By James R. Whelan, author of six books on Latin America, including a history of Chile  ("Out of the Ashes").
The Wall Street Journal, October 30, 1998

Chilean General  Augusto Pinochet, now under arrest in London pending judgments on his case by the British House of Lords and Spain's National Court, neither sought power nor exercised it in a manner we normally associate with dictators. Ultimately, he relinquished control of the Chilean government voluntarily and conducted a smooth restoration of civilian rule.

To evaluate his actions, you must understand the circumstances of the attempted Marxist takeover of Chile in the 1970s. Salvador Allende reached the presidency of Chile in 1970 with only 36% of the vote, barely 40,000 votes ahead of the candidate of the right. In Mr. Allende's 1,000 days of rule, Chile degenerated into what the much-lionized former Chilean president Eduardo Frei Montalva (father of the current president) called a
"carnival of madness". Eleven months before the fall of President Allende, Mr. Frei said: "Chile is in the throes of an economic disaster: not a crisis, but a veritable catastrophe. . . ."

Shortly after those remarks were made, the legal ground beneath the Allende presidency began to crumble. The Chilean Supreme Court, the Bar Association and the leftist Medical Society, along with the Chamber of Deputies and provincial heads of the Christian Democrat Party, all warned that Allende was systematically trampling the
law and constitution.

By August 1973, more than a million Chileans--half the work force--were on strike, demanding that Allende go. Transport and industry were paralyzed. On Sept. 11, 1973, the armed forces acted to oust Allende, going into battle against his gunslingers. Six hours after the fighting erupted, Allende blew his head off in the presidential palace with an AK 47 given to him by Fidel Castro. By the time the generals had completed their takeover, they were heroes to at least two-thirds of the Chilean population.

But they came under a heavy propaganda attack from abroad. Much of the vilification emanated from Moscow. But it also came from the then-powerful left in Western Europe. Part of the fury stemmed from a misreading among European socialists of what Chilean "socialism" was all about. In Chile, the Socialist Party was the party of Maoist-style violence. After the coup, Mr. Frei again spoke out. In a moving letter to the head of the World Union of Christian Democracy, Italy's Premier Mariano Rumor, the former Chilean president wrote: "The military have saved Chile. . . .Civil war was fully planned by the Marxists. . . the economy of Chile was headed for disaster. . . this country is destroyed."

In those sentiments, he was joined by Chile's then two other living ex-presidents. One of them, Gabriel González Videla, said he "did not have words to thank the armed forces for having liberated us from the Marxist claws.
 Looking ahead, he said he expected "the best, because they have saved us and will permit us to live in democracy
. . . the totalitarian apparatus which had been prepared to destroy us, has itself been destroyed. . . ." Such judgments--expressed by mere Chileans--would not, however, spare the military the wrath of leftist political elites around the world.

To counter the still existing well-armed and well-funded guerrilla and urban terrorist forces, the embattled government created, in 1974, a military intelligence agency which--before Mr. Pinochet disbanded it in 1978--would become a rogue elephant responsible for most of the human rights abuses. What is seldom spoken of is that most of the victims were terrorists. Before Fidel Castro sentenced him to 30 years in prison in 1989, Cuban General Patricio de la Guardia bragged at his "trial" of his service in Chile during the Allende years. He said he  had led part of an international para-military brigade--one that the Chilean government estimated to number about 15,000.

In June 1974, the Communist Party in Chile reiterated its doctrine that the right to use violence was "non-negotiable." But the talk of violence was muted for a time as the party attempted to gain political allies. In 1976, however, party ideologue Volodia Teitelboim in a Radio Moscow broadcast spoke of the need to "rethink the military problem," adding that Communists could not be "Gullivers bound hand and foot by legality."

On April 5, 1977, a group of cashiered Chilean military men in London announced the formation of a "Front of Democratic Armed Forces of Chile in Exile." A second such group was formed the same day in Brussels and a third shortly afterwards in Communist East Berlin. On April 6, a spokesman named Jaime Estevez said in a Radio Moscow broadcast that the purpose of these Soviet-backed entities was to lead the fight" for the overthrow of the fascist junta." In August of that year, the Central Committee of the Chilean Communist Party constituted itself as "The General Staff of Revolution."

In 1979, one month after the Sandinistas shot their way into power in Nicaragua, Chilean Communist Party Secretary General Luis Corvalan said Chile "could become the second Nicaragua." A month later, he warned that "if fascism is not eradicated. . . terrorism would find in Chile a wide open field for its action." A year later, from his Moscow refuge, Corvalan proclaimed a new era of "acute violence". Corvalan endorsed guerrilla warfare, terrorism and a massive armed uprising.

By 1986, increasingly legalized political activity in Chile was gathering momentum in preparation for what would be free elections in 1988. Early that year, the military stumbled onto part of one of the largest clandestine arms shipments in the history of the hemisphere, enough to arm 5,000 men. It was traced to Cuba. That same year, a meticulously planned assassination plot involving 70 terrorists narrowly missed killing General Pinochet; five of his escorts were murdered. In the aftermath of each of these incidents, the government cracked down on the terrorist groups. Inevitably, innocent people were affected. The armed
underground responded with stepped-up sabotage--and a campaign of assassinations of police officers. Among many examples: On April 2, 1988 three youths murdered police Corp. Alfredo Rivera Rojas, a 35-year-old father of two, while he was carrying groceries home in Santiago.

There were innocent victims on both sides of this civil war, but the fact is that far fewer died in Chile than did in most other Latin conflicts in this century. The Rettig Commission--named by the first post-military government to investigate human rights abuses and headed by a former Allende minister--counted a total of 2,279 dead and missing on both sides. The first three months of fighting claimed 1,261 of the victims.

What the Chilean military--arguably the most professional and disciplined in all of Latin America--left behind was a nation incomparably better off than the wreckage they inherited.

General Pinochet's opponents have never forgotten their defeat.