The
rescue of 33 miners in Chile is an extraordinary drama filled with
pathos and heroism. It is also a media windfall for the Chilean
government, whose every beneficence is recorded by a forest of cameras.
One cannot fail to be impressed. However, like all great media events,
it is a façade.
The
accident that trapped the miners is not unusual in Chile and the
inevitable consequence of a ruthless economic system that has barely
changed since the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Copper is
Chile’s gold, and the frequency of mining disasters keeps pace with
prices and profits. There are, on average, 39 fatal accidents every year
in Chile’s privatised mines. The San Jose mine, where the men work,
became so unsafe in 2007 it had to be closed – but not for long. On 30
July last, a labour department report warned again of “serious safety
deficiencies ”, but the minister took no action. Six days later, the men
were entombed.
For
all the media circus at the rescue site, contemporary Chile is a
country of the unspoken. At the Villa Grimaldi, in the suburbs of the
capital Santiago, a sign says: “The forgotten past is full of memory.”
This was the torture centre where hundreds of people were murdered and
disappeared for opposing the fascism that General Augusto Pinochet and
his business allies brought to Chile. Its ghostly presence is overseen
by the beauty of the Andes, and the man who unlocks the gate used to
live nearby and remembers the screams.
I
was taken there one wintry morning in 2006 by Sara De Witt, who was
imprisoned as a student activist and now lives in London. She was
electrocuted and beaten, yet survived. Later, we drove to the home of
Salvador Allende, the great democrat and reformer who perished when
Pinochet seized power on 11 September 1973 – Latin America’s own 9/11.
His house is a silent white building without a sign or a plaque.
Everywhere,
it seems, Allende’s name has been eliminated. Only in the lone memorial
in the cemetery are the words engraved “Presidente de la Republica” as
part of a remembrance of the “ejecutados Politicos”: those “executed for
political reasons”. Allende died by his own hand as Pinochet bombed the
presidential palace with British planes as the American ambassador
watched.
Today,
Chile is a democracy, though many would dispute that, notably those in
the barrios forced to scavenge for food and steal electricity. In 1990,
Pinochet bequeathed a constitutionally compromised system as a condition
of his retirement and the military’s withdrawal to the political
shadows. This ensures that the broadly reformist parties, known as
Concertacion, are permanently divided or drawn into legitimising the
economic designs of the heirs of the dictator. At the last election, the
right-wing Coalition for Change, the creation of Pinochet’s ideologue
Jaime Guzman, took power under president Sebastian Piñera. The bloody
extinction of true democracy that began with the death of Allende was,
by stealth, complete.
Piñera
is a billionaire who controls a slice of the mining, energy and retail
industries. He made his fortune in the aftermath of Pinochet’s coup and
during the free-market “experiments” of the zealots from the University
of Chicago, known as the Chicago Boys. His brother and former business
partner, Jose Piñera, a labour minister under Pinochet, privatised
mining and state pensions and all but destroyed the trade unions. This
was applauded in Washington as an “economic miracle”, a model of the new
cult of neo-liberalism that would sweep the continent and ensure
control from the north.
Today
Chile is critical to President Barack Obama’s rollback of the
independent democracies in Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela. Piñera’s
closest ally is Washington’s main man, Juan Manuel Santos, the new
president of Colombia, home to seven US bases and an infamous human
rights record familiar to Chileans who suffered under Pinochet’s terror.
Post-Pinochet
Chile has kept its own enduring abuses in shadow. The families still
attempting to recover from the torture or disappearance of a loved bear
the prejudice of the state and employers. Those not silent are the
Mapuche people, the only indigenous nation the Spanish conquistadors
could not defeat. In the late 19th century, the European settlers of an
independent Chile waged their racist War of Extermination against the
Mapuche who were left as impoverished outsiders. During Allende’s
thousand days in power this began to change. Some Mapuche lands were
returned and a debt of justice was recognised.
Since
then, a vicious, largely unreported war has been waged against the
Mapuche. Forestry corporations have been allowed to take their land, and
their resistance has been met with murders, disappearances and
arbitrary prosecutions under “anti terrorism” laws enacted by the
dictatorship. In their campaigns of civil disobedience, none of the
Mapuche has harmed anyone. The mere accusation of a landowner or
businessman that the Mapuche “might” trespass on their own ancestral
lands is often enough for the police to charge them with offences that
lead to Kafkaesque trials with faceless witnesses and prison sentences
of up to 20 years. They are, in effect, political prisoners.
While
the world rejoices at the spectacle of the miners’ rescue, 38 Mapuche
hunger strikers have not been news. They are demanding an end to the
Pinochet laws used against them, such as “terrorist arson”, and the
justice of a real democracy. On 9 October, all but one of the hunger
strikers ended their protest after 90 days without food. A young
Mapuche, Luis Marileo, says he will go on. On 18 October, President
Piñera is due to give a lecture on “current events” at the London School
of Economics. He should be reminded of their ordeal and why.
www.johnpilger.com
ZNet