The General’s Slow Retreat: Chile after Pinochet

Chapter 2. The Conciliator

35 I March 11, 1990, was the day Pinochet actually handed over the presidential badge to his successor, if not all the power that office was meant to signify. According to protocol, the departing president is supposed to be the first to greet the new president, but Pinochet arrived a few minutes late.1 A photograph taken in La Moneda shortly after the inauguration is suggestive of the conflicts ahead, though outwardly the two men appear to be engaging in polite conversation. In the photograph Pinochet wears the army’s white dress uniform and stands less than two feet from Aylwin. Though slightly shorter than the new civilian president , he looks the more confident: his posture erect, his hands folded neatly behind his back as he gazes directly at his successor. Two younger T W O The Conciliator 36 A n U n e a s y T r a n s i t i o n army officers standing behind Aylwin and Pinochet are also staring at the new civilian president; one is unsmiling, while the other seems to be smirking. Pinochet may have surrendered the Chilean presidency, but he would continue as army commander and do everything possible to keep his authoritarian system in place. “I think he believed that my government was going to fail and that he would return in all his glory and majesty,” Aylwin said. The two men first crossed paths during the presidency of Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei (1964–70), when Aylwin was a member of the Chilean senate . There was a reception at the senate library that Pinochet attended as representative of the army; Aylwin still possesses a group photograph of the event. The second meeting occurred a few years later, when thenpresident Salvador Allende summoned the senate president and other Chilean leaders to La Moneda.2 The meeting had been called to discuss the assassination of a former cabinet minister who had served under President Eduardo Frei Montalva, Allende’s predecessor. Edmundo Pérez Zujovic had been driving along a Santiago street, accompanied by his daughter, when his car was intercepted by a leftist extremist group that shot the Christian Democrat with an automatic weapon.3 At the meeting Aylwin recalled that he urged Allende to turn the case over to the carabinero police rather than the civilian detective police, Investigaciónes, whose left-wing director seemed too politicized to undertake an impartial inquiry. But Pinochet rebuked Aylwin, saying that the Chilean army had full confidence in the leftist-led detective unit. “It was the first time I had an exchange of opinions with Pinochet,” he said. That year Aylwin became president of the Chilean senate and led the political opposition to the Allende government, even as Pinochet appeared to be a neutral officer unlikely to participate in coup plotting.4 This opposition culminated in a congressional resolution, the Declaration of the Breakdown of Chile’s Democracy, on August 22, 1973. The resolution called for “an immediate end” to Allende’s constitutional abuses, accusing the Socialist leader of ruling by decree, of supporting illegal land seizures, and of ignoring rulings by the Chilean judiciary.5 The next day Pinochet became army commander, taking over from General Carlos Prats, a strict constitution- T h e C o n c i l i a t o r 37 alist who resigned when a group of right-wing Chilean women staged a demonstration outside his home. Their next encounter would not occur until a few months after the coup. Aylwin and other leaders of the Christian Democratic Party had requested an audience with the junta to discuss the human rights situation and the decree banning Chile’s political parties. The meeting was long, civilized, but uncomfortable, he recalled. Pinochet barely spoke, but other junta members had harsh words about the Christian Democrats and the Frei government, accusing them of enabling a near-Marxist takeover of the country under Allende. The two met again on December 21, 1989, as Aylwin reestablished the protocol of president-elect visiting the departing president. Aylwin broached the subject of Pinochet’s future, telling the general that while he recognized that the constitution allowed him to remain army commander for eight more years, it would be for better for the government and the Chilean army if he would retire. Aylwin would never forget Pinochet’s response, which contained an implied threat: “But no one will ever protect you...