representative constitution was set aside and an
emergency ‘state of siege’ declared that effectively
abolished freedom and civil rights. These were
not short-term measures. The ‘state of siege’ was
only lifted fifteen years later in the summer of
1988 as Pinochet was seeking to improve the
image of his repressive regime on the eve of a ref-
erendum designed to confirm him in power; even
Chilean exiles were now invited to return.
But Pinochet’s first task in 1973 was to ensure
the security of his military regime. This he did
during the next fifteen years by waging a ruthless
campaign to eliminate any opposition; people
were picked up in the street or in their homes and
just ‘disappeared’, without trial; their relatives
were told that nothing was known about them.
All social classes were affected, and all shades of
political opinion, though the main target was the
left wing. A regime of terror was inaugurated.
Women as well as men were imprisoned, tortured
and killed; others languished in prisons and
camps. The ‘disappeared ones’ became one of the
most horrifying features of recent Latin American
history. In Chile (a rough estimate) 3,000 are
missing, in Argentina 30,000, in Guatemala
35,000, in El Salvador 9,000, in Haiti 15,000;
children were orphaned, their identities obliter-
ated, and they have been adopted by politically
‘safe’ parents. These flagrant violations of human
rights aroused only sporadic protest in the West,
but Pinochet was safe from any effective inter-
national interference. The attitude of the US was
of particular importance.
The Nixon–Ford administrations wanted a
stable government in Chile, preferably one that
was reasonably democratic and supported a free-
enterprise economy, with a decent human-rights
record. But the US also saw in Marxism a cancer
spreading out from Cuba; it had to be contained
in Cuba; should it break out of this isolation,
given the severe problems of Latin America, it
would not halt in any one country, but would
spread to the neighbours of the US and present
a threat to America in its own hemisphere. The
fight against communism was therefore to be
given priority. Large-scale aid once more flowed
to Chile: loans to assist economic recovery, aid
under the Food for Peace programme (eight
times larger than what was given during the
Allende years) and funds to purchase arms. In all
these measures the Nixon–Ford administrations
expressed their support for Pinochet. It is true
that their purpose was to defeat communism, not
to underpin the Chilean regime’s brutalities, but
they could not escape the dilemma: the two were
linked – they were making, as they saw it, the
choice that best served US interests. As Kissinger
explained, the US should not become involved in
‘temptations to crusade’. But Senator Edward
Kennedy and other members of Congress embar-
rassed the Republican administrations with their
opposition and their attempts to restrict aid to
Chile by linking it to human rights. The admin-
istrations’ task thereby became more difficult, but
ways were found to continue giving aid from
1973 to 1976, the most repressive years of the
Pinochet regime, during which the opposition
was decimated. For them, by the time the new
Democratic president Jimmy Carter made human
rights a key plank of US policy, with particular
reference to Latin America, it was too late. Aid to
Chile and other repressive regimes was drastically
cut, without noticeable effect on the brutality of
these regimes. The US could not bring about
their fall by economic means, nor was economic
aid sufficient to maintain them. That is why US
policy in Chile is such an instructive example of
the difficulties and frustrations that appeared to
face Washington’s policy makers.
It was in Chile, too, that Western academic
economists and technocrats were allowed a deci-
sive influence in policy making to cure the eco-
nomic chaos that was prevailing at the end of
Allende’s presidency. The Chilean generals did
not understand economics but, opposed as they
were to socialism, backed free-market remedies
being advocated by Professor Milton Friedman’s
Chicago School. At its most basic, the theory was
that the free-market system should be allowed to
function and that all artificial restraints, such as
protection of economic sectors that were otherwise
not competitive, trade unions bidding up wages
beyond their market value, state-run industries not
dependent on commercial profits, should be
removed. Inflation would be cured, and market
forces would achieve a balance between supply and
1
THE WORLD OF LATIN AMERICA 693
