Former Chilean dictator Pinochet dies at 91

Jack Epstein, Chronicle Staff Writer
SANTIAGO

Augusto Pinochet, the former military dictator of Chile who was revered by supporters for leaving behind the most stable country in Latin America but reviled by critics who say he ruled with a complete disregard for human rights, died Sunday. He was 91.

Pinochet suffered a heart attack a week ago, and an announcement by the Santiago Military hospital said his condition worsened suddenly on Sunday.

He was one of the most controversial political figures of the 20th century and had been in poor health in recent years, suffering from diabetes, arthritis, heart disease and the effects of at least three mild strokes that his family said had left him with mild dementia. Before his death, the retired general lived in virtual seclusion and was seen in public rarely, walking with a cane and the help of bodyguards.

Pinochet will be most remembered for leading a military coup that toppled the world’s first democratically elected Marxist president, Salvador Allende, on Sept, 11, 1973. Allende had named Pinochet commander-in-chief of the armed forces just 18 days before the coup.

In recent years, declassified U.S. government documents have shown that the Nixon administration began a program to destabilize the Allende government, which had earned President Richard Nixon’s wrath by nationalizing U.S. copper mines and other foreign-controlled businesses, rural estates and banks and recognizing Cold War foes of the United States such as Cuba, North Korea and North Vietnam. Led by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Washington financed labor strikes, propaganda and military plotters, paving the way for Pinochet’s rise to power, some historians have argued. “It is not part of American history we are proud of,” former Secretary of State Colin Powell said in 2003.

In a photograph flashed around the world that became a symbol of Latin American military tyranny of the 1970s, Pinochet was seen seated at a table in dark glasses, arms folded and with a harshly turned-down mouth, surrounded by the three other generals who took over the government in a four-man junta.

By most accounts, the coup — since 2001 it has been referred to by some Chileans as “the other 9/11” — was one of the most brutal in modern Latin American history.

Pinochet ordered land and air attacks on the presidential palace, where Allende died by his own hand with an automatic rifle given to him by Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Thousands of leftists were arrested, tortured and executed in Santiago’s National Stadium — including the internationally-known protest singer Victor Jara — and on military bases and naval ships. Bodies were dumped into mine shafts, unmarked graves and the Pacific Ocean.

An estimated 1.million people were forced into exile and 28,000 were tortured. Every year on Sept. 11, Chilean exiles in the Bay Area have met at La Pena, a cultural center in Berkeley founded in 1975 by Chileans fleeing the repression.

In 1992, a truth commission found the 17-year Pinochet regime (1973-1990) responsible for the death or disappearance of 3,197 people. In fact, some scholars have credited Pinochet with introducing the term “disappeared” to the lexicon of modern politics. Pinochet has always maintained that he and other members of the military command never issued orders to eliminate political opponents and that any abuses were the work of a few rogue officers.

To be sure, many Chileans welcomed the junta, hoping Pinochet would save Chile from communism and what they regarded as reckless economic policies by the Allende government. But some soon regretted their support.

By 1974, Pinochet had relegated the junta to an advisory role, calling himself “Supreme Head of the Nation.” He declared a state of siege, closed Congress, censored the media, eliminated habeas corpus, banned leftist parties and trade unions, burned books and barred movies he deemed subversive. Even musicals such as “Fiddler on the Roof” — which purportedly showed Russia too favorably — were not publicly shown until democracy was restored in 1990. “Never a leaf moves in Chile without my knowing of it,” the general once said.

His agents stifled all internal opposition, but an intelligence lapse nearly proved fatal on Sept. 7, 1986. Pinochet narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by a leftist rebel group as he returned to Santiago in a motorcade from a weekend retreat. Pinochet was not harmed, but five of his bodyguards were killed.

During his rule, Pinochet returned all nationalized properties and industries, embracing the unfettered free-market theories of a team of young advisers nicknamed the “Chicago Boys” for their dedication to the views of the late University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman. Given a blank check to remake Chile’s economy, they slashed duties on imports, restricted union activities, lowered taxes and privatized most banks, utilities and the social security system.

After a slow start — the economy contracted by 13 percent in 1975, its sharpest decline since the Great Depression of the 1930s — Chile sustained an average growth rate of 7 percent from 1984 to 1998, three times the Latin American average. Democratic regimes that followed his dictatorship increased social spending, which reduced poverty and boosted life expectancy, salaries, and the education and health systems.

Pinochet also set up a secret alliance among six South American military intelligence agencies that hunted down and killed leftists in a regional dirty war called “Operation Condor” that even reached the streets of Washington, D.C.

In 1976, Orlando Letelier, an ambassador to the United States under Allende who was working in Washington to galvanize international opposition to Pinochet, was killed — along with an associate, U.S. citizen Ronni Karpen Moffitt — by a remote-controlled bomb planted by Chilean agents. In 1995, retired Gen. Manuel Contreras, the former chief of the secret police, was convicted of the murders in a Chilean court and sentenced to seven years in prison. A subsequent U.S. investigation during the Clinton administration recommended that the United States indict Pinochet for the diplomat’s murder.

Despite accusations of Chile’s state-sponsored terrorism, relations with Washington remained cordial. In their only meeting in 1976, declassified documents show that Kissinger assured Pinochet that he could expect no sanctions over human rights from the administration of President Gerald Ford. “In the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here,” Kissinger told Pinochet. “I think that the previous government was headed toward communism. We wish your government well.”

U.S. policy changed under President Jimmy Carter, who put a heavy emphasis on monitoring human rights in Chile and elsewhere. Carter cut off economic aid and supported U.N. resolutions criticizing the Chilean strongman.

But the United States changed direction once again after the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. In a controversial analysis, the late Jeane Kirkpatrick, a key member of Reagan’s foreign policy team, distinguished between “authoritarian” regimes such as Pinochet’s — which were friendly to the United States and could be changed through “quiet diplomacy” — and unfriendly “totalitarian” communist regimes like Castro’s Cuba, which could not be reformed and deserved harsh sanctions.

But Pinochet apparently didn’t appreciate even quiet diplomacy from his U.S. ally. “He’s the toughest nut I’ve ever seen,” Langhorne Motley, Reagan’s assistant secretary of state, told the New York Times after a meeting with the general.

Augusto Pinochet Ugarte was born into a middle-class family on Nov. 25, 1915, in the port city of Valparaiso. His father, Augusto Pinochet Vera, was a customs official whose ancestors fled to Chile from Brittany in the early 18th century. He wanted his son to study medicine. His mother, Avelina Ugarte Martinez, a strict disciplinarian of Basque descent, encouraged her eldest son to become a military officer.

His early friends described him as a sensitive child, who cried when watching scary movies, and an average student whose favorite subjects included religion.

With his mother’s support, he tried to join a military academy on two occasions but was rejected each time because of physical weakness. As a result, he began working out, developing an obsession with physical fitness that remained with him for most of his life. At 17, he finally enlisted as an officer cadet.

Once in the army, he became a crack shot and a black belt in karate. He didn’t smoke or drink. Unusual for a Chilean soldier, he wrote several books on military matters, including one on the War of the Pacific against Peru and Bolivia. “My life consisted of nothing but discipline and obedience,” he once said.

He was also an avid reader of Napoleon’s exploits and Roman military history, naming his two sons after eminent Romans: Augusto and Marco Antonio. In later speeches, he often compared himself to Lucius Quincius Cincinnatus, a 5th century dictator who became a symbol of Roman virtue for retiring to his farm after saving Rome from war and revolt on two occasions.

In 1943, Pinochet married Lucia Hiriart, the daughter of a former senator and cabinet minister. He is survived by his wife and their five children — daughters Ines Lucia, Jacqueline and Veronica, and sons Marco Antonio and Augusto Jr.

For the next 30 years, Pinochet slowly climbed the military hierarchy until becoming commander-in-chief of the army in August 1973. On the day of the coup, he was clearly in charge.

Once in command, Pinochet talked about future elections, saying he was a man with no ambitions. But he gave no indication of a willingness to relinquish power until 1980, when he introduced a new constitution, giving him the right to govern for the next eight years and become senator-for-life afterward.

In 1988 — sure of widespread support — he allowed a referendum on whether his rule should continue past the imposed constitutional limit. Fifty-five percent of voters said no; 43 percent said yes. He remained in office until 1990, when Patricio Aylwin became president in the first democratic vote since Allende’s election in 1970.

In 1998, Pinochet stepped down as army chief at a ceremony in which a band played his favorite song, the German World War II ballad “Lili Marlene.” He then donned a suit and tie and tried to take his seat in the Senate as stipulated by the constitution that he had written. But fistfights broke out among anti-and pro-Pinochet senators during his swearing-in ceremony, and some Chileans in the gallery were escorted out by guards for yelling “assassin.”

That same year, Pinochet traveled to London to seek surgery for a herniated disc. He had been a frequent visitor to England — “the ideal place to live,” he once said — and enjoyed shopping at Harrods and sipping tea with his friend, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, to whom he often sent chocolates and flowers.

But in October of that year, he was awakened by two British plainclothes police officers who arrested him on a warrant issued by Baltazar Garzon, a Spanish judge who charged him with the torture and killings of Spanish citizens in Chile.

Two ensuing rulings by the British House of Lords rejected his claim of immunity. The decisions forged legal history and sent a strong message to former dictators accused of human rights abuses that they would no longer be free to travel.

After 503 days under house arrest, Pinochet was allowed to return to Chile in 2000 for health reasons.

But his detention in Britain caused a political earthquake at home, spurring the Chilean Supreme Court to lift his immunity from prosecution and allow trials against him and hundreds of other military officers for human rights crimes. Once again, he was placed under house arrest — this time for 42 days.

In 2002, Pinochet resigned his post as senator-for-life, ending his political career. The next year, Chile’s Supreme Court ruled that all charges against him should be dropped because of his weakening physical and mental condition.

Nevertheless, an avalanche of court cases of human rights violations — about 600 in all — dogged him until the end of his life.

At the time of his death, he remained under indictment in two human rights cases and on tax evasion stemming from secret multimillion-dollar bank accounts abroad. Immunity from prosecution as a former president was lifted in each of those cases. Four others were dropped because of his failing health.

Joyce Horman, an American whose journalist husband, Charles, was executed by the military during the coup, pursued a criminal case. Her story was turned into a popular 1982 movie called “Missing,” starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek.

An Argentine judge sought Pinochet’s extradition in the murder of Chilean Gen. Carlos PratsÖ in Buenos Aires in 1974. Prats, who had been commander of the army before Pinochet, refused to join the coup plotters and fled to Argentina. He died with his wife, Sofia, in a car bomb allegedly placed by Chilean agents.

In 2003, Contreras, Pinochet’s former spy chief, was indicted for the Prats murders. The next year, a Santiago court condemned Contreras to 15 years in jail for ordering the killing of a Chilean journalist named Diana Aaron in 1974.

In September 2005, Chile’s Supreme Court upheld a court of appeals ruling that stripped Pinochet of immunity from prosecution for his alleged role in the killing of 119 dissidents whose bodies were found in neighboring Argentina in 1975. The year before, Pinochet reportedly told a judge that he had no knowledge of such “small stuff” because he was too busy running the country.

Two days short of his 90th birthday, Pinochet was placed under house arrest again for alleged tax evasion, using four false passports to open bank accounts abroad, submitting a false government document to a foreign bank and filing a false report on his assets estimated at $28.million. The indictment came after a U.S. Senate report alleged that he and his family had stashed some $8.million in more than 125 hidden accounts at Citigroup, Riggs and other banks. The Pinochet family insisted the money came from savings, investments and donations.

In January, an appeals court stripped Pinochet of his immunity so he could stand trial on charges of killing two Allende bodyguards. They were executed during the so-called Caravan of Death in which 75 jailed dissidents were killed by a military party that toured the country in a helicopter in the weeks immediately after the coup. At the time of his death, Pinochet was under house arrest for those murders.

And in September, Chile’s Supreme Court stripped Pinochet of immunity from prosecution for alleged abuses at the notorious Villa Grimaldi detention center — one of 1,131 established during his regime — where the current president, Michelle Bachelet, then a 22-year-old medical student, and her mother Angela Jeria were tortured. Villa Grimaldi, a sprawling house in southeast Santiago, has been turned into a memorial park to honor the victims.

Bachelet previously told reporters that Pinochet would not receive a state funeral. “The conscience of Chileans would feel violated,” she said. Pinochet’s son Marco Antonio told the Santiago daily La Segunda that his father had asked to be cremated to avoid desecration of his tomb.

Pinochet never publicly asked for forgiveness for the people killed during his dictatorship. He usually blamed what he called “excesses” on subordinates. But just last month, during the celebration of his 91st birthday, he made an unprecedented statement in which he took full responsibility for the harsh dictatorship. His tone, however, was defiant:

“Today, near the end of my days, I want to say that I harbor no rancor against anybody, that I love my fatherland above all and that I take political responsibility for everything that was done which had no other goal than making Chile greater and avoiding its disintegration. I assume full political responsibility for what happened.”

Pressed several times to apologize for his actions, he always refused. In a rare interview that Pinochet described as the “last that I will give in my life,” he told a Spanish-language television station WDLP-22 in Miami in 2003 that he had no regrets for any of his actions.

“What shall I ask to be forgiven by? If anybody should ask for forgiveness, it was the Marxists, communists,” he said. “I feel like a patriotic angel.”

E-mail Jack Epstein at jepstein@sfchronicle.com.