I'll leave it to others to "balance" the commentary on Gen. Augusto Pinochet's death with praise for his free-market economic reforms. Pinochet was a despot, a murderer and a fraud. He cheated death until 91, finally succumbing on Sunday as loving family members stood at his bedside and caring doctors did all they could to ease his pain. His regime exterminated more than 3,200 human beings for their political views, and most of them had to die young, alone and in agony.
About 29,000 victims were tortured during Pinochet's 17-year dictatorship, and an estimated 200,000 Chileans were forced into exile. The dictator's final public statement -- on his 91st birthday last month, he took "political responsibility for everything that was done" -- was a typical evasion. What is "political responsibility" supposed to mean? Pinochet dodged personal and moral responsibility for his atrocities to the bitter end.
One of the most remarkable stories I have ever covered was the beginning of Pinochet's downfall. In 1988, in accord with a new constitution the dictator had imposed, Chile held a plebiscite on Pinochet's continued rule. He never would have allowed such a thing unless he were confident of winning; this was supposed to be a semblance of democracy, not the substance.
But 15 years had passed since Pinochet seized power in a bloody coup that overthrew the elected government of socialist President Salvador Allende. Centrist political forces had come to rue their initial acquiescence in the coup, and now they joined with the left in a grand coalition to say no to Pinochet.
Along with other foreign correspondents, I spent weeks at a time in the somewhat lugubrious Hotel Carrera in downtown Santiago, overlooking the presidential palace, La Moneda. Allende had committed suicide there during the coup as fighter jets strafed the building and assault troops fought their way inside.
To his chagrin, Pinochet actually had to go out and campaign. To show the dictator's enduring popularity, the government arranged buses to take correspondents to a pro-Pinochet rally in Vina del Mar, a coastal resort. The wildly enthusiastic crowd, which greeted Pinochet as if he were the second coming of Elvis, turned out to consist mainly of wealthy women and their maids. When the elegant, bejeweled housewives weren't looking, the maids would give reporters a wink or a quick thumbs-down to make clear that while they might be compelled to cheer, they were going to vote no.
Anti-Pinochet rallies, meanwhile, drew hundreds of thousands of people to working-class neighborhoods in Santiago. Ad hoc street demonstrations downtown usually ended with the appearance of armored police vehicles that were specially designed to spray a particularly noxious type of tear gas.
In the end, the vote wasn't even close -- Pinochet lost, and was compelled by his own constitution to allow full and fair elections two years later. When he finally had to surrender his presidential powers to a civilian government in 1990, he kept his post as head of the army and brazenly warned against any attempt to bring military officials to justice for their abuses.
Pinochet was never fully held accountable for his crimes, which almost certainly include an outrageous act of state-sponsored terrorism here in Washington -- the 1976 car-bomb murder near Embassy Row of Orlando Letelier, who was Chile's foreign minister under Allende, and Letelier's assistant, Ronni Moffitt. The old general did have to endure an embarrassing interlude of house arrest in England, as well as a string of other accusations back home in Chile that threatened his luxurious retirement. But his failing health -- along with the not-so-veiled threat of military retaliation if the civilian government touched a hair on the old man's head -- kept him a free man.
Pinochet remained a hero to many in the Chilean right, who saw him as the noble citizen-soldier who had saved a grateful nation from Marxist ruin and laid the groundwork for an economic miracle. A few acolytes still see him this way, but even for many who once were fervent supporters, this myth of selfless patriotism has been thoroughly exposed as a lie.
Authorities discovered that Pinochet, having spent his adult life drawing a public servant's modest salary, somehow had squirreled away more than $27 million in offshore bank accounts. Other members of his family also mysteriously came into great wealth. And in October, Chilean investigators said they had found 10 tons of gold in a Hong Kong bank under Pinochet's name.
It may be small solace to those he tortured and the survivors of those he killed. But at least the world knows that Augusto Pinochet wasn't just a tyrant. He was also a common thief.
Eugene Robinson