Michelle Bachelet at the start of her second Presidency in Chile

This post by Javier Couso is from April, Bachelet's First Month in Office — And What Lies Ahead CLAS Blog 04/18/2014. But it gives a succinct look at her New Majority (Nueva Mayoría) political project is about:

President Bachelet's decisiveness in her first few weeks in office has had a profound impact. First, her determination to fulfill her campaign promise to introduce significant changes in Chile’s current socio-economic model has increased her credibility among the large portion of the population who had become skeptical of politicians in recent years. Second, her focus on enacting the platform she campaigned on has provided a sense of mission and direction to her coalition, the Nueva Mayoría, which comprises a vast spectrum of political parties, from the Christian Democrats in the center to the Communists on the left. Lastly, the assertiveness of Bachelet's first month in government has left Chile’s highly ideological right-wing parties confused to the point of paralysis, since they thought that her campaign promises were just a rhetorical move to prevail in the presidential election.

Tags: chile, michelle bachelet

Chilean reforms and the US

TV Pública argentina has a disturbing report analyzing the background of the Obama Administration disturbing pressure on Michelle Bachelet's Nueva Mayoría (New Majority) government to not proceed with the program on which she was elected of changing some of the more destructive neoliberal policies installed under the Pinochet dictatorship, Chile bajo la mirada norteamericana 05/17/2014:

Bachelet is pushing forward with a tax reform that was part of her program. For the Nueva Mayoría, "reform" does not mean what it means in the EU and even in the US at the moment: neoliberal plans to reduce salaries and lighten the regulatory and tax burdens on the wealthy. Bachelet's tax reform would actually require the wealthiest to pay more to support their country, including improving the financing of college educations.

US Ambassador to Chile Michael Hammer has already stepped in to complain about the Nueva Mayoría's reforms, demanding "clear rules" and the involvement of all "stakeholders," in particular US firms that might be affected in some way: Embajador de Estados Unidos pidió "reglas claras" al Gobierno ante reformas Radio ADN 06.05.2014.

Las visiones sobre los dichos del embajador de EE.UU. sobre la reforma tributaria CNN Chile 08.05.2014:

The accompanying article is Reforma Tributaria: Las visiones sobre los dichos del embajador de EE.UU. CNN Chile 08.05.2014

Bachelet was elected this year with her Nueva Mayoría coalition including a wide spectrum of center-left to left parties, including Chile's Partida Communista. Here's the most famous member of that party, Camila Vallejo Downing, talking about the tax reform, Reforma tributaria, intervención de Camila Vallejo 13.05.2014:

If this report from AllGov.com can be credited (Ambassador to Chile: Who Is Michael Hammer? 07/20/2013), Hammer may have an friendly inclination toward the notion of authoritarian government in Latin America:

Nominated by President Barack Obama on June 21 to be the next U.S. ambassador to Chile, Mike Hammer has been assistant secretary of state for public affairs since March 30, 2012, having served as acting assistant secretary since the March 13, 2011, resignation of P.J. Crowley, who was forced out after he characterized the harsh confinement of whistleblower Pfc. Bradley Manning as "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid." Hammer had been principal deputy assistant secretary since January 2011. If confirmed by the Senate, Hammer would succeed Alejandro D. Wolff, who has served in Santiago since September 2010. [my emphasis]

Being considered more trustworthy by this Administration than a critic of its harsh and genuinely repressive treatment of whistleblowers like Manning is not an encouraging sign in itself.

Born December 26, 1963, in Washington, DC, to parents Michael P. and Magdalena Hammer, Michael A. Hammer spent much of his childhood in Latin America, specifically Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil, where his father was working for the American Institute for Free Labor Development, a CIA front group that worked to undermine spontaneous radicalism and channel workers into corporate-funded, conservative labor groups. The elder Hammer was gunned down in a hotel dining room in San Salvador on January 3, 1981, by Salvadoran National Guard agents who had been trained at the Pentagon’s notorious School of the Americas. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, with both Secretary of State Edmund Muskie and Vice President Walter Mondale in attendance. He was probably a CIA agent. ...

After completing his studies at the National War College during the 2006-2007 academic year, Hammer served as political aide to ambassador Phillip Goldberg in La Paz, Bolivia, from 2007 to September 2008, when Goldberg was expelled after a series of incidents suggested that the embassy was engaged in espionage and fomenting discontent against the government. [my emphasis]

On the other hand, if his father was murdered by a Salvadoran rightwing death squad, maybe he learned from that it's wise to have reservations about authoritarian government in Latin America.

Also, I believe the correct term for what AllGov describes as the senior Hammer's role would be "CIA officer," rather than "agent," the latter being used for contacts working for the CIA rather than a CIA employee working under a cover like AIFLD.

We don't need any destabilization operations against Michelle Bachelet's government in Chile.

Tags: camila vallejo, chile, michelle bachelet

Michelle Bachelet returns as President of Chile

Michelle Bachelet was inaugurated today for her second (non-consecutive) term as President of Chile.

In a particularly nice touch, during today's official ceremony, the incoming Chilean President Michelle Bachelet was given the Presidential ribbon that signifies her assumption of office by the President of the Chilean Senate, María Isabel Allende, one of the daughters of President Salvador Allende who was murdered in the coup of 1973. (Not the famous writer Isabel Allende, who is a first cousin once removed of the murdered former President.)

Michelle Bachelet asume su segundo término como Presidenta de Chile -- Exclusivo Online Univision Noticias 11.03.2014

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Visión 7: Michele Bachelet asumió la presidencia de Chile TV Pública argentina 11.03.2014

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She previously served as President in the 2006-2010 term. She is from the Partido Socialista, which was also Salvador Allende's party. One notable feature of her electoral coalition, the Nueva Mayoría (New Majority) is that it includes the Communist Party, whose most famous member is Camila Vallejo, who began her first term today as a deputy in the Chilean Parliament. (Camila Vallejo asumió su banca con el puño en alto InfoNews 11.03.2014)

Tags: camila vallejo, chile, michelle bachelet

If Chile can do it ....

... so can the United States. Chile just issued arrest warrants for 120 individuals accused of committing illegal acts of repression during the Pinochet military dictatorship that ruled their country 1973-1990: Chile sienta en el banquillo a más de 100 represores de la dictadura de Pinochet El Mundo (Spain)02.09.2009; Chile: masiva orden de arresto a ex militares por casos de desaparecidos Clarín (Argentina) 01.09.2009; Chile seeks arrests for alleged human rights violations CNN.com 09/01/09.

In fact, Guatemala just had its first judicial decision against a military officer for crimes committed during Guatamala's civil conflicts of the 1980s: Guatemala enjuicia la guerra civil El País (Spain) 01.09.2009.

If Chile and Guatemala can do it, we can, too. Yes we can.

Tags: accountability for torture, chile

The politics of memory in Chile and elsewhere

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet Jeria celbrated on Sunday the 20th anniversary of the end of the Pinochet military dictatorship, which was installed by a coup on September 11, 1973. The "9/11" date has a different political meaning in Chile than in the US. (Chile celebra 20 años sin Pinochet por Manueal Délano El País [Spain] 06.10.2008.)

It was on October 5, 1988, that Chilean voters overwhelmingly rejected a nationwide referendum posed by the dictatorship to authorize its continuation for eight more years. That rejection marked the beginning of the transition to democracy. As part of the deal for the military to leave power, the Chilean parliament agreed to an amnesty for the perpetrators of the various crimes of the dictatorship. The amnesty was later overturned. But the long delay in the democractic government having the legal ability to prosecute criminals from the Pinochet regime no doubt impeded the process of understanding the experience of the dictatorship in terms of the restored democracy.

Délano's article is a reminder that the poltics of memory are an important part of the legitimation of democracy as much if not more so than for dictatorships. Even though the establishment of official narratives sponsored by the government and conventional-wisdom narratives among civil society inevitably stand in some tension to the impetus of the scientific/professional writing of history.

In her address Sunday, Bachelet said, "aunque a algunos no les guste, no puedo dejar de pensar que no es lo mismo ser padres de la democracia que hijos de la dictadura; que no es lo mismo haber llorado porque Pinochet se iba que porque la democracia llegaba" (and even if some of us don't like it, I can't help but think that it is not the same to be parents of democracy as to be children of dictatorship; that it is not the same to have cried because Pinochet left as to have cried because democracy arrived).

In that statement, she is calling attention to the fact that the Pinochet dictatorship wasn't simply an affliction of natural causes like a plague, but could endure as long as it did only because some significant portions of Chilean society supported it. Even dictatorships have to have some social basis.

The history of democracy and the ending of the various military dictatorships that were so prevalent in Latin America in the 1970s are important stories in themselves. A particularly moving part of that process from Argentina is fictionally depicted in the movie Cautivo: the process of identifying the now-adult children who were kidnapped as babies from "disaparicidos", those who disappeared because they were seen by the Argentine junta considered them enemies of the state. Many of them were placed with families connected the junta and raised by them, creating an incredibly poignant dilemma. Cristina Fernández' government in Argentina has set it as a priority to intensify the efforts to deal with the crimes of the junta.

The United States has something to learn from this in relation to our current administration. I'm not suggesting that the Cheney-Bush government has been a dictatorship. But it has severely damaged the Constitutional order to the point that I see our government currently as a semi-democracy in which the overwhelming power and significance of the Executive in the federal government severely limits the process of democracy. When the President and Vice President overtly claim the right to break the law and violate the Constitution - and the Congress lets them get away with it and in the case of torture and telecom immunity retroactively indemnify it - we can't honestly claim that Constitutional democracy and the rule of law are securely in operation.

There needs to be a formal, official, legal reckoning with the various crimes of the Cheney-Bush administration. As Cass Sunstein pointed out at the Netroots Nation convention in Austin this past August, one of the urgent tasks of a new Obama administration will be to dig into the cesspool of secret Executive orders and legal rulings to find out the extent of the problem. Sunstein himself was at best ambiguous about the need to proceed against the perpetrators legally, however.

Failure to do so would be a terrible mistake. Dick Cheney these past nearly-eight years has demonstrated that with an authoritarian Republican Party, a politicized Justice Department and a national security state that has enormous ability to promote a politics of fear, the Constitution, the rule of law and democratic practices can be overridden. Neither this administration or the segregationist governments of the pre-1970 Deep South formally abolished their allegiance to the American Constitution, though the "Unitary Executive" doctrine does so in part. But then the German Weimar Republic constitituion was never formally abandoned either.

There needs to be a real accounting, a legal accounting, of this administration's major misdeeds. Not just Congressional censure resolutions, not just pious speeches by political leaders, not just a "truth commission", not just a continuation of the journalistic and historical documentation already underway, though all of these would be good in themselves. The major crimes committed by this administration need to be legally investigated and prosecuted, even if Congressional amnesties and Presidential pardons mean that a new Obama administration has to rely on international law rather than American domestic law to proceed legally in some cases.

Our massive national security state in itself is a challenge for democracy even with the best-intentioned of elected officials. As this administration has shown over and over, reliance on the good will of our politicians is not good enough. Not by a long shot. The rule of law has to be take seriously. Which means that those who blatantly violate it as this administration has repeatedly should be held legally accountable.

Tags: authoritarianism, chile, michelle bachelet

Brasilian President supports gay marriage

Why are those Latino nations so backward?

El Mundo (Spain)/AFP reports that Brasilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in an interview on Brasilian TV that he supports gay marriage and that it's time to end the "hypocrisy" about it. (Lula, a favor de los matrimonios gays 19.09.2008)

Let's see. Spain has legalized gay marriage. Chile and Argentina have both elected female Presidents. Brasil's President endorses gay marriage.

Aren't these Latin nations supposed to be so macho and retrograde on matters of gender equality and gay rights than us enlightened, civilized, "advanced" Americans? Something in this picture doesn't quite fit ...

Tags: argentina, brasil, chile, gay rights, lula da silva

The CIA and the assassinations of Orlando Letelier and Carlos Prats

Orlando Letelier (1932-1976)

Manuel Contreras, who was director of the Chilean secret police, DINA, under the dictator Augusto Pinochet, has publicly stated in Chilean television that the CIA cooperated with DINA in the assassinations of Carlos Prats in 1974 in Buenos Aires and Orlando Letelier in Washington D.C. in 1976 (La CIA actuó en dos atentados contra opositores en la dictadura de Pinochet El Mundo 03.12.2007). He named Vernon Walters, then deputy CIA director, as the CIA official with whom they worked directly. Both Letelier and Prats had been officials in the democratic government of social-democrat Salvador Allende, which was overthrown with active CIA instigation in 1973.

Letelier at the time of his death was working at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). He was killed by a car bomb, which also killed Ronni Karpen Moffitt, a fundraiser for IPS. As the IPS Web site puts it, "it was the most infamous act of international terrorism ever to take place in our nation's capital." The Transnational Institute also provides Web resources on the Letelier assassination.

The murders of Letelier and Moffitt in the nation's capital occurred during the administration of the famous "healer" Gerald Ford. At the time, Rummy was Secretary of Defense and Dick Cheney was Ford's chief of staff. I'm just saying.

I'm not current enough on the Letelier-Moffitt case to know how Contreras' claim fits in with the record. It will be interesting to hear what those still close to the case have to say about it.

The Arlington National Cemetery Web site obituary for Vernon Walters says:

General Walters had an uncanny ability to be present at large events. As an aide to Truman, he was the note-taker when the president fired Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War. He was in Tehran in 1953 when the CIA staged a coup in support of the shah of Iran and in Brazil when a group of generals staged a coup in 1964.

Letelier had been the Chilean Ambassador to the United States at the time of the coup. In 1972, along with their burglaries related more to domestic politics, the infamous Plumbers, the rogue secret police unit Nixon established under direct control of the White House, repeatedly broke into Letelier's office at the Chilean Embassy, as John Prados describes in his excellent 2006 study of CIA covert operations, Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA.

Prados writes, "In particular there is clear evidence that the Letelier assassination could have been prevented [by American officials] but was not." He also describes relations between Walters and Contreras as follows:

The deputy director for central intelligence, Gen. Vernon Walters, came to Santiago in March 1974 to assay Pinochet's spies. With him were the brass of WH Division [the CIA's Western Hemisphere Division]. The Americans talked of help to Chile on foreign threats but acknowledged this could be adapted to the alleged internal challenge. A new station chief came at this time. Stewart D. Burton went on picnics with Colonel Contreras and within a year recruited him as a CIA source. A special agency team arrived in Santiago in August and stayed for months training DINA, during the very period the Chileans worked up to their assassination of General Prats.

In the summer of 1975 Contreras visited the United States twice. On both trips he saw Walters, once for lunch in the executive dining room at Langley. That October Contreras hosted a conference in Santiago for heads of the spy agencies of the Southern Cone. A formal "convention" a month later created a multinational anti-subversive campaign called Operation Condor. The intelligence agencies of Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, later joined by Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru, shared information, exchanged representatives, informed one another when dissidents were expelled, and coordinated propaganda.

There would be murders or attempted assassinations in Costa Rica, Mexico, France, Portugal, Argentina, and on the streets of Washington, D.C., where Orlando Letelier died when his car blew up in Sheridan Circle, just across the street from the Chilean embassy, in September 1976. An American citizen, Ronni Moffitt, died with him, and her husband Michael suffered injuries. The reluctance of U.S. authorities to investigate links between the Letelier assassination and DINA is a measure of the collusion at that point between Washington and Chile. Condor became in effect a terrorist network, a characterization only rendered stronger when DINA began working with anti-Castro Cubans. The number of victims has yet to be established, but incidents continued through 1980. (my emphasis)

Yes, this was during the administration of that famous "moderate" and "national healer" Jerry Ford that this went on. Did I mention that first Rummy and then Dick Cheney served as his chief of staff? That would be the same Dick Cheney who now claims the President can do whatever he wants with the CIA or any other part of the federal government regardless of the law or the Constitution.

When she was Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright did acknowledge that the United States had committed terrible errors in the whole rotten business of cooperating with the Pinochet dictatorship. (Los errores de Washington por Yolanda Monge El País 11.12.2007.

Tags: chile, operation condor, orlando letelier, manuel contreras, pinochet, ronni moffitt, vernon walters