A half-century after Gen. Augusto Pinochet's coup, some in Chile remember the dictatorship fondly

A half-century after Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s coup, some in Chile remember the dictatorship fondly

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FILE - Former Chilean dictator and then-military commander Gen. Augusto Pinochet is embraced by a supporter as he meets with supporters who gathered at his home to greet him on the occasion of the 22nd anniversary of his taking the post as head of the Chilean armed forces, in Santiago, Chile, Aug. 23, 1995. As Chile marks the 50th anniversary Monday, Sept. 11, 2023 of the coup that brought Pinochet to power, polling shows more than one-third of Chileans today justify the military takeover of a democratically elected government that went on to violate human rights, murder opponents, cancel elections, restrict the media, suppress labor unions and disband political parties. (AP Photo/Santiago Llanquin, FILE)

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FILE - Statues of the faces of men who led the 1973 military coup against Chile’s late President Salvador Allende, from left to right, Jose Toribio Merino of the Navy, late dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Gustavo Leight of the Air Force and Cesar Mendoza of the police sit in a showcase along with other items in a museum exhibiting Pinochet’s memorabilia in Santiago, Dec. 12, 2008. The museum is sponsored by the Pinochet Foundation, made up of supporters and former aides to Pinochet, who died in 2006. (AP Photo/Santiago Llanquin, File)

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Actor Rene Rojas performs as Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet during a theater presentation in honor of a song by Chilean singer-songwriter Victor Jara, inside the tunnels of the National Stadium that was once used as prison and place of torture, in Santiago, Chile, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2023. This year marks 50 years since the military coup that toppled late President Salvador Allende. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

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People work on a mural restoration in honor of former President Salvador Allende, and the executed and disappeared, on the perimeter wall of the Alamos 3 and 4 detention center in Santiago, Chile, Saturday, Aug. 12, 2023. This year marks 50 years since the military coup that toppled Allende. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

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Sergio Gómez Martínez poses for portrait holding a portrait of the late Gen. Augusto Pinochet outside his home in Santiago, Chile, Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023. The retired accountant said that “fortunately, Augusto Pinochet led the coup” against Allende’s socialist government, arguing that his economic wellbeing improved under the right-wing military government “because there was order, employment, and the countryside and industries began to produce.” (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

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Former detainee Hector Hipolito Alvarez, poses for a photo inside of the dressing room of the National Stadium, which was used as a prison and place of torture, and where he was detained on Sept. 20, 1973, in Santiago, Chile, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2023. Alvarez was at the stadium for a presentation in honor of Chilean singer-songwriter Victor Jara who was murdered during the coup of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

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Notes placed by visitors are seen in the attic of the former secret detention and torture center Ex-Clinica Santa Lucia that was used during Augusto Pinochet´s dictatorship, ahead of 50th anniversary of the coup in Santiago, Chile, Monday, Aug. 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

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FILE - A man holds a sign of Chile’s late Gen. Augusto Pinochet who ruled Chile as a dictator from 1973 to 1990 with the Spanish message: “We want order,” at a protest after the murder of police officer Daniel Palma, the third murder of an officer in the previous 23 days, in Santiago, Chile, April 6, 2023. Chile will mark the 50th anniversary the coup that brought Pinochet to power for almost 17 years, on Sept. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix, File)

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An access door is pictured during a presentation in honor of Chilean singer-songwriter Victor Jara at the National Stadium that was once used as a prison and place of torture, in Santiago, Chile, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2023. Jara was one of the first victims of the Gen. Augusto Pinochet dictatorship. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

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Marta Lagos, director of the regional polling firm Latinobarómetro and founder of pollster Mori Chile, gives an interview at her home in Santiago, Chile, Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. “Chileans got used to living with Pinochet,” Lagos said, referring to the late dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet. “Pinochet, I believe, is the only dictator in Western contemporary history, during this century and the last century, who, 50 years after his coup, is still appreciated by 30 or 40% of a country’s population.” (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

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The eastern entrance of La Moneda presidential palace is draped with a Chilean flag during an event marking late Salvador Allende’s 1970 presidential victory in Santiago, Chile, Monday, Sept. 4, 2023. Allende was ousted from office 50 years ago in a military coup and Chile was governed by a military junta that did not return power to the civilian government until 1990. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

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Congresswomen Nydia Velazquez, (D-NY), second left, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-NY), second right, are accompanied by Minister Alvaro Elizalde, General Secretary of the Presidency, left, and Marcia Scantlebury, president of the Memory and Human Rights Museum, right, during a visit to the museum, in Santiago, Chile, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023. The two representatives are part of a US delegation who traveled to the South American country to learn about efforts to defend its democracy ahead of the 50th anniversary of the military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

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Hugo Toledo wears pants with bloodied portraits of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, left, and former Commander of the Chilean Army Juan Cheyre, who he holds responsible for his imprisonment and torture at the start of the military dictatorship, at an event marking the 1970 electoral victory of Salvador Allende outside La Moneda presidential palace in Santiago, Chile, Monday, Sept. 4, 2023. Allende was ousted from office 50 years ago in a military coup and Chile was governed by a military junta that did not return power to the civilian government until 1990. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

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Mario Silva Alvarez, the son of Hector Silva who was detained and disappeared during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, left, and Hector Silva´s brother Jaime Silva Hiriarte, right, raise Hector´s posthumous law degree at the Supreme Court in Santiago, Chile, Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2023. The Supreme Court awarded law degrees to 8 persons who were disappeared and executed during Pinochet´s regime, and handed their diplomas to their living relatives in a ceremony that is part of the 50th commemoration of the military coup that overthrew Chilean president Salvador Allende. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

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Sergio Munoz shows a photo of when he was detained in the National Stadium, which was used as a prison and place of torture, and where he was detained on Sept. 1973, in Santiago, Chile, Saturday, Sept. 2, 2023. Munoz is taking part in a meeting of former detainees as part of the 50th commemoration of the military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet that overthrew Chile’s late President Salvador Allende. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

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Painter Efren Cortes transports his paintings, including one of the late President Salvador Allende, on a dolly in the Plaza de Armas where he has been selling his paintings for over 30 years, in Santiago, Chile, Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023. The painting of Allende, which is not for sale but for display, was commissioned for the commemorative book “Chicho,” Allende´s nickname, to mark the 50th anniversary of the military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet that overthrew his government. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

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FILE - Members of the Disappeared Detainees Relatives Group of Chile hold cardboard cutouts depicting their disappeared relatives in a march commemorating the so-called “Operation Colombo” in which over a hundred dissidents were executed by security forces of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, in Santiago, Chile, July 22, 2023. Chile will mark the 50th anniversary the coup that brought Pinochet to power on Sept. 11, 2023, as the world remembers him as the dictator whose regime tortured, killed and disappeared 3,065 people in the name of fighting communism. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix, File)

By EVA VERGARA and DANIEL POLITI

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — The world remembers Gen. Augusto Pinochet as the dictator whose regime tortured, killed and disappeared 3,065 people in the name of fighting communism.

But as Chile marks the 50th anniversary next Monday of the coup that brought Pinochet to power for almost 17 years, many in the country don’t see it as a dark day. Amid a weak economy and a surge in violent crime, recent polls show that many Chileans don’t think human rights are as much of a priority.

They are grappling with what they see as Pinochet’s complicated legacy at a time when a large number have told pollsters they are losing faith in democracy.

“Before, there wasn’t as much wickedness as there is now,” said Ana María Román Vera, 62, who sells lottery tickets. “You didn’t see as many robberies.”

A July poll by the Center for Public Studies, a Chile-based foundation, found that 66% of respondents agreed with the statement that rather than worry about the rights of individuals, the country needs a firm government. That is more than double the 32% who agreed with the statement fewer than four years ago.

In Chile, 9/11 was a landmark before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. because it was the date of the 1973 coup in the South American country. That significance, though, has been changing. Polling shows more than one-third of Chileans today justify the military takeover of a democratically elected government that went on to violate human rights, murder opponents, cancel elections, restrict the media, suppress labor unions and disband political parties.

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“There should be an overwhelming majority of Chileans who denounce the dictatorship and the military coup and acknowledge that the military destroyed democracy,” said Marta Lagos, director of the regional polling firm Latinobarómetro and founder of pollster Mori Chile. “That would be the normal situation in a normal country. But that’s not the case.”

Late last month, leftist President Gabriel Boric unveiled what will effectively be the first state-sponsored plan to try to locate the approximately 1,162 victims of the dictatorship who remain missing.

Yet even as Boric’s government and human rights organizations plan events to mark the coup anniversary, many in Chile don’t appear to see the ousting of a democratically elected leader as wrong.

A poll earlier this year by Lagos’ firm found that 36% of Chileans believe the military “freed” Chile “from Marxism” when it deposed leftist democratically elected president Salvador Allende, who came into power in 1970 and killed himself the day of the coup. The poll found that 42% said the coup destroyed democracy, the lowest number since 1995.

Pinochet led the coup at a time when the country was mired in an economic crisis that included scarcity of food and galloping inflation that reached an annual rate of 600%. When the military took over it implemented a free-market economy that suddenly meant those with means could go on a consumerism binge even as the poverty rate soared.

Retired accountant Sergio Gómez Martínez, 72, said that “fortunately, Augusto Pinochet led the coup” against Allende’s socialist government. He argued that his economic wellbeing improved under the right-wing military government “because there was order, employment, and the countryside and industries began to produce.”

Repression was unleashed on opponents on the day of the coup. On the days that followed, Congress was shut down and political parties were dissolved as the military junta snatched control of all aspects of society. Those opposed to the regime were regularly imprisoned and tortured and hundreds of thousands were forced into exile.

Gómez said the human rights violations of the Pinochet years “could have been avoided” but they do not seem to be at the centerpiece of his memory of the years of Pinochet’s rule, when by some estimates around 200,000 citizens went into exile for political reasons and some 28,000 opponents of the regime were imprisoned and tortured.

He’s hardly alone. Almost four in 10 Chileans think Pinochet’s 1973-1990 rule modernized the country and 20% see the dictator as one of the best rulers of 20th-century Chile, according to the Mori survey.

A regional survey by Latinobarómetro this year found that only 48% of Latin Americans think that democracy is preferable to any other form of government, which marks a 15-point drop from 2010.

Across Latin America, strongmen like El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele are gaining popularity. Bukele has gained an ardent following due to his severe crackdown on gangs despite a record of human rights abuses.

Boric, meanwhile, has seen a sharp plunge in his approval ratings ever since he swept into power in March 2022 as Chile’s youngest-ever president at 36 following widespread student-led street protests that put on display how the economic inequalities borne from the dictatorship lived on. Citizens broadly rejected an effort last year to replace the country’s dictatorship-era constitution with what would have been one of the world’s most progressive magna cartas, and later went on to elect conservatives to write the next draft of the document.

Efrén Cortés Tapia, a 60-year-old painter, said his most vivid memories about the dictatorship years was not just the “repression” but also “not being able to listen to the music of forbidden folklore groups.” For him, the dictatorship led to “limits in the cultural development” as well as “fear and dread.”

Even as Chilean society grapples with its mixed feelings over the dictatorship, more is being learned about the repression of the years through the courts.

There are around 1,300 active criminal cases for human rights violations during the dictatorship and some 150 are serving sentences in Punta Peuco Prison, a facility exclusively set aside for those guilty of dictatorship-era crimes.

Boric’s administration is also looking abroad for answers, pushing the United States to declassify documents that can help shed light on the role Washington played in the coup it supported.

In late August, the CIA declassified portions of the President’s Daily Briefs related to Chile from Sept. 8, 1973 and Sept. 11, 1973 that confirm then-President Richard Nixon was briefed on the possibility of a coup.

During a recent visit to Chile, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, said it was “very important … to acknowledge and reflect on the role of the United States” in the coup.

Pinochet remained in power until 1990, stepping down after a majority of Chileans voted against military rule in 1988. But he did not disappear and immediately became commander-in-chief of the Army until 1998 and later became a lifelong senator, a position he created for himself. He resigned in 2002 and died in 2006 without ever being convicted in Chilean courts, although he was detained for 17 months in London on the order of a Spanish judge.

“Chileans got used to living with Pinochet,” Lagos said. “Pinochet, I believe, is the only dictator in Western contemporary history, during this century and the last century, who, 50 years after his coup, is still appreciated by 30 or 40% of a country’s population.”

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Politi reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.