FIRST OF TWO PARTS
A continent-wide dissension *********************************** The prison of Pinochet was received in Brazil with a lot of joy: friends and relatives rang to each other, the radio and TV interrupted transmissions several times to broadcast the good news and the Internet did the rest. In Argentina the same happened, according to the information that I received. Vox populi, vox Dei (the people's voice is the Lord's voice, although I'm an atheistic). Nevertheless, in Chile, a small part of the left-wing and about half of the demo-christians are preferring that the tyrant be back to where it belongs, and be back free. Quite strange?
Thomas Kruse <tkruse at albatros.cnb.net> has shown in short the two main arguments of the dissenting sides:
(1) The "delicately crafted 'democracies', [are] the product of brokered transtions that got the armies back in the barracks at the cost of achieving very limited 'justice'. Let bygones be bygones, and get on with it already. The implicit threat should be clear."
This fear is derived from what I'm going to call further in this message "the Bolsonaro syndrome".
(2) "The other side suggests that justice aborted or denied can never be the basis of a democracy worthy of the name (leaving aside for the moment the issue of the ownership of the means of production, etc.)."
I myself side with this latter one. Though Emilio and I belong to the left-wing of the Workers Party, that still is the largest of Latin America in number of votes, we do disagree as to the current Pinochet affair. The Argentinian comrade Nestor <NGORO at indec.mecon.ar> also sides with Emilio's misconceptions.
The advantages of a judgement outside South America ***************************************************************** Nevertheless, we all dream to see the tyrant duly judged and so the military terrorism is exposed once more, as well its links with the US policy towards Latin America. Isn't better that this happens in a place with a large world audience? Isn't more secure to our fragile democracies that the tyrant be locked abroad forever? Isn't another damn good political lesson on how the bourgeoisie violently rejects their own democratic institutions when the organized workers are near to control the state peacefully?
Furthermore, the trial will be a warning against would-be state terrorists all over the world as much as Nuremberg was, both political and ethnical ones. "The first duty of a soldier is to kill !" --- this is a phrase attributed to the madman Pinochet to calm down his subordinates' consciousness, e si non è vero è bene trovato (and if it is not true it is well invented anyway). My comparison to the cases of Eichmann in Argentina and Mengele in Brazil is not senseless, I presume.
Metaphysics ***************** In the core of Emilio's and Nestor's position lays a biased and mechanical conception of the bourgeois law and a mistrust on the real underlying motives of the arrest of Pinochet. We need a marxist analysis of these wrong ideas and of the CONCRETE situation, not metaphysical-populist prejudices. I intend to do this, but only after November, 16. As I already said, I'M CRUSHED under a heavy and hurried pressure from studies by now and I must spare time. Let's keep Pinochet well locked till then! (or under close surveillance in London, at least).
Remember Marx and let's conclude that, quite unwillingly, the British state is collaborating with Latin American progressive forces once more... **************************************************************************** ************ I remember that Marx wrote in one of his little known articles to the Dana's journal at New York that the only case in which the organized proletariat could stand alongside the British government was in the Near East question. He deemed absolutely necessary to resist to an advancement of the obscurantist Russian czarism over the moribund Turkish empire.
If he said something alike nowadays someone would call him a "revisionist" or a "traitor" or perhaps a "modernose liberal". The only edition of these articles that I know (a precious history of the second half of the XIXth century) is an old one published in Paris by Alfred Costes, Éditeur in the late twenties and published under the general title of "Oeuvres Politiques".
Let me just remember at least three occasions other than the Pinochet's affair in which the British imperialism helped the progressive forces in South America as a COLLATERAL EFFECT. All of them have clear economic and political interests behind, of course, neither humanitarian nor progressive ones. Let's see them:
(1) The support in the wars for independence. It was not only a formal diplomatic support, but an active political and a military one as well. Just to mention an example amongst others: admiral Lord Cochrane headed the war navies of Brazil and Chile during the fights (but also crushed a republican uprising in Brazil, the only monarchy of America, together with Canada).
(2) The end of the African slave trade. In this case Britain and Brazil were at the edge of a full war around 1845 (the Aberdeen bill affair), though the Brazilian monarchy was a close ally of Britain in America. It was a blow against the great landlords, however a mild one: they soon discovered cheap labour in Europe, the white slaves...
This question was mingled with the Alves Branco's cabinet policy of reviewing the status of most favoured nation granted to Britain by the commerce treaty of 1810. Nevertheless, progressive historians tend to dismiss any substantive meaning in this policy, since there was not a structured bourgeoisie in Brazil by then.
(3) The Malvinas (Falklands) war. I agree that las Malvinas son argentinas, but nevertheless I hailed the defeat of the Galtieri dictatorship, since it accelerated the fall of the South American military dictatorships, one after another. The war is far from being the sole explanation, of course, but the ensuing financial mess made things easier for the progressive and democratic forces.
On the three (or two) worlds, on González and on amnesties ************************************************************************ To answer some of the criticisms made by Emilio, by the time being it must be remembered the following:
a) "Third-world countries" is a fanciful expression coined by Alfred Sauvy, the easy-to-digest sociologist, around 1952. A true Marxist analysis must not abide by this loose concept and those of "first world" and "second world" as well.
b) One doesn't need to worry about the Spanish Supreme Court authorizing judge Baltasar Garzón to re-open the prosecution of the former Spanish prime-minister Felipe González on his crimes against the Basque freedom-fighters (are they?). The reasons are the following:
(1) What is legally at stake is not the González's affair, but the illegal violence perpetraded by the former military dictatorships of
Argentina and Chile (other South American countries are not yet mentioned, but the doors are widely opened). It may also includes the possible arrest of fascist Spanish officers which commited crimes in Spanish soil in collaboration with their South American counterparts;
(2) González was already acquited. Thus, any new charges against him must be based on facts other than those which were already known and appreciated by the courts in a due process of law and through a new inquiry. Please, don't call me a "Gonzalista" or anything alike; I am just recalling a plain fact.
c) The concept of amnesty ISN'T being grinded by the liberal wave coming from both the "first world" as well as from ---don't forget it!---- the South American bourgeoisies. By the way, Chile under Pinochet and Argentina under the ruinous financial sageness of Alsogaray and Martínez de Hoz, in the "la plata dulce" times, were the FIRST LABS in the world for the Chicago-economics, don't forget it either! The reasons are the following:
(1) The amnesty enacted by a sovereign state doesn't necessarily bind another sovereign state (amnesties of crimes against humankind are void).
(2) Irrespective of amnesty, there is an universal juridical principle that makes punishable by any country: (a) a crime commited against one of its citizens anywhere in the world; (b) a crime perpetrated by one of its citizens against any other person in the world; (c) a crime commited abroad by a foreigner against another foreigner (this case gives room to extraditation). It must be provided anyway that the law of the punishing country previously considers the act to be a crime.
Someone already remembered me about the flaw in case 2(c) above in the affair of the great train robbery in England in 1963. One of the robbers (I forget the guy's name) escaped to Brazil and he is free here up today. This case has NOTHING to do with the Pinochet's one. When Britain requested the extradiction of the guy to Brazil it was discovered that he has a Brazilian son, and in this case the law prefers the unity of the family. He could have been prosecuted before a Brazilian court, but the Scotland Yard has never sent a copy of the inquiry to Brazil. Now the small boy is a grown-up man, but the father may not be extradited to Britain because he now benefits from the statute of limitations on the crime of robbery.
A very clever guy, isn't him? Instead of robbing a Post Office train he could have otherwise become an international tax planning practioner... :>)
The menaces to the Chilean democracy are the same as ever BEFORE **************************************************************************** ******** Emilio says: "Its scares me a lot to see the old brucutus-cars [*] throw jets of water against the people and formed shock troop soldiers marching against the demonstrators."
[*] Really not vintage cars, but brandy-new water-canon armored trucks. Emilio, don't forget the tear gas canisters, the ferocious biting dogs, the horseback police charges, the tanks and the bullets too. Both of us are experienced in dealing with this kind of street fighting in the good "ole" days.
I repeat below three paragraphs of a message of mine that refers to the violence of the Chilean military police (carabineros) in two recent events which have taken place BEFORE the arrest of the tyrant.
Chile is far from being a full-fledged bourgeois democracy as compared, for instance, with Argentina or Brazil, which are not pretty models.
The Constitution of the Republic is the neoliberal one decreed by Pinochet himself. Among other things, it provides for a non-elected portion of the Chilean Senate (a very reactionary portion, of course) that hampers any attempt to reform the Constitution. Pinochet warranted immunity to himself and in practice he is out of the jurisdiction of the Chilean courts: a superman above the Law. The Chilean courts have too many conservative judges nominated by the military.
The fascist military still keep an undisguised upper hand hanging over the civilian government (although being the reactionary demo-christian one headed by the junior Frei). In the mass demonstrations last March against Pinochet, when he left the job of commander-in-chief of the Army and became senator for life, the ferocious military repression against the people has shown quite well that the civilian government has no command at all. In June, during the World Soccer Championship in France, the military forbade any meetings of more than four people, even meetings of soccer fans. What about this "democracy", who are the masters in charge of it?
=======IT FOLLOWS IN THE SECOND PART=======