el poder.” Capital (Marzo 1999): 72. Zúñiga, Victor, “Financiamiento universitario: Mayor acceso a ‘Ues’ presiona por crecientes fondos del Estado.” El Mercurio (22 de agosto de 2004), Edición Internet. ✩ 110 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 111 P art III Challenges Human Rights, Impunity, and Democratization nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 112 nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 113 introduction to part III In 2003 the Chilean Human Rights Archives became part of the UNESCO program, Memory of the World (they are part of the same program as the Slave Trade Archives and the ancient Sana’a Manuscript). The Chilean archives are constituted by records of human rights abuses between 1974 and 1990. Many organizations participated in the compilation, such as the Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos, the Comisión Chilena de Derechos Humanos (CODEPU), the Corporación Justicia y Democracia, the Fundación de Ayuda Social de las Iglesias Cristianas (FASIC), the Fundación de Protección a la Infancia Dañada por los Estados de Emergencia (PIDEE), and the Fundación de Archivos de la Vicaría de la Solidaridad y la Productora Nueva Imagen (“Educación nuestra riqueza” Internet source). That so many institutions cooperated to reconstruct the historical memory of the period reflects the broader challenges of restoring democracy and overcoming impunity, and likewise require a collective effort. After 17 years of dictatorship in Chile that resulted in many thousands of dead, disappeared and tortured, with the reestablishment of democracy it becomes both possible and necessary to bring about healing and reconciliation.1 Truth and Reconciliation Commissions are now at work in many parts of the world, as an unprecedented number of countries are moving from dictatorship to some degree of democracy. The first such commission was set up in Uganda2 (1974), but did not receive much attention. The first commission to have major repercussion in the international press was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission established in Argentina in 1983–84 at the end of the seven-year dictatorship. Today such commissions operate in many countries, like Rwanda, Bosnia, and Peru (complete list: <http://www.usip.org/library/truth.html>). Symptomatic of the challenges of the post-Pinochet period is the explicit omission of the word “justice” from the name and mission of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Chile (also known as the “Rettig ✩ 113 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 114 Introduction to Part III Commission”) established by President Aylwin in 1990. In 1991 it released its report3 (LA Times) seeking to establish a shared historical interpretation of the breakdown of Chilean democracy and the repressive aftermath that followed. While the renowned South African model for the Commission was directed toward voluntary confession of atrocities committed during the past, and toward eliciting forgiveness from the victims (and amnesty for the perpetrator), this approach could not be followed in Chile. The nature of the politically negotiated transition and the power retained by Pinochet after the election of a civilian President (he remained Commander in Chief until 1998), made compromise – the granting of impunity for human rights violations – the price to be paid for return to civilian rule. While the military and the political class embraced the politics of pragmatism, many others firmly believed that there could be no lasting peace or democracy, without unearthing the truth and forcing the perpetrators to face their acts in the presence of victims, or their families, even though legal action may not seem to be possible (Hatun 12). Everything changed after Pinochet’s 1998 arrest in London. Of course, as it becomes evident in the Pinochet affair (cf. Mark Ensalaco), even then there is formidable resistance on the part of the military and other government entities to the exposure of horrific events. The military’s attitude towards the human rights issue, the nature and reasons for its resistance to truth and justice during the transition years and beyond, permits an understanding of the political and ideological dynamics of the struggle between the armed forces and the civilian elites attempting to implement such policies (Brito, Chapter 2). Many people (especially among the newest generation) believe these troubles are better put to rest, they are long past and it is better not to disturb the waters, but to concentrate all efforts on looking toward the future and building democracy (cf. Guzmán, Memoria obstinada). On the other hand, there are those who resisted the dictatorship and suffered torture or terrible losses and want to remember the victims, they should be given their due by bringing out the truth of what happened to the victims and hope for punishment of those responsible for their fate. Historical record-keeping is much easier now with the technology available today, thus memory (institutional, historical and personal) has a whole host of new definitions, as evidenced in Ornella Lepri Mazzuca’s exploration of historical memory. On an individual level, as José Miguel Varas’ narrative suggests – as Gregory Lobo puts it: “the message is for those who are paying attention: don’t forget.” Public expression is a sine qua non for democratization. Camilo Trumper reflects upon the “organization of political meaning in a visual form” during the Allende years. Toward the end of the dictadura in the plebiscite campaign in 1988 (‘sí’ or ‘no’ to Pinochet’s continuing power), visual public art again became a powerful instrument of resistance. In ✩ 114 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 115 Introduction to Part III post-transition Chile, ruled again by democratically elected governments, it is crucial to explore the evidence for links between accountability and democratic consolidation. The democratization process in Chile is viewed by political scientists as an exemplary case, one that is not only of importance in itself, but is also instructional for comparativist purposes (cf. Whitehead). The redemocratization aspect of the Chilean experience offers important lessons. While the pragmatic position of Chile’s political class made the negotiated transition to civilian rule possible, it has been the ethical stance of the victims and the human rights movement for truth, justice, and legal sanction that was and still is driving the full democratization of Chilean society. Works cited Brito, Alexandra Barahona de. Human Rights and Democratization in Latin America Uruguay and Chile. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997 Educación, Nuestra Riqueza. 8 March 2005. <http://www.mineduc.cl/noticias/ Julio/N200307251907518597.html> Guzmán, Patricio. Memoria obstinada. (Documentary film). 1997. Hatun Willakuy: Versión abreviada del informe final de la Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación. Lima: 2004. Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books, 1992. Los Angeles Times, 9 July 1990. Minow, Martha L., Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998. Truth Commissions, 10 March 2005. <http://www.beyondintractability.org/ m/truth_commissions.jsp> Whitehead, Laurence. Democratization: Theory and Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Notes 1 2 3 Many books analyze the victimhood of political violence. Among them, Martha L. Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence, and Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. There is a chronological list of TRC-s on the Internet: <http://www.beyondintractability.org/m/truth_commissions.jsp> It was popularly known as the “Rettig Report” after former Senator Raúl Rettig, president of the commission. ✩ 115 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 8 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 116 pinochet A Study in Impunity Mark Ensalaco The imperfections of democracy in Chile – and Latin America – thirty years after Chile’s 9/11 are well known. This chapter focuses on one of those shortcomings: impunity for the massive and systematic violation of human rights in Chile under Pinochet (cf. Ensalaco). There is a consensus in interdisciplinary literature on transitional justice that impunity constitutes an injustice and undermines the rule of law (cf. Orentlicher, Zalaquett, Méndez, Sieder, Kritz). But few articles in this growing literature systematically examine the phenomenon of impunity itself. The efforts to prosecute Pinochet in both Spain and Chile provide insight into the factors that sustain impunity, as well as the forces that counteract it over time. The Pinochet prosecution, then, permits us to frame the contours of an actionable theory of impunity that can assist the human rights movement’s efforts to defeat it, and thereby rectify injustice and strengthen the rule of law and transitional and post-transitional settings. The Prosecution of Pinochet In October 1998 Scotland Yard police arrested Augusto Pinochet at the request of a Spanish Magistrate who sought the former Chilean dictator’s extradition on charges of torture, murder, terrorism and genocide. Pinochet’s arrest was the cause of great rejoicing for the victims of Pinochet’s cruel seventeen-year dictatorship and the international human rights movement, because Pinochet had come to personify the homicidal military regimes that tyrannized much of Latin America during the final convulsion of the Cold War in the Americas. The arrest offered hope for justice in a world where impunity for reprehensible crimes is the rule. ✩ 116 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 117 Pinochet: A Study in Impunity Not everyone rejoiced at the news of Pinochet’s arrest. Although there are many who revile Pinochet for having overthrown socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973, there are those in Chile and elsewhere who revere him. Margaret Thatcher, who became the British prime minister late in the Pinochet dictatorship and who developed a personal fondness for the South American despot, mounted a spirited public defense of her friend. In an open letter published in the Times of London five days after Pinochet’s arrest, Baroness Thatcher urged that Pinochet “be allowed to return to his country forthwith.” “I have better cause than most,” Thatcher mused, “to remember that Chile, led at that time by General Pinochet, was a good friend to this country during the Falklands War.” But the former prime minister’s impassioned pleas did not persuade her peers in the House of Lords. In a series of precedent-setting rulings, the Law Lords rejected Pinochet’s claims of sovereign immunity from prosecution for conspiracy to commit torture. Lord Browne-Wilkinson summarized the ruling this way: “How can it be for international law purposes an official function to do something which international law itself prohibits and criminalises?”1 As the world prepared for the millennial celebrations, it appeared as though the British might actually extradite Pinochet to Spain for what would certainly have been the most important trial since the trial of Eichman in Jerusalem. So when in March 2000 British authorities decided to repatriate Pinochet for reasons of the aging former dictator’s failing health, all the hopes for justice crashed heavily against the wall of impunity that Pinochet, the armed forces, and an entrenched segment of the political class had erected in Chile. In fact, the earth had moved beneath the Chilean political landscape during Pinochet’s enforced absence. Only three days after Pinochet’s triumphant return to Chile, Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia initiated court proceedings with the intent of revoking Senator Pinochet’s parliamentary immunity from prosecution as a prelude to a criminal trial. Guzmán, selected by lottery to investigate charges of criminal wrongdoing by Pinochet and his subordinates, actually had been quietly sifting through evidence against Pinochet in a cluster of cases for almost two years. Indeed, the first criminal complaint against Pinochet was lodged in January 1998. More than two hundred criminal complaints were hurled at Pinochet. By the time Pinochet returned from London with his impunity apparently intact, Guzmán had developed convincing circumstantial evidence of Pinochet’s criminal responsibility in the infamous Caravan of Death case which involved the murder of more than 72 Chileans in October 1973. That evidence convinced the Santiago Court of Appeals to revoke Pinochet’s senatorial immunity in June 2000. The Supreme Court of Justice upheld the Court of Appeals decision in August. The path was open for a possible criminal trial of the once untouchable former dictator. Then, in November, the Santiago Court of Appeals ruled that Pinochet ✩ 117 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 118 Mark Ensalaco would have to undergo mental and neurological examinations to determine his fitness to stand trial. In December, Guzmán formally indicted Pinochet, only to have both the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court annul the indictment on a technicality. Pinochet submitted to two days of medical examination between 10 and 12 January. Guzmán obtained the medical reports a week later, then on 23 January formally questioned Pinochet for more than thirty minutes in his home. On January 29 2001, Guzmán indicted Pinochet on 57 charges of homicide and 19 charges of aggravated kidnapping related to the Caravan of Death case and ordered him placed under house arrest. Pinochet was then 86 years of age. But Pinochet would not stand trial for the Caravan of Death crimes, even though Judge Guzmán discovered enough probative evidence to convict Pinochet before an impartial tribunal. On 1 July 2002, the Chilean Supreme Court in a 3 to 1 ruling definitively dismissed the charges against Augusto Pinochet in the Caravan of Death case on the grounds of ill health. It appeared that Pinochet’s defense team had found justification in the law to permit Pinochet to remain above and outside the law. The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Caravan of Death matter did not dissuade Judge Guzmán from pursuing his investigation of Pinochet’s criminal involvement in other cases. But it did raise the prospect that any criminal charges brought against the former dictator in the future would be dismissed for the same reasons the high court dismissed the charges in July 2002. Then Pinochet made a critical error of judgment that must have infuriated his attorneys. On the eve of his eighty-eighth birthday in November 2003, Pinochet granted an interview to a journalist from a Miami television station. In it, Pinochet appeared lucid. Families of his victims argued that Pinochet was indeed fit to confront criminal charges in a court of law. Judge Guzmán pressed ahead with his investigation in another high profile case involving the death and disappearance of 9 Chileans in the context of a vast criminal conspiracy known as Operation Condor. Attorneys for the victims presented the evidence in court in early 2004. In May 2004, the Santiago Court of Appeals stripped Pinochet of his parliamentary immunity from prosecution for a second time. In August, the Supreme Court upheld that ruling in a very narrow 9–8 vote. In both instances, the courts ruled against Pinochet’s attorneys’ motion to block prosecution, concluding that it would be premature to dismiss a criminal case against Pinochet on the grounds of ill health before Judge Guzmán even filed a criminal indictment. The rulings thus permitted Judge Guzmán to indict Pinochet in the Operation Condor case, providing his investigation discovered evidence to support an indictment. In fact, Judge Guzmán had ample circumstantial evidence of Pinochet’s prior knowledge and authorization of the crimes related to Operation Condor. But the matter of Pinochet’s mental fitness to stand trial again threat- ✩ 118 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 119 Pinochet: A Study in Impunity ened to prevent a trial from ever taking place. In October 2004, Judge Guzmán ordered Pinochet to submit to medical, psychological and neurological examinations for the second time in three years. Guzmán had indicted Pinochet in 2001 when he was still 8 months short of his eightysixth birthday. By the time Guzmán had studied the reports of the three doctors who examined Pinochet and had begun drafting his ruling, Pinochet was approaching his eighty-ninth birthday on 25 November. The deterioration of Pinochet’s physical condition was apparent. In fact, two of the three doctors determined that Pinochet was neither physically nor mentally competent to stand trial. Only the medical expert selected by the families of the complainants in the case ruled that Pinochet was competent. Under the rules of Chilean criminal procedure, the concurring opinions of two medical experts regarding Pinochet’s incompetence gave Guzmán sufficient grounds to dismiss the charges. But under the same rules, the existence of a dissenting opinion permitted Guzmán to indict Pinochet. In mid-November, Guzmán appeared to have reached a decision. He would make it public after November twenty-fifth, Pinochet’s birthday. Then, Guzmán decided to reexamine the video of Pinochet’s November 2003 television interview.2 On December 13 Judge Guzmán formally indicted Pinochet on 8 charges of aggravated kidnapping and one charge of aggravated homicide and ordered Pinochet placed under house arrest. Guzmán ruled that, although Pinochet suffered from multiple physical ailments, his demeanor in the television interview a year earlier and in his responses to questions Guzmán posed to him in formal questioning demonstrated that Pinochet was mentally competent to participate passively in criminal proceedings. Critical to Guzmán’s conclusion was that Pinochet demonstrated the ability to distinguish good from bad, and goodness from evil.3 Guzmán’s ruling was the most serious blow to Pinochet’s impunity to be inflicted at the end of 2004, but there were others. On 2 December, even before Guzmán published his indictment in the Operation Condor case, the Santiago Court of Appeals voted 14 to 9 to strip Pinochet of his immunity from prosecution making possible an eventual indictment for Pinochet’s involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate the former Chilean army commander, Carlos Prats, and his wife in 1974. Later that month, yet another judge filed a motion to strip Pinochet of his immunity in order to be able to prosecute him for money laundering and tax evasion uncovered in an investigation of the failed Riggs Bank in Washington. Then, on 20 December in a unanimous 3 to 0 ruling, the Criminal Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals rejected the habeas corpus petition filed by Pinochet’s attorneys, challenging the legality of Guzmán’s indictment on the grounds that it violated Pinochet’s right to due process. On 4 January 2004, a five-member panel of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, in a narrow 3 to 2 ruling, confirmed the Court ✩ 119 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 120 Mark Ensalaco of Appeals ruling and let Guzmán’s indictment stand. Pinochet’s attorneys have filed a motion to dismiss the charges on the grounds that Pinochet is not competent to stand trial. It is possible that the Supreme Court will ultimately dismiss these charges. But as of the time of this writing [April 2005], there also exists the real prospect that Pinochet will stand trial. Pinochet’s impunity is in tatters. Impunity Impunity connotes agency: it involves the actions undertaken by the guilty and their accomplices intended to frustrate, impede, and deter investigations, prosecution and punishment. It connotes power: the ability to execute a conspiracy to obstruct justice through concealment of evidence, intimidation, and violence. Impunity is most secure when the guilty manage to create a climate of fear, write the law, dominate critical state institutions, manipulate politics, and maintain the loyalty influential geopolitical allies. The Climate of Fear The measure of effectiveness of the state terrorism in Chile under Pinochet was the creation of a climate of fear. After Pinochet left the presidential palace to resume his duties as commander-in-chief of the army in March 1990 he boasted “nobody will touch me, the day they touch one of my men, the rule of law is ended” (Correa Sutil 14). Pinochet and his loyalists made civil society, including the political class, fear that prosecution would imperil democracy and the rule of law. Chile’s transition to democracy was not yet a year old when Pinochet ordered the Chilean armed forces on national alert in December 1990 to unnerve the newly elected government. In May 1993, he ordered heavily armed Special Forces troops to deploy near the Moneda palace in an intimidating show of force. Thus, Chileans had reason to fear Pinochet might resort to force to block prosecution. Elizabeth Lira, a participant in the Human Rights Dialogue, documented this in her work with victims of state repression: “fear and paralysis that result from experiencing repression can be described as a political reality with personal consequences” (Salimovich 89). In a sense the reverse is true as well: because so many Chileans experienced the personal consequences of repression, fear and paralysis became the political reality that sustained impunity. The fear that paralyzed Chilean society did not endure. After Pinochet retired as army commander in March 1998, fear that Pinochet could order the armed forces to reverse Chile’s democratic transition dissipated. More importantly, Pinochet’s detention in London and Guzmán’s investigation in Santiago shattered the myth that the ex-dictator was untouchable. The ✩ 120 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 121 Pinochet: A Study in Impunity lesson in this concerns the power of the courage of those who demand an end to impunity to reverse a societal dynamic that had once enabled the culpable to evade justice. The Law Chilean Law In 1978 Pinochet imposed a Decree Law granting the guilty amnesty for human rights violations between 11 September 1978 and 10 March 1978. Human rights advocates condemned the amnesty, arguing that all amnesty laws or “final stop” laws which they resemble, guarantee impunity and deny victims the right to a judicial remedy (Méndez 259). In fact, the manner in which judges appointed by Pinochet interpreted the 1978 amnesty law, effectively blocked prosecution and judicial investigations of crimes, including disappearances. The climate of fear that was the regime’s legacy was so potent that few politicians seriously contemplated annulment of the law. Another obstacle was the Chilean constitution’s provisions regarding parliamentary immunity from prosecution. Although the 1980 Constitution prohibited the legislative branch from investigating and impeaching officials of the executive branch, it did not prohibit the courts from investigating members of both houses of the legislature (Ensalaco 409–29). The constitution contemplated the revocation of parliamentary immunity providing a special investigating judge could present a compelling case that a legislator should be impeached and held over for trial. The 1978 amnesty law and Pinochet’s senatorial immunity from prosecution represented formidable obstacles to justice. But Judge Juan Guzmán managed to overcome them. As to the facts, Guzmán’s investigation uncovered substantial evidence of Pinochet’s culpability in the Caravan of Death case, (including handwritten notations beside the names of executed prisoners) and the Operation Condor case (cf. Verdugo). As to the amnesty law, Guzmán framed an inventive legal theory that argued that “disappearance” or aggravated kidnapping should be considered a continuing crime and as such could not be covered by the amnesty law. The Chilean Supreme Court accepted the theory as the foundation for the impeachment of Pinochet in both the Caravan of Death and Operation Condor cases. These Supreme Court rulings forever undermined the legal obstacles to prosecution in Chile. In November 2004, the Supreme Court issued yet another critical ruling in the Sandoval case. In a unanimous ruling, the criminal chamber of the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s conviction and sentence of Manual Contreras, the former head of Pinochet’s secret state police, for the disappearance of Miguel Angel Sandoval in 1975. The ruling was consistent with earlier rulings regarding aggravated kidnap- ✩ 121 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 122 Mark Ensalaco ping as a continuing crime. But the ruling went even further by explicitly citing provisions of Geneva Conventions and the American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons, and by barring application of the statute of limitations to disappearances cases.4 The effects of these and other rulings are far-reaching: the courts no longer interpret Chilean law in a manner that sustains impunity. International law Baltazar Garzón based his demand for Pinochet’s extradition to Spain on a claim of universal jurisdiction. Universal jurisdiction for the most serious crimes (war crimes, crimes against humanity like torture and disappearance, and genocide) is a powerful instrument against impunity. Garzón’s application of universal jurisdiction was especially important because it challenged the presumption of the immunity of current or former heads of state. The doctrine of sovereign immunity is a personalized application of the doctrine of state sovereignty. Perhaps the single most significant contribution of the international human rights movement since the end of the Second World War has been its steady encroachment on the notion that sovereign states cannot interfere in internal matters of other sovereign states even when those states violate human rights on a massive and systematic scale. The rulings of the House of Lords in the Pinochet matter represented a culmination of international legal opinion regarding the clash of state sovereignty and human rights. Lord Browne-Wilkinson’s rhetorical question – “For how can it be for international law purposes an official function of state to do something that international law itself prohibits and criminalizes?” – definitively resolved the matter. There have been other important developments in international law related to the prosecution of former heads of state. Both the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court are explicit that an accused person’s official position, including as head of state, does not relieve that person of criminal responsibility.5 Moreover, the Rome Statute grants the International Criminal Court jurisdiction to prosecute in those cases where, as in Chile prior to Guzmán’s 2001 indictment of Pinochet, domestic courts could not prosecute or would not prosecute in good faith. Thus, international law no longer offers protection against prosecution or guarantees of impunity. Institutions – the Courts, the Armed Forces and the Secret Police The Courts Prior to the transition in 1990, Pinochet offered inducements for judges to retire, then appointed new judges to safeguard the imposed legal order and to preserve impunity. Pinochet’s specific concern ✩ 122 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 123 Pinochet: A Study in Impunity was to preserve the 1978 amnesty law’s obstruction of justice. Virtually all Chilean legal scholars agree that the 1978 amnesty law strictly prohibited punishment for human rights violations; but few believe that it prohibited judicial investigation to determine those responsible prior to the application of the amnesty. But, the Pinochet and early-post Pinochet era courts interpreted the law to prevent even the investigation of serious allegations (Fruhling 10). At the end of 1997, the Chilean Congress enacted legislation requiring judges to retire at age 75. The following year, President Eduardo Frei appointed nine judges to the Supreme Court, altering its composition and its judicial temperament (HRW “When Tyrants Tremble” 10). Soon after the appointment of the new judges, the Supreme Court reversed its position regarding the 1978 amnesty law’s prohibition of investigation and prosecution as well as punishment, and it permitted the reopening of disappearance cases. These changes led eventually to the Supreme Court’s decision to lift Pinochet’s immunity from prosecution in 2001. The trend to interpret the law to benefit the victims of repression rather than the perpetrators has continued. Indeed, in the recent Sandoval decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the amnesty law could not prevent criminal punishment. By losing control over the Supreme Court, Pinochet and his loyalists have lost control over the one state institution that is uniquely capable of sustaining impunity. The Armed Forces The Chilean officer corps, motivated by personal fidelity to Pinochet and corporate loyalty to their institutions, vigorously struggled to deny the truth, impede the search for the disappeared and obstruct justice after the democratic transition and even after Pinochet retired as commander of the army. As to the truth, the armed forces categorically rejected the conclusions of the Commission on Truth and Reconciliation in 1991, and still refused to acknowledge an official policy of repression at the conclusion of the ten-month long Human Rights Dialogue, or Mesa de dialogo sobre los derechos humanos, in June 2001. It was not until November 2004, after the Commission on Political Prisoners and Torture released its report about the widespread practice of torture during the regime, that the armed forces formally acknowledged that torture was an official policy.6 As to the disappeared, the armed forces did not fully honor the agreement reached at the end of the Human Rights Dialogue in June 2001 to provide information about the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared. The armed forces had agreed to compile a report on the disappeared, but only on the condition that the Chilean congress enact into law strict guarantees of confidentiality for military officers who came forward with information. The families of the disappeared complained that the law only perpetuated impunity and predicted that the armed forces would not ✩ 123 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 124 Mark Ensalaco provide substantive information. In fact, the report the armed forces delivered to President Lagos in January 2002 contained only fragmentary information about 200 of the 1,100 disappeared. Some of that information proved to be false. Moreover, of the 200 disappearances clarified by the armed forces’ January 2001 report to the president, only 27 involved abductions by the DINA.7 The armed forces high command also attempted to obstruct justice by intimidating the government and the courts on the eve of the Court of Appeals ruling on Pinochet’s immunity in 2001. On 15 May 2001, then army commander General Ricardo Izurieta and other senior commanders defied President Lagos’s directive against public displays in support for Pinochet. “Let’s not be naïve,” Lagos said in a televised interview the following day, “everyone knows what was sought yesterday.” 8 Three days later, General Izurieta convened a five-hour meeting of the Council of Generals for the purpose of discussing the ongoing prosecutions of army officers, as well as the Pinochet proceedings before the Court of Appeals. Afterwards the army high command issued a public statement urging the public and the government to act with “prudence,” compelling President Lagos to seek public clarification of the military commanders’ adherence to the constitution.9 Each of these acts was intended to intimidate. More alarmingly, military intelligence attempted to intimidate or compromise Juan Guzmán. Guzmán’s telephone, mail and electronic mail communications were monitored, and efforts were made to lure him into compromising situations to discredit him (Guzmán Interview 2001). The fact remains that none of these actions deterred the Supreme Court from impeaching Pinochet or Guzmán from indicting him. The man who replaced him as army commander attempted to forestall Pinochet’s prosecution after the former dictator’s return to Chile. General Izurieta’s pressures probably influenced President Lagos, who acted as though impunity was the price Chilean democracy would have to pay for political normality. Whether those pressures convinced the Supreme Court to dismiss the charges against Pinochet in the Caravan of Death case in July 2002 is not known. What is certain is that by May 2004, when the Supreme Court again impeached Pinochet, the military high command had concluded that the corporate interests of the armed forces were not served by defending Pinochet. When Pinochet and his unconditional loyalists lost control of the army, they lost the power to credibly threaten disruption of the democratic process and the power to preserve their impunity. Politics Three democratically-elected presidents’ failure of political will to pursue justice has contributed to impunity. One might concede that the Aylwin ✩ 124 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 125 Pinochet: A Study in Impunity and Frei administration had a reasonable fear that efforts to prosecute would imperil democracy and the rule of law. But the Concertación set itself against prosecution even after Pinochet’s detention in London and Supreme Court’s ruling stripping Pinochet of immunity in 2001. It was President Eduardo Frei’s foreign ministry that appealed to the United Kingdom to repatriate Pinochet for reasons of health, not Pinochet’s family or defense team (“Chile Formally Requests . . . ” BBC). After Pinochet’s repatriation, representatives of socialist president, Ricardo Lagos, repeatedly attempted to interfere with the investigative and judicial processes. In November 2000, a senior member of the Lagos political team, telephoned Guzmán urging him to order medical as well as mental examinations for Pinochet – this after the Court of Appeals ruled Pinochet must undergo mental examinations to determine whether he was insane or demented, either of which would have exempted him from prosecution. That same month, a senior official of the Medical-Legal Institute approached him to urge him not to name independent medical experts to perform those examinations. In December, as Guzmán prepared to indict Pinochet for the first time, a senior official in the Ministry of Justice called him to urge him not to indict Pinochet.10 The evidence of the Lagos administration’s attempts to influence Judge Guzmán’s actions raises questions concerning the possibility that it also attempted to influence the judges of the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court who ultimately dismissed charges against Pinochet in the Caravan of Death case in 2002. The motives behind these efforts to interfere with the prosecution of Pinochet will remain a matter of conjecture until former officials come forward to openly acknowledge and explain those efforts. Fear that the armed forces might disrupt the democratic process was certainly a factor early in Chile’s democratic transition. Concern that Pinochet’s supporters in the congress, including especially un-elected senators appointed by Pinochet, would disrupt the legislative process was probably another. The Frei and Lagos administrations appeared to be overly concerned that the Pinochet affair complicated their ability to win the legislative approval of Pinochet’s political supporters, especially that of Independent Democratic Union partisans. Thus, the Pinochet loyalists’ ability to manipulate the political process contributed to impunity. But by the time the Supreme Court impeached Pinochet again in May 2004, the political dynamics had changed and another factor sustaining impunity had eroded. Geopolitical Factors Throughout the Pinochet affair in London, Pinochet enjoyed the support of powerful allies motivated by a combination of political concerns and geopolitical allegiance. The Spanish government opposed Judge Baltasar Garzón’s independent prosecution from the beginning. (HRW, “When ✩ 125 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 126 Mark Ensalaco Tyrants Tremble,” 15). Moreover, investigative journalists uncovered evidence of what appears to be collusion between the Chilean, British, and Spanish foreign ministers to achieve a political settlement. According to one report, the United Kingdom’s foreign minister reportedly told his Spanish counterpart, “I will not let him die in Britain,” to which the Spanish foreign minister reportedly replied “I will not let him come to Spain” (“Cook in secret Talks . . . ,” O’Shaughnessy; BBC News: “Chile denies”). The collusion of the Chilean, Spanish, and British governments appears to have been motivated principally by fear of the economic consequences of a disruption of inter-state relations. But geopolitical allegiance forged during the Cold War undoubtedly was a factor. This could be seen most clearly from Margaret Thatcher’s (and the Conservative party’s) campaign to free Pinochet. There can be no doubt that had Thatcher still been prime minister, there would have been no extradition proceedings in the United Kingdom. The Vatican also took sides in the Pinochet affair. In November 1999, the Vatican sent a letter to the British government, apparently appealing for Pinochet’s repatriation. The existence of the still secret letter was revealed by Conservative supporters of Pinochet in the House of Commons in February 2000, a month before the home secretary announced his decision to repatriate the aging former dictator (Hooper). The timing and secretive nature of the letter raised questions about the Vatican’s sympathies vis-à-vis Pinochet and his victims. The revelation that the letter was authored by Cardinal Sodano only added to the controversy. Cardinal Sodano, who had served as the papal nuncio in Santiago during the dictatorship, was generally regarded as tolerant of Pinochet’s authoritarianism. For his part, John Paul II is known for his legendary anti-communism, although during a much publicized visit to Chile in 1987, the Pope expressed his preference for an orderly transition to democracy there. A Vatican spokesman responded to the controversy stirred by the revelation of the letter by evoking the theme of reconciliation: “The Holy See supports national reconciliation everywhere, including in Chile” (Hooper). The Church’s apparent preference for pardon over punishment continued after Pinochet’s repatriation to Chile. In November 2000, on Pinochet’s eighty-fifth birthday, the Catholic Archbishop of Santiago celebrated a “liturgy of pardon.” The Vatican sent an envoy to the Mass who stated publicly that in Chile he had “encountered a people with an historic will to reconciliation” (“El mapa político . . . ” La Tercera). Regardless of whether the Vatican’s intervention was motivated by a concern for reconciliation, or by something else, the fact remains that a critical moment of the extradition controversy in London, after proponents had won all the important legal battles, the Vatican in effect became a ✩ 126 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 127 Pinochet: A Study in Impunity powerful geopolitical ally of those who sought to preserve Pinochet’s impunity. The efforts of Margaret Thatcher and other Conservative supporters of Pinochet in the United Kingdom, and the Vatican’s secret appeal, probably influenced the Blair government’s decision to repatriate Pinochet. But these erstwhile allies had no ability to influence events in Chile. Throughout Pinochet’s seventeen-year dictatorship, the United States was the Pinochet regime’s single most important geopolitical ally. CIA, State Department, and other agency documents declassified in 1999 reveal the Nixon administration’s efforts to incite the 1973 coup, as well as its knowledge of the Pinochet regime’s human rights violations, including plans for a campaign of assassinations known as Operation Condor (cf. Kornbluh, Dinges). Despite those violations, and despite Congress’s efforts impose economic sanctions on Chile, three American administrations sought to consolidate and preserve the Pinochet regime. But the United States’ geopolitical interest in the Pinochet regime ended as the Soviet Union began to collapse, and the Reagan administration urged Pinochet to honor the results of 1988 plebiscite that compelled him to cede power. The Clinton administration had no interest in protecting Pinochet’s impunity after his arrest in London. But neither did it aggressively seek to assist in Pinochet’s prosecution. The Democratic administration’s decision to declassify the nearly 24,000 documents in 1999 was a symbolic gesture. However, some these documents have probative value as they establish Pinochet’s direct knowledge of the criminal activities of the DINA. One declassified CIA document explains that “[Manuel] Contreras [director of the DINA] answers directly to Pinochet, and it is unlikely that he would act without the knowledge and approval of his superiors” (Kornbluh 164). By releasing documents into the public domain, the United States appears to have abandoned a Cold War ally. But it remains to be seen what further actions the United States might take to defeat impunity in Chile. It remains to be seen, for example, whether the United States Justice Department would cooperate fully with an investigation of a Chilean judge or a open criminal investigation of its own, if such an investigation might lead to evidence of the criminal involvement of former American officials.11 Conclusion As stated before, Pinochet once boasted, “No one will touch me. They day they touch one of my men the rule of law is ended.” As this is being written, Pinochet is a criminal defendant under house arrest. Pinochet may ✩ 127 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 128 Mark Ensalaco never stand trial for his crimes because of his age. But it is certain that he will die with the threat of serial impeachment and indictment hanging over him. Moreover, Chilean courts have convicted some of Pinochet’s subordinates, most notably Manual Contreras, the former head of the once fearsome DINA. Criminal prosecution of the principal figures of the Pinochet regime is an obligation that Chile’s restored democracy must fulfill. And prosecution is now possible, because those who have struggled for justice have eroded the factors that sustained impunity in Chile. Pinochet is a study in impunity. The lesson is this. The courts have finally touched Pinochet and some of his men, but the rule of law is not ended, it has been restored. Works cited Cheyre, Juan Emilio. “Ejército de Chile: el fin de una visión.” Internet: 8 March, 2005 <http://www.lanacion.cl/prontus_noticias/site/artic/20041105/pags/ 20041105090447.htm> “Chile denies ‘secret Pinochet deal’” BBC News 4 August, 1999. Internet: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/411532.stm> “Chile Formally Requests Pinochet’s Release,” BBC News October 15, 1999; Internet: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/475242.stm> “Home Office Statement in Full” BBC News, 12 January 2000. “Cook in Secret Talks on allowing Pinochet Home,” Electronic Telegraph, 12 September 1999. “El mapa político frente a un acuerdo de derechos humanos,” La Tercera, 1 December 2000. Correa Sutil, Jorge. “No Victorious Army has Ever Been Prosecuted: The Unsettled Story of Transitional Justice in Chile,” in A. James McAdam (ed.), Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law in New Democracies Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977, 151, n.14. “Cook in secret Talks on allowing Pinochet Home,” Electronic Telegraph, 12 September 1999. Dinges, John. The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents New York: New Press, 2004. “El Mapa político frente a un acuerdo de derechos humanos,” La Terecera, 1 December 2000. Ensalaco, Mark. Chile Under Pinochet: Recovering the Truth. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Guzmán, Juan. Interviews. Santiago, April 2001, 15 November, 2004, and 1 December, 2004. Hooper, John and Claire Dyer, “Shock at Pope’s Pinochet pleas,” Guardian, 20 February 1999. Human Rights Watch “When Tyrants Tremble” (October, 1999), 15. Kornbluh, Peter. The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. New York: The New Press, 2003. Kritz, Neil J. (ed). Transitional Justice: How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former Regimes , 3 Vols. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute for Peace, 1995. ✩ 128 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 129 Pinochet: A Study in Impunity Méndez, Juan. “Accountability for Past Abuses,” Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 19 (1997): 255–82. O’Shaughnessy, Hugh. “Secret UK deal freed Pinochet,” The Observer, 7 January 2001. Orentlicher, Diane F. “Settling Accounts: The Duty to Prosecute Human Rights Violations of a Prior Regime,” 100 Yale Law L.J. 2537, 2551–94 (1991). Salgado, Juan Carlos, Brigadier General. Intervención. 31 de Agosto de 1999” 10 March 2005 Internet <http://www.purochile.org/mesa13.htm> Salimovich, Sofia, Elizabeth Lira and Eugenia Weistein, “Victims of Fear: The Social Psychology of Repression,” in Juan Corradi et al. (eds) Fear at the Edge: State Terror and Resistance in Latin America Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992: 89. Sieder, Rachel (ed.) Impunity in Latin America. London: Institute for Latin American Studies, 1995. Zalaquett, José. “Confronting Human Rights Violations Committed by Former Governments: Principles Applicable and Political Constraints,” 13 Hamline L. Rev. 623 (1990). Notes 1 Judgment – Regina v. Bartle and the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis and Others Ex Parte Pinochet Regina v. Evans and Another and the Commissioner of Police for the metropolis and Others Ex Parte Pinochet (On Appeal from a Divisional Court of the Queen’s Bench Division 24 March 1999.) 2 Author’s interviews with Juan Guzmán, 15 November and 1 December, 2004. 3 Resolución dictada por don de Juan Guzmán Tapia, 13 de diciembre, Rol N° 2182–98 “Operación Cóndor,” considerado 14°. 4 Resolución de la Segunda Sala de la Excm. Corte Suprema, Rol N° 517–2004. 5 Statute of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, adopted 25 May 1993, article 7 (2); Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court, adopted 17 July 1998, article 27. 6 Just before the Commission delivered its report to President Lagos, army commander General Juan Emilio Cheyre published an open letter entitled “Ejército de Chile: el fin de una vision,” in which he obliquely acknowledged abuses on the part of the army during the military regime (Cheyre Internet). 7 Interviews with Elizabeth Lira, a participant in the Human Rights Dialogue, April 2001 and November 2004, and with Lorena Pizarro, president of the Association of the Families of the Detained-Disappeared, November 2004. 8 “Lagos molesto por almuerzo militar – Rechazada reforma a Ley de Prensa.” 17 May, 2000. <http://www.derechos.cl/> 9 “Gobierno solicita nuevamente explicaciones al ejército – pocas esperanzas in la Mesa de Diálogo.” 22 May, 2000. <http://www.derechos.cl/> 10 These incidents were brought to the author’s attention in interviews conducted between November 2000 and April 2001 with a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The author witnessed the November 2002 incident involving the official from the Medical-Legal Institute. ✩ 129 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 130 Mark Ensalaco 11 The Justice Department has announced its decision to permit a Chilean judge to interview Michael Townley, the American-born DINA operative, in connection with the 1974 assassination of former General Carlos Prats. Townley, who was convicted in connection with the 1976 assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington, is in the Department of Justice’s Witness Protection Program. ✩ 130 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 9 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 131 alternative “pasts” in post-pinochet chile The Relation of History/Fiction and the Subjectification of History Ornella Lepri Mazzuca The interaction between history and fiction often causes and supports the reawakening of memory with respect to episodes belonging to past historical events. During the years that followed the fall of Pinochet’s regime, Chile had to reconstruct its political, social, economical and intellectual manifestations in order to reinvent its image internally as well as externally in the face of the global world. In the new era that followed the elections of 1988, one of the dominant issues still lingering in the conscience of Chilean people, has been dealing with the events that shattered the nation, mainly political repression. Todorov writes that “the cult of memory does not always serve justice”1 (58). Nevertheless, past memory is firmly imprinted in the consciousness of a nation. In literary terms, the fictional dichotomy between past (and memory) and present, and official and unofficial historical events, shows the separation in space (more so than in time) of the nation and its subjects. This effort results in the creation of a boundary between the (un)forgettable political past and the actual situation of Chile in a global economy. Until recently, literary production aimed to reproduce the complexity of the past by representing the present, as the essence and the absence of catharsis had been lying behind the denial of the horrible events that affected Chile during the dictatorship by means of collective memory. In this chapter I will explore the meaning of historical memory beginning with Isabel Allende’s autobiographical experience. In her autobiographical confession My Invented Country (Mi país inventado), Allende starts her nostalgic retrospective journey with this remark: because a terrorist attack destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade ✩ 131 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 132 Ornella Lepri Mazzuca Center, and starting with that instant, many things have changed. We can’t be neutral in moments of crisis. (11) 2 A page later she adds: When I watched the collapse of the towers, I had the sense of having lived a nearly identical nightmare. By a blood-chilling coincidence – historic karma – the commandeered airplanes struck their US targets on a Tuesday, September 11, exactly the same day of the week and month – and at almost the same time in the morning – of the 1973 military coup in Chile, a terrorist act orchestrated by the CIA against a democracy. The images of burning buildings, smoke, flames, and panic are similar in both settings. (12) 3 Reflecting upon the nature of Chilean people, Allende quotes the commentary of a journalist who affirmed: “We have a bad memory for crimes of state, but we never forget the peccadilloes of the man next door” (99).4 For this reason, we find active and well-maintained websites on the Internet administered by Chileans living abroad who try to preserve the memory of the past events that shook Chile and its population during the years of Pinochet’s dictatorship. Past memory has also influenced various writers in the last decade of the 20th century who, through fiction, explore the historical period since the events of September 11, 1973. This process of reinventing history through fiction serves the purpose of placing oneself in the past with the intent of facing the present, according to Linda Hutcheon’s postmodern interpretation. Although the postmodern theoreticians maintain that postmodernity is not endorsed by history, the multilateral narration of past events demonstrates the constant influence of the past on the present. The notion of memory has been conceptualized in various ways over time and has been changed through the uses of writing techniques such as handwriting, typing with a typewriter or a computer, to the use of digital images: photography, video and television. According to Aristotle memory was, metaphorically, an image or mark, represented in a piece of papyrus or engraved in a stone (Cárcamo Huechante 109). The techno-cultural change that emerged in Chile at the end of the 1980s corresponds to the transition period to democracy. The television broadcasts showing images of La Moneda, the presidential palace, in flames, the national protests, and photos of prisoners /desaparecidos, were used to denounce the transgressions of the Pinochet dictatorship. Within this context visual images acquire a privileged role between the political and historical circles. At this point, politics and history cannot escape from the memory frame and the audiovisual cultural frame. The images translate the difficulty of recollecting past events, in a context that claims actuality in order to avoid oblivion. In a world of images, ✩ 132 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 133 Alternative “Pasts” in Post-Pinochet Chile writing is no longer a sufficient means of preserving the memory of the desaparecidos. Susan Sontag employs the term “image world,” in reference to the impact that photography had in the 20th century in substituting the direct experience (qtd. in Cárcamo Huechante 103). It is possible to reconstruct parts of history through images. Nelly Richard defines this idea in Residuos y Metáforas: “memory needs areas of inscription on which to engrave itself, so that the relation among mark, texture and event would live, releasing new meaningful effects (15).5 The photographic image, with its digital and technological capacity, attempts to reduce the distance between the present and the past by reinscribing the memory of human loss within the actuality. The photographic montage creates a grammar of the communication media which reastablishes the memory of the past. If memory is not expressed and past events are not recalled, then these events do not exist in the history of the future. Norman Malcolm, quoting Russell, points out that when we talk about historical events it is hard to remember the images when they are not reproduced by visual memory; nevertheless, this is only a proposition, according to Russell’s definition, a configuration of images one can believe in, remember, or towards which one can react with an attitude of doubt or fear (40). Malcolm adds to Russell’s postulate that the content of memory’s images does not contain verbal tenses because past, present and future merge into a “belieffeeling,” a process that allows the validity of certain moments rising from memory and the representation or copy of past events (41). Memory always carries with it shades of vagueness, insecurity and imprecision. Fiction narrative is likewise a non-linear process, as well as the writing of history. As Isabel Allende points out in her autobiography: There’s a certain freshness and innocence in people who have always lived in one place and can count on witnesses to their passage through the world. In contrast, those of us who have moved on many times develop a tough skin out of necessity. Since we lack roots or corroboration of who we are, we must put our trust in memory to give continuity to our lives . . . but memory is always cloudy, we can’t trust it. Things that happened in the past have fuzzy outlines, they’re pale; it’s as if my life has been nothing but a series of illusions, fleeting images, of events I don’t understand, or only half understand. (78–9) 6 Allende’s mnemotechnic process is highly subjective; nevertheless her testimony is of vital importance in order to transmit the memory of the past. Pablo Neruda, in his posthumous collection of poetry Iniciación al nixonicidio y alabanza de la revolución chilena, published in the United States as A Call for the Destruction of Nixon and Praise for the Chilean revolution, hurls himself directly against Nixon’s politics during the period of Salvador Allende’s socialist administration, which will lead to ✩ 133 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 134 Ornella Lepri Mazzuca the military coup orchestrated by the CIA. Neruda writes in the introduction (“Explicación perentoria”) to his poems: Nixon has heaped together the crimes of so many who preceded him in treachery. [ . . . ] He also intervened with an economic blockade in an attempt to isolate and destroy the Chilean revolution. In this activity he is using different executioners, some of them already unmasked, such as the venomous network of I.T.T. spies, and others cunning, hidden and dispersed among the fascist opposition of Chileans against Chile. Thus, the long title of this book corresponds to the present state of the world, to the recent past, and to the menacing and sorrowful spectacle we hope to leave behind.7 This book was written in January 1973. A few months later the “recent past” mentioned by Neruda would turn into a nightmare that will last almost seventeen years. The recent past becomes the future in Neruda’s vision and it regresses to become the past after the fall of Pinochet’s regime. Russell’s theory explains this memory process, which precedes and follows past events. During the historical course, between anticipated memory and past memory, another element intervenes: the concealment of memory. According to Tzvetan Todorov, memory is not in direct opposition to oblivion: The restitution of the entire past is something certainly impossible (only Borges could have imagined it in his short story “Funes, the Memorius”), therefore it is frightening; memory is necessarily a selection: some aspects of an event will be retained, others will be eliminated – immediatly or progressively – and consequently they will be forgotten. (14) 8 Memory does not achieve the complete representation of the official history, however, it allows myriads of people who witnessed the dictatorship or heard accounts narrated by friends and relatives to reflect upon and reproduce testimonies. The selection of particular aspects of history and the way in which they are engrained into our memory is also determined by totalitarian political regimes realizing that the conquest and preservation of power is produced and maintained by the manipulation of information and communication. The official history is juxtaposed to individual and collective versions of a community. On the other hand, oblivion is also often voluntary when confronting terrible and humiliating experience of certain events. In an interview, Marcela Serrano affirms that after the capitulation of the Pinochet regime “[T]here was no space for memory when democracy started in Chile, nobody wanted to remember the past” (qtd. in O’Connell 182).9 The past, with all its violence and brutalization of human values, wraps itself up in disguise in order to escape and forget the historical ✩ 134 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 135 Alternative “Pasts” in Post-Pinochet Chile period that left many Chileans lacking political and civil rights. In the narrative of José Rodríguez Elizondo, La pasión de Iñaki, the protagonist Iñaki realizes that “no mirar atrás es un requisito para sobrevivir” (“not looking back is a requirement in order to survive” (qtd. in O’Connell 183). Todorov asserts that an individual has the right to forget tragic events (24); however, he also affirms with vehemence that a group or a nation has a duty to remember: “When events experienced by an individual or by a group are of exceptional or tragic nature, this right becomes a duty: that of bringing back to memory, that of providing testimony” (16).10 The opposite process to the voluntary alienation of memory is the omission, by the historians, of the terrible massacres that caused the disappearance of thousands of people. When some elements of history come to light, the best way to utilize the information is to denounce the same horrors repeated in the present times. Isabel Allende’s interpretation is deeply direct: The victors write history in their own way. Every country presents its soldiers in the most favorable light, hides their mistakes and downplays their atrocities, and after the battle is won everyone is a hero. Since we grew up with the idea that the Chilean armed forces were composed of obedient soldiers under the command of irreproachable officers, we were in for a tremendous surprise that Tuesday, September 11, 1973, when we saw them in action. Their savagery was so extreme that it’s believed they were drugged, [ . . . ]. (157) 11 However, as Todorov points out, this does not signify that the past must rule the present; it is the latter that uses the past at its will. The individual who cannot overcome what one calls the mourning, who doesn’t acknowledge the reality of a loss, and the sorrowful shock sustained, who continues to live in the past instead of integrating it to the present, who is dominated by the memory and cannot tame it [ . . . ], this individual [ . . . ] condemns himself involuntarily to anguish without exit, if not to madness. (32–33)12 Todorov affirms that when the events experienced by an individual or a group of people are of an exceptional or tragic nature, the right to memory becomes a function and an obligation in order to remember and witness the past. Far from being prisoners of the past, horrible events should serve justice, so that past errors will not be repeated. The 1988 plebiscite in Chile ended the agonizing struggle against dictatorship. However, according to a report on the Chilean electoral system by Santolay and Iñíguez, “Reforma Constitucional y Electoral en Chile,” despite almost 56 percent of the population who voted for the deposition of Pinochet (“No”), the remaining 44 percent (“Sí”) voted for the maintenance of the status quo of the military regime. The invisible trauma ✩ 135 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 136 Ornella Lepri Mazzuca produced by the concentration of favorable votes to the dictatorship perhaps was one of the reasons, in the imaginations of the Chilean people, for denying the memory of the recent past. Public opinion is still divided between those who consider Pinochet a savior of the homeland and those who see him as a criminal. Isabel Allende employs enthusiastic and polemic terms in order to explain this actual contradiction in Chile: Ways were found to ignore – or pretend to ignore – violations of the human rights for many years, and, to my surprise, I still find some who deny those crimes occurred, despite the evidence [ . . . ]. Crimes perpetrated in shadows during those years have, inevitably, been coming to light. Airing the truth is the beginning of reconciliation, although the wounds will take a long time to heal because those responsible for the repression have not admitted their guilt and are not disposed to ask forgiveness. The acts of the military regime will go unpunished, but they can no longer be hidden or ignored. (161) 13 Constable and Valenzuela write, in A Nation of Enemies, that the upper-class Chileans often reacted angrily when mentioning the foodrationing politics that Allende established during his presidency and trembled when thinking about student and mass uprisings (11). Many supporters of the Pinochet regime seized the opportunity to build a “modern state” based on free-market rules and by the application of the doctrine of wild capitalism, through a neoliberal experiment. In these circumstances, even the weakest leftist manifestation was destroyed and political repression was brutal. In this situation, even though political freedom existed in theory, no one is in a position to enjoy it. In Chile, the authors of this economic miracle, in an expression introduced by Milton Friedman, did not believe that political freedom would bring economic freedom. The “Chicago-boys,” the group of economists educated in Chicago and entrusted with the economic miracle, emphasized the scientific nature of the program. The use of scientific knowledge, by the technocrats, reduced the freedom of individuals in order to assure the creation of an authoritarian state, which consequently created the ideal environment for the introduction of a free market economy (Rayack 57). Bakunin perceived the negative effects of a state ruled by technocrats and based on scientific texts. According to his assessment, “human sciences are necessarily imperfect, and forcing the individual inside the scientific conformity will end up with the martyrdom of humanity” (79). The Chilean experience confirms this viewpoint. The model of free-market economy was imposed on the Chilean society by Pinochet’s regime, however only the rich and the powerful enjoyed the results of this experiment (Constable and Valenzuela 192). In order to apply these market regulations, the government attacked the opposition by repressing human rights. Memory is not always dependent upon a personal experience of the ✩ 136 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 137 Alternative “Pasts” in Post-Pinochet Chile individual who relates history. As for the exiled, for example, memory goes through belief and interpretation of accounts from other individuals. For many political exiles, and for the survivors of imprisonment and torture during the dictatorship, the necessity to preserve the past caused the proliferation of web sites on the Internet dedicated to future generations. One of these sites is called Memoria viva (“Live Memory”). The adjective “viva” signifies and symbolizes the act of storing, preserving and updating events and information that belong to the past of an individual or a society. Memory, if it is not reactive, not “alive” becomes oblivion, like some literary texts, like secondary achievements of people more or less famous, movies that did not leave an impression on the critics and public, or similar events that never appeared in history books. In one of these testimonies, appearing in the site Memoria viva, sponsored by the “International Project on Human Rights” (Proyecto internacional de derechos humanos), written in memory of the brother of the anonymous writer, “Testomonio en memoria de Marco Antonio” (“Testimony in Marco Antonio’s memory”), the reader finds the following: I’m now old and I feel I’m dying and at this point in my life only a few things are left to be started, however I have things that I want to finish. I have seen many things, a lot of sufferings and friends whom I saw being taken out of a cell and never come back or disappearing. Now that I’m not afraid anymore and in memory of my brother I say the things that he couldn’t say for fear.14 (<memoriaviva.org>) After the fear infused by the dictatorship, the voices of silenced people recuperate their vitality in order to denounce the events that many Chilean had refused to accept or that they ignored. In 1998, when the National Criminal Court of Spain requested Pinochet’s extradition from England, the general’s comment was that it would have not served any purpose opening new wounds among the Chilean society when the truth about what happened had already disappeared in the past. Nevertheless, despite many obstacles, the truth is inevitably emerging through history books, fiction, direct testimonies and images of the dictatorship years. Another testimony, related by Rosa Gutiérrez Silva, recounts: By way of this testimony I accuse the military coup government of Augusto Pinochet for my fourteen years of exile, those who were running the Naval War Academy for the tortures I received, and those who destroyed my family leaving my three brothers unemployed. I apologize for editing errors, but it’s difficult to remember the sorrow that I feel again. I’m omitting details in honour to my family and daughters and in order to spare tears that until now were falling in vain, [ . . . ].15 (<memoriaviva.org>) The past exists, even when it’s difficult to recall brutal events. In a fast changing sociopolitical and technological context of historical references, ✩ 137 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 138 Ornella Lepri Mazzuca there is a risk of creating a conflictive record between all the written, visual and digital sources of memory. Todorov sees this overwhelming amount of information as a possible obstacle to memory: Fallen into a faster consumption of information, we would be devoted to their even faster elimination; cut off from our traditions and brutalized by the demands of society based on amusement entertainments, lacking spiritual curiosity [ . . . ], we would be condemned to celebrate oblivion cheerfully and to be happy with the vain pleasures of the moment. Memory would then be threatened not by the obliteration of memory, but by their abundance.16 Despite the dangerous path taken by the discourse on memory towards a possibly endless future, Isabel Allende’s poetic interpretation in My Invented Country summarizes the significance of individual memory and history: I realize as I write these lines that my view is subjective. I should report events dispassionately, but that would be to betray my convictions and sentiments. This book is not intended to be a political or historical chronicle, only a series of recollections, which always are selective and tinted by one’s own experience and ideology. (159) 17 In conclusion, today memory takes advantage not only of the use of writing, but also the many forms of media offered by technology. Live memory is not a utopia; nevertheless it is a never-ending process that little by little employs all the sources available for the gathering of individual and collective memory, in order to create a multifaceted record reflecting multiple views and contexts of all histories that construct History. Works Cited Allende, Isabel. Mi país inventado. Barcelona: Areté, 2003. ——. My Invented Country. Trans. Margaret Sayers Peden. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Bakunin, Michael. The Political Philosophy of Bakunin. Ed. Gregory P. Maximoff. New York: The Free Press, 1953. Cárcamo Huechante, Luis Ernesto. “MEDIAted Memory: Writing, Photography, and Performativity in theAge of the Image.” Latin America Literature and Mass Media. Ed. Debra A. Castillo and Edmundo Paz-Soldán. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2001: 103–16. Constable, Pamela and Arturo Valenzuela. A Nation of Enemies: Chile under Pinochet. New York: Norton, 1991. Gutiérrez Silva, Rosa. “Yo acuso a Pinochet.” Memoria viva 2000. 24 September 2003. <http://www.memoriaviva.com/testimonios/Testimonio%20de% 20Rosa%20Gutierrez%20Silva htm>. Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. London: Routledge, 1988. ✩ 138 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 139 Alternative “Pasts” in Post-Pinochet Chile Iñíguez, Diego and Pablo Santolaya. “Reforma Constitucional y Electoral en Chile” Proyecto ACE. 21 August 2003. 11 February 2004. <http://www.aceproject.org/main/espanol/ lf/lfy_cl.htm>. Malcolm, Norman. Memory and Mind. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977. “Memoria Viva.” 8 February 2004. <http://www.memoriaviva.com/> Neruda, Pablo. A Call for the Destruction of Nixon and Praise for the Chilean Revolution. Trans. Teresa Anderson. Cambridge: West End Press, 1980. ——. “Incitación al nixonicidio y alabanza de la revolución chilena.” <http://www.confenats.cl/cultura.htm> January 2005. O’Connell, Patrick L. “Narrating History Through Memory in Three Novels of Post-Pinochet Chile.” Hispania 84 (2001):181–92. Rayack, Elton. Not So Free to Choose: The Political Economy of Milton Friedman and RonaldReagan. New York: Praeger, 1987. Richard, Nelly. Residuos y Metáforas (Ensayos de crítica cultural sobre el Chile de la transición). Santiago: Cuarto Propio, 1998. “Testimonio en memoria de Marco Antonio.” Memoria viva 2000. 24 September 2003. <http://www.memoriaviva.com/testimonios/testimoniodeunhermano.htm>. Todorov, Tzvetan. Les abus de la mémoire. Paris: Arléa, 1995. Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 Original text of the quote: “Le culte de la memoire se sert pas toujours la justice” (58). All of the translations are mine, unless otherwise indicated. “no hace mucho un atentado terrorista destruyó las torres gemelas del World Trade Center y desde ese instante algunas cosas han cambiado. No se puede permanecer neutral en una crisis” (13). All of the English versions of Allende’s Mi país inventado come from Sayers Peden’s translation. “Al ver el colapso de las torres tuve la sensación de haber vivido esa pesadilla en forma casi idéntica. Por una escalofriante coincidencia – karma históricolos aviones secuestrados en Estados Unidos se estrallaron contra sus objectivos un martes 11 de septiembre, exactamente el mismo día de la semana y del mes – casi a la misma hora de la mañana – en que ocurrió el golpe militar de Chile, en 1973. Aquel fue un acto terrorista orquestado por la CIA contra una democracia. Las imágenes de los edificios ardiendo, del humo, las llamas y el pánico, son similares en ambos escenarios” (14). “Tenemos mala memoria para los crímenes del Estado, pero nunca olvidamos los pecadillos del prójimo” (120). “el recuerdo necesita de superficies de inscripción donde grabarse para que la relación viva entre marca, textura y acontecimiento, libere nuevos efectos de sentido” (Richard 15) “Hay cierta frescura e inocencia en la gente que ha permanecido siempre en el mismo lugar y cuenta con testigos de su paso por el mundo. En cambio aquellos de nosotros que nos hemos ido muchas veces desarrollamos por necesidad un cuero duro. Como carecemos de raíces y de testigos del pasado, debemos confiar en la memoria para dar continuidad a nuestras vidas; pero la memoria es siempre borrosa, no podemos fiarnos en ella. Los acontecimientos de mi pasado no tienen contornos precisos, están esfumados, como ✩ 139 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 140 Ornella Lepri Mazzuca 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 si mi vida hubiera sido sólo una sucesión de ilusiones, de imágenes fugaces, de asuntos que no comprendo o que comprendo a medias” (98). “Nixon acumula los pecados de cuantos le precedieron en la alevosía. [ . . . ] También ha intervenido en un cerco económico que pretende aislar y aniquilar la revolución chilena. En esta actividad usa diferentes ejecutores, algunos desenmascarados, como la venenosa red de espías de la I.T.T., y otros, solapados, encubiertos y ramificados entre los fascistas de la oposición chilena contra Chile.Así pues, el largo título de este libro corresponde al estado actual del mundo, al próximo pasado, y a lo que ojalá dejemos atrás como espectáculo de amenaza y dolor.” (http://www.confenats. cl/cultura.htm) “La restitution intégrale du passé est une chose bien imposible (mais qu’un Borges a imaginé dans son histoire de ‘Funes el memorioso’), et, par ailleurs, effrayante; la mémoire, elle, est forcémnet une sélection: certains traits de l’événement seront conservés, d’autres sont immédiatement ou progressivement écartés, et donc oubliés” (14) “no hubo espacio para la memoria cuando empezó la democracia en Chile, nadie querría acordarse del pasado” «Lorsque les événements vécus par l’individu ou par le groupe sont de nature exceptionnelle ou tragique, ce droit devient un devoir: celui de se souvenir, celui de témoigner» (16). La historia la escriben los vencedores a su manera. Cada país presenta a sus soldados bajo la luz más favorable, se ocultan los errores, se matiza la maldad y después de la batalla ganada todos son héroes. Como nos criamos con la idea de que las Fuerzas Armadas chilenas estaban compuestas de obedientes soldados al mando de irreprochables oficiales, nos llevamos una tremenda sorpresa el martes 11 de septiembre de 1973, cuando los vimos en acción. Fue tanto el salvajismo, que se ha dicho que estaban drogados [ . . . ] (173). “L’individu qui ne parvient pas à accomplir ce qu’on appelle le travail de deuil, qui ne reussit pas à admettre la réalité de sa perte, à s’arracher au choc douloureux qu’il a subi, qui continue de vivre son passé au lieu de l’intégrer dans le présent, qui est dominé par le souvenir sans pouvoir le domestiquer [. . . ], cet individu [ . . . ] se condamne involontairement lui-même à la détresse sans issue, sinon à la folie”(32–33). “durante muchos años y, ante mi sorpresa, todavía suelo encontrar algunos que niegan lo ocurrido, a pesar de la las evidencias [ . . . ]. Los crímenes perpetrados en la sombra durante esos años han ido emergiendo inevitablemente. Ventilar la verdad es el comienzo de la reconciliación, aunque las heridas tardarán mucho en cicatrizar, porque los responsables no han admitido sus faltas y no están dispuestos a pedir perdón. Las acciones del régimen militar quedarán impunes,pero no pueden ya ocultarse o ignorarse” (184). “Yo ya estoy viejo y siento que me estoy muriendo y a esta altura de mi vida quedan pocas cosas para empezar, pero me quedan cosas por dejar bien terminadas. Son muchas las cosas que he visto y mucho sufrimiento y los amigos que vi sacar de las celdas y que nunca volvieron o que desaparecieron. Ahora ya no tengo más miedo y en la memoria de mi hermano digo ahora las cosas que él no pudo decir por miedo.” (http://www.memoriaviva.com) “A través de este testimonio acuso al Gobierno del golpista Augusto Pinochet, ✩ 140 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 141 Alternative “Pasts” in Post-Pinochet Chile por mis catorce años de exilio; a quienes dirigieron la Academia de Guerra Naval, por las torturas recibidas, y a quienes destruyeron a mi familia dejando cesantes a mis tres hermanos. Pido disculpas por los errores de redacción, pero es difícil rememorar el dolor ya que se vuelve a sentir. Omito detalles en honor a mi familia e hijas y para ahorrar lágrimas que hasta hoy eran en vano, [ . . . ].” 16 “Précipités dans une consommation de plus en plus rapide d’informations, nous serions voués à leur élimination tout aussi accélerée; coupés de nos traditions et abrutis par les exigences d’une societé des loisirs, dépourvus de curiosité spirituelle [ . . . ], nous serions condamnés à célébrer allègrement l’oubli et à nous contenter des vaines jouissances de l’instant. La mémoire serait menacée ici, non plus par l’effacement des informations, mais par leur surabondance” (13). 17 “Me doy cuenta de que al escribir estos hechos soy subjetiva. Debiera contarlos despasionadamente, pero sería traicionar mis convicciones y sentimientos. Este libro no intenta ser una crónica política o histórica, sino una serie de recuerdos, que siempre son selectivos y están teñidos por la propia experiencia e ideología” (182). ✩ 141 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 10 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 142 ephemeral histories Public Art as Political Practice in Santiago, Chile, 1970 – 1973 Camilo Trumper Haga Patria, Muera De Amor cuando nadie me ve escribo tu nombre en las paredes de mi ciudad 1 The election of Salvador Allende in 1970 marked the triumph of a new, particularly urban form of Chilean politics. Allende’s presidential campaign was structured around a combination of traditional political maneuvering and grassroots mobilization. His victory was largely due to a new form of politics that incorporated political direction “from above” with participation “from below.” Allende’s grassroots supporters, organized into Popular Unity Committees, literally took his message to the streets, saturating city walls with Popular Unity campaign slogans, posters, and graffiti. Allende fought and won the presidential election through the murals and posters displayed in Santiago’s public sphere, including the crumbling walls of downtown areas and working-class neighborhoods. Allende’s proposal of “new politics” revolutionized Chilean urban, political and social landscapes. What form did this “new politics” take, what are its origins, and how did it become a dominant if contested form of struggle in the early 1970s? How is it that a presidential election came to be fought and won with the poster and paintbrush? How do we study urban political struggles that produce such ephemeral sources as posters, murals and graffiti? What is the relationship between the city, its public spaces, its streets and walls, “El Arte al Servicio del Pueblo”, quoted in Ramona, Año 1, No. 30, Martes 23, 1972. ✩ 142 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 143 Ephemeral Histories and political participation? These questions drive my investigation of the interrelation between urban politics and public art. Space, Place and Political Change The distinct subtopics within the rubric of urban history were scrutinized by a number of North American authors. Cities often become spaces that house political struggle, flows of capital, and/or the making of conflicting relations and discourses of “race,” gender, and nationality. However, another school argues that these are not distinct phenomena that occur separately in cities, but that, instead, cities are sites in which politics, economics, social inequalities, and individual agencies intersect, and the ways in which they come together has important implications for the construction of history. The city, its public spaces and local places, are intricately tied to political change, and are themselves worthy of study. Harvey’s examination of the “annihilation of space by time” and Nora’s conceptualization of “lieux de mémoire” offer means of thinking about space and place as intimately tied to political practice. Harvey’s analysis of the dialectic of space and place is framed by his critique of the capitalist mode of production as a revolutionary system in which space and time are continually being destroyed and rebuilt by the technologies of modernity. Nora complements Harvey, understanding the experience of modernity as defined by the destabilizing eradication of the spaces in which memory is tied to everyday places, objects, images, and gestures (Nora 1–3). Like Harvey, Nora examines the annihilation of a “milieux de mémoire,” of a “space” in which memory is a real part of everyday experience. This leaves fragmented “lieux,” particular sites that, touched by the fingerprints of the larger realities of “space,” embody and crystallize memory in specific “places”. The “quest for memory in the contemporary world,” then, “is nothing more than an attempt to master the perceived loss of one’s history”; all we are left with is the need and ability to read the signs of culture in places, objects, and images that are “marked by vestiges of the past” but “remembered in the vicissitudes of contemporary consciousness” (xiii). Lieux occupies a relationship between macro and micro, abstract and material, past and present. Formed in particular historical, social and political contexts, they are continually re-interpreted in successive presents, and thrive because of their ability to resurrect the traces of the past, to re-crystalize meaning and generate new meanings by making new and unforeseeable connections (xxi 15). Thus, Nora utilizes a historical methodology to refute positivist conceptions of history proposing the existence of a coherent, unified historical narrative. He emphasizes macro structural, social and political contexts in which place is made and rooted, but argues that these macro ✩ 143 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 144 Camilo Trumper fields continually inform and are recreated in the particulars of place, and because of this, our understanding of the macro political processes must be accomplished in an examination of these particular sites. This chapter is an exploration of Chilean city streets and city walls as spaced (“lieux”) in (on) which larger political battles were fought. I examine the city walls as historically significant places, in which the murals and posters served as an influential force to execute political change. In the years surrounding the Unidad Popular (UP) government, the political posters, murals and graffiti that saturated city walls became an important means of political participation. They were created in, and reflected, a larger historical process and political struggle, but also provided new forms of political expression. The parties of the UP utilized public art as a means of articulating their political platforms, and diverse grassroots groups seized and transformed this language to redraw the lines of the Chilean nation and state, and redefine the terms of citizenship in order to affirm the pertinent role of each citizen as a legitimate political actor regardless of class distinction. Part of a physical, grounded experience of political participation located in the bustle of streets, this new form of Chilean public politics “collapsed the distinction between imagining community and participating in it” (Henkin 11).2 Indeed, actors from the right and the left took to the city streets and seized city walls, utilizing public art to mobilize political and social claims in ways that simultaneously drew upon legitimate artistic and linguistic conventions and engaged the received symbols and images, translating them in different contexts, subtly manipulating, displacing, and redefining their meanings. Thus, city streets and walls are sites “where politics becomes concrete, physical, corporeal” (Groth 18). I contend that we can read murals, posters, and graffiti of the period as evanescent historical documents, means of elaborating a contingent, shifting set of political meanings that were challenged and changed every time they were ripped down and painted over, remade in every successive layer. Public Art: Murals and Posters The work of Brigadas Muralistas (Muralist Brigades) provide significant examples of public political art as historical source. From the early 1960s through the bloody coup of 1973, the Brigadas covered Chilean city walls with paintings, texts and graffiti. During the UP they took advantage of the state’s cultural policies, taking to the streets to present their own vision of politics. Indeed, UP’s platform, published succinctly as a Programa de Gobierno, devoted a significant section to “a new culture for a new society.” This segment highlighted the importance of visual media in the formation of what was claimed to be the final aim of the program, the ✩ 144 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 145 Ephemeral Histories making of “a new culture and a new person”. But this new culture, it claimed, “will not be created by decree . . . it will only rise from humankind’s struggle against individualism . . . for national values and against cultural colonization . . . for the people’s access to art, literature, and means of communication, and against its commercialization.” Thus, borrowing from Che Guevara’s idea of the “new man,” the Programa traced a close link between the transformation of the state, society, culture, and the creation of a new citizen and person. “The transformations we will seek”, it concluded, “require a socially conscious, committed proletariat, an educated proletariat able to employ and defend its political power, a scientifically and technically trained proletariat capable of moving toward a socialist economy, and a creative proletariat open toward the production and appreciation of the most varied forms of art and intellect.” The Brigadistas seized upon this connection, challenging distinctions of high and low culture and claiming the streets as sites of political and cultural change, as sites of self realization. Roberto Matta, the renowned Chilean surrealist who worked sporadically with the Brigadas, articulated a complex understanding of public art as revolutionary, and simultaneously transformative of politics, city and self: “I decided to work with the guys because, if things are going to change, the idea of the museum has to change . . . the streets have to be the museums . . . I want art that comes from below rather than an art that is imposed from above” (Ramona 6). Indeed, the Brigadas claimed the urban landscape as a central pillar of political participation and communication, a democratic space where citizens across class, race and gender became politicized, participatory citizens engaging left- and right-wing party media and messages, but doing so in order to re-draw the lines of political citizenship and participation. The Muralist Brigades were born in the early 1960s as part of Allende’s earlier electoral campaigns. Informal groups of militants, students and workers eventually coalesced into three major organizations with clear party affiliations and tied to the UP: the Brigada Ramona Parra (BRP) of the Juventudes Comunistas (JJCC), the Brigadas Elmo Catalán (BEC) and Inti Peredo of the Partido Socialista (PS); the centrist Democracia Cristiana (DC) had successfully utilized ad campaigns featuring organized displays of political slogans in the 1964 election campaign, while farright-wing groups, most notably Patria y Libertad (PL), quickly formed paramilitary youth groups that fought violently for control of public spaces. The BRP rapidly became the most established, organized, innovative and effective representative of this new form of political organization. Originally formed in response to the DC’s 1964 presidential campaign, the BRP solidified its presence during a 1969 march from Valparaíso to Santiago in protest of the Vietnam War. In August and September of 1970, the UP brigades united in an initiative termed ✩ 145 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 146 Camilo Trumper “Amanecer Venceremos,” and numerous groups of 15 young party members covered Santiago’s walls with thousands of slogans of “+3 Allende Venceremos Unidad Popular!” Between September 4, 1970 – the day of Allende’s election – and 1973, the BRP moved away from solely text-based messages, inaugurating a characteristic style that incorporated image, color, and text, into a potent means of political communication. Although these Brigadas drew from Mexican, Cuban, and Eastern European traditions of public art, their methods and messages were different. They created an elaborate, ephemeral visual language, which was “collective, urban, anonymous, and ephemeral, carried out quickly and furtively, and without any pretension toward longevity, produced (initially) by militants, non-artists, and conceived not as art but as a tool of propaganda and political agitation” (Longoni 26). Seizing walls originally built to demarcate private property, the Brigadas perfected a modern division of labor which emphasized speed and efficiency, ultimately finishing a simple slogan in minutes and more complex murals in hours (Kunzle 362, Longoni 23). Trazadores would design the mural and outline the image and text; fondeadores would paint the background; rellenadores would fill in the image with the BRP’s characteristic primary colors, usually yellow and red; and fileteadores would trace the image with thick black lines (Kunzle 362). As Alejandro “Mono” González, the artistic director of the BRP, relates of the Brigadas style “we borrow styles, and with these borrowed styles, we build a language, we reinvent, and we work this language into a new context, into a new reality with our own commitments” (qtd. in Sandoval 35). What began in the mid 1960s as furtive slogans became powerful, hybrid creations, murals that, incorporating various influences, pieced together a distinct visual language, and using this language, which engaged official political messages and articulated fleeting, changing, alternative political discourse and message. The Brigada’s place within UP’s “nueva cultura” was institutionalized in 1971 when parallel exhibits of mural artists were mounted in Santiago’s Instituto de Arte Latinoamericano and in the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo. The BRP poster, which was designed by González to accompany these exhibitions, illustrates the muralists’ visual language and place within urban politics, synthesizing BRP iconography and serving as an emblematic object of study. The most striking aspect of this poster is its deployment of color. Reds and oranges, offset by thick black lines, dominate its aesthetic. In the first two levels of the poster’s tripartite structure, the national imagery of the deep reds parallel the Communist Party reds; the oranges not only recall the draw of the copper industry, but are also used for the skin-tone of the lone human figure. This play of color symbolically ties the human form, the nation, and industry under the harmony and peace represented by a single dove. At the apex of the image, the Chilean flag has been trans- ✩ 146 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 147 Ephemeral Histories formed into a hand whose thumb and forefinger form the shape of a wrench. Nation and industry are expressed as related constructs as they reach for an open flower whose pistils form an upraised fist. Their interaction forms a narrative in which nation and industry are entwined with hope, determination and resistance. The BRP conveys a message similar to that of the Programa, in that self-fulfillment emerges as a result of labor, which is intertwined with the transformation of nature. This process of self-realization is inextricably tied to the formation of the nation. Articulating a version of the UP discourse of nation and citizenship, the BRP simultaneously recalls and reminds the viewer of the central role that the UP citizen can claim in state formation. In short, the BRP works within discourses of nation, modernity, and progress, but it transforms these discourses into a vehicle to make potent demands regarding the role of the state in its citizens’ everyday realities. Thus, the move from the streets to the museum symbolized UP’s democratization of the spaces of “high art,” but it also symbolized the crucial role that public space and public art played in the articulation of political discourse, narrative and meaning: murals and posters are sites in which visual imagery is collected, coalesced into coherent narratives, where the iconography of modernity, nation and class are brought together as constituent parts of a larger framework of meaning, an overarching structure that is fashioned by the particular juxtaposition of each element, but which add significance to each isolated term; and it is this particularity of visual language that makes BRP’s public political art a potent means of political participation and expression. In this sense, Ramona Parra simultaneously articulated, drew upon, and shaped UP’s messages and symbolisms. But its art is only one example of a wider range of popular art which expressed changing, contradictory definitions of UP’s discourse, its ideas of nationalism and nation.3 In what follows I examine the political posters produced in Vicente Antonio Larrea and Luis Albornoz’s graphic arts studio to illustrate the subtle ways in which UP’s definitions of nation and citizenship were engaged and shaped by the people at the grass-root level in relation to interlocking discourses of modernity, class, gender and race.4 An examination of a selection of these posters allows me to highlight the ways in which a variety of actors emerging from diverse places and sources reshaped the different forms of political and cultural production of the UP. A poster the Larreas designed for the Conjunto de Música Popular illustrates their implicit connection to the BRP. The poster highlights the place of public walls (or muros) in a shared political community. Here, the image of a hillside neighborhood, a typical working-class población in the port of Valparaíso, is symbolically buttressed by a vast muro, graced by BRP’s slogans and characteristic colors. It is a community held together by, and inextricably bound to, UP’s cultural production. In fact, the Larreas subtly elaborate and rework these intertwining ideas ✩ 147 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 148 Camilo Trumper of politics and community agency throughout their work. They do so by evoking a wide range of intersecting discourses of nation, class, gender and race, and are often at odds with official ideologies. The set of posters produced by the Larreas in the late 1960s and early 1970s draw from a body of symbols that parallels the ones we have seen in BRP works and in the official Programa – symbols of nation, community, industry, children and harmony. But a salient feature of their posters is their immediacy. Although they mobilized a recurring set of themes and symbols, these artists constantly reconstructed the ways in which they put these images and signs together to articulate their message for different contexts and times. Their work was often produced immediately after the events, one day to the next, in response to UP speeches, to other forms of visual language, or to public demonstrations (Interview with Vicente Larrea, 07/01). Because of this, their work reveals a subtle, ever shifting understanding of the national community. The articulation of nation and community comes through most strongly in a series of prints produced for the UP campaigns of volunteer labor. One of these campaigns sought to recruit volunteers to work in the reconstruction of areas outlying Santiago after a violent earthquake struck the central valley soon after Allende’s election. Evoking themes of solidarity, national unity and family, the following series of posters transforms this natural disaster into a metaphor for the reconstruction of a cohesive national community unified by acts of solidarity that cut across class, race and gender lines. An initial poster, framed by a simple textual message, “A TRABAJAR POR CHILE: MOVIMIENTOS VOLUNTARIOS DE LA PATRIA” (“Working For Chile: National Volunteer Efforts”), places a jumbled world of agricultural, industrial and urban labor, which is slowly emerging from the devastation of the earthquake, on the shoulders of a young child clothed in working-class garments featuring the Chilean flag. A second in this series, “CHILE RECONSTRUYE UNIDO” (“Chile Re-Builds United”), presents a second stage to this process of reconstruction. An ordered community has risen out of initial confusion, one complete with housing, schooling, and various forms of labor, but still under construction. A third, “CHILE TRABAJA POR CHILE” (“Chile Works For Chile”), portrays a smiling family in front of a tractor, surrounded by workers and the Chilean flag. In a subsequent image, an outstretched fist holds a shovel that is itself transformed into a defiant flag. These examples draw a clear relationship between volunteer labor, the family, and the construction of a national community. As Kunzle writes, the “earthquake is interpreted allegorically, not just as a natural disaster but as the spirit of the new Chile breaking through the barren rocks of the past” (367). Indeed, the natural imagery is prevalent, intertwining seamlessly with symbols of labor and culture. This is true throughout the Larrea brothers’ work: “the cog of the machine becomes the rising sun, the wrench is like a guitar, the pick is like ✩ 148 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 149 Ephemeral Histories a book” (Kunzle 367). These ideas play out powerfully in this series. A final image, calling Chileans “A Trabajar” (“To Work”), simply portrays two birds building a nest together. In these images, the construction of a cohesive, harmonious national community becomes a natural, teleological result of the labor of individuals, a symbol of national solidarity that encompasses and subsumes, rather than highlights, class conflict. These interpretations of the Chilean nation, and the role of the state and the individual in constructing the nation, appear modified in interesting ways in another series of posters on the nationalization of copper. For decades, copper had been the main Chilean export and the almost sole source of foreign currency. Miners had long played a pivotal role in national political and labor struggles. However, large copper mines had been owned by transnational corporations that until Frei Montalva’s Chilenización, had left little to the Chilean economy. For the UP, state ownership of copper mines was an essential aspect of its nationalist platform. The following poster illustrates the ways in which the Larreas interpreted this theme. Divided into two semantic fields, its apex is a textual space: CHILE CHILE DECIDIO HAS DECIDED SU DESTINO. ITS DESTINY. LA ANACONDA ANACONDA QUIERE TORCERLO WANTS TO TWIST IT DEFENDAMOS EL COBRE. DEFENDAMOS CHILE! LET’S DEFEND OUR COPPER, LET’S DEFEND CHILE! This text establishes antimony between Chilean autonomy and the foreign owned Anaconda Copper Company. It is a play on space and words. The organization of text and the play on the verb torcer recalls the serpentine contours of the Anaconda. This stands in direct contrast to the linear order of the text below, which calls for Chilean autonomy. We have, then, a dichotomy between the insidious influence of serpentine international capital, and the well defined sovereign nation whose autonomy is intimately, naturally tied to the linear shape of its physical contours and national boundaries. The visual section of the work echoes this symbolism. The poster’s central axis is a disembodied fist. A key figure in UP socialist and communist symbolism, the fist stands as an emblem of community, resistance and determination. In this case, the emphasis on community is strengthened, as the Chilean flag emerges from the fist’s apex and makes up the figure’s wrist, bleeding seamlessly into fingers grasping a copper bar. The fingers themselves are symmetrical, linear digits, simultaneously evoking the geography of the nation and the rigid lines of a brick of copper. In this way, the copper bar becomes a metaphor for the nation. It envelops an array of Chilean ideal types, ✩ 149 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 150 Camilo Trumper including the rural huaso, the miner and the indigenous peasant woman. The colors employed strengthen the continuity between national community and copper. The reds of the Chilean flag are mirrored in the red highlights of the copper bars’ faded oranges; these oranges are themselves evoked in skin color of Chilean faces and fists. In this way, the Chilean national community becomes naturally linked with the autonomous mining industry, their interconnection symbolized by color in physical contours, marks of ethnicity and the red tinged miners’ hats. This becomes the image of a national community defined not only in terms of modern industry, ethnicity, and class, but also by geographical imagery, national symbols, and the trappings of profession and style of dress. This poster articulates another image that became a potent symbol of the nationalization of copper: Chile se pone los pantalones largos (Chile Wears its Long Pants). Here, nation, modernity, skin color, and class are tied to natural processes. They are linked either to geography, “race” or growth, with nationalization as the liminal point between children’s pantalones cortos (short pants) and the mature nation/mature citizens’ pantalones largos (long pants). Subsumed by and expressed as color and contour, Chilean nationalism, modernity, and its constituent aspects are re-intertwined and re-articulated in innovative ways. The poster is a space in which a linear, unified Socialist narrative of nationality is created, a space in which existing traditions and symbolisms are displaced and translated into new, coherent discourses. Gathering apparently disjointed, dissonant symbols into a cohesive portrait, the Larreas fashioned powerful meanings from juxtaposition. As in the cinematic montage or the photographic essay, the production of meaning, narrative and truth lies in the interval, in the moment between pieces. The poster, then, is a project of re-collection, of remaking an existing historical/political narrative into a cogent, unified image. Political posters perform this task of re-collection as a means of manufacturing original historical and political discourse, organizing and reorganizing symbolic imagery, and manipulating a visual grammar to build constellations of legitimate political meanings. Another example furthers our understanding of the ways in which visual language becomes a political medium that creates meaning. Again celebrating the nationalization of Chilean copper, and drawing upon a poem by Neruda, this image provides a synthetic image of Chilean society. It portrays a group of people, a series of ideal types ordered as a rough pyramid whose apex is a child holding a Chilean flag over his head and whose base is the ubiquitous copper bars that serve as a literal and metaphoric foundation for the national community. Arranged carefully, this pyramid effaces class hierarchy, but maintains other differences. The Chilean peasant, doctor, miner, and teacher occupy parallel positions. However, “race” remains a potent means of preserving the presence of ✩ 150 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 151 Ephemeral Histories historical difference. Urban professionals look white, while rural working classes, including miners, fishermen and huasos (cowboys) look darker. “Race” has remained an unspoken foil for social relations in Chile – a “white” country in official and popular discourse, the lines of difference in Chile are drawn along binary divisions between urban and rural, as well as the elite and working classes; lines where the subaltern side of these relationships are touched by unspoken insinuations of indigenous “racial” background. Moreover, gender roles remain striking and intertwined with class and race, for while male figures hold evident signs of professional identity, of all possible female figures, only the middle-class mother features prominently. Indeed, the most interesting aspect of this poster is the way in which the artists deploy symbols of status, class and gender distinctions to reveal a complex understanding and active engagement with respect to the importance of color, dress, mannerism and stance (what Bourdieu calls “habitus”) in creating and marking social distinctions. The articulation of these differences renders the poster’s message clear: the UP is not a radical or revolutionary break with tradition; it instead requires a new nationalism, a new form of community that nevertheless grapples with historical inequalities. This national community stands in contrast to official UP discourse, which calls for the abolition of class, race and gender difference. This interpretation already initiates an analysis of the ways in which ordinary, everyday imaginary, and not only monumental spaces, provides a basic symbolism and style for the construction of the UP nation (Groth and Bressi 1–24). The poster accomplishes this task visually and textually. Neruda offers a network of interconnected terms drawn from everyday definitions of the boundaries and terms of political discourse. patria, pampa y pueblo arena, arcilla, escuela, casa resurrección, puño, ofensiva orden, desfile, ataque, trigo lucha, grandeza, resistencia nation, plains and peoples sand, gravel schools, homes resurrection, fist, offensive order, march, attack, wheat-fields struggle, greatness, resistance Visually and textually public art produced specific constellations of concepts and interpretations. It structured a “chain of equivalence” between potentially unrelated symbolisms and terms (Ross 97). In this poster, nation and community are symbolized in the fist. The unification of people as a cohesive entity, resistant and strong, is tied to the necessity of order and sequence. A vertical analysis of Neruda’s poem and the poster’s imagery together uncovers implicit connections between nation, urban and rural land, resurrection and political struggle. A horizontal reading of the poem’s penultimate line integrates the military organization of ordered troops to the naturally tall, straight, structured contours of wheat-fields. As Foucault reveals in his analysis of Borges’ classifications, ✩ 151 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 152 Camilo Trumper establishing hierarchies and relationships between concepts and grammars is a process of suturing relationships of power and discourse (19). I interpret this as a visual process. These posters elaborate a visual language, grammar and lexicon that knit together a densely articulated political discourse in which everyday objects can be understood as ciphers of larger social “truths.” This language created, in short, a visual system in which extraordinary monuments and sights, as well as ordinary, everyday objects, ranging from helmets to shirts and shoes, took on potent political significance. Certainly, the organization of political meaning in a visual form is not only an example and means in which embodied agents act in particular historical contexts to reproduce their political and social realities, but it is also a practice of power, a technique of re-constructing discourse, and of re-establishing meaning. Thus, this last poster serves as a concluding example of the ways in which I have examined the intersection of text and image in public political art as a means of articulating potent political meaning on city walls and city streets. Works Cited Aldunate, Isabel. “Yo te nombro, Libertad.” March 8, 2005. <http://members. tripod.com/~mgiuras/interprete/ialdunate.html> Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Díaz, Walter. Revista Ramona, Tue. 4 April, 1972, Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, vol. 1. New York: Vintage Books, 1980. Groth, Paul. “Introduction.” Understanding Ordinary Landscapes. Ed. Bressi and Todd. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997. Habermas, Jurgen. “The Public Sphere.” Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemprary Perspectives in Cultural Studies. Ed. C. Mukerji and M. Schudson. Berkeley: U C Press, 1991. Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An inquiry into the origins of cultural change. New York: Blackwell, 1989. Henkin, David. City Reading: Written Words and Public Spaces in Antebellum New York. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Kunzle, David. “Art and the New Chile: Mural, Poster and Comic Book in a ‘Revolutionary Process’.” Art and Architecture in the Service of Politics. Ed. H. Millan and L. Nochlin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978. La Bicicleta (journal) No. 6, Dec. 1972. Larrea, Vicente. “Interview” by Camilo Trumper. El Mercurio, 07, 2001. Longoni, Ana. “Brigadas Muralistas: La persistencia de una práctica de comunicación político-visual.” Revista de Critica Cultural. 19 (noviembre 1999) 21–27. <http://www.revista-de-critica-cultural.cl/n19.htm> Mallon, Florencia. Peasant and Nation: The making of postcolonial Mexico and Peru. Berkeley: U C Press, 1994. Nora, Pierre. Lieux de Mémoire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001 ✩ 152 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 153 Ephemeral Histories Revista Ramona Editorial (unsigned) 1.30 (February 27, 1972). Ross, Kristin. Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture. Cambridge: MIT University Press, 1995. Sandoval, Alejandra. Palabras Escritas en el Muro: El caso de la Brigada Chacón. Santiago: Colección Intervenciones en la Ciudad, 2001. Winn, Meter. Weavers of the Revolution: The Yarur Workers and Chile’s Road to Socialism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Notes 1 2 3 4 Graffiti, photographed in La Bicicleta. As lyrics, interpreted by Isabel Aldunate, it became a powerful song of opposition to Pinochet’s dictatorship. In the quotes that follow, all translations are mine. A significant theoretical debate has evolved around the question of the nature of the public sphere. Attempting to rescue the positive value of rationality from Weber’s critique of formal rationalization and disenchantment of modern public life, Habermas (1991) posits the existence of a public realm characterized by the possibility of enlightened subjects engaging in transparent communication. What emerges is a theoretical ideal type of public space structured around the value of democracy, communication and rationality. This is not so much a physical space, or a site of struggles of power, but an arena of rational communication where private individuals can come together, free of coercion, to form public opinion from unrestricted conversations. My study of Santiago’s public sphere stands in contradistinction to this vision of a political public. Located in “physical space rather than in conceptual abstractions,” in the “bustle of the streets” rather than the enclosed spaces of governmental politics, political art formed the center-point of an active struggle over political meaning which had very real, physical consequences for its participants. The UP was a tenuous coalition of a wide spectrum of disparate political parties, which together garnered just over a third of total votes in the 1970 election. The UP was split by internal struggles as the parties sought to further their own interpretations; this struggle informed and is reflected in public art, as various Brigadas proposed differing interpretations of nation and state, drawing sharp differences in relation to the possibility of armed struggle in the battle over government and streets, differences epitomized by the contrast of BRP doves to widespread images of rifles and resistance. As Mallon writes in her introduction to Peasant and Nation, the ways in which the nation is imagined and the state shaped are not simply defined “from above” but also informed by the actions of grassroots organizations and individuals acting “from below.” A number of important works draw on similar frameworks. Peter Winn’s older Weavers of the Revolution elaborates a groundbreaking analysis of UP political processes based on this dichotomy. I propose that a focus on public art moves us away from a rigid analysis that separates “above” and “below” into separate autonomous categories, and instead highlights the subtle interconnections between these categories, and all that lies between them, including the middle classes and professionals. ✩ 153 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 11 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 154 remembering the future The Narrative Politics of José Miguel Varas Gregory Lobo When considering the reasons why anti-capitalist political struggle seems marked, from the perspective of where we stand now, by failure, we cannot overlook the explanatory factor of armed struggle . . . on the right. That other September 11, the attack on the Palacio de la Moneda, should be seen as part of that struggle – of the armed and violent struggle for capital, whose roots reach deep. Prior to and since 1911, since 1917, since 1954 and ’59, the response to potential threats against the capitalist world system has always included a large measure of immoderate violence. Meanwhile, it is left-wing violence, or the promise of it, that seems to garner all the attention. Carlos Altamarino, in the introduction to his book on the failure of Chilean socialism, Dialéctica de una derrota, marks this reality – actual right-wing violence, the mere dread of left-wing violence – when he draws the contrast between the peaceful celebrations of Allende’s victory, which the bourgeoisie so feared, and the celebrations following the golpe, when that pent up fear was unleashed in the most spiteful manner. Altamarino writes, when September was of the people, the police did not register one single outrage. When it was of the bourgeoisie it [September] died darkened by the stink of 40,000 cadavers. The red terror, persistently announced by the heralds of the bourgeoisie, didn’t appear then nor in the three subsequent years. The white terror, on the other hand, came without announcement and its work did not pause after the popular defeat. Two styles of life, two different conceptions of society and man. One, of the people, happy, generous, open to the hope of a better life; the other, of its adversaries, menacing, dehumanized, implacably resolved to defend its privileges. (9) 1 Violence, the always at-hand solution to the problem of popular resistance, seems to have done its job. As Hernán Vidal argues, ✩ 154 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 155 Remembering the Future the greatest triumph of the military dictatorship was psychological, in that it was able to induce in large sectors of the population, in the name of a “realism,” “pragmatism,” or political “renewal,” the conviction that many of its objectives were their own, [ . . . ] imposing a reality principle that would accept capitalist modernization, the dominance of market mechanisms, and the limitation of all political expectations. (303) The limitation of all political expectations – wrought not by the inherent deficiencies of alternative social practice but by the practice of right-wing violence – seems to me to more or less characterize the present conjuncture. But while the present is, so to speak, a fait accompli, the future cannot be abandoned to the current dominant discourses, to the imaginations of the privileged. We need, as it were, to re-member the future, to put it back together again – that future once animated by ideas of social progress (socialism), that political future, which once was thought of as desirable in which – silly as it might sound – each would contribute according to their abilities and talents, and each might benefit according to their needs and desires. To be re-membered, however, such a future needs first to be remembered: the very memory of it needs revitalization. It is with this thought in mind that I introduce the Chilean author José Miguel Varas, a writer whose recognition by literary criticism, even in Chile, consists of little more than this, from Raúl Silva Castro’s Historia crítica de la novela chilena: “José Miguel Varas (1928) published a first book of short stories, Cahuín (1946), when he was only eighteen years old. Shortly after, he released a novel, Sucede (1950), which lacked a properly novelistic structure” (401). This oversight, according to Jaime Concha, has little to do with aesthetics: “To read [Varas] and compare his worth with his systemic omission on the part of Chilean criticism [ . . . ], is to realize the cynical ideological role literary studies have played in our country, representing [ . . . ] the appetites and avatars of the dominant class” (11). Recently, nevertheless, LOM Ediciones felt it worthwhile to re-publish Varas’s Chacón, and Alfaguara, in 2001, released Varas’s Cuentos Completos, testament to a growing interest in the author, at least in his native land. I argue that Varas’s work deserves to be read far beyond that land, and that its inclusion on reading lists would invigorate both our students’ and our own ideas about what is and isn’t desirable, and what is and isn’t possible, in this post-everything historical conjuncture. Varas, who lived in exile in the Soviet Union during most of the Pinochet dictatorship, writes within two different periods. The first is determined and shaped to some degree by the struggle between the USSR and the US. In response to each imperium’s particular claims to universality we can read Varas’s work between 1946 and 1968 for what I describe as a red nationalism. This is a narrative politics which stakes out ✩ 155 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 156 Gegory Lobo a position between the empires, neither of which cared a wit for democracy in the struggle for and against “socialism,” and indeed, it is a narrative politics which helps prepare the way for a democratic Chilean socialism.2 The second period in which Varas puts out fiction, after the Cold War, seems to be a period in which US power is unchecked by competitors, be they military or ideological. The future is to be capitalized, market-driven, and the entire world, so a discourse of globalization proclaims, is invited along. Against this, what Varas writes in this period constitutes a narrative politics, which critically recuperates socialist idealism. While the post-Cold War period gave rise to utopian visions of unrestrained capitalist excess, the literary contributions of Varas can be read as provocations and even injunctions to remember that earlier future once animated by notions of something better. The exemplary novel in this regard is El correo de Bagdad, which tells the story of a Mapuche painter in Baghdad during the Iraqi revolution of the 1960s. At the same time, the novel exposes the violent foundations of the new world order, evidenced by the numerous hot wars which erupted at the end of the Cold War. Particularly important here is the one against Iraq, which, we should remember, did not end the first time (I’m referring to the almost regular but scarcely noted bombings of the country by British and US warplanes that continued right up to the beginning of the sequel), and certainly has not ended this second time. El correo de Bagdad has three main characters. The first is an unnamed reporter for a left-wing newspaper in Santiago, who is writing from the early 1990s, having recently returned to Chile from exile. He is now presenting to the public the contents of a package that his editor gave to him in the months before the coup. The package had been lying around the newspaper’s office since the mid-sixties, sent by the second character, a professor, Doctor Josef Beran (henceforth JB, or the Professor) of the North Bohemia University, Czechoslovakia.3 The contents of the package are 14 letters from the third character, a Mapuche painter, Aliro Machuca (a.k.a. and hereinafter, Huerqueo), to JB, two from Prague, and the rest from Baghdad. Each letter is followed by an annotation by the professor. Set in Chile, Czechoslovakia, and Iraq, and for the most part very much in the middle of the Cold War when revolution was still a part of leftist discourse, the novel addresses our contemporary global concerns – even their manifestations at the level of theory. There is, for example, a tendency by theorists of difference, which ought to be considered part of the human condition and indeed the presupposition for any political theory,4 to elaborate it into a theory of irreconcilable alterity or otherness, which holds that discrete cultures can never be known to each other. Difference in this sense becomes not the presupposition for politics but its a priori condition of impossibility. Neil Larsen in Reading North by South ✩ 156 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 157 Remembering the Future and Misha Kokotovic in “Theory at the Margins” show how, in a worst case scenario dealing with the genre of testimonio, this leads exactly to theorizations of the impossibility of cross-cultural politics, leaving to their own devices Bolivian mineworkers, free-trade zone maquiladora workers, and numerous indigenous groups, who we simply can’t even presume to understand (Larsen 9–18; Kokotovic). The conclusion can only be a political dead-end insofar as politics is the negotiation of plurality, an impossible proposition if we are all unknowable to one another. Against this the novel articulates an idea of global resistance that speaks to our present moment, suggested by a curious solidarity between Kurd and Mapuche. In El correo de Bagdad Varas re-remembers the desire for liberation in a narrative which grounds cultural identity in political identification, such that Mapuche Indian and Kurd can unite, such that we can locate them, I would argue, in the same identity community of people as different as Karl Marx, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Ho Chi Min, Rosa Luxemburg; people who otherwise wouldn’t belong together. The novel thus re-remembers a vision of the future based on a politics of solidarity against the divisive relations of domination and oppression which constitute, despite the affirmations of the most optimistic discourses of globalization, the foundations of the present. The play on difference and solidarity develops early in the exposition, when the students, having just arrived in Baghdad, run into a demonstration of about 2,000 women. At their lodgings finally, the leader of the International Union of Students, a “fat, dark and disdainful” Jir Pelikan, is asked about the demonstration (51). In response he explains that the women were protesting the fact that a group of students, among them the president of the Iraqi Student Union, had been sentenced to death by a military tribunal. This leads to an outburst of remonstration from the assembled International Union students, who collectively suggest that a protest be lodged, and that the congress be postponed. Pelikan explains that one has to understand that “the matter is in the hands of military justice and that he cannot do anything” (51). The students continue to protest, and again Pelikan asks for their understanding: “This is a revolutionary process with many contradictions, but we have to support it” (52). He goes on: “It’s another broken link in the imperialist chain [ . . . ]. We shouldn’t judge their internal problems” (52). And then the clincher: “Finally, let’s not forget: they’re Arabs” (52). What is the reader to make of Pelikan’s justification of the death sentences on the basis that “they’re Arabs?” We can understand the character to be deploying the orientalist notion that Arab culture is somehow essentially barbaric and prone to despotism, and to be suggesting then that the students, being good cultural relativists, ought not to condemn their way of doing things. However, if their difference demands understanding or approbation of their actions, what are we to make of Huerqueo’s ✩ 157 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 158 Gegory Lobo repeated observations that they are, after all, just like us? (that is to say, him and his). For example, the plane carrying the international students is received by a line of soldiers upon landing in Baghdad. “They weren’t very well fed and they could have been Latin Americans based on their faces and appearance.” Huerqueo observes (48). As for the Iraqi students who share their buses, Huerqueo notes that their “only apparent exoticism was their guttural language” (48). And walking through the city’s neighborhoods Huerqueo sees “children, hundreds or thousands of children, between five and twelve years, abundant like flies, hanging around all over the place, shoeless, dirty, dark, with great big black eyes, only different from those that proliferate in any poor neighborhood in Santiago by the greater abundance of curly hair” (53). Even the Kurds “were only distinguishable from Arabs and Latin Americans because they wore little round hats” (70). Similar observations run through the novel. They are really not that different. Against the use of difference to excuse injustice, Huerqueo’s casual insistence on how similar the different actually are, brings to the fore that state or condition – of malnutrition, of poverty – which the great international majority share. I would suggest that this perhaps old-fashioned internationalism is the novel’s response to the new-ness of neo-liberalism’s globalization. Cultural difference, in other words, need not obviate political identification, an insight that is developed through Huerqueo, who, even as his artistic star rises, will become politicized in the context of the deformed Iraqi revolution. Every day more disgusted with its contradictions, he becomes . . . a revolutionary, though it is not with the communists per se that Huerqueo will join; it is with the Kurds. The Kurdish resistance approaches the artist first and they tell him, “[you] belong in your country to a minority group, discriminated against, like the Kurds here. Because of this, we believe that you can understand us and [ . . . ] help us” (118). This line must confound theorists of difference who maintain that different cultures are fundamentally unknowable to each other. This appeal to Huerqueo reveals that the problem of understanding across the cultural divide is not so much an issue of cultural difference, but one of a differential relation to the experience of domination. Perhaps it is indeed impossible for an empire’s beneficiary to understand the mindset of someone on the receiving end of imperial violence, but, as the novel suggests, these latter could find that despite their differences, they have much in common. As the novel continues, Huerqueo, the cosmopolitan Mapuche artist, leaves everything behind for the Kurdish liberation struggle. We learn his reasons – which might seem incongruous for 21st century readers like ourselves – when he meets the professor in Vienna for the last time. The occasion is a private showing of Huerqueo’s work prior to its tour of Latin America. His artistic future, in other words, is bright. In a restaurant the ✩ 158 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 159 Remembering the Future professor pushes Huerqueo to give voice to the brooding preoccupations, which on this ostensibly joyous evening have been so obvious. And so we learn, through the professor, what moves Huerqueo to re-identify: despite his “very essential commitment to his Mapuche people” (233), Huerqueo declares, “we’re acculturated. Too much, he thinks, by the world, books, ideas, cities [ . . . ]. Innocence is lost” (233). Given his acculturation he feels it would be impossible to spend the rest of his life back where it began in Curarrehue in the south of Chile; but nor, given his politicization, can he continue as a cosmopolitan art figure, above the fray. In criticizing Huerqueo’s decision, the professor seeks to convince him that he is no longer marginal and oppressed. His artistic talent is every day more recognized and his discretionary income advances apace. But while his “success,” the “adulatory slaps on the back, the bank account” (233) is but a “great temptation to forget,” his humble beginnings when he had intimate knowledge of “hunger and contempt” (233), the reality of the Kurds in Iraq is an insistence that he should not (forget): [U]pon feeling fraternal gaze of mustachioed men and dark tender women, spilling tears with them [ . . . ], on sharing ostracism of eight-hundred years, listening to their painful undulating songs, to smell the oily steel of their sacred patriotic rifles [ . . . ], being received with absolute trust in their stone houses, despite that nothing is in common – save condition of pariahs – , and above everything on seeing their children who go from the cradle to combat, one thinks: what do our petty petty-bourgeois dreams of a little carpeted house with a little cuckoo clock matter and what the hell (beg pardon, J.B.) does it matter my painting which only the refined understand? (234) Huerqueo reflects on the contradictions of his identities Mapuche, Chilean: “Am I not a Mapuche . . . and Chilean on top of that?” [251] an artist, a husband, an adulterer, a success . . . a Kurd? Mapuche and Kurd: although different, what brings them together, however, is what they share, their condition in the world, their understanding of oppression. If the oppressed are not represented as different, neither are the oppressors. Earlier I suggested that a cursory reading of the novel might give rise to the impression that it participates in the discourse identified by Edward Said as orientalism. We have already seen the head of the International Union of Students justify an apparent act of barbarism by reminding the would-be protestors that these people are, after all, Arabs. Among other “orientalist” scenes Huerqueo tells the professor about two of Qasim’s soldiers who pitilessly beat an obviously deranged man and then laugh heartily at their exploits. When Huerqueo recounts this incident to his wife, Eva (J. B.’s niece), she starts to shake and gives voice to the feelings that the reader might by now be sharing: “We have to get out of here! ✩ 159 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 160 Gegory Lobo They’re savages. We can’t keep on in this country” (142). But here, all of a sudden, another sense becomes clear of Huerqueo’s repeated observation that they (the Arabs) are just like us (Chileans, Latin Americans), marking a shift in the way he sees things. They may very well be savages, but this is not one more incidence of dehumanizing orientalism; it is rather a rebuke to the discourses that would always locate the other as the carrier of barbarism. For the beating Huerqueo describes, as brutal and heartless as it is, is not endemic to Baghdad. Varas has Huerqueo to respond to Eva’s outburst by suggesting she think about the Nazis, Stalin, and other European savages and savageries. They are just like us. But there is more. Since Huerqueo is writing in the early 1960s, he cannot make the connection for Eva between the Iraqi military regime’s assault on ordinary Iraqis and the Chilean military regime’s assault on ordinary Chileans. There are incommensurabilities, certainly: what you have in revolutionary Iraq is the military overthrow of a Kingdom and a clear oligarchy; in Chile, of a socialist movement. But the novel points to the similarities. With the understanding that in the immediate aftermath of the coup in Chile, Santiago’s river, the Mapocho, served as a dump for the bodies of communists and other official enemies, Varas writes a scene into El correo de Bagdad where Huerqueo and a friend visit the banks of the Tigris at night. Amongst the impromptu eateries serving fish from the river, a crowd gathers: “It’s a corpse. There’s a corpse in the river” (146). The body dragged from the Tigris turns out to be that of a communist, stabbed over twenty times. Meanwhile, looking from the corpse to the street above, Huerqueo sees “at a great height, through a wall of glass, the incandescent room of a big restaurant in which moved waiters with maroon colored jackets among tables with white tablecloths at which were sitting men and women in evening dress” (146). The scene renders perfectly the image of a society divided and at the same time joined by the relation between those who have too much and those who do not have enough. What we witness in Huerqueo is a change in his “geopolitical vision.” In National Identity and Geopolitical Visions, Gertjan Dijkink identifies a geopolitical vision as “any idea concerning the relation between one’s own and other places, involving feelings of (in)security or (dis)advantage (and/or) invoking ideas about a collective mission,” which “requires at least a Them-and-Us distinction and emotional attachment to place” (11). A geopolitical vision is how one sees oneself in relation to the world, and if Huerqueo begins the novel seeing himself as a Mapuche artist transcending the limiting stereotypes imposed on him by his national context, he will end the novel seeing himself, if not exactly as a Kurd, then certainly as one of the earth’s oppressed fighting against a domination which is ultimately international (certainly with regard to the Kurds who inhabit Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran). ✩ 160 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 161 Remembering the Future Varas’ novel emphasizes what is shared among otherwise radically different people. Surrounded by alterity, in a situation in which he feels “culturally deaf and mute,” there is “all of a sudden, in such a distant country as Iraq, again the insistent message saying: don’t forget” (233). The messenger is a Kurd, and Huerqueo recognizes – remembers, as it were – his people. In reading this novel we too receive the message “don’t forget.” Don’t forget that shortly after Chile has its first free elections in about two decades the first allied bombing of Baghdad begins. Consider here the significance of the novel’s title, which suggests mail, letters, and thus a message from Baghdad. The author plays on the ambiguity of the title and his own efficacy as a political agent when he has Huerqueo write the professor from an increasingly unstable Iraq: “I promise to keep writing to you, even though I have grave doubts about the efficacy of the messenger/mail/message” (82). However, we now know what the message from Iraq is: don’t forget. As, even in the age of terror, we celebrate the end of history, the fall of communism, the victory of the market, there is Iraq: bombed, with both Kurds and Iraqis (and US and British servicemen and women) betrayed, and the message is, for those who are paying attention: don’t forget. Forget what? Don’t forget how this works: there are those who do not have enough, and those who have too much, and they will stop at nothing to keep it that way. Works Cited Altamarino, Carlos. Dialéctica de una derrota. Mexico, D.F.: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1977. Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Cáceres, Gabriela, Lorena Godoy and Daniel Palma. 1890–1990 Almanaque Histórico de Chile. 2 ed. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Los Andes, 1996. Collier, Simon, and William F. Sater. A History of Chile, 1808–1994. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Concha, Jaime. “José Miguel Varas o un desclasimiento ejemplar.” Varas, Porái, 7–16. Dijkink, Gertjan. National Identity and Geopolitical Visions: Maps of Pride and Pain. London: Routledge, 1996. Kokotovic, Misha. “Theory at the Margins: Latin American ‘Testimonio’ and Intellectual Authority in the North American Academy.” Socialist Review 27.3–4 (1999): 29–63. Larsen, Neil. Reading North by South: On Latin American Literature, Culture, and Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Lobo, Gregory. Narrative Politics in Chile, under and after the Cold War: José Miguel Varas. Diss. University of California, 2002. Oppenheim, Lois Hecht. Politics in Chile: Democracy, Authoritarianism, and the Search for Development. 2nd ed. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. ✩ 161 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 162 Gegory Lobo Silva Castro, Raúl. Historia crítica de la novela chilena, 1843–1956. Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica, 1960. Varas, José Miguel. Cahuín. 1946. Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2002. ——. Chacón, Colección Clásicos de la Novela Social Chilena. Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 1998. ——. Cuentos Completos. Santiago: Alfaguara, 2001. ——. El Correo de Bagdad. Santiago: Editorial Planeta, 1994. ——. Las pantuflas de Stalin y otras historias. Santiago: CESOC Ediciones ChileAmérica, 1990. ——. Poraí. Santiago: Editorial Nascimento, 1963 ——. Sucede. Santiago: Editorial Pax, 1950. Vidal, Hernán. “Postmodernism, Postleftism, and Neo-Avant-Gardism: The Case of Chile’s ‘Revista de Crítica Cultural’.” The Postmodernism Debate in Latin America. Eds. Michael Aronna, John Beverley and José Oviedo. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995: 282–306. Notes 1 2 3 4 The total number of dead is not known exactly. More “objective” figures come from Collier and Sater (360), and Cáceres (137). It would seem, however, that Altamarino’s 40,000 in the quotation above is high. But would the figure of 2,300 dead, reported by the Chilean Human Rights Commission (see Oppenheim 113), negate the rhetorical force of Altamrarino’s words? If so, what is the threshold beyond which such a tenor would be justified? For further argument about the ‘place’ of Varas’s work in relation to the Allende electoral victory see Lobo (2001). This character speaks a broken Spanish replete with errors that I reproduce in the translations of quotations that follow. See for a discussion of difference as the precondition for politics, Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition. ✩ 162 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 12 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 163 the marginal on the inside Nannies and Maids in Chilean Cultural Production (1982 –2000) Julia Carroll “La Nana Teresa era el más querido y respetado miembro de toda la familia.” José Donoso, Conjeturas “ . . . y yo con la vergüenza toda colorada, esperando con la fuente en la mano que el doctor terminara de servirse y de hablar del guiso y la señora haciéndole caso en todo al doctor y diciendo perdonen, disculpen, es que viene del campo, todos venimos del campo si es por eso, dije yo, pero ahí estaba la política moviendo la cola y resultaba que había que callarse aunque las cosas estuvieran cambiando y contraten en las fábricas y don Isma sea ministro . . . ” Ana María del Río, Tiempo que ladra In his stage directions for the opening scene of the 1957 play Mama Rosa, set in a Santiago salon in 1906, the playwright Fernando Debesa explains that the proper term for domestic workers, at the time of the dramatic action, was “servant.” He notes parenthetically that “[l]a palabra ‘empleada’ no existe todavía” (106). In this play, which portrays the customs of an elite Chilean family over the course of a half-century and chronicles its gradual loss of wealth and status, Debesa’s specification about the proper way to refer to the domestic servant suggests that the position of this subordinate figure – like that of her employers – was undergoing change. In a later scene set in 1947, however, although the family maid Mama Rosa refers to herself as an empleada, the new title seems to indicate little real change. She laments to one of the Solar Echevarría daughters that despite “la famosa ley 4054,” the law granting ✩ 163 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 164 Julia Carroll social security to a larger percentage of the Chilean workforce, her situation as a domestic laborer was precarious (197). Debesa’s concern for historical accuracy in his portrayal of a maid, a traditionally marginalized subject, demonstrates the appropriateness of drawing on this particular figure to highlight the vexing social and economic disparities that plagued Chilean society throughout the 20th century and that persist even today. By situating its dramatic conflict vis-à-vis a domestic servant who serves as a conduit for social critique, Mama Rosa is an early example of a literary text in dialogue with Chile’s complex history of institutionalized, voluntary servitude. This chapter examines the possible meanings behind the representation of the domestic worker in three texts produced a bit later, between 1982 and 2000. The writing of the domestic figure under dictatorship will be examined in José Donoso’s short novel Los habitantes de una ruina inconclusa (1982), followed by a reading of Thelma Gálvez and Rosalba Todaro’s introduction to Yo trabajo así, en casa particular, the 1985 compilation of testimonies by several live-in maids. Elizabeth Subercaseaux’s La rebelión de las nanas (2000), a novel written for a large audience in a democratic context, will serve as counterpoint to the two earlier texts. I propose that the discursive articulations surrounding the maid figure in these works, or more precisely, surrounding the conflictive relations between domestic worker and employer (as these two manifestations are always necessarily linked), allow us to intuit a profound disquiet regarding the unequal power relations inherent in the political situations of the time, a disquiet that remains -and is perhaps even exaggerated – in the country’s democratic context. In recent years, the significance of the domestic worker has been the concern mainly of labor historians and feminist scholars. These have made a case for the influence of domestic service – used widely throughout Europe and the Americas – in shaping culture and society.1 Yet despite the significant shifts that the scholars examine; such as greater participation of women in the workforce at all levels, increased female migration due to transnational employment trends and subsequent modifications in traditional roles of women, an understanding of the role of domestic service in Chile must consider the historical roots of the practice. As FLACSO sociologist Carolina Stefoni explains, from as early on as the colonial period, when servants were considered to be possessions attached to the elite-owned Hacienda system, the custom of employing a maid to perform household and/or childcare duties has evolved in accordance with changes in Chile’s economic and political circumstances. The increased employment of maids in Chile after the mid-century, for example, results in part from migration patterns: The decline of the agriculture, lack of employment in the countryside and growing cities propelled one of the most important migratory movements in the country, and with it the increasing number of women ready to work ✩ 164 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 165 The Marginal on the Inside in the cities. Likely this increase in availability allowed this service to expand toward middle class sectors (135).2 Into the 21st century as well, the tendencies in domestic service continue to correspond with broader national and transnational changes. For the past few decades, the decreasing participation by Chilean women in domestic service has caused the job description to no longer resemble, in most cases, Mama Rosa’s. That is to say, the traditional puertas adentro, or live-in, employment scenario has been surpassed by puertas afuera – daytime only work – preferred by many women given the increased independence it permits. In addition, in the past five years an ever-increasing number of Peruvian women have crossed the border to fill positions as empleadas in the Chilean capital, thus modifying still further the demographics of this labor sector. These factors suggest that despite legislation in Chile in recent years that has granted more rights to domestic workers – a written contract, regular days off, and maternity leave – the job continues to be little valued by society and by the women themselves, carrying a deeply-rooted stigma connected to its colonial beginnings and its association with pre-capitalist development.3 This attempt to shed light on the critical possibilities of a literary character – and particularly on one identified by her submission to the established patrimonial order – requires some explanation. The domestic worker, as a “marginal on the inside” situated within the power structure of the home, labors under the conditions imposed by the official discourse of her patrones and wields very little power – real or discursive. This inquiry might also be frustrated by the fact that the author portraying this figure is often someone who has benefited from the service of domestic laborers. Such is the case with José Donoso, who devotes a chapter of his 1996 memoir Conjeturas sobre la memoria de mi tribu to his nanny Teresa. The writer idealizes his childhood maid and attributes to her, among other important things, his passion for storytelling and writing. Indeed, the authors and works discussed here adhere to a different, less radical project than do the contentious voices writing against dictatorship, such as the writers extolled by Eugenia Brito in Campos minados: literatura post-golpe en Chile (1990). Donoso, despite his self-imposed exile in Spain, could hardly be considered to be writing from the “borders,” or “margins” of official culture, as Brito argues is the case for writers like Diamela Eltit. Similarly, in the context of Chile’s Transición to democracy, it would be problematical to apply Nelly Richard’s concept of an “aesthetics of residue,” developed in Residuos y metáforas (1998), to an analysis of the mainstream books of Elizabeth Subercaseaux (Brito 16; Richard 12). And yet, even though the inextricable link between the maid figure and the cultural “institutions” that conserve order is undeniable, such a ✩ 165 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 166 Julia Carroll relationship does not preclude the possibility of locating in these narrative enunciations the possibility of resistance. As their interactions take place within the private sphere of the home, the positioning of the dominant in relation to the subordinate does not constitute a clear opposition between “outside” and “inside,” but rather, a complex and relatively fluid set of negotiations. In Domination and the Arts of Resistance (1990), James C. Scott has categorized these negotiations as constituting the public transcript and the hidden transcript. For Scott, the public transcript describes “the open interaction between subordinates and those who dominate”; in this case, the normative, official dealings between the maid and her employer. However, Scott is quick to point out that this public transcript is not fully indicative of the full range of interactions that occurs between subjects of uneven powers: “The public transcript, where it is not positively misleading, is unlikely to tell the whole story about power relations. It is frequently in the interest of both parties to tacitly conspire in misrepresentation” (2). In the three texts, the relations between empleada and patron/a can be productively examined for their adherence to and defiance of the public transcript. The hidden transcript, then, obscured by the public, “characterizes discourse that takes place ‘offstage,’ beyond direct observation by power holders” (2, 4). Clearly, detecting the acts of resistance that comprise the hidden transcript is a more complicated task. Scott’s configuration sheds light on how the spaces of resistance are almost impossible to locate in the reading of texts produced in authoritarian Chile or in its wake. Indeed, in the three works I consider, it is difficult to differentiate the hidden transcript of disenfranchised, marginal subjects from the “official discourse” that inscribes them. The indeterminacy regarding the maid figure’s agency is evident in the novella Los habitantes de una ruina inconclusa, written in 1982 during Donoso’s expatriate years in Spain, when Chile was undergoing an acute economic crisis. In the text, many of the author’s typical areas of exploration are present: uncertainty regarding social class, anxiety about the inevitability of decadence, and intense desire for otherness. The narrative describes the existential conflicts suffered by an elderly couple of wealthy santiaguinos upon the arrival of an assemblage of vagabonds in their exclusive neighborhood. The few interactions between Francisco and Blanca Castillo (a successful lawyer and a gran señora), who have lived for decades in the same large home, and the indigent newcomers who seize control of the unfinished building across the street, are enough to create in both husband and wife a deep desire to “cross over” as it were, and experience life as the vagrants do. Though this desire is never fully satisfied for the Castillos, one character who does successfully switch sides is Rita, the family maid. As it turns out, Rita’s role in fueling the couple’s anxiety and in pushing the narrative to its peak of conflict is recognized ✩ 166 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 167 The Marginal on the Inside only after she has disappeared from the story. After Rita abruptly abandons her decades-long post as empleada, Francisco and Blanca must face up to their powerlessness. While Rita picks up the strange language of the vagrants without difficulty, the Castillos’ attempts at communication come to nothing. Unwilling as they had been for years to have bothered learning anything about the culture of their puertas adentro maid, the couple is thus incapable of convincing her to come back and work for them again: “knew so little about how this human being lived who has been with them for twenty-five years” (136).4 As the story progresses, the linguistic and cultural codes by which the Castillos had once lived are eclipsed by the foreign code of their exempleada and the vagabonds with whom she has connected. The public transcript, in this context the time-honored spoken contract between employer and domestic worker, has lost all legitimacy. Its breakdown, in turn, implies the alternative construction of the hidden transcript of the marginalized subjects across the street, a discourse that can only be imagined by the Castillos and the reader of the story. Donoso’s narrative of polarization and social exclusion points to the impossibility of negotiation between two wildly different groups while at the same time demonstrating the relative fluidity of the maid figure’s negotiations within this rigid framework. Such a bleak outlook, however, constitutes a logical outcome for the asymmetrical power relations embedded in the story and in society under dictatorship. Another work that addresses the disparate relationship between subordinates and dominants in the dictatorship context is Yo trabajo así . . . en casa particular, published by Centro de Estudios de la Mujer in 1985. The compilation, edited with an introduction by Thelma Gálvez and Rosalba Todaro, contains the testimonies of four domestics from the ages of 22 to 58 interviewed in Santiago by Veronica Oxman. In contrast to Donoso’s work of fiction that presents a maid character via the perspective of her employers, in Yo trabajo así . . . the voices of the workers – recounting their opinions of their jobs, employers and personal lives – provide the material for the narrative. The title, an affirmative statement in firstperson presumably made by one of the interviewees, follows a rhetorical convention of Latin American testimonial literature (testimonio) from the 1970s and ’80s. As indicated by its conversational title, the text claims to record authentic discourse that captures the nuances of speech of the four interviewees, and conveys, among other sentiments, the shame that sometimes accompanies employment as an “indoors” maid. Traditionally, in testimonio, a lettered, academically trained scribe records in writing the oral testimonies of a subaltern subject whose voice may not have otherwise been recognized, as he or she often comes from a cultural group with less access to written discourse. Yo trabajo así . . . is also similar to other works of testimonio in its contestatorial mode. ✩ 167 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 168 Julia Carroll And yet, unlike well-known testimonial subjects such as Rigoberta Menchú and Domitila Barrios, whose protests against the injustices committed against their communities are encouraged by their sympathetic scribes, the injustices described by the domestic workers fit the aims of a somewhat different project. Given the fact that Luz, Elcira, Patricia and Magdalena participate voluntarily, as it were, in the occupation that exploits them, the purpose of their testimony is not to denounce the system of domestic service or the cultural institutions that support it, but rather to improve the system of communication between the parties involved in the relationship. Therefore, in the introduction, the editors synthesize the workers’ testimonies, and observe that the most difficult aspects of domestic service revolve around the issue of trato, a word that can have several different meanings depending on the context, such as treatment, manner, contract, or agreement. According to the editors, the workers’ frustrations stem from the inconsistencies and ambiguities in their trato with their employers. It is interesting to note that Gálvez and Todaro sympathize with the plight of the employers as well, claiming that the difficulty of negotiating the trato between empleada and señora can also negatively affect the power holders. Thus, the sociologists propose clear communication on both sides as a solution to improve the working conditions of the live-in maid: To improve her situation this ambiguous relationship should be changed for an explicit one where all would know what to expect and what is expected of them, where misunderstandings would be cleared up and concerns could be raised if someone does not fulfill the agreement (12). 5 In other words, to improve the lot of the 25 percent of the female work force in Chile employed in domestic service, a mutually respected contract is in order.6 The spoken contract wished for by Gálvez and Todaro, indeed a variation on the public transcript, draws on the need to mend the conflicted relations between master and servant as a starting-off point for the insertion of a more legitimate relationship in the context of authoritarian Chile. The authors’ desire to reenact a traditional transcript, and to furnish the actors – both empleada and patrona – with roles that constitute a ‘fair’ exchange of remuneration for services, illustrates, by the modesty and relative conformity of the proposal, the extent to which the reality of dictatorship has reduced the scope within which relationships of equality can be imagined and articulated. In the years that pass between these dictatorship period texts and Elizabeth Subercaseaux’s novel La rebelión de las nanas (2000), written a decade after the return to a democratic government in Chile, new legislation may well have changed the “official” story of the domestic worker, but the maid figures in this text demonstrates how, for a large percentage of Chileans, nothing has really changed. In a rhetorical move similar to ✩ 168 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 169 The Marginal on the Inside Debesa’s writing about Mama Rosa, a witness to the political and cultural changes of the first half of the 20th century, Subercaseaux performs a critical diagnostic of Chilean society and politics in which she chooses to focus on two communities of subjects who have yet to resolve their conflicts: the upper-class señoras and their domestics. Subercaseaux, like Debesa, uses the shifting terminology for the domestic worker to gauge societal changes, in this case, the increased opulence and consequent breach between the upper class and the people they hire. She notes: “Hacía mucho tiempo que [ . . . ] las empleadas domésticas dejaron de llamarse empleadas y pasaron a ser las ‘nanas’” (10). The political commentary of the opening pages of La rebelión de las nanas positions itself in a decidedly middle-of-the-road space, critical of both the extreme right and left. Set on the eve of the election of Ricardo Lagos in 1999, the prologue describes in broad strokes the issues leading up to the present impasse in Chilean society regarding the debate over how to deal with the authoritarian past and move forward with democracy. In this multi-perspective novel that switches back and forth between the empleadas and their señoras, Subercaseaux touches on the broad range of contemporary phenomena of democracy as experienced by these groups. For the maids, there is the enthusiasm over the election of a socialist on the one hand, and on the other, the tense competition with Peruvian immigrants for jobs. Meanwhile, the señoras pine away for the old fashioned, submissive servant associated with a bygone economic and social era. As one woman puts it, “scarcity of servants is one of the prices we are paying to emerge from underdevelopment” (128).7 Subercaseaux’s gloomy message comes through strongest just when her maid characters appear to have adopted a sense of solidarity. Carmen Rubilar, Licha Muñoz, and Marina Trilupil decide to organize a peaceful protest in which they march all the way from downtown to Vitacura, outwitting the authorities by disguising themselves as momias in their wealthy employers’ clothing. On the day of the march, the women feel an excitement and a liberation they have not experienced in years. Yet, despite the legality of the march, Subercaseaux concludes the empleadas’ protest and the novel with the gratuitous violence exercised against them by Fernández, a paranoid member of the military who impulsively kills the empleadas and their dreams of equality. The tragic ending seems to suggest the continued threat to human rights posed by reactionary factions like the crazed Fernández, who continues, in a time of supposed democracy, to carry out the terror of the past. Furthermore, the fate of these maid characters suggests that the discursive agency supposedly granted to domestic laborers through increased legislation mandating written contracts and permitting labor organization, holds little real weight in the face of reactionary forces that, while no longer synonymous with the current administration, still impose serious limits on national ✩ 169 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 170 Julia Carroll civil and human rights agendas. In the three years since the publication of Subercaseaux’s novel, cultural engagements with Chile’s past have continued to unfold and take on new shape, due in part to increasing temporal distance from Pinochet’s dictatorship as well as additional events forming part of critical and literary landscapes. Thus, an attempt at a conclusion might limit the basic purpose of this examination of the different ways in which power relations are articulated, conserved or contested in literary production. Therefore, I wish to end with a suggestion for further consideration about the possible meanings behind the figure of the maid in these works and in others. Though I have traced this figure in several examples of dictatorship and post-dictatorship cultural production, the object of analysis has not been the character itself, but rather the discursive modes through which this character has been articulated and its relationship to historical events. Indeed, as an object of study, certain tendencies can be noted. Whether it be through allegory, testimony or contemporary chronicle, in Los habitantes de una ruina inconclusa, Yo trabajo así . . . en casa particular, and La rebelión de las nanas, the maid figure has “served” to convey the persistence, to use Subercaseaux’s phrase, of “a society crossed by severe asymmetries” (10).8 And yet, in my view the figure of the domestic servant is so compelling because of its contradictions and its double signification of the persistence of a patrimonial, authoritarian past on the one hand, and of a profound dissatisfaction and desire for future justice, on the other. The domestic servant’s simultaneous complicity and challenge of its context and cultural practices, in a sense, likens the figure to just about any subject confronted by the legacy of illegitimate acts of power and faced with the necessary and ongoing process of negotiating new discursive spaces. Works Cited Brito, Eugenia. Campos minados (literatura post-golpe en Chile). Santiago de Chile: Editorial Cuarto Propio, 1990. Debesa, Fernando. “Mama Rosa.” Teatro chileno contemporáneo: antología. Ed. Moisés Pérez Coterillo. Madrid, España: Fondo de Cultura Económica Sucursal, 1992: 114–214. Donoso, José. Conjeturas sobre la memoria de mi tribu. Santiago: Alfaguara, 1996. Donoso, José. “Los habitantes de una ruina inconclusa.” Cuatro para Delfina. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1982: 93–147 Ehrenreich, B. and Arlie Russell Hochschild. Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Metropolitan Books, 2003. Gálvez, Telma and Rosalba Todaro. Yo trabajo así . . . en casa particular. Ed. Verónica Oxman. Santiago de Chile: Centro de Estudios de la Mujer, 1985. Gutiérrez, Ana. Se necesita muchacha. México. Fondo de Cultura Económica. 1983 ✩ 170 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 171 The Marginal on the Inside Parrenas, Rhacel Salazar. Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration, and Domestic Work. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. Richard, Nelly. Residuos y metáforas: Ensayos de crítica cultural sobre el Chile de la transición. Santiago: Editorial Cuarto Propio, 1998. Río, Ana María del. Tiempo que ladra Santiago: Planeta, 1994 Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990. Stefoni, Carolina. “Mujeres inmigrantes peruanas en Chile.” Papeles de población. 33 (July–September 2002): 117–46. Subercaseaux, Elizabeth. La rebelión de las nanas. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Grijalbo, 2000. “Un trabajo como otros: Las trabajadoras de casa particular.” Argumentos para el cambio. 25 (June1998). Centro de Estudios de la Mujer <www.argumentos.cem.cl/argu25.htm>. Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 See B. Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild’s recent Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy (2003) and Rhacel Salazar Parrenas’ Servants of Globalization (2001). “El deterioro en la agricultura, la falta de empleo en el campo y el crecimiento de las ciudades provocaron uno de los movimientos migratorios más importantes en el país, y con ello el aumento de mujeres dispuestas a trabajar en las ciudades. Probablemente este aumento en la oferta permitió expandir este servicio hacia los sectores medios” (135). (Editor’s translations, unless otherwise indicated). This legislation is discussed in “Un trabajo como otros: Las trabajadoras de casa particular,” issue 25 (1998) of Argumentos para el cambio (Centro de Estudios de la Mujer). For more information on legislation affecting domestic workers in Chile, see <www.sernam.cl> (Servicio Nacional de la Mujer’s web site), which has links to a comprehensive legal database. “sabían tan poco sobre cómo vivía ese ser que estaba con ellos por veinticinco años” (136). “Para mejorar su situación tendría que cambiar esa relación ambigua por una relación de trabajo muy explicitada, donde todos sepan qué esperar y qué se espera de ellos, donde se pueden aclarar los malentendidos y se pueda reclamar si alguien no cumple los acuerdos” (12). Though this percentage continues to decrease, the high proportion of Chilean women working as domestic servants was once of interest to writers such as the Mexican Elena Poniatowska, who in her 1981 introduction to Ana Gutiérrez’ Se necesita muchacha, quoting Gloria Laff, states that “En Chile, la mitad de la población femenina económicamente activa se dedica al servicio doméstico” (33). “[l]a escasez de servidumbre es uno de los precios que estamos pagando por salir del subdesarrollo” (128). “una sociedad cruzada por severas asimetrias” (10) ✩ 171 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 172 nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 173 P art IV Cultural Representations Repression and Shifting Subjectivities nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 ✩ 174 ✩ Page 174 nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 175 introduction to part iv After the historical trauma of nearly two decades of ruthless oppression in Chile, regaining democracy requires a redefinition of Chilean collective identity. This is carried out partly by self-representation in and by way of different media. Representation, be it literary or visual, is always closely linked to questions of cultural identity, its construction, that includes the processes involved and the end product as well. In relation to the key markers of individual identity – class, age, gender and ethnicity – representation concerns itself not only with how identities are represented, but also with the processes though which they are constructed, and with the reception by people whose identities are also differentially marked by such demographic factors. Consider, for instance, the “gaze” (Chandler) that embodies the subjectivity of representation. Those who create (or analyze) visual art concern themselves with the gaze, particularly, its perspectives, directions, and the way it produces meaning. The chapters in part IV deal with the manner and extent to which representation and language (in the widest possible sense) are crucial to the construction of subjectivity. Repression and dictatorship do not favor the manifestation of different identities; nevertheless, as a testament to the deep rooted vitality of art and culture, such manifestations rapidly and extensively sprung up immediately after the collapse of the dictatorship (not only in Chile, but also in other parts of Latin America, in Spain, and elsewhere). During a dictatorship different subjectivities adopt a latent, subterranean flow, but they explode as soon as the despotism ends to fill the voids created by the repression of any manifestation of pluralism. Filmic representation of oppression and dictatorship is the focus of three of the four essays that constitute part IV. The films in question, especially the documentaries, are concerned with the desire to bring about a reflection of the years of dictatorship, and the function of memory in the democratization process. Such films subtly yet relentlessly propel participants, as well as viewers, to face the irreversible harm done to the ✩ 175 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 176 Introduction to Part IV society as a whole, and to its members, by the ruthless repression. Fernando is Back and Obstinate Memory are two examples of documentaries whose premises are based on the stimulating idea of how film could be used to understand the self as a reflexive project in a society that is just emerging from the crippling legacy of a long-lasting dictatorship. Narrative films (such as The House of Spirits mentioned in Oliver’s essay) may also be considered as catalysts for social change because of their powerful ability to approximate the appearance of reality more persuasively than any other mass media. Patricio Guzmán’s films, particularly Obstinate Memory, explore the multiple ways individual and collective acts of remembrance deal with the horrific legacies of a dictatorship. However, Amy Oliver turns the question around and aims it toward the possible didactic aspects offered by these films: “What do those who did not live through the Allende years in Chile remember about what happened there, and why do they remember?” (if they do). This crucial dilemma is at the heart of the debate in Chile today. What is better: to remember and fight for justice (which was the conclusion reached by many victims of the Argentine dictatorship also unfolding in the late ’70s: “ni perdón, ni olvido” – neither forgiveness nor forgetting), or to let the past be past and place all energy into building a democratic future. The films do not offer a definite answer, quite the contrary; they seek to explore the consequences of both positions. However, they do acknowledge the tension and uneasiness created by the coexistence of both attitudes. The ambiguity or simply the lack of agreement is prolonging the harmful effects of the trauma suffered by many. Andrea Bachner, on the other hand, explores the narrative (written) representation of trauma (both physical and psychological) by scrutinizing Diamela Eltit’s rendering of the traumatized body in her novel, Lumpérica. Bachner bases her arguments in Derrida’s concept of ‘inscription’ which she parallels with Eltit’s writing that distances the author’s subjects from value judgment (negative/positive) and thus a more nuanced representation is delivered in the modality of “performing subjectivities.” Flesh and discourse are in the centre of this self-reflexive narrative. In the context of this novel, inscription produces and maintains the communal memory, and thus serves as an instrument for memorization or conservation. “In this sense, inscription conserves time by keeping the past in the present” (Jang). Both filmic and narrative representations of the subjectivities constructed during and after the dictatorship are intimately related to the effort of recording the past and conserving it through a memoralistic gesture as part of Chile’s struggle to come to terms with its recent history. This recent past of dictatorship is in sharp contrast with Chile’s earlier (or pre-1973) democratic tradition, a tradition destroyed by seventeen years of repression, that according to the military and the civilian elites, can only ✩ 176 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 177 Introduction to Part IV be regained in the future at the expense of forgetting the crimes, suffering, and pain enacted to destroy it. Ironically, this is demanded from the citizens of the new fledging democracy, without acknowledging that it requires acts of self-denial, self-mutilation, as part of individual and collective experience. That is one of the reasons why the trauma of dictatorship cannot simply be erased through symbolic and empty reconciliations. This is also the reason why the representation of these issues will continue to be part of the different forms of artistic and cultural expressions, as Chilean society works through the conflicting processes of redefining its identity. Works Cited Chandler, Daniel: “Notes on the Gaze.” 3 March 2005. Internet: <http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/gaze01.html> Jang, Seungkwon. “The Deconstruction of Programming, and Programming as Deconstruction.” 25 March 2005 Internet: <http://www.stc.arts. chula.ac.th/cyberethics/papers/AP-CAP2005–S_Jang.doc> ✩ 177 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 13 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 178 exporting chile Film and Literature after 1973 Amy A. Oliver The story of the last thirty years in Chile has been engrained in international memory through literature, art, international affairs and activism, and international attention has focused on the story of Chile to a greater extent than other, not altogether dissimilar, Latin American stories. For example, another worthy Latin American story is General Efraín Ríos Montt’s attempt to become President of Guatemala in 2003. While his election would have been an unseemly development, little international public outcry was heard around the Guatemalan events since 1954, at least in North America. I could enumerate other Latin American situations that are at least as deserving of international attention as Chile, but for me the questions persist: How has the Chilean story managed to remain in the spotlight when it, too, might have lost international moral visibility? What factors have contributed to Chile’s relative success at exporting its story in the pursuit of justice? Why has the sad tale of this nation of 15 million people, “so far from God” and so far from the United States, been relatively more successful at embedding itself in global memory? While I would never propose a single answer for such questions, I will offer several factors that contribute to the staying power of the case of Chile, and then examine the role of selected literature and film in transmitting Chile’s story. More specifically, I will discuss literature and film while focusing primarily on the cultural reception of Chile’s story in the international arena, especially in the English-speaking world. I do not claim to place the role of literature and film in the transmission of Chile’s story above other factors that have contributed to international attention being directed toward Chile, but I do seek to demonstrate that literature and film can play a role in keeping history alive. Chile’s 9/11 and its after-shocks have been the subject of much litera- ✩ 178 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 179 Exporting Chile ture and film. Patricio Guzmán’s documentary, Chile, Memoria obstinada, examines the question of what those who lived through the Allende years remember about that period in Chilean history. Here I offer a distinct/different perspective on the question, “What do those who did not live through the Allende years in Chile remember about what happened there, and why do they remember?” On a foundational level, the efforts of anti-Pinochet activists and victims in the long and persistent march for justice cannot be overstated. The abiding love of country and justice found among Chileans and their allies in human rights endeavors have fueled tireless campaigns that have not been in vain. Activists include Chileans living in Chile, as well as Chileans in exile, the so-called 14th region or jurisdiction (there being 13 within Chile itself). More than eight hundred thousand people of Chilean descent now live abroad, with large numbers in Sweden, the United States, Argentina, Canada, Australia, Britain, and France. Though not all exiles are human rights activists, the sheer number of exiles and their diaspora call attention to why such numbers left Chile in the post-1973 era. In answer to the obligatory question asked of Chilean exiles, “When did you leave?” Isabel Allende writes: If he, or she, says before 1973, it means that person is a rightist and was fleeing Allende’s socialism; if he left between 1973 and 1978, you can be sure he is a political refugee; but any time after that, and she may be an ‘economic exile,’ which is how those who left Chile looking for job opportunities are qualified. It is more difficult to place those who stayed in Chile, partly because those individuals learned to keep their opinions to themselves. (My Invented Country 46–7) Although activism continues to be seminal in disseminating the story of what happened in Chile, especially among people who were born after 1973, activism is not unique to Chile’s human rights campaign and it cannot alone account for why the Chilean story has endured in global memory. Several international incidents in the United States and in Britain, which gave Chile’s plight opportune media coverage, demonstrate the crucial role of events and influences beyond Latin America’s borders in Chile’s history. For purposes of contrast, I will first mention an incident that took place within Latin America’s borders. A historical episode that many Chileans remember, especially those of a certain age, is the murder of the exiled General Carlos Prats. Carlos Prats served as minister of the interior and commander-in-chief of the Chilean armed forces under the late President Salvador Allende. General Prats resigned on August 23, 1973, and was replaced by Pinochet, who had presented himself as a political vacillator. Some scholars claim that the reasons for Prats’s resignation are not clear. Kyle Steenland writes of Prats: ✩ 179 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 180 Amy A. Oliver It is known that the split between him and the majority of the top officers was open and bitter. It seems that he wanted to force the resignation of many of the major conspirators in the Army but that Allende felt that it was inopportune. Prats then resigned, seeing no way to resolve conflict among the top officers, and fully understanding that the majority of them were planning to overthrow the government. (14) Pinochet ordered Prats into exile in Argentina a few days after the coup. Living in Buenos Aires and writing his memoirs, Carlos Prats and his wife Sofía were killed by a car bomb planted by the DINA, Chile’s secret police, on September 30, 1974. In 1992, the Prats family sought justice through the Chilean courts, which turned down the request because of a pending Argentine investigation. It was not until 2003 that five former heads of DINA were indicted for the assassination of General Prats. Others who have been implicated include CIA agent Michael Townley, a US citizen now living in the United States under the witness protection program (Sánchez 2). Pinochet has not been questioned about his alleged role because the Chilean courts ruled at the time that he was mentally unfit to stand trial. While some people in North America and Europe remember the Prats murders, I think that this event was almost totally eclipsed in northern memory by another car bombing that took place on US soil just two years after the Prats murders. This returns me to the thesis of the importance of the international role in highlighting events in Chile. On September 21, 1976, DINA planted another car bomb that killed Orlando Letelier, Allende’s former Foreign Minister who had been lobbying to suspend loans and to prevent arms sales to Chile. Also murdered was Ronni Karpen Moffitt, who also worked at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. Her husband, Michael Moffitt, a co-worker of Letelier who was riding in the backseat, was injured. The killing of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt, on the streets of the Western Hemisphere’s oldest democracy, was carried out by men who had overthrown its second-oldest democracy, a democracy that Chileans had thought was at least as stable as Switzerland’s. Until 9/11/01, the murder of Letelier and Moffitt was the most famous act of international terrorism committed in Washington, D.C. The fact that this act of terrorism took place in Sheridan Circle on Embassy Row, in the heart of the capital of the United States, again thrust the Chilean story into the international spotlight. Perhaps in part because of this spotlight, Manuel Contreras, the former head of DINA, and Pedro Espinoza, one of his assistants, were sentenced, respectively, to seven and six-year jail terms (Sánchez 2). The Cuban exiles that assisted in the bomb plot in Washington were jailed in the US, but Pinochet has yet to be called to account for the murder. Still, this murder by car bomb in ✩ 180 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 181 Exporting Chile Washington, D.C. greatly increased public attention of the events happening in Chile. A more recent event that had significant international impact was a leading news story: the efforts of the Spanish judges, Baltasar Garzón and Juan Guzmán, to prosecute Pinochet. Media coverage of Garzón’s ruling was somewhat upstaged by the arrest and detention of General Pinochet in Britain in October of 1998, and the subsequent drama of Pinochet’s incarceration, its reviews attracted widespread media coverage and once again thrust Chile into the public eye. A novelist could not have chosen a better moment than the former dictator for his hospitalization directly after his arrest. One day Pinochet was walking in an English garden and the next day he was said to be too ill to stand trial. Pinochet ruled for seventeen years; another eight passed before his arrest in London prompted the first truly effective attempts in Chile to hold him accountable. Reed Brody of the New York-based Human Rights Watch observed, “The very fact that Pinochet was arrested, that four countries sought his extradition, that his claim of immunity was rejected, that his [alleged] crimes were spelled out before British courts. The world is becoming a smaller place for people who commit atrocities” (Miller and Rotella 1). Sofía Prats, the daughter of Carlos and Sofía Prats, argues that Pinochet’s detention in Britain changed the way he is seen in Chile: “It has meant he is no longer seen as untouchable. It means justice can be obtained and that the effects of things that happened long years ago are felt around the world” (Campbell 1). I will turn now to key historical, political, and socially symbolic moments of cultural production through literature and film, which have played their own role in keeping Chile in the spotlight. One of the world’s best-selling novelists happens to be from Chile. The mere fact that she shares Salvador Allende’s last name and his daughter’s first name, and repeatedly has had to clarify that she is the niece and not the daughter, has in itself drawn attention to Chile’s story. Isabel Allende’s best-selling first novel, La casa de los espíritus, has been translated into more than thirty languages. The cover of the novel, published in Spain in 1982 by Plaza y Janés, was not adorned by the iguanas or mangoes that so frequently appear on the jackets of books by Latin American writers, but by a woman with green hair. The cover of the English translation, published in 1985, promised a melodramatic and epic family tale. The novel blends fact and fiction, eventually setting the Trueba family and their magic world against the backdrop of the barely disguised Chilean coup. This widely read novel has been a significant cultural vehicle for exporting Chile’s story to the world. The bestseller succeeds in drawing an international audience into an epic romance that has the added benefit of educating that audience about the key elements of the coup. For ✩ 181 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 182 Amy A. Oliver example, Allende pointedly includes a date at a pivotal moment in the novel: September 11, 1973. The character of the president has all the attributes of Salvador Allende, El Poeta is unmistakably Pablo Neruda, El Cantante is clearly Víctor Jara, and it is difficult to miss the “augustos bigotes” of Augusto Pinochet, or “el dictador” as he is known in the novel. In addition to the historically accurate cast of characters, repression in the social and political realm is equally well detailed as we learn, for example, that men sporting beards and women wearing pants are not going to be tolerated by the dictator’s regime. Both the text and film versions of La casa de los espíritus have met with criticism. For example, some critics of the novel have argued that its blend of fact and fiction is far from smooth and that the magical tone of the first two-thirds contrasts sharply with the harsh historical reality of the last third. Some feminist critics have argued that the novel perpetuates sexist stereotypes despite the supposed centrality of the female characters. Lloyd Davies has written: Although critical reception of La casa de los espíritus and subsequent works has been generally favourable, there remain serious doubts about Allende’s literary credentials which have led to her exclusion from the canon of modern Latin American authors: the Chilean critic, Cedomil Goic, excludes her from his monumental Historia y crítica de la literature hispanoamericana (1988) . . . (17) Overall, since critical and demonstrable popular acclaim for the novel arguably far outweighs the perceived flaws, I believe the novel succeeds both as art and as political education. The far less enthusiastically received film, with its sadly miscast actors, differs markedly from the novel and unfortunately fails to capture the novel’s magical realism just as it fails to provide relevant information about the coup. The film adaptation of The House of the Spirits was released in 1993 to widespread reviews of the “two thumbs down” variety. Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep are miscast in this film as Esteban and Clara. Jeremy Irons sports more hair gel on screen than Juan Perón used in his entire lifetime. The copious bronzer on his face is an attempt to make him appear swarthy and macho, traits that are difficult to accept for those who have seen Irons in other film roles. Winona Ryder, who plays Blanca, comes closer to embodying the qualities Clara is supposed to possess than Meryl Streep does. Glenn Close offers a solid performance as Férula. The starstudded cast did ensure that the film got attention and well-placed reviews. Indeed, the film could have been of good quality if it had been conceived differently and had employed different lead actors. However, the overall poor quality of the film did not detract from the opportunity to promote the novel again, sales of which surged with the release of the film, and to advance Chile’s story into the spotlight once again. Books are ✩ 182 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 183 Exporting Chile usually better than their film adaptations, and this was emphatically clear when the House of the Spirits film debuted. In my estimation, an earlier film, Constantin Costa-Gavras’s Missing (1982), more forcefully portrays many of the compelling issues surrounding the Chilean coup. Missing offers a more historically complete portrayal of the events surrounding the coup. In some ways it complements the novel version of La casa de los espíritus, and it is more successful at “exporting” the story of the Chilean coup to the world. Based on Thomas Hauser’s book, The Execution of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice, “Missing” is Costa-Gavras’s first Hollywoodproduced film. It presents an only slightly fictionalized account of the disappearance of American expatriate writer Charles Horman (played by John Shea) in Santiago (though the city and Chile are never mentioned) just after a military coup. Upon hearing of his son’s disappearance, Horman’s conservative father, Ed (played by Jack Lemmon), travels to Chile to visit Horman’s wife, Beth (played by Sissy Spacek), to sort things out. Ed and Beth are unlikely political allies as they run into the official stonewalling of the American embassy and Chilean authorities that insist there is no trace of Charles. The film parallels reality so closely that, when it was released in 1982, then-Secretary of State, Alexander Haig felt compelled to issue categorical denials of the film’s allegations. Missing won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay that year and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress. The film earned nearly $8 million at the box office, a very respectable though not a “blockbuster” sum by 1982 standards. In contrast, the film The House of the Spirits brought in only $6 million at the box office, eleven years later. Hollywood films were excellent vehicles to communicate Chile’s story to a large English-speaking audience. While plenty of worthy Spanishlanguage films have been produced on Chile, Missing is not one of those “pesky foreign films” that require viewers to read English subtitles. The drama of the film’s story is sufficient to keep the attention of North American viewers accustomed to learning about international affairs by watching “The Global Minute” on CNN. For some, seeing Missing was the way they learned that Chile had important modern political, specifically at first, “Cold War” stories to tell. More recently, while people in the English-speaking world might focus on Christopher Hitchens’s book on Henry Kissinger and the film The Trials of Henry Kissinger, I think that college courses in the United States may also have an influence on keeping Chile’s story going. A cursory review on the internet of courses with content on Chile reveals that the topic of the 1973 coup arises with considerable frequency in all sorts of Latin American Studies courses. Even beyond Latin American Studies, the coup provides an excellent case study for certain types of political science ✩ 183 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 184 Amy A. Oliver courses. The novel The House of the Spirits is featured in many literature courses and Missing can be found in a variety of film courses. Insofar as university professors in the United States have any influence over students’ thinking, the inclusion of Chile’s story in courses may be a detail that helps keep the story alive. My experience has been that students unfamiliar with what happened find the story riveting and are motivated to do further reading, talk about Chile with their friends, and even to travel to Chile. Finally, the coincidence that the Chilean coup and the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania both occurred on September 11, twenty-eight years apart, establishes an ironically serendipitous link between the two events that may in the long run turn out to be another factor that fuels continued focus on the meanings of events thirty years ago in Chile. Works Cited Allende, Isabel. La casa de los espíritus. Barcelona: Plaza y Janés, 1982. ——. House of the Spirits. Trans. Magda Bogin. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1985. ——. My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile. Trans. Margaret Sayers Peden. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Campbell, Duncan. “Coup Ghosts Wait for Pinochet,” The Guardian, 23 January 2000 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/pinochet/story/0,11993,190616,00.html>. Hauser, Thomas. The Execution of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice (1978). Missing. New York: Avalon, 1982. Hitchens, Christopher. The Trial of Henry Kissinger. London: Verso Books, 2001. Davies, Lloyd. Isabel Allende: La casa de los espíritus. London: Grant & Cutler Ltd, 2000. Miller, Marjorie, and Sebastian Rotella. “Pinochet is Freed by Britain, Flies Home to Chile.” Los Angeles Times, 3 March 2000 <http://www.latimes. com/news/nation/20000303/t0000207 71.html>. Sanchez, Alicia. “Rights-Chile: Five Ex-Secret Police Leaders Indicted for Murder.” Global Information Network (2003): 1. Proquest. 26 February 2003 <http://proquest.umi.com/ pqdlink?did=295446761&Fmt=3&clientId =3260 & RQT=309&VName=PQD>. Steenland, Kyle. “The Coup in Chile.” Chile: Blood on the Peaceful Road. Latin American Perspectives. 1.2 (Summer 1974): 9–29. ✩ 184 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 14 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 185 “me moria” Aesthetics, Documentary and the Creation of Nostalgia in Patricio Guzmán’s Chile, memoria obstinada Jeffrey R. Middents One of the things that most irritates me is that people never talk to me about the language of my films – about the construction of character, about the narrative, about the narrative agents. It’s as if political facts just happened. I feel a tremendous responsibility to construct a discussion, to create an emotionally rich environment, to bring people into the issue. Patricio Guzmán1 Patricio Guzmán’s 1997 documentary Chile, Obstinate Memory (Chile, memoria obstinada) opens with an introduction to Juan, one of the few surviving guards who had been called away on his wedding day to defend the Chilean presidential palace during the coup d’état on September 11, 1973. Used as a human shield by the army at one point, he is shot in the stomach and falls with his hands up on a pile of bodies outside the palace doors – an image captured in a famous photograph. Remembering this experience 23 years later, he says, “Sentí que en este momento, yo me moría. (At that moment, I felt as if I was dying).” Memoria, memory; me moría, I was dying: it is a coincidence that these phrases only differ by where the stress is placed. Juxtaposing ideas of death and memory with regard to this film, however, is intentional: the subjects of Guzmán’s film are asked to confront death and torture triggered specifically from the images found in his earlier film, the seminal documentary La batalla de Chile: La lucha de un pueblo sin armas (The Battle of Chile: The Struggle of an Unarmed People, released between 1975 and 1979). The agitated images of the film, primarily shot with hand-held camera, convey the violent turbulence of the Chilean reality; such images contrast, however, ✩ 185 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 186 Jeffrey R. Middents with Chile, memoria obstinada, which favors simpler shot compositions and subtler use of mise-en-scène. In this chapter, I would like to argue that Guzmán constructs an elegant, “quieter” aesthetics in Chile, memoria obstinada, which seduces the viewer more effectively by placing emphasis on individual subjects. As such, despite the genuine power of La batalla de Chile, Guzmán’s sophisticated construction in Chile, memoria obstinada “creates” nostalgia in all viewers, even in viewers unfamiliar with the Chilean experience. Notably a Canadian and French co-production, Chile, memoria obstinada records exiled director Patricio Guzmán’s 1996 return to his homeland where he clandestinely screens La batalla de Chile to audiences who had not been permitted to view it under the Pinochet regime.2 Guzmán is not the first director to return and film clandestinely in Chile – ten years earlier, Miguel Littín daringly shot Acta general de Chile (General Report from Chile), an event famously chronicled by Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez – nor is he probably the first to secretly screen banned material. Yet the exhibition of the first film becomes the reflexive subject – and thereby implicitly, the object of critique – of the second. After opening with images of the bombing of La Moneda, the presidential palace, both films explicitly acknowledge the filmmakers’ presence and positioning. La batalla begins with sound and image synchronization checks that would otherwise be edited out of a finished documentary, thus announcing to the viewer the constructed nature of the documentary film format. In contrast, after being introduced as one of Allende’s guards, Juan is then shown in Memoria obstinada to be falsely posing as a crew member on the film where he is actually the subject. Apart from this, however, the two films have drastically different approaches to reflecting the contemporary political and social atmosphere in Chile. La batalla was clearly not originally conceived as a piece to record the downfall of a popularly elected government; on the contrary, as Ana López points out in “The Battle of Chile: Documentary, Political Process and Representation,” Guzmán and Grupo Tercer Año’s original plan in 1973 involved filming specific, related events concerning the shared political viewpoint of Unidad Popular (278). The fact that they end up inadvertently documenting the violent nature of the coup d’état has led a number of critics – primarily, but not exclusively, from the West – to somewhat mistakenly claim the film as “‘pure documentary’, dealing with facts, history, testimony and so forth” (López 275–76). As such, however, La batalla has traditionally been treated less as a deliberately constructed documentary, and more as a clear, factual document. The aesthetic elements of the film underline this perception, given that the chaos of the period is reflected through a busy mise-en-scène and agitated camera movements. The hand-held camera used throughout the film jerks the image in a relatively violent fashion, even if the subject is ✩ 186 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 187 Me moria not moving himself. This is particularly noticeable during the numerous interviews of people on the street: even when the subject is calmly talking, the image itself appears frenzied. The camera is constantly searching, refusing to stick with a single character in order to focus on the collective. Even when an upper-class woman who is clearly anti-Allende is polled in her own house, the camera wanders around and catches her son and other people in her apartment rather than remaining focused on her. When the camera is placed on a tripod, fluid pans and tilts also emphasize the multitude of people within the frame moving frenetically in situations, such as a strike, a parade or a rally. For example, a high-angle shot from a balcony slowly pans to fill the frame with what appears to be thousands of protesters bouncing up and down. Nonetheless, Ana López marks notable aesthetic differences between La batalla de Chile and other political documentaries of the time due its conscious use of unusually long takes: In the finished film, these sequence shots so laboriously obtained serve to alter the traditional relationship between film, filmmakers and spectators. In the narrative-fiction cinema, the sequence shot increases the film’s credibility and its indirect persuasiveness. It is generally considered more “realistic” because of its apparent preservation of the unities of time and space. Its extensive use in the documentary, however, rather than emphasizing a real already ostensibly guaranteed by the documentary form, paradoxically brings the document closer to the realm of fiction . . . By revealing the means by which the dramatic action has been structured, the sequence shot functions within this documentary as a kind of estrangement device that separates the spectator from the sheer force of rhetoric and that simultaneously suggests (because of its role in fiction) and prevents (because this is a documentary) simple identification. (278–79) It is evident that even in such a “raw” film as La batalla de Chile, specific aesthetic considerations were taken into account even before filming3 began. Patricio Guzmán shoots Chile, memoria obstinada differently by minimizing the erratic nature of the camera and focusing on the individual within frame compositions. Interviews almost exclusively feature a single person taking up a large amount of space within the frame, but the primarily still (i.e. non-moving), uncluttered space surrounds the subjects being interviewed and does not distract the viewer. As if to emphasize this, after a woman named Carmen Vivanco is presented with an image of herself recorded as part of La batalla 23 years ago, we see her unmoving face reflected in a television screen, which is showing images of constant movement from the film. Vivanco’s motionlessness is accentuated by the superimposed ghostlike images of agitation of which she was a part. Whereas La batalla de Chile emphasizes chaos, the aesthetic nature of Memoria obstinada stresses an uneasy calm following the storm. ✩ 187 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 188 Jeffrey R. Middents Guzmán constructs his seduction of the contemporary viewer by beginning with this emphasis on the individual, primarily on the self as reflected within the very images of the film. Return for a moment to the statement made by the bodyguard Juan: Me moría, I was dying. However, by being able to say that, Juan also confirms the fact that he is alive now: “I was dying, but I am not dead.” Indeed, the first subjects of Memoria obstinada affirm their connections with past images of themselves. Looking at photographs or watching a movie, they find themselves within these images, establishing a connection with them. Indeed, the characters do what we unconsciously do in film: identify with a character in an image. Literally, these images are the subjects themselves, but they serve to remind the viewer of the power of the image. This connection/recognition is jarring, however, when the subject in the image is already dead. Roland Barthes discusses the intense pain upon the recognition of a dead loved one in his long essay Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, by admitting that a still photograph of his recently deceased mother only serves to confirm for him that she is dead; it does not allow him to remember what she was like when she was alive: In photography, the presence of the thing (at a certain past moment) is never metaphoric; and in the case of animated beings, their life as well . . . ; if the photograph then becomes horrible, it is because it certifies, so to speak, that the corpse is alive, as corpse: it is the living image of a dead thing. For the photograph’s immobility is somehow the result of a perverse confusion between two concepts: The Real and the Live by attesting that the object has been real, the photograph surreptitiously induces belief that it is alive, because of that delusion which makes us attribute to Reality an absolutely superior, somehow eternal value; but by shifting this reality to the past (“this-has-been”), the photograph suggests that it is already dead. (78–79) Recognizing oneself as Juan and Carmen Vivanco do, when shown the photographs and the film respectively twists Barthes’s notion further by confirming that indeed, the “I” is not dead: “I” am in fact very much alive by being able to recognize myself in what appears on the screen. The images bring back the painful memory for the viewer that, while others did die, he/she is not dead, even if only for random reasons. Once again, it is important to remember that the subjects of Chile, memoria obstinada are not just Chileans who experienced what was documented beforehand: they are also spectators, much like us who are currently watching a documentary. As such, they function in a sort of associative fashion with us as fellow spectators. As if to instruct us as to this process, Guzmán inserts a situation in which he is the one recognizing the person in death by presenting the figure of Jorge Müller, one of the film’s cameramen who was “disappeared.” We are shown film footage of Müller, learn from fellow filmmakers how he acted, find his name on the ✩ 188 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 189 Me moria wall of remembrance of the desaparecidos, and watch his father’s wrenching inability to speak about his dead son. If Guzmán has brought us with him to empathize as viewers of a documentary, he now interjects his own painful memories, ones that are imbued with loss. By now focusing on a person who is not seen moving as a part of a film, but who is inextricably rooted in the past, Guzmán moves from the idea of memory and into nostalgia. In Home Matters: Longing and Belonging, Nostalgia and Mourning in Women’s Fiction, Roberta Rubenstein defines nostalgia as “a painful awareness, the expression of grief for something lost, the absence of which continues to produce significant emotional distress. Most individuals experience such loss not merely as separation from someone or something but as an absence that continues to occupy a palpable emotional space [:] . . . the ‘presence of absence’” (5). This “presence of absence” becomes tangible when we see images of Müller’s father, who keeps his son’s bedroom in exactly the same way today as it was almost 20 years ago, and is utterly incapable of speaking in front of the camera. By having his subjects also function as spectators of another documentary, however, Guzmán asks us to associate with their personal, painful nostalgias, as if he were inviting the viewer to share in the absence. In The Future of Nostalgia, Svetlana Boym separates nostalgia into two types, reflective and restorative: Restorative nostalgia evokes national past and future; reflective nostalgia is more about individual and cultural memory. . . . Nostalgia of the first type gravitates toward collective pictorial symbols and oral culture. Nostalgia of the second type is more oriented toward an individual narrative that savors details and memorial signs, perpetually deferring homecoming itself. If restorative nostalgia ends up constructing emblems and rituals of home and homeland in an attempt to conquer and spatialize time, reflective nostalgia cherishes shattered fragments of memory and temporalizes space (49). Although La batalla de Chile alludes to this by informing us of the final outcome of the film with images of the bombing of La Moneda, it does not revel in nostalgia, nor does it invite its viewers in as more than witnesses to an event, because it never establishes personal connections with the subjects. People are shown to be powerful with a number of shots of large gatherings, but individual connections necessary to establish nostalgia are not present. As viewers, we are able to relate to and empathize with the characters in Memoria obstindada, even if we are not directly involved with or even cognizant of the events that occur in the film. The question comes down to: can we obtain this nostalgia to relate to the specific Chilean pain if we ourselves are not part of the time period or location, can we acquire these “obstinate memories” of loss when they ✩ 189 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 190 Jeffrey R. Middents occur outside our realm of consciousness? Guzmán answers this directly through the last major sequence of the film, where la batalla is shown to Chilean students who have either come of age or were born during the military regime. Pointedly, a group of students at a girls’ high school fiercely debate the coup in very abstract terms, until the interviewer asks their teacher about her point of view. Her response is chilling: “When the coup happened, I supported it and thought it was necessary. I now think that I was wrong. Even two days afterwards, I thought differently.” The girls respond to this with a confused silence: the teacher’s words are not directed at them but they are nevertheless affected. Suddenly, the issue is not about “them” and “those communists” but about someone they know personally. By taking the time to present us as viewers with characters and by showing us viewers of a documentary who are involved in the conflict, Guzmán invites us to feel the anguish at a subtler, more powerful level than the shock produced by La batalla de Chile. In the last sequence of Chile, memoria obstinada, a university class has just finished watching La batalla de Chile. There is silence before students haltingly, tenderly begin speaking about their connections to the abstract people they have encountered in the film. Shot individually in medium close-ups, each student is on the verge of (if not already) sobbing as they connect to a nostalgia for a temporal experience they do not have. Their professor, a friend of Guzmán’s, has the final words: “In these troubled times, when models have collapsed and ideologies serve for very little, we must take up the task of turning ourselves into living memory-images,” or – to use Marjorie Agosín’s words – as witnesses. However, these words are not directed at the students, for the only time during the film in which the professor addresses the camera directly, he is talking to us as viewers of his film. Given that this is a French–Canadian production, not a Chilean one, his statement seems like a charge to us outside Chile: that this memory, this nostalgia is not just the responsibility of Chileans, but also our responsibility. In a highly sophisticated and subtle way, Chile, memoria obstinada transfers this memory to new viewers who are nonChilean, convincing them far more effectively through identification than through shock and violence. Works Cited Agosín, Marjorie, ed. A Woman’s Gaze: Latin American Women Artists. Fredonia: White Pine Press, 1998, pp. 145–61. Aufderheide, Patricia. “The Importance of Historical Memory: An Interview with Patricio Guzmán.” Cineaste. 27.3 (Summer 2002): 22–25. Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections of Photography. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill & Wang, 1981. Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, 2001. ✩ 190 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 191 Me moria Guzmán, Patricio. La Batalla de Chile I–II–III. (1975–1979) ——. Chile, memoria obstinada. 1997 ——. El caso Pinochet. 2001 López, Ana M. “The Battle of Chile: Documentary, Political Process and Representation.” The Social Documentary in Latin America. Ed. Julianne Burton. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990, 267–87. Rubenstein, Roberta. Home Matters: Longing and Belonging, Nostalgia and Mourning in Women’s Fiction. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Notes 1 This quote comes from Patricio Guzmán discussing The Pinochet Case (2001) with Patricia Aufderheide in Cineaste (23). 2 Guzmán notes in a recent interview that, while it still has never enjoyed a theatrical release, La batalla de Chile is currently available on video in Chile, often also packaged with Chile, memoria obstinada. (See Aufderheide, 25). 3 Similar shots are used for the many interview portions in Guzmán’s most recent documentary Le cas Pinochet (The Pinochet Case, France/ Chile/Belgium/Spain, 2001), which juxtaposes the legal efforts made in Europe to bring Pinochet to trial in 1998 with first-person accounts of torture from various Chileans willing to testify for the prosecution. While these accounts and harrowing and powerful, the aesthetic use is not nearly as effective as in his earlier work. ✩ 191 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 15 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 192 reception and censorship of a chilean documentary The Plight of Fernando Is Back Kristin Sorensen Annette Kuhn refers to films, photographs and other artifacts that can help to trigger memory as memory texts. In her book Family Secrets, Kuhn claims that “memory work” is important because it can reclaim the voices of individuals who have been silenced or suppressed. From this perspective, a Chilean documentary could serve as a memory text, serving a crucial function in the post-dictatorship era since Chile’s recent past is contested and contained by contemporary leaders and divergent sectors of society. Kuhn describes family secrets as being shaped by amnesias and repressions. In the case of Chile, acts of violence that were committed during the dictatorship are family secrets as well. In this case, the “family” could be envisioned as the Chilean nation, and the violence was “among brothers and sisters,” committed by Chileans against Chileans. How Chileans interpret this violence is influenced by what gets presented and re-presented through these mediated memory texts. Filmmaker Patricio Guzmán, speaking in the same vein as Kuhn, explains the importance of documentary to the preservation of memory: A country without documentary films is like a family without a photo album. When you see the photo, you remember your past, but the same photo also redefines your past. So there is a to and fro with memory. You return to a forgotten story, and in the process you rewrite that story. (Qtd. in Riding, NYT) According to New York Times journalist Alan Riding, “[Guzmán’s] frustration is that Chile seems less interested in his work than the rest of the world is.” His movies have never been shown on Chilean television and stay only three or four weeks in theaters. Market forces combined ✩ 192 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 193 Reception and Censorship of a Chilean Documentary with a collective will to ignore the past push Guzmán’s films out of the public sphere. Chilean filmmaker Silvio Caiozzi learned quickly, after two of his colleagues from the production of the film that he co-directed with Pablo Perelman in 1974, To the Shadow from the Sun (A la sombra del sol), including cinematographer for Guzmán’s Battle of Chile, Jorge Müller, “disappeared” the morning after the first screening of the film (cf. Middents), that if he wanted to continue to make movies inside of Chile, he would have to work with extreme care and subtlety. His feature films, including Julio Begins in July (Julio comienza en Julio 1977), The Moon in the Mirror (La luna en el espejo 1990), and Coronation (Coronación 2000), demonstrate a deep concern for human repression (Bio-filmografía). The making of Fernando Is Back (Fernando ha vuelto 1998) was the result of an agreement to videotape for the widow of “disappeared” Fernando Olivares Mori the official findings of the research team at the Medical Legal Institute in Santiago. “As those remarkable women (the forensic doctor and anthropologist assigned to Fernando’s case) went over every bone in his body, demonstrating every fracture in his ribcage inflicted through torture, my hands started to shake the camera and I realized the importance of what we were doing” (Personal Interview, 27 March 2002). After introductory footage of a candlelight vigil, the narrative begins in the Medical Legal Institute, in an office where the forensic doctor and anthropologist charged with Fernando’s case explain what type of evidence they used to ensure that the skeleton belonged to Fernando. Then Fernando’s widow Agave and her family are led into the room where Fernando’s remains are located. With sensitive dexterity, the women uncover Fernando’s skeleton and explain what evidence they found for Fernando’s execution (gunshot wounds at the base of the skull) and prior torture and injury (dozens of fractures on the ribcage and gunshot wounds in the lower back and hip). Finally the skeleton is covered, and the family is led back into the office to recover from their overwhelming emotions. “I can’t get over the ability a human being has to do such things to another human being. It’s incredible,” proclaims Agave. She becomes the moral conscience within the documentary. After this moment of deep sorrow and disbelief, we do not hear from her again. She becomes a silent participator and spectator in the funeral proceedings. We are left with her exclamation of astonishment at the capacity for human cruelty. Her question becomes our own. Agave is not easy to ignore. Soft-spoken, stylishly dressed, not expressing the political left’s rhetorical explanations for the Chilean situation, and demonstrating deep love and loss for her husband, she does not fit the political right’s stereotype of the “human rights agitators.” Instead, ✩ 193 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 194 Kristin Sorensen she poses a moral question that has no political boundaries. The “human rights question” is removed from the realm of politics and becomes a humanitarian issue. When the documentary was first screened at the film festival of Valdivia, it won a prize “for the contribution to the diffusion of Christian values,” given by the Catholic Organization of Cinema. By withholding voiceover commentary, Caiozzi accomplishes the same feat as Agave. Rather than espousing a specific interpretation, Caiozzi lets the stark images speak for themselves. Fernando Is Back was a surprise screening at the annual film festival of Valdivia. When the screening was over, Caiozzi describes the experience in the auditorium as magical. “You need to keep in mind,” he says, “that many members of the audience were Pinochetistas.” Many people were crying. Many stayed silent. As members of the audience started to stir, several approached him. They told Caiozzi how moved they had been and how much they appreciated his film. “One woman told me that now after watching this, she realized that Pinochet had gone too far – that this was unacceptable” (Personal interview). Reviews were published in newspapers across the country. The reviews emphasized the grave importance of its subject matter and the need to make this documentary available to the public. The headlines read, “Silvio Caiozzi Moved Audiences Deeply in Festival of Valdivia: “Films that can Open the Eyes” (La Nación, 29 September 1998), “In the Festival of Valdivia: Silvio Caiozzi Screens Moving Video over DetainedDisappeared” (El Mercurio, 29 September 1998), and “Caiozzi’s Film Prized in Valdivia” (La Tercera, 1 October 1998). In the article from La Nación, Carmen Gloria Muñoz writes, “It will be remembered as one of the most stirring moments that has lived at Valdivia’s cinema festival. After the exhibition of Fernando Is Back, a documentary of no more than a half-hour, the Cochrane Theater was filled with tears . . . The work is one of bloodcurdling precision.” When Caiozzi returned to Santiago, he received phone calls from the press, requesting another screening of the documentary. Caiozzi’s staff arranged it. Thirty-four parties confirmed that they would attend the screening. However, at the appointed time and place, only three parties arrived, and none of them were from the important press of Santiago. In addition to this incident, Caiozzi has experienced a series of other odd moments of avoidance, denials, and setbacks in his pursuit to share his documentary with the public. Caiozzi initially sent the documentary to all of the major Chilean TV networks so that they might air it. None of them did. After a newspaper reporter interviewed Caiozzi, who complained that his documentary was being withheld deliberately from the public, TVN (Televisión Nacional de Chile) interviewed Caiozzi and broadcast the interview, along with scenes from the documentary, but the documentary in its entirety did not appear on the air. It was aired very ✩ 194 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 195 Reception and Censorship of a Chilean Documentary late at night. Fernando Is Back has only been shown in its entirety on Chilean TV on Sky satellite television, which is not available to most Chileans. The video of Fernando Is Back can be purchased at the leading Chilean recorded music store, Feria del disco, but the store does not advertise that they have it. In Chile, interpreting and constructing meaning about Fernando Is Back would be based in large part on individuals’ experiences during the years of Allende’s Popular Unity government and then Pinochet’s regime. I invited three Chileans who had never seen Fernando Is Back to my apartment on separate occasions. I played the documentary for them, and I asked them a list of standardized questions, both before and after the screening, which included inquiries into the experiences these individuals had had during the years of Popular Unity and the dictatorship. My first guest, David (Personal Interview, 27 April 2002), is a conservative man in his early forties. He works as an accountant for a health clinic. My second guest, Fernando (Personal Interview, 28 April 2002), in his fifties, identifies with the political left. He works as a mathematical engineer. My third guest, Trinidad (Personal Interview, 15 May 2002), is a workingclass woman in her fifties and an active member in the Communist Party. She used to work in a textile factory, and now she works as a caretaker in a nursing home for retired members of the military. [See the appendix for the transcript of their interviews.] The years of Popular Unity were years of fear and instability for David, and years of utopic dreams and revolutionary social progress for Fernando and Trinidad. These three years were defining moments in the formation of personal identities and political alliances. Their social, political, and class positions during this moment in history also largely determined how they would be able to live during the following seventeen years of dictatorship. As a member of the privileged class, David would be left alone by Pinochet, and thanks to Pinochet, his family’s wealth and security were protected. Fernando and Trinidad lived in constant danger during Pinochet’s regime, and the relationships and activities with which they had been involved during the years of Popular Unity had to be continued clandestinely at great personal risk or curtailed altogether. David, despite his political differences with those who were the primary victims of human rights violations, demonstrates deep sorrow and remorse after viewing the documentary. Of my three interviewees, his attitude and emotional state is most changed between the pre- and post-screening discussion. His responses during the post-screening discussion demonstrate how he is struggling to negotiate his long-held convictions towards the Chilean situation with the evidence just witnessed of human barbarity that was committed by men following orders from a man that in many ways, David admires. Watching the video was troubling for him, but he deftly manages to fit what he has watched into a more ✩ 195 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 196 Kristin Sorensen comfortable arena, where those who are to blame are those whom he has opposed consistently for many years. Fernando is not much changed after viewing the film. He also does not have trouble explaining the violence or blaming those responsible. What is interesting is that his conclusions are not very different from those of David. He also wishes that Chile would “move on,” and “get over” this specific human rights issue, although he suggests that moving on is necessary so that current human rights violations are further exposed. He appreciates the documentary, and was moved while watching it, but, like David, he does not feel that screening it to larger Chilean audiences is necessary. Trinidad has a different response to the documentary than both David and Fernando. Although her background and experiences are in many ways similar to those of Fernando, her reactions afterwards and her convictions regarding the importance of exposing this documentary, as well as others with similar themes, to larger audiences are diametrically exposed to his. As an active member in the Communist Party, she is wellversed in contemporary human rights violations – abject poverty, inadequate health care, failing and insufficient social programs and education systems – but for her, these issues should not be addressed rather than former state violence, but in addition to that. The result is that Fernando and David, although from opposite ends of the political spectrum, conclude their responses in ways that are strikingly similar, namely pessimistic and ambivalent, while Trinidad, who seems initially to hold such common views with Fernando, remains the sole espouser of human rights discourses regarding “truth and justice.” What do viewer responses to Fernando Is Back tell us about the role of documentaries and other types of media in re-constructing and re-conceptualizing historical memory? Furthermore, how do traumas, experienced at the national level, influence historical memories that may be confirmed, altered, or complicated by exposure to different media? David, Fernando, and Trinidad all experienced traumas during recent Chilean history. For David, the trauma was experienced as a child during the years of Popular Unity. For Fernando and Trinidad, the trauma lasted for decades, as they saw their ideals crushed and their friends taken away. At the moment, two layers of obstruction exist in direct confrontation with Chile’s recent past: lack of access to relevant discourses at the institutional level and resistance at the personal level. While small steps of progress have been taken to decrease media censorship, the problem of personal resistance to traumatic historical memory is going to be more difficult to overcome. In the meantime, filmmakers will continue to struggle to get their productions seen and heard by those who most directly affect and are affected by their work – people in Chile. ✩ 196 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 197 Reception and Censorship of a Chilean Documentary Appendix QUESTIONS POSED BEFORE THE SCREENING OF Fernando is Back. Athough individuals’ responses are grouped together, they were all interviewed separately on different occasions. Q. Describe what your life was like during the years of Popular Unity. David My family had a lot of money, but that didn’t help because there was nothing in the store. Suddenly the products disappeared. We were all given coupons to get our portion of food. It was very little. This lowered our self-esteem. There was no toothpaste, soap, shampoo. They say that the [political] right with the CIA hid things to help the boycott, to undermine Allende’s government. Perhaps it’s true. There was a line two blocks long to buy one loaf of bread. At night my father guarded the door with his gun because he knew the revolution could take our house. Our friends’ land was expropriated. School stopped. The police were shooting gasses. At night, we heard protests of people banging pots, demonstrating that they were hungry. Fernando Those years were full of hope for change, especially for the poor. The government was undermined by the right and from outside of Chile. Now there are documents from the CIA that show this. Businesses closed, but the owners kept on living, the truckers [who striked against Allende’s government] were supported. As time passed, things became more violent. In the last months, there was repression. They were preparing for, expecting the coup. I was a student of engineering. Trinidad Those years were filled with happiness, hopes, and freedom. Q. Describe your experiences during the years of dictatorship. David After the coup, no one knew what was happening. There was a lot of fear. The planes [that bombed the Presidential Palace on the day of the coup] flew over our house on the way to La Moneda. That government [Popular Unity] was a corrupt government. After Pinochet arrived, we were at peace. Then there were the human rights violations. I agreed with getting them [leftists, Allende supporters] out of the country, but not with killing them . . . There was a sensation of never having problems. For me it was easy. I felt fine with him. There was security, no delinquency. There was order. I studied, worked. I don’t have friends or relatives who disappeared. I understand it was harder for others. I lament that Pinochet did bad things. ✩ 197 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 198 Kristin Sorensen Fernando On September 11, 1973, I lived near the General Cemetery. I saw trucks carrying corpses to the cemetery. It was a massacre, not a war. Only one side was killing. There was much fear. I didn’t want to leave the house. When I did, I had to be very careful. I had a box of literature from Popular Unity. The first thing I did was to destroy these things. If they came and saw this, they would kill me. There were helicopters overhead. You couldn’t flee. I burned almost everything. These were the first few days. We didn’t know where my brother was. At first, he was disappeared. We all thought, “What do we do now?” Some tried to cross the mountains. We tried to survive. Go underground. Others were detained. There was a complete list of the militants of the Communist Party. One after another, they were taken. We went into “the air.” I decided to live life: career, get married, have kids. The military killed all my friends; others went into hiding. When I saw a friend in the street, we couldn’t communicate. Or we gave each other signs. There were some bits of hope at different times. The Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR) tried to overthrow Pinochet’s government. That movement died also. We eventually realized that there was not any possibility for change unless the military decided themselves to change. Trinidad I felt much sadness, impotence, fear about what would happen. I knew of the experiences of other dictatorships from other Latin American countries. There was much pain, suffering. It killed a certain projection of life, destroyed it. Q. How do you feel about Pinochet? Fernando He’s an animal, but one like many others in the Armed Forces. Only military men are good servants of the owners of powerful companies. The powerful don’t get their hands dirty. He’s a man of few intellectual abilities, but not stupid. He has sufficient intelligence for what he did, a typical career military man. Trinidad Pinochet lives in impunity. I think of him with pain, about the injustice, not with hate, much impotence, fear. Q. When people speak of human rights violations, what do you think? David I want to know if it’s the truth. Wait to see if it’s really true before justice is served. I’m not very interested. I just want the country to advance, live in peace, forget. The issues are over. To talk about it now is to rekindle the fire. Some people want to rekindle the fire because without the past, they are nothing. More rapid and certain justice is needed to ✩ 198 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 199 Reception and Censorship of a Chilean Documentary resolve these issues so relatives can know where their disappeared relatives are located. The politics don’t allow for tranquility. There are people who don’t want these themes to ever die. Trinidad I feel pain, sadness, suffering. I think of the victims. The lawyers deserve much respect and admiration. I feel shame and rage when the right says that they didn’t know. QUESTIONS POSED AFTER THE SCREENING OF Fernando is Back Q. What are your initial reactions to this? David What do you think is better, to know what happened to Fernando? Or not? I don’t know. It’s a very hypothetical situation for me. I lament the death of Fernando, the same way I lament the death of someone who got hit by a car or died of cancer. I don’t like when they use these situations as an emblem. Why do you need to raise this to such a level? I know the pain is incredible. Someone was burned with a blowtorch. I find it barbaric. I hope this never happens again, but we only denounce the military when they are on the right. What about MIR, the Frentistas, those who killed Senator Jaime Guzmán (an important ally of Pinochet who was assassinated after the transition to democracy)? It doesn’t seem like that violence is important. When there are killings, there is no noble cause. Fernando My attitude hasn’t changed much. What I saw, I already knew. It’s a culmination of things, not a surprise. Until when are we going to pursue this theme? Of course, the relatives, foreigners are still interested. Will this stop from happening again? No. There are examples from around the world. Look at Guantanamo Bay, Yugoslavia, Chechnya. Trinidad Many things. Impotence. I was thinking that it could have been my son. We will fight to the end. Those cowards. I know there won’t be justice, but we will fight for the truth until the end for those who don’t know. Members of the Armed Forces and DINA cannot live peacefully. Q. Should this documentary be shown on TV? David No. It won’t help anyone. It just returns to the past. We don’t need this. It should be placed in a special library where you can go to remember the past. The theme of death – leave it in peace. Some place with public access, free, where there is music and documentaries of this epoch. On TV, no. People are bored with this. ✩ 199 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 200 Kristin Sorensen Fernando It’s a little strong, strong images for kids. The problem is the themes that TV and newspapers treat or not treat. Self-censorship. Journalists know what they can and cannot discuss due to the environment. It’s important to show Fernando Is Back because some people still deny it happened. But it’s just as important to discuss poverty. Many themes are hidden. The country is “successful.” Inflation is controlled. Salaries are rising a little. These themes are favored on TV. Trinidad Of course. It should be shown for all to see. It’s very strong for consciousness. Absolutely, it needs to be shown. Not just this one. Many (others). Q. Should society do more for the relatives of those who were killed? David If they can and know something, perfect. Do something. But what else can be done? All of these things have already taken place. Fernando I don’t know. Maybe. But there are many others who need help. The poverty, misery. Not all human rights victims live that badly now. There are people who need more help than them. The problems are so grave. Relatives of the disappeared have their organizations. Trinidad Yes. The government after the dictatorship said more needed to be done. But it wasn’t. The economy is most important. Groups are demanding truth and justice. The Church is different now, compromised. Society should be dedicated to this, but it’s not. There is very little coverage in the media because it’s not convenient for them. The economic structure doesn’t allow it. The history of our country for most people is not told. This is not acceptable. Q. Does society need to do more for living torture victims? David Society can’t do anything. It depends on you. Vietnam veterans. Does your country help them? It’s a patriotic debt that they have paid. Fernando Possibly, yes. Victims don’t want to talk about it. They feel shame for informing and don’t want to tell what happened. Something is missing for them. I don’t have an answer. Trinidad We are always fighting for justice. There are so many victims, mental, physical, psychological. Persecution, internal exile. They went to the Church, afraid. They also need justice. But this class of human rights violations doesn’t exist for the State. ✩ 200 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 201 Reception and Censorship of a Chilean Documentary Q. Is there truth and justice in Chile? If not, what needs to happen for there to be truth and justice? David No. The country needs to disappear, start over. There is discrimination in justice. If you don’t have the money, forget it. It seems like this is the strangest country on Earth. Fernando There is neither truth nor justice. More bodies have been found. We just had the Table of Dialogue [roundtable discussion among government, military, and human rights groups in 2000]. Lies. Possibly one or other case will be solved. When something is found, the military goes and takes it. The military is concerned with hiding, taking, misplacing. This is a country of “volcanoes.” Trinidad The Constitution [written in 1980 by Pinochet] needs to be changed, to begin with. Freedom of expression: it exists, but it’s not in the media. We don’t need reform, but a complete change of the Constitution. The tribunals need complete independence. This contributes to the impunity. Works Cited Caiozzi, Silvio. Fernando ha vuelto (1998). ——. “Personal Interview.” Santiago, Chile, 27 Mar 2002. ——. Bio-filmografía. 5 March, 2005. <http://www.chilecine.cl/ espanol/ detalle_director.php?id_tabla=9&id_persona=40> Huerta, David. Personal Interview. Santiago, Chile, 27 April 2002. Kuhn, Annette. Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination. New York: Verso, 1995. Montolio, Fernando. Personal Interview. Santiago, Chile, 28 April 2002. Muñoz, Carmen Gloria. “Films that Can Open the Eyes,” La Nación, 29 September 1998 Muñoz, Trinidad. Personal Interview. Santiago, Chile,15 May 2002. Review: “In the Festival of Valdivia: Silvio Caiozzi screens moving video over Detained-Disappeared” (El Mercurio, 29 September 1998) Review: “Caiozzi’s Film Prized in Valdivia” (La Tercera, 1 October 1998). Riding, Alan. “Telling Chile’s Story, Even if Chile Has Little Interest.” The New York Times, 3 October 2002. ✩ 201 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 16 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 202 re/coiling inscription Incisive Moments in Diamela Eltit and Jacques Derrida Andrea Bachner [Sans] cesse la loi s’écrit sur les corps. Elle se grave sur les parchemins faits avec la peau de ses sujets. Elle les articule en un corpus juridique. Elle en fait son livre. Ces écritures effectuent deux opérations complémentaires : par elles, les êtres vivants sont «mis en texte», mués en significants des règles (c’est une intextuation) et d’autre part, la raison ou le Logos d’une société «se fait chair» (c’est une incarnation). de Certeau 3 1 That the seemingly abstract concept of inscription is also a contested ground in a more concrete political context is underlined by its use in coming to terms with historical trauma, especially in the aftermath of dictatorship, for example in the (post)dictatorship literature in Chile. The metaphors of writing play an important role in the discourse on Chile during the dictatorship, and the transition, but also for a democratic Chile in the context of its new role within global capitalism. In her book Residuos y metáforas, published in 1998, the Chilean critic Nelly Richard represents the Chilean history of the last thirty years in terms of inscriptions and erasures at different levels: During the dictatorship, on the one hand the regime is seen as imposing a violent and totalizing inscription onto bodies, to the extreme of bodily torture; but on the other hand, a part of these very inscriptions is erased in the disappearance of the victims’ bodies, “los desparecidos.” During the transitional period, the program of consensus and reconciliation can be read as an attempt at erasing the very erasure of those who had been detained and disappeared, whereas an effort at resistance, a holding on to memory, tries to reinscribe those bodies in danger of suffering a double erasure. This new inscription does ✩ 202 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 203 Re/coiling Inscription not only confront forgetting, but also new types of bodily inscriptions and erasures in the context of the unceasing flows of capitalism and mass media: The traces of the past suffer today repeated processes of erasure, and not only of a political and institutional nature. They exist also disguised as the seduction of television and commercial bliss. A fin-de-siècle globalization that moves to the evanescent rhythm of commodities without having time for nor taking pleasure in asking itself what each novelty leaves behind, dissipates the value of a historicity painfully ciphered in the experience of the dictatorship and causes that which we thought impossible to erase to become each time more blurred. (15) 2 This battle, as it is represented as a re-inscription, takes place in a textual realm and reaffirms the political value of a counter-writing, of a textualization of reality as it is performed in an academic context by the theoretical movement of deconstruction. In her book, Richard underlines the proximity of her own project with such a theoretical tendency: Even though the abuses of an academic and literary deconstruction made it necessary, at a certain point, to defetishize the Text as it had become an emblem of an excessive textualization that seemed to have erased the lines of a social potential for conflict, today it seems to me equally important to return to the text [ . . . ] in order to defend a critical textuality against the reductionism of the industry of the “paper” [in English in the original] and the academic bureaucratization of a knowledge of a merely pragmatic consumerism. (18) 3 Even though Nelly Richard effects a return to textuality here, after having questioned deconstructivist ideas for their erasure of the social dimension, she seems to regress even farther to a tradition under the influence of the fetish of the text such as it was formulated in the works of Julia Kristeva, or Jean-François Lyotard in the sixties.4 It seems a return to the illusion of écriture, of a different, marginal, baroque, dense, excessive kind of writing that flaunts its materiality and disrupts a bureaucratic, monomorphic, unproblematic communication. Thus, Richard works within a paradigm of inscription and erasure, but preserves intact the illusion of a dichotomy between two different types of inscription and erasure: one in the context of oppression, the other one in the context of liberation. In his essay “Des outils pour écrire le corps” Michel de Certeau conjures up a body that is prone to the inscription of the law, or rather, becomes body only after submitting the unruly folds of its flesh to the painful incision of law’s sharp pen.5 This seemingly simple figuration of the submission of the individual subject to societal and state power really opens up a contested space teeming with transitions, transformations, and ✩ 203 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 204 Andrea Bachner tensions: In a process of incarnation, the text of the law becomes flesh, while flesh becomes text in an act of inscription which, as it cuts into life flesh, brings about excruciating suffering, but it also conveys the privilege of a name and intelligible subjecthood, a wished-for bliss.6 Thus, the body, this strange hybrid being of flesh and discourse, also embodies the borderlands which are cut through by the dividing line between individual and society, flesh and writing, pleasure and pain, sub-jection and subjecthood. The metaphor of inscription, with its long genealogy, seduces by offering an elegant way for rethinking the coming into being of the societal subject.7 In the context of the linguistic turn in theory and its textualization of reality, the re-scripting of interiority as the effect of a writing on the surface, in Foucault’s shorthand in Surveiller et punir “the soul, the prison of the body” (“l’âme, prison du corps”34), is a spectacular turn, conceptually and stylistically speaking. However, the concept looses much of its limpid brilliance once one ventures into its grey zones and fully explores the ramification of its metaphor of writing. Whereas de Certeau’s explication focuses, as the title of his essay highlights, on the instruments that do the inscribing, and also, to a lesser degree, on the surface that is written on/into, the agency of the act of inscription, the scribe(s), but also the author(s) of the script remain shady concepts. Only if we grant de Certeau’s “law” and “Logos of society,” and Foucault’s “power” and “discourse” to be pre-existing, disembodied forces, which express and incarnate themselves through a forming of a previously undifferentiated material mass, “the flesh,” is the differentiation between the different components of this scene of writing clear-cut: the “law” authors the script and authorizes the inscription, the “flesh” suffers the incision and interiorizes its pre-scriptions. Yet, a dichotomy of the author’s pen and the flesh-made-parchment would take the revolutionary edge out of the re-scripting of interiority. It would, through a detour, reinvigorate the reign of form over matter, transcendence over materiality. Discursive pre-scription, through its act of inscription would become destiny. This is certainly not what authors like Foucault or de Certeau try to express through their uses of the metaphor of inscription. My intentional misreading highlights how the metaphor of inscription can be construed in different, at times conceptually dangerous ways. In what follows I will discuss how two very different authors, the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, and the Chilean novelist Diamela Eltit work with, through, and beyond the metaphor of inscription. Both Derrida and Eltit use the figure of inscription, but challenge its binary of active writing instrument and passive writing surface. Instead, by introducing conceptual circles into the figure – between the agency and the surface of inscription –, and by thinking about the repetition of inscription, they open up the metaphor and move away from the concept of inscription as a universal, unilateral act that is beyond contestation towards a thought ✩ 204 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 205 Re/coiling Inscription of the specificity of inscriptive surfaces and acts, the iterability of inscriptions, and the possibilities of putting up resistance against or of altering inscriptions. In this they go beyond other uses of the metaphor, like JeanLuc Nancy’s concept of excription and Nelly Richard’s political but essentializing use of inscription, which I will use as contrastive foils for my discussion of Derrida’s and Eltit’s inscriptions. In different contexts, Derrida and Eltit re-inscribe inscription in a way that I want to call a re/coiling of inscription. They use the paradigm of inscription, but make it undergo change. Their re/coiling is a movement of acknowledging the importance of the concept and accepting it, but also an attempt at modifying and questioning it. In this sense, re/coiling translates Martin Heidegger’s concept of “Verwindung,” as working around and questioning a concept, which is, however, still used and not transcended in a sense of Hegelian “Aufhebung,” as Gianni Vattimo explains it in Fine della modernità. The term of re/coiling, however, is also appropriate in a second way. Its image of circularity reflects the move these writers effect on the image of inscription: their questioning and problematization of the notion consist in a connection to figures of circularity. Re/coiling inscription is conceptually creative, this aspect becomes especially visible in Diamela Eltit’s use of inscription, which is politically effective, as well. In his book Corpus, the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, moved by a negative reading of inscription, contests the creativity of the metaphor, protests against its importance for Western thought, and proposes a counter-concept which he names excription. Echoing de Certeau’s description of inscription as an intextuation of the body and an incarnation of the law; for Nancy the metaphor of inscription leads to the conceptual erasure of the body as body, as it creates a textualized nonbody that only serves as the embodiment of incorporeal principles, be it the law or the mind. It is thus only instrumentalized in the context of signification. The body signifies, but, in its function of signifier, no longer exists as a body. Nancy thus rejects inscription and calls for an excription of the body: The ‘written bodies’ – incised, engraved, tattoed, scarred – are precious bodies, safeguarded, reserved like the codes for which they are the glorious engrams: but finally, this is not the modern body, it is not this body which we have thrown here, in front of us, and that comes to us naked, only naked and excribed in advance out of all writing. (12) 8 The attempt at avoiding inscription in the writing of the body in Nancy’s argument is based on his unveiling of inscription and its conventional connection of body and meaning as itself paradoxical, imprisoned in an impossible circularity, what he also calls a “concentration,” which results in the elimination of the body as body. The body as signifying body within ✩ 205 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 206 Andrea Bachner the logic of incarnation signifies itself and is the being of the sign, representing the union of signifier and signified. It is trapped in the (non-)logic of circularity, which, according to Nancy, preempts it from ever appearing as body. In order to avoid inscription and concentration, the movement of excription has to result in the re-corporealization of the body of language through an erasure of signification and the exposure of the signs as a grouping of “bodies”: Excription happens in the play of an in-significant/non-signifying spacing: that which, always anew, disconnects the words from their meaning, and which abandons them to their expanse. A word, from the moment it is not absorbed without remains in meaning, remains essentially extended between the other words, tending towards them without however joining them: and this is language as body. (63) 9 The conceptually problematic nature of excription becomes evident with a closer look at the term. Ex-scription still designates a process of writing. As such, it is not inscription’s opposite, but rather its complementary other – an erasure that takes existence only after and because of inscription. Such a relationship to “scripting” is not only true for the term as such, but apparently also for the concept it names. It is less a de-textuation of the elements of writing, but rather a different type of incarnation of écriture. Once writing does not signify any longer, but rather becomes visible in its spatial order, in that sense, it is no longer writing, or markings without signification, but a body, which, in Nancy’s own words “we have thrown here, in front of us, and that comes to us naked, only naked and excribed in advance out of all writing?” Would the excription of writing out of meaning thus not embody just another way of erasing the corporeal through reconceptualizing it in the realm of textuality, as something that exceeds signification? Is this not just another fantasmatic, supplemental corporeality of the textual that erases the differences between text and body through an emptying out of the corporeal and its entry on the side of the textual?10 Nancy, while trying to elude inscription, repeats a movement of the erasure of the corporeal through a corporealization of the textual which he sees inherent in inscription. Unlike Jean-Luc Nancy, Derrida does not reject inscription, but rather seems to mobilize the conceptual violence inherent in the paradigm to its fullest extent: while the bodily substratum of inscription seems to be erased, writing is strangely embodied in explicitly gendered metaphors, texts bleed and suffer.11 What seems a facile transference of a fetish of corporeality onto the textual under the sign of inscription, however, is indeed a much more complex process and has to be read in the context of the philosopher’s thoughts on circularity and iterability. Iterability, as it is always connected to différance, is never a return of ✩ 206 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 207 Re/coiling Inscription the same, but rather, it is thought of as an open circularity. This notion becomes important in the context of inscription under the figure of the “marque” with its double face of singularity and universality. A “marque” of inscription is open towards the past and the future, as it is always already a “re-marque,” the repetition of the trace of a “marque,” and itself will become the trace of a future “re-marque.” Thus it permits the relation between a general, universal pattern, and a singular experience. The singular, violent experience has the structure of a “re-marque,” of a re-actualization of the fundamental “marque.” In turn, this allows for the intelligibility and communicability of the singular without equating it with the universal structure.12 Derrida’s creative circularity, however, is also uneasily connected to gendered metaphors that are used to embody it: the folds of the hymen and circumcision. In “La double séance” in Dissémination, the image of the hymen embodies the différance of écriture through an ambivalent relation to the fold of a “re-marque,” as surface and inscription are conceptually contaminated in the context of a circular structure: inscription as a “re-marque” is always already conceptualized as a figure of the fold. Furthermore, the result of such a fold of the “re-marque” is itself a fold in the inscriptive surface which, as does the hymen, is already seen as multiply folded entity in itself. It is a “fold not just in the veil or in the pure text but in the folding that the hymen was in itself” (Derrida 281).13 The fold is not only a simple redoubling of the undecidability of the hymen. It is not only a structure of an inscription of undecidability (the fold) into undecidability (the hymen), as the very relationship between them remains undecidable: the fold both is and is not equivalent to the hymen, it both stands for and does not stand for the pliability of the hymen; it is thus both in excess of the hymen and equivalent to the hymen. The inscriptive surface and the act of inscription are thus folded into each other. A similar structure is at play in the context of the figure of circumcision, especially in Schibboleth and Circonfessions. Circumcision is also caught up in the circular structure of the “re-marque”: as a personal singular experience it symbolizes a sexually and culturally specific marking, but also the more abstract concept of inscription as the production of a subjectivated, discursive body. Such a circular structure is accentuated by the movement of this inscription itself, as it is a circular incision. It is an inscription that cuts into the surface, but also circumvents a deeper cut through turning around it, even though it is phantasmatically evoked. It partakes of [T]he cutting, pointed, concise, but also rounded and circumventing form of a sickle, also of writing, of a sickle-writing. This sickle-writing does not turn around that which it cuts, because it does not avoid it, not totally, but it cuts while turning around it. (Schibboleth 68–69) 14 ✩ 207 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 208 Andrea Bachner Circumcision as inscription is doubly caught up in a paradoxical circle: as a “re-marque” it always already depends on, and also embodies a “premarque.” Furthermore, in the context of Derrida’s reflexions on self-circumcision, the relation between surface and inscription has to be read as much more complex than a bi-partite structure of passive surface and active inscription. However, are these not just clever metaphors for abstract concepts that underpin the possibility of talking about texts as if they were bodies, as if they suffered or experienced pleasure? Derrida’s take surely is on the side of textuality, as the real is always already inscribed. However, the recoiling of inscription in the context of specific bodily metaphors can maybe also be read creatively under the sign of the “re-marque.” As a universal structure, inscription only exists in its specific reactualizations, but this does not mean that singular inscriptions are erased in their differences, but rather that the concept as such is opened up to multiple differences of styles and surfaces. Chilean writer Diamela Eltit, even though she writes in the same context as her compatriot, Nelly Richard, rather affects a re/coiling of inscription similar to Derrida’s, especially in her 1983 novel Lumpérica. This experimental novel performs the violent bodily interactions, at night, on a square of Santiago de Chile, between the female protagonist, a group of homeless, and the illumined advertisement that looms over them. Given the political context, Eltit is faced with a complex multiplicity of specific inscriptions: the inscription of a capitalist system which rescripts bodies as commodities, the inscription of the name of the father and of nationality on marginal bodies – women, social outcasts –, and the all-too-real, painful inscription of torture under dictatorship. The re-inscription Eltit works is thus specific, but given that all of these share the paradigm of inscription, she also questions a general pattern and explores what space it offers for resistance. This questioning and re/coiling of inscription is visible in the novel as a whole, but especially in the chapter “Ensayo general,” which can be translated as general essay, or dress rehearsal. It describes a series of cuts that somebody inflicts on his/her own arms with a razor blade, a textual re-creation (or pre-creation) of a live performance by the author filmed by Lotty Rosenfeld under the title Maipú. In this chapter, inscription is multiplied in varied representations of a real act of cutting, as the text foregrounds that inscriptive production is trapped in paradoxical circularities, by emphasizing the act of cutting, and de-emphasizing its production of signification. Such a re-inscription – as a re-enactment, not a re-presentation – challenges the predominance of a universalized act of discursive inscription and thus underlines the pain, but also the specificity of each singular incision. The descriptions of the cuts in the novel emphasize that inscription does not function in a linear sequence but rather in that of a paradoxical loop ✩ 208 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 209 Re/coiling Inscription in an impossible future anterior. The hand is both part of the surface where the cutting is effected, and is produced by this incision, as it marks off the hand from the rest of the arm, as the writing of the cut “will separate the hand that frees itself through the line that comes before it” (“va a separar la mano que se libera mediante la línea que la antecede” 145). Thus, the hand is both prior to the cut and depends on it for its existence. The sentence directly following that quoted above, “This is the cut with the hand” (“Este es el corte con la mano” 145) renders the question of inscription and surface even more complex. It designates the agent of the cut; it is done with the hand, so that one hand produces the cut that lends intelligibility to the other one, and, potentially, vice versa. This logic is reiterated through the inclusion of intertextual material in the chapter. The photograph at the beginning of “Ensayo general” shows the author exhibiting her arms with the cuts she has made on them. As such, it is already a partial reiteration of her live performance, Maipú consists of Eltit’s cutting of her arms and reading parts of Lumpérica in a red light district of Santiago. The text itself reflects on the inclusion of the photograph in a section of “Ensayo general” that is given the (bracketed) title of “In relation to the cut in/of the photograph” (“En relación al corte de la fotografía” 149). Such a reflection indicates yet another paradoxical looping related to the temporal and logical sequence of representations. The comment on the photograph and on its representation of the “real” cuts suggests a logical sequence of the “original” cut (in the context of the live performance), as well as its representation in the photograph followed by a secondary representation in the text, which also thematizes the photograph. On the other hand, such an order is also destabilized. As the performance also consisted in readings of passages from Lumpérica, at least parts of the text are prior to the act of cutting. Thus, there is no answer to such questions as if the text is the dress rehearsal for the live performance or rather its representation. This blurring of the sequential structure of surface/inscription/production-through-signification is mirrored by the instability of temporal order in the chapter “Ensayo general” as a whole, as it points to the impossibility of the scene of the “Ensayo general” when the material that is performed upon is the body. Such a dress rehearsal can never enact the preparation of its more perfect repetition, the performance as such, as it radically changes the material such a performance relies upon. Since the cuts cannot be erased, there is no possibility of a return to the state before the dress rehearsal, the smooth, unblemished, pristine surface of the skin. Indeed, such a pristine surface can never exist and has never existed to begin with. In another part of the same chapter, Eltit attempts a recreation of the cuts in the text, using an experimental style, a series of different textual cuts that underline the subject of the cut on a textual microlevel: ✩ 209 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 210 Andrea Bachner Muge/r/apa y su mano se nutre final-mente el verde des-ata y maya se erige y vac/a-nal su forma. (142) Anal’iza la trama = dura de la piel: la mano prende y la fobia des/garra. (143) Muge/r’onda corp-oral Brahma su ma la mano que la denuncia & brama. (144)15 This is a baroque écriture, which celebrates the writing of excess, ruptures the economy of direct communication, and thus seems to get close to the ideal of a writing of curves and interstices, as it is highlighted by Richard. However, its re-creation of the cuts is not granted a privileged role or is seen as a better, more real, more corporeal representation of cuts made on a body. Rather, each act of cutting, each act of inscription is singular and irreducibly different. Thus the photograph of the author with cut arms that is placed at the beginning of “Ensayo general” does not render the cut, but rather creates a surface for a different cut to act upon: Does the cut as such represent itself as in the very photo? Rather, it is fixed as such. The representation is given to the extent that it [the cut] is acted upon./ For example, the tracing of the cut is a furrow that is worked upon, and which is thus shown as a sign. However, as it is like a furrow, it becomes a trench or a parapet under which a performance protects and hides itself. /As a furrow, it is sunk down below a surface that has been penetrated. If one re-turns it through a photograph, it is flattened into a new surface, which will only be broken by the eye that cuts its gaze there. (149) 16 Thus cutting a text is not the same as cutting a body. Cutting one’s arms in a performance is not the same as undergoing torture, or being inscribed by nationalism, or patriarchy. But while these cuts can never be erased, they can be re-enacted and thus be unveiled as performative acts that are potentially open to re-inscription. The re/coiling of inscription that Derrida and Eltit work in their very different contexts, unlike Nancy’s concept of excription, rescripts the concept as such without evading it, and unlike Richard’s use of inscription, does not return to a dichotomy of positive versus negative inscriptive acts. It allows for a rethinking of the connection between the singular and the universal, introduces a destabilization of the difference between inscriptive agency and surface, renders inscription multiple and performative, and underlines the differences in surfaces and inscriptive styles. Yet, the incisions operate within the concept of inscription and are posited in the realm of the textual, therefore, transferring the corporeal back into the picture is problematic. Thus, they also seem to question a desire for the return of the corporeal. Maybe, instead of pursuing a phantasmatic corporeality somewhere out there, beyond the textual, we should refocus our attention on different styles of performing inscription and their politics. ✩ 210 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 211 Re/coiling Inscription Works Cited Butler, Judith. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Certeau, Michel de. “Des outils pour écrire le corps.” Traverses 14/15 (April 1979): 3–14. Derrida, Jacques. La dissémination. Paris: Seuil, 1972. ——. Éperons: Les styles de Nietzsche. Paris: Flammarion, 1978. ——. Le monolinguisme de l’autre, ou: La prothèse d’origine. Paris: Galilée, 1996. ——. Schibboleth: Pour Paul Celan. Paris: Galilée, 1986. ——, and Geoffrey Bennington. Jacques Derrida. Paris: Seuil, 1991. [includes Circonfession]. Eltit, Diamela. Lumpérica. Santiago de Chile: Las Ediciones del Ornitorrinco, 1983. Foucault, Michel. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” Language, CounterMemory, Practice. Selected Essays and Interviews. Ed. Donald F. Bouchard, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977. 139–164. ——. Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison. Paris: Gallimard, 1975. Kristeva, Julia. La révolution du langage poétique: L’avant-garde à la fin du XIXe siècle: Lautréamont et Mallarmé. Paris: Seuil, 1974. Lyotard, Jean-François. Discours, figure. 5th ed. Paris: Klincksieck, 2002. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Le visible et l’invisible. Ed. Claude Lefort. Paris: Gallimard, 1964. Nancy, Jean-Luc. Le sens du monde. Paris: Galilée, 1993. ——-. Corpus. Paris: Editions Métailié: 2000. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Jenseits von Gut und Böse. Zur Genealogie der Moral. Ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999. Richard, Nelly. Residuos y metáforas: (Ensayos de crítica cultural sobre el Chile de la transición). Santiago: Editorial Cuarto Propio, 1998. Vattimo, Gianni. La fine della modernità: Nichilismo ed ermeneutica nella cultura post moderna. Milano: Garzanti, 1985. Notes 1 2 “The law writes itself ceaselessly on the bodies. It engraves itself onto parchments made from the skin of its subjects. It expresses them in a juridical corpus. It makes them into its book. These writings carry out two interlocking operations: through them, living beings are “put into text,” transformed into the signifiers of the rules (this is an intextuation) and on the other hand, the reason or the Logos of a society “makes itself flesh” (this is an incarnation).” Where no reference is given, translations are mine. “Las huellas del pasado sufren hoy reiteradas operaciones de borradura, y no sólo político-institucionales. Las hay también disfrazadas de seducción televisiva y de goce comercial. Una globalización de fin de siglo que se mueve al ritmo fugaz de la mercancía sin tener tiempo ni ganas de preguntarse por lo que cada novedad deja atrás, dissipa el valor de la historicidad dolorosamente ✩ 211 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 212 Andrea Bachner 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 cifrado en la experiencia de la dictadura haciendo que lo que creíamos imborrable se vuelva cada vez más borroso” (15). “Si bien los abusos del desconstruccionismo académico-literario hicieron necesario, en un determinado momento, desfetichizar el Texto porque se había convertido en el emblema de una textualización a ultranza que parecía haber borrado de sus líneas la conflictualidad de lo social, me parece hoy igualmente necesario volver al texto [ . . . ] para defender la textualidad crítica contra el reduccionalismo de la industria del paper y la burocratización académica de un saber de mero consumo práctico” (18). Both writers posit spaces within writing that are not discursive, that is they are seen as traces of a prediscursive order, not yet submitted to an economy of communication, Freudian oedipalization or a Lacanian realm of the symbolic. For Kristeva, especially in her book La révolution du langage poétique, this is the realm of the maternal, and related to sound and rhythm, for Lyotard, in his Discours, figure, it is connected to the visual. Both thinkers thus introduce a dichotomy into writing and nostalgisize about a prediscursive realm which, paradoxically, is only accessible and visible within discourse. Jean-Luc Nancy’s notion of excription seems to inherit some features from such concepts of a non-discursive écriture. Here Michel de Certeau draws on thoughts on the sway power has over the individual through a discursive fashioning of the body as Michel Foucault develops them in Surveiller et Punir. Foucault’s thought itself shows a strong Nietzschean influence. See Friedrich Nietzsche’s Zur Genealogie der Moral. The French original uses the word “chair” for that which becomes the body after the inscription of the law. The use of the term shows a theoretical indebtedness to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s use of the term in Le visible et l’invisible, which my translation as “flesh” might not render immediately visible. Drawing on theories by Luis Althusser and Sigmund Freud, among others, Judith Butler explores the paradoxical structure of subjection (as both subjection and the road to subjecthood) in her book The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. This genealogy – in a Nietzschean sense, as Michel Foucault foregrounds in his essay “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” is a very important term for the history of inscription, as it portrays history as a series of inscriptions – reaches from Nietzsche via Foucault to more recent constructivist theories of gender. “Les «corps écrits» – incisés, gravés, tatoués, cicatrisés – sont des corps précieux, préservés, réservés comme les codes dont ils sont les glorieux engrammes : mais enfin, ce n’est pas le corps moderne, ce n’est pas ce corps que nous avons jeté, là, devant nous, et qui vient à nous, nu, seulement nu, et d’avance excrit de toute écriture.” (All translations are mine, unless otherwise indicated.) “L’excription se produit dans le jeu d’un espacement in-signifiant : celui qui détache les mots de leur sens, toujours à nouveau, et qui les abandonne à leur étendue. Un mot, dès qu’il n’est pas absorbé sans reste dans un sens, reste essentiellement étendu entre les autres mots, tendu à les toucher, sans les rejoindre pourtant : et cela est le langage en tant que corps” (63). Such a question seems also called for in the context of Nancy’s notion of touching. “Toucher,” as the philosopher formulates it in different works, is ✩ 212 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 213 Re/coiling Inscription 11 12 13 14 15 16 seen as a non-violent, non-appropriating, non-hierarchising way of relating different singularities or terms without creating stable linkages, without having one side swallow the other. It can be seen as non-violent exactly because it is not a zero of distance, but a minimization of distance, the creation of an almost imperceptible in-between, the event of a space that is shared because it is never crossed. As Nancy formulates it in Le sens du monde, “La limite illimite le passage à la limite” (64). “Toucher” is a figure for thinking contact between different bodies, but it is also used to rethink and refashion the connections between body and meaning, and that of body and writing (in the sense of “écriture”). It is in this sense that “toucher” partakes of the problematic nature discussed in the context of excription, as it is a re-incarnation of abstract concepts through a corporeal metaphor. This becomes evident at the beginning of Derrida’s book on Nietzsche, Éperons, with its equation of “style” and the sharp point of the “stylus” (cf. Éperons, p. 29) but also in his own descriptions of his analysis of poems by Paul Celan in Schibboleth as a wounding and raping of the text (cf. Schibboleth, p. 84). Such a fold of the singular with the universal is illustrated in Le monolinguisme de l’autre through the question of linguistic expropriation. The relationship of subjects to language is described as an alienation from language, since nobody possesses “his/her” language. This universal structure, however, is one of non-violent expropriation, whereas this holds no longer true for singular experiences of linguistic expropriation, prohibition, colonialization, illustrated mainly through Jacques Derrida’s own experience of triple linguistic prohibition, concerning Hebrew, Arabic, and French. The connection of those two is so very different, yet parallel experiences of linguistic expropriation are fashioned through a turn of the fold. It is a refolding onto a fundamental fold that both repeats, but also lays bare the fold below this refolding (cf. Le monolinguisme de l’autre, esp. 49–50). “[pli] non plus dans le voile ou dans le texte pur mais dans la doublure que l’hymen, de lui-même était” (Derrida 281) “la forme coupante, aiguisée, concise, mais aussi arrondie, circonvenante d’une faucille, d’une écriture encore, d’une écriture de faucille (Sichelschrift). Cette écriture-faucille ne tourne pas autour de ce qu’elle trance, puisqu’elle ne l’évite pas, pas tout à fait, mais elle coupe en faisant le tour” (Schibboleth 68–69). This passage relies so much on the particularities of its language, that I will not attempt a translation. I think that the textual cutting is visible in any case. “¿Se representa en sí mismo el corte como en la propia fotografía? Más bien se lo fija como tal. La representación se da en la medida que se actúe sobre él. /Por ejemplo, el trazado del corte es un surco sobre el que se opera evidenciándolo de ese modo como una señal. Empero, al estar como un surco, se vuelve trinchera o parapeto bajo el cual se protege o se esconde una actuación. /Como surco, está hundido bajo una superficie que ha sido penetrada. Si se lo devuelve fotográficamente se lo aplana en el rigor de una nueva superficie, que solamente será rota por el ojo que corta allí su mirada” (149). ✩ 213 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 214 epilogue The Struggle for Truth and Justice and the Challenges of Latin American Democracy Fabiola Letelier It is in an honor to speak to you tonight as a part of this conference organized by the Department of Latin American and Caribbean Studies of the University at Albany that takes place thirty years after the military coup in Chile. This multi-disciplinary gathering has allowed us to better understand the weaknesses and strengths of the current political, economic and cultural systems in Latin America. From such an exchange of ideas, I believe that we have reaffirmed a commitment to deepen our efforts to build an authentic democracy in the region; a democracy that can put an end to the suffering and injustices faced by our peoples. The struggle for human rights is not simply a nostalgic leftover task from the past. Rather, it constitutes the fundamental foundation for the future of democracy throughout our continent. My own history of participation in the struggle to promote and defend human rights began with the military coup in 1973. On September 21 of 1976, while working in the Legal Department of the Vicaría, providing legal assistance to victims of repression, I went from being a lawyer to becoming a victim when I was informed that my brother, Orlando Letelier, exiled in the United States, had been assassinated in Washington by an act of state terrorism carried out by the Pinochet’s secret police, the DINA. I made a commitment to my parents, who have since passed away, that as both a lawyer and a victim I would do everything possible to obtain justice. This essay was the Keynote Speech at the Conference “Democracy in Latin America: 30 Years After Chile’s 9/11” State University of New York at Albany, October 2003. ✩ 214 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 215 Epilogue In 1980 along with other human rights activists, I founded the Committee to Defend the Rights of the People (CODEPU). CODEPU was a secular institution that based its work not only in the international doctrine of human rights, but also on the 1976 Declaration of Algiers that proclaimed the right of all peoples to self determination, to control their own natural resources and to solidarity. CODEPU provided legal defense to political prisoners who had been denied legal counsel because they had exercised their legitimate right to defend themselves from oppression. CODEPU also provided medical attention to victims of torture and their families and was actively involved in publicly denouncing the violations of human rights. I spent almost 20 years of my life in this institution. During these years, I participated in various missions organized by the International Federation of Human Rights, as an international observer to Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Currently, I am engaged in legal proceedings to determine the responsibility of Pinochet and other officials of the armed forces in crimes against humanity. Among these, there are the cases of two Spanish priests, Juan Alsina and Antonio Llidó. Juan Alsina was executed by the military and Antonio is among the detained and disappeared. Additionally, I am also working on a case related to Operation Condor. In sum, I am a person that has spent the last 30 years working to promote and defend human rights in Chile and the rest of Latin America. Because of this, and everything that has transpired in Chile and Latin America, I think it is relevant to ask ourselves: What have we learned in these thirty years of struggle for human rights? First, like so many other lawyers in Latin America, we had to learn human rights doctrine at the same time that we were exercising our role as legal defenders of the victims. Actions to defend political prisoners, to defend the victims of torture and other human rights violations, preceded a full knowledge and grasp about international human rights doctrine. We developed our understanding and constructed our strategy for the defense of human rights from practice, as we went about our task of defending political prisoners, victims of torture, and exile. Second, even though we were aware that the civilian and military tribunals were subordinated to military power and offered limited possibilities, we turned to them to demand justice, a justice that we still have not achieved. However, through our actions we were able to maintain the historical and judicial memory of the crimes committed against humanity in our countries. Despite repeated legal setbacks, we persevered in our legal action over years and decades. Third, we didn’t see our role as confined exclusively within the legal struggle. To the contrary, we understood our role as linked and part of the broader social movement to end the dictatorship and rebuild a democratic system. ✩ 215 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 216 Fabiola Letelier Fourth, as we became more involved with the international doctrine of human rights, we grew more and more convinced of the importance of universal over national jurisdiction, especially when national jurisdiction proved itself incapable of achieving justice. It is for this reason, that in Chile, we the victims, traveled to Spain to become part of the legal process against Pinochet for the crimes of genocide, torture and other human rights violations committed against our people. We did so, with the hope that international courts would achieve what had been denied to us by the national legal system of our countries. Fifth, we also understood the need to grasp the holistic nature of human rights. That is, that human rights consist not only of civil and political rights, but also of economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights, and that all of these are mutually inter-dependent. This helped us understand that the violation of human rights in our countries took place not only through repression, under dictatorial regimes, but also through the establishment of the neoliberal economic model that in my country was imposed by Augusto Pinochet and his “Chicago Boys.” Perhaps the most important lesson, however, was the following: It was the victims themselves, and not the civilian elected government nor the system of political representation, who have been at the forefront and have led the struggle for human rights in the continent. Given the legitimate demands for truth and justice, the State has responded with “pragmatic”, “symbolic” policies, and the politics of gestures, all of them imposed by the victimizers, resulting in the State, becoming an accomplice with the imposition of impunity. Building upon, and based on, the experience of the victims and human rights lawyers and organizations from Chile and Latin America, we have been able to draw over the years some insights and lessons that gain relevance when we evaluate Latin American democracy, thirty years after the overthrow of the constitutional government of Salvador Allende. Thus, as we look toward the future, it is pertinent to ask ourselves: What contribution can the human rights movement make to envision a future democratic Latin America? In my opinion, the first contribution is the understanding of importance of keeping historical memory alive: of standing fast to prevent oblivion and defeat those forces that seek “to erase and clean the slate” without truth, without justice, without reparation, and that aim to obliterate from our hearts and minds, a full awareness of the suffering of our peoples. We have the right to know the truth, the entire and complete truth of what happened to our relatives and loved ones. Only then will we be able to demand full justice – without qualifiers – determining the specific responsibilities of the authors, bringing legal sanction to each case by the corresponding authorities. In this manner, we will be able to build a future in which these cruel and illicit acts will never again happen. ✩ 216 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 217 Epilogue We must maintain the struggle against impunity for crimes against humanity, because these crimes affect not only the victim and his or her family, but also society as a whole. With impunity it becomes impossible to build a genuinely democratic society. Impunity is a new crime that adds on to the crimes already committed. Impunity violates the right to equality under the law, since it grants a specific group of victimizers exclusion from the rule of law, something that should apply to all without exceptions. Achieving truth, justice, and reparation to the victims is a legal duty of governments, that should always be demanded, and that does not prescribe with time. Throughout the conference, we have heard rich discussions about how to build a truly democratic system in Latin America. This raises great challenges: how can we better understand social reality and bring about profound changes? Perhaps, the experience gained by the human rights movement in Latin America provides us with some orientations about how to begin confronting these challenges. First, people have to be the main actors, the main protagonists, in their history. Second, popular sovereignty must be broadly acknowledged and exercised by members of society. This implies not only periodically electing their representatives, but that people organize in a multitude of organizations – trade unions, cooperatives, neighborhood associations, political parties, among others – to express their demands, voices, and values. Third, the respect for all the human rights contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international instruments, provides an ethical framework for all Latin American societies. Fourth, achieving greater social equality, calls for the transformation of the current socio-economic system, to address the growing gap between an increasingly wealthier minority, and a majority living in poverty and insecurity. The last point that I want to highlight as essential for future Latin American democracy is the principle of solidarity among peoples. This is a principle that Chileans know very well, since it was generously given to us during the 17 years of the military dictatorship. Many governments and peoples opened their borders to give protection, jobs, and livelihood to thousands of exiles and their families. I believe that today it has become more important than ever to coordinate the social organizations – what some call civil society – of our countries. This is a key prerequisite for transforming the present unjust and undemocratic structures, and for establishing a society where peace, truth, justice and solidarity prevail. This was the challenge assumed by Salvador Allende more than three decades ago, and today it remains a still unfinished task. However, I firmly believe that, each and every one of us has a role to play in meeting such a challenge. ✩ 217 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 218 contributors Marjorie Agosín is Professor of Spanish at Wellesley College, a renowned spokesperson for human rights, and an award-winning author and poet. Her books include: Scraps of Life: Chilean Arpilleras (1987), Toward the Splendid City (1994), A Cross and A Star (1995), Las hacedoras (1996), Always from Somewhere Else: A Memoir of My Chilean Jewish Father (1998), She also wrote seven books of poetry, such as Brujas y algo más: Witches and Other Things (1984), Dear Anne Frank (1994), Las chicas desobedientes (1997) and others. Her latest book is Poems for Josefina (2004). Andrea Bachner is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Her academic interests include postmodern and postcolonial literatures across the cultures (European, Latin/American, Chinese) and theoretical focus on the questions of cultural and sexual difference. She has published in Comparative Literature Studies and is currently working on her dissertation which investigates different connections between corporeality and textuality in poststructuralist theories and postmodern literatures. Julia Carroll completed her Ph.D. at Emory University in 2005. Her dissertation deals with cultural production from Argentina and Chile, by writers such as Diamela Eltit, Pedro Lemebel, Luisa Valenzuela and César Aira. In addition to her interest in politics, gender and memory in the Southern Cone, she has also written on the relationships between language and identity in US Latino literature. Mark Ensalaco is the founding director of the Human Rights program at the University of Dayton. He is the author of Chile Under Pinochet: Recovering the Truth (1999). He is currently working on the sequel, The Mark of Cain: The Prosecution of Pinochet and the Search for the Disappeared. ✩ 218 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 219 Contributors Kevin Foster is an Associate Professor in the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies at Monash University in Melbourne. He has published on a broad range of topics including the Spanish Civil War, African Autobiography and Brazilian Football and British Identity. He is author of Fighting Fictions: War, Narrative and National Identity (1999) and is completing a book on British cultural constructions of Latin America, Imaginary Continent. Volker Frank is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina-Asheville. His research interests include labor movements in comparative perspective, democratization, social theory, and globalization. Among his most recent publication is “Politics without Policy: The Failure of Social Concertation in Democratic Chile 1990–2000,” in Victims of the Chilean Miracle: Workers and Neolibleralism in the Pinochet Era 1973–2002, edited by Peter Winn (2004). Diane Haughney is Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bates College. Her book on the Mapuche movement in the 1990s is forthcoming with the University Press of Florida. She spent more than eight years in Chile, from 1992 to 2000. Peter Kornbluh is a researcher and a director of the Cuba Documentation Project, as well as the Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, George Washington University. He is co-author of The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History, and The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, editor of Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report and author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. His latest book is Low Intensity Warfare, Counterinsurgency, Proinsurgency and Antiterrorism in the Eighties (2004). Fernando Leiva is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Latin American, Caribbean and US Latino Studies at the University at Albany (SUNY). His research focuses on theories of economic development, the political economy of globalization and the impact of internationalizing capital upon workers. His publications include Democracy and Poverty in Chile: The Limits to Electoral Politics (1994). Currently he is working on a book tentatively titled Latin American Neostructuralism: The Enchantment and Contradictions of Post-Neoliberal Development. Fabiola Letelier is a leading human rights lawyer in Chile, sister of Orlando Letelier, the late minister of Foreign Affairs and later Minister of Defense during the Allende administration in Chile, assassinated by a car-bomb in Washington DC in 1976. In the 1970s, she worked for the ✩ 219 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 220 Contributors Committee for Cooperation for Peace, in 1980 she founded the Committee to Defend the Rights of the People (CODEPU), and in 2000 co-founded with seven other human rights attorneys Memoria y Justicia, a non-governmental organization that coordinates exchange of information related to national and international law. Gregory J. Lobo teaches cultural theory in the Department of Lenguajes y Estudios Socioculturales at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. His publications on culture as politics include “¡Siempre politicemos! O, la cultura como política-qua-cultura”, “Pensamientos sobre el otro 11 de septiembre: en memoria de un futuro justo”, and “Sorting Out Moral Equivalency and Appropriate Response: Reflections on ‘Left’ Reactions to September 11, 2001” (available on the web). He is currently working on sovereignty and discipline in Colombia. Ornella Lepri Mazzuca is an Assistant Professor of Spanish and Italian at SUNY Dutchess College. Her research focuses on Latin American literature, Italian literature, and the use of technology in the foreign language learning process. Her recent presentations include: “Paolo Volponi: Alienation and Eschatological Process in the Narrative Structure and as Mirror Image of Social Realities” and “The Internet: Methodology and Technology in the Foreign Language Classroom.” Jeffrey R. Middents is an Assistant Professor of literature and film studies at the American University in Washington, DC, where he teaches cinema and world literature, specializing in 20th century Latin American narratives. His essay on Peruvian authors Francisco Lombardi and Federico García will be published in Representing the Rural: Space, Place and Identity in Films about the Land (2005). His book-length project on the development of Peruvian national cinema, Hablemos de cine, is forthcoming. Silvia Nagy-Zekmi is a Professor of Latin American literature and cultural studies and Chair of the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures at Villanova University. Her books include: Historia de la canción folklórica en los Andes (1989), Paralelismos transatlánticos: Postcolonialidad y narrativa femenina en América Latina y Africa del Norte (1996), Identidades en transformación: El discurso neoindigenista de los países andinos (1997), De texto a contexto: Prácticas discursivas en la literatura española e hispanoamericana. (1998), Le Maghreb Postcolonial (2003), and forthcoming: Paradoxical Citizenship: Edward Said (2005), Moros en la costa: Orientalismo en Latinoamérica (2006). Amy A. Oliver is an Associate Professor of Spanish at American ✩ 220 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 221 Contributors University, her research on Latin America explores philosophical treatments of marginality, feminism, hybridity, alterity, “nepantlismo,” and “transfronterismo.” She has lived in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Spain. She serves on the International Editorial Board of Cuadernos Americanos, and on three committees of the American Philosophical Association. She has been President of the Society for Iberian and Latin American Thought and Director of American University’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Kristin Sorensen is an Assistant Professor in International Studies at Bentley College. She received her PhD in Communication and Culture at Indiana University. In her research, she looks at contemporary media in Chile and how that media addresses the themes of human rights violations that occurred during the dictatorship. More generally, she is concerned with how human rights, social, and environmental issues get articulated through the media and the way in which media consumers and audiences engage with these discourses. Patricia Tomic is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Okanagan Campus of the University of British Columbia. She is currently conducting research on globalization, culture and neoliberalism with a particular interest both on Chile and the Canadian hinterlands. Her recent publications include, “The Letter: Racism, Hate and Monoculturalism in a Canadian Hinterland,” in Carl James (ed.), Possibilities and Limitations: Multicultural Policies and Programmes in Canada (2005) and “Powerful Drivers and Meek Passengers: The Public Transportation System in Santiago, Chile,” in Race and Class (2005), with co-author Ricardo Trumper. She is presently co-editing with Everardo Garduño and María Loreto Rebolledo, Imaginarios, identidades e historias. Miradas desde la antropología del género. Camilo Trumper is a PhD candidate in Latin American history at UC Berkeley. He is currently finishing his dissertation which examines urban politics in the Unidad Popular through visual and ephemeral sources ranging from political posters and murals to documentary film and photography. Ricardo Trumper is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Okanagan Campus of the University of British Columbia. His research interests include globalization, neo-liberalism and post-Fordism. He is currently working on transportation, fear and sports. Among his recent works are articles, such as “The Letter: Racism, Hate and Monoculturalism in a Canadian Hinterland,” “Powerful Drivers and Meek Passengers: The Public Transportation System in Santiago, Chile,” in Race and Class, ✩ 221 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Page 222 Contributors forthcoming, 2005 (co-author: Patricia Tomic); he co-edited with Rodrigo Hidalgo and Axel Borsdorf, Transformaciones metropolitanas y procesos territoriales. Lecturas del nuevo dibujo de la ciudad latinoamericana (2005). Steven Volk is a Professor of History and Chair of Latin American Studies at Oberlin College. He previously served as the Research Director of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA). He has written on the formation of the Chilean state in the 19th century, US foreign policy in Latin America, and Frida Kahlo. He is currently researching the ways in which Chile has entered into the US political imagination since 1970. ✩ 222 ✩ nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 index ✩ 223 ✩ Page 223 nagy-zekmi-levia--design - 2.qxp 01/07/2005 12:38 Index ✩ 224 ✩ Page 224