Leader in Chile’s electoral polls, ultra-right candidate José Antonio Kast, 55, told foreign journalists that he does not consider the regime led by Augusto Pinochet from 1974 to 1990 to be a dictatorship.
Official data show that, at the command of the general, at least 3,200 people were murdered and more than 40,000 tortured.
The Republican Party candidate, a known admirer of Pinochet, used as an argument the comparison with other dictatorships in Latin America and said that it is necessary to differentiate the Pinochetist era from authoritarian regimes currently observed in the island of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
“I believe that Nicaragua represents exactly what did not happen in Pinochet’s Chile: [no segundo caso], democratic elections were organized and political opponents were not prevented”, argued Kast. The president also alleged that the Pinochet regime had made a “democratic transition”, something not seen in the other experiences mentioned by him.
The story, however, shows a somewhat different version from the one presented by Kast, who is fighting for a place at the Palacio de La Moneda for the second time.
In 1973, Pinochet led troops who, with US support, overthrew the socialist Salvador Allende. From then onwards, 17 years of authoritarian rule followed, with persecution of opponents and violation of human rights, until pressure in the streets and in the international forum forced the dictator to retreat.
The latest report by the Valech Commission, a board created by the Chilean government in 2003 to investigate crimes from the Pinochet era, concluded that more than 40,000 opponents of the regime were executed and tortured. Many are still missing. More than 1,200 victims were minors and, of these, 176 were under 13 years of age.
The era is remembered especially for its brutality to women – at least 3,621 are among the victims. Most of them were raped individually or collectively by the military, the report showed, and at least 13 became pregnant after sexual violence.
In 1988, a popular plebiscite decided that Pinochet should not remain in power. The general was forced to accept the result because he was under internal pressure — from businessmen dissatisfied with the economic paths that no longer represented the success they had before — and internationally, as denunciations of the violations committed echoed in other countries.
This, however, was not the first time that José Antonio Kast praised the dictator Pinochet, who died in 2006. In addition to praising the regime’s neoliberal economic policy, the president said in the 2017 electoral race, and then repeated, that would have Pinochet’s vote if he were alive.
In public statements and interviews, Kast has been trying to shrug off the nickname of an ultra-right candidate. “It has been established by the press that I am extreme; extreme at what? This is an old political divide. Why do you think someone from the extreme right would lead the polls?” said the candidate for foreign journalists.
A Catholic, Kast is in favor of repealing the country’s abortion law and cutting social spending. The candidate was one of those who opposed the Chilean constituent, a process that will draft a new Magna Carta for the country, still governed by a document sewn by the Pinochet dictatorship. The process was approved in a popular plebiscite after mega-protests in the country – 78.27% voted in favour.
Three weeks ago, when protests occupied Santiago, the country’s capital, in commemoration of the two years of the mobilizations that led to the Constituent Assembly, Kast declared that there was nothing to celebrate. “It is a day to be condemned. We can never go back to accepting blackmail against our country’s institutions,” he said.
In the final stretch of the electoral race –the election will be held next Sunday (21)–, Kast has frequently referred to the dictatorships of Daniel Ortega, in Nicaragua, and Nicolás Maduro, in Venezuela, to attack his main opponent, the leftist Gabriel Boric, a former student leader
The argument gained momentum last week after the Communist Party of Chile, which supports Boric’s candidacy, published a note in support of Ortega’s re-election in a front-line election.
“We have to end the hypocritical foreign policy in Chile. We have to break relations with these dictatorships. The Communist Party, which supports Gabriel Boric, is an accomplice of Ortega,” Kast said in a video posted on social media.
In a poll on the local channel CHV Notícias, Boric was asked about the matter. “In a government, international policy is dictated by the president of the Republic, and my commitment is unrestricted and absolute with respect for human rights,” he said, adding that his administration would condemn and work to improve the situation in any country that violates these principles .
Along with Brazil, Chile was one of 25 member states of the Organization of American States (OAS) that voted in favor of a statement this Friday (12) classifying Ortega’s reelection as illegal and undemocratic.
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