Re: The CIA in Chile (forwarded from Chris Brady)

["Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky" <gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

En relación a The CIA in Chile (forwarded from Chris Brady),
el 13 Feb 00, a las 18:58, Chris Brady dijo:


[BTW, Louis, how can one forward this to Chris? His reply might be
most enlightening]

> [...] The figure of 30,000 killed is
> more often applied to Argentina?s Dirty War while Chile?s killed and
> disappeared are put at around 3,000.  [...] (More were
> offed in Argentina both in real numbers and proportionally, but the
> military there rotated commands so that instead of confusing agency,
> the entire upper level of officers must be seen as associated with
> slaughtering their own people.[...]).

Though this might seem outrageous, since once a figure gets usual you
will not think over it again, the whole _direct_ murders by the Junta
officers were quite below the 30,000 mark. Some put it even below the
15,000 mark, and I am not speaking of the reactionaries. But OK, the
30,000 (some speak of 50,000) are quite a lot. It amounts at some
quarter of a million (or more) in the USA.

The rotation of commands was an intentiontional policy of the leaders
of the repression, in order that every officer had the blood stains
on their hands. There is an anecdote (if I am not wrong it was Julio
F. B.  who told it to me, but well, let him correct me if I am
untrue) about a couple of young Navy officers who were caught, during
the early months of the massacre, in what seemed to be homosexual
activities (or couple exchange activities, more or less the same
thing in the "moral" code of our gorillas). They were immediately
expelled from the Navy in the most unhonorable terms, of course.

Time passed by, and long after this happened someone met the two
"original" couples friendly talking to each other at an asado (a kind
of barbecue party here), in the casual manner two old-time "straight"
couples meet and talk on those occasions. Puzzled, this person asked
"How can it be, you're not quarreling.  Don't you hate each other
after having ruined your carreers?".

With a smile, came the answer: "No, not at all. We had to make the
whole story up. This was the only way we could have ourselves
expelled from the Navy. We did not want to get involved in the
massacre, but one could not just quit, and less yet could we expose
our reasons to quit. So we invented this "dirty" affair, and had our
Admirals expell us. Our hands are clean of Argentinian blood."

[snip]

Chris again:

> Re. Lagos:
> [...] The military is not responsible to
> the President as stipulated in the 1980 Constitution written by
> General Pinochet.  The [...] Constitution privileges the Armed
> Forces with ten percent of the net profits on annual Chilean copper sales.

[Here it should be pointed out, for those who do not know this, that
copper is to Chile what oil is to Venezuela: the international wage
of the country so to say]

> The military is an autonomous
> agent of multinational capital.  Its history indicates how it will act
> if it is challenged in that role.  Ricardo Lagos knows the history of
> his country very well. His Socialist Party, [...] is clearly not the
> answer. The only thing he can do is to [...] allow the regeneration of a
> viable revolutionary left (although he cannot express that
> eventuality).

I am quite suspicious of the possibilities of Lagos to "allow the
regeneration of a viable revolutionary left", in the sense that IMHO
Lagos does not have any intention whatsoever to generate the
conditions for that Left to exist. The relative autonomy of the
Chilean military is not something Lagos is too worried about, and the
situation there is much like the situation in Argentina after the
1955 coup, only that in Chile things were carried on
"scientifically", the worker's movement and the popular government
were enormously weaker, and thus oligarchic reaction was most
complete and overwhelming. Lagos appears at my eyes as some kind of
Radical in the Argentinian sense, a formally democratic petty
bourgeois without too much to offer, and with some understanding, in
the deepest layers of his heart, that what happenned in 1973 could
not have been avoided, that the Chileans with Allende had gone too
far ahead, and that the current settlement is not only the only
possible one, but the only reasonable one. Thus he seems to be
supportive of the "independence" of the military, not opposed to it.
His own political outlook seems to stem from that "independence".

On his post, Chris seems to be sympathetic with Lagos on this
respect, and I honestly do not give a damn for the "socialist" will
of Lagos and his likes. They just express the "progressive, liberal"
wing of the petty bourgeoisie that, somehow or other, has accomodated
to the post-Pinochet Chilean scenario. The last thing they would like
to have is a situation where a revolutionary left can exist. In the
end, if such a menace appears, they will be ousted and they will
blame the radicalized ones for their ousting.

This is epitomized in that shit of a novel, _The house of Spirits_,
where the old "momios" and the young "revolutionaries" (children to
the momios) agree to blame the military for all the crimes. And the
whole thing can also be read in Donoso's [this time the adjective is
"great"] _Casa de campo_. And Donoso had the merit of forecast,
because his novel was written in 1973/76!

For those who have read that novel by Donoso: Wenceslao grew up,
found an accomodation, and put all the blame on the Landlord and his
crew. The child who seemed so promising (the open end in Donoso's
novel even allows for some hope) is now a callous politician of the
establishment.

Ay, Chile, cómo nos dueles en el costado izquierdo del mapa y del
cuerpo!





Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxx