Chile Church seeks pardons, including rights cases

By CARLA CANDIA (AP) – 2 days ago

SANTIAGO, Chile — Chile's Roman Catholic Church on Wednesday urged President Sebastian Pinera to grant a sweeping pardon to aged and long-serving inmates — and the fact it would aid military officers who committed crimes against humanity has angered relatives of their victims.

Families of people who were slain or who vanished during Augusto Pinochet's 1973-1990 dictatorship protested outside La Moneda palace as Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz and Monsignor Alejandro Goic, president of the Episcopal Conference, met with the president.

"Our proposal is not meant to open up wounds of the past, nor to make them heal by decree," Goic said of the plan, which is designed to mark Chile's 200-year independence celebrations Sept. 18 with a display of clemency.

But the wounds of the past remain bitter for many Chileans.

According to official statistics, 3,065 opponents of Pinochet's right-wing regime were killed and 1,200 more disappeared. Some 600 military personnel have been accused of crimes against humanity but no more than 150 are now in prison.

Mireya Garcia, vice president of the Group of Relatives of the Detainees and Disappeared, said those who commit crimes should serve their sentences. "Justice doesn't have to do with clemency but with what is fair," she told The Associated Press.

The church's proposed amnesty would apply to prisoners who are sick or older than 70 or those who have served half their sentence. Garcia's group says about 35 military personnel jailed for dictatorship-era "dirty war" crimes apparently would be eligible, though officials have not given an exact count.

The main opposition to the pardons for former military officials comes from left-center sectors who have a majority in the Congress, but some law-and-order members of Pinera's conservative bloc are also uneasy at the idea of seeming to go easy on convicts.

Pinera himself has sought to distance his brand of conservative politics from the far-right Pinochet dictatorship
Gen. Humberto Julio, president of an organization of retired military officials, praised the church proposal, saying it would help national reconciliation.

"It's incorrect to talk about impunity when the intention is to apply a sentence according to the age and health condition of prisoners," he said.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

The 1988 referendum: Yes or No

As I've told you in the lecture, Pinochet's new constitution included a referendum in 1998 to define the continuity of his administration. Pinochet was convinced that he was going to win, so he prepared the referendum (plebiscito in spanish) defining himself as the candidate.

In those years Pinochet's advisers commited a terrible mistake: the government gave to the to options Yes and No, fifteen minutes on TV every day at 11 pm for free for political campaign. The Coallition of Parties for Democracy saw immediately the opportunity that 15 minutes on TV meant, and they put all their efforts to send a message positive, optimistic, talking about change, hope, and future. In fact the campaign slogan was "Chile: Joy is coming".

Pinochet's advisers didn't have much interest in this fifteen minutes. Who's going to watch and resist fifteen minutes of political campaign? they asked. But the truth is that everyone watched it, and after that, citizens matured their ideas and opinions, and then, on october 5Th of 1998, they decided: No option obtained a 56% of the votes. Yes option obtained a 44% of the votes.

I leave you two videos for you to watch: the No campaign and the Yes campaign. You'll notice the differences! After a few weeks, Pinochet's advisers tried to change their campaign, but didn't work either. Here we have the results.

Augusto Pinochet: 1915-2006

One year after his death, the right wing chilean newspaper El Mercurio published an interactive special about Pinochet, with multiple information about his life and the place that he has in chilean history (in spanish). In english you can visit our link section and then go to the Times Topic about Pinochet in The New York Times.

About this blog

Dear travelers,

My name is Loreto Navarrete, but my friends from USA call me Lory. I'm a social anthropologist and since this summer I'm doing a lecture called "Chile: Allende and Pinochet. Forty years of controversial history" for all the passengers that are traveling with Grand Circle Travel to Chile.

The idea is that you can learn and discovery more about Chile, and its exciting history. As you all know, history -and specially politics- can be controversial, and we'll always find persons with different points of view. The invitation here is to learn, share opinions, and discuss about our past and current politics. All ideas and comments are welcome, because the wonder of learning is that we all can learn from each other!

All the best,
Loreto Navarrete (Lory)