SANTIAGO, CHILE -- As the United States contemplates trying to build democracy in Iraq, it nevertheless finds itself saddled with a number of undemocratic -- even odious -- allies in the war on terrorism. Countries such as Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia may be partners the United States needs, but they also have reprehensible human-rights records that America would rather not be associated with. Is it possible for the United States to influence the human-rights practices of such allies? And do those allies respond constructively to U.S. pressure on human rights? Recently declassified records from the Chilean dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet suggest that the answer to those questions is often yes.
The Actas de la Honorable Junta de Gobierno -- transcripts and memorandums from secret meetings of the Chilean military regime -- show a government extremely concerned about U.S. opinion and sanctions. The long-secret Actas have a near-mythical status in Chile, and public access to the documents remains heavily restricted. The rare-books librarian at the Chilean congressional library told me, when I visited recently, that I was only the third person outside the government to have unfettered access to them. I was barred from making photocopies of the 64 hulking volumes, bound in red leather with gold stamping, but I was permitted to take notes on my laptop.
Most dictatorships -- such as Iraq or North Korea today -- are opaque about their functioning, and the Chilean dictatorship was no exception. But the Actas provide an intimate look at the Pinochet government's inner workings. And they demonstrate that though the Chilean dictatorship played down its relationship with the United States (in order to bolster its image of independence) its leaders were very much attuned to what the United States had to say, including on human rights.
The initial U.S. response to the 1973 overthrow of Marxist President Salvador Allende -- an overthrow the United States had done much to encourage -- was opprobrious. The United States often sat out United Nations votes calling on the Pinochet regime to respect human rights, joining only Chile in abstaining from an otherwise unanimous consensus. But by late 1975, the United States began voting to condemn torture and human-rights abuses in Chile, and a decade later it took the lead in publicly criticizing Chile. With the exception of already-committed aid, no U.S. military assistance or sales went to Chile after the start of the 1977 fiscal year, and economic aid declined significantly then as well. So U.S. fecklessness only reigned initially.
The congressional inquiries and Viva Allende marches on college campuses are long forgotten today, but at the time, Democrats, Republicans and the public fiercely debated Chile. Then-Sen. William Fulbright (D-Ark.), for example, said he received an "unprecedented number of telegrams, letters and phone calls" expressing opposition to the coup and concern for its victims. On one side of the debate, then-President Jimmy Carter, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and a bevy of Democratic representatives struggled to put human rights at the core of U.S. policy toward Chile. On the other side, the Ford and Reagan administrations, the Pentagon and the State Department's Latin America desk argued that "quiet diplomacy" could work, and without alienating anti-communist allies.
Today, thanks in part to the Actas, we know that the human-rights advocates were right, and that the quiet diplomats were actually silent ones. Take the case of Chilean human-rights leader Jaime Castillo: After Jeane Kirkpatrick, then-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, went to Santiago to indicate the Reagan administration's intention "to fully . . . normalize relations with Chile" and had what she termed a "most pleasant" discussion with Pinochet, Castillo was expelled from Chile.
Castillo had been expelled before, after a speech in Chile by then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger about human rights. But a recently declassified memorandum of conversation (or "memcon") shows that in a private meeting, Kissinger all but apologized to Pinochet for mentioning Chile in the speech. "This speech is not aimed at Chile. I wanted to tell you about this. My evaluation is that you are a victim of all left-wing groups around the world and that your greatest sin was that you overthrew a government that was going communist," Kissinger recorded in the memcon. "We are not out to weaken your position." Kissinger's private warmth toward Pinochet, it seems, provided U.S. approval for continued repression, including Castillo's expulsion.
According to the Actas, on Oct. 3, 1973, less than a month after the coup, the junta ordered that discussions with Washington about Chile's debt be postponed until "the current image of CIA intervention in the military pronouncement of 11.Sept.1973 disappears." The postponement was a painful one: Chile's economy badly needed fresh credit, and the economy, Pinochet and other dictatorship officials reminded themselves repeatedly, was the regime's "Achilles' heel." Indeed, the postponement was lifted just six days later, and the Chileans soon found that Kissinger and other senior administration officials were eager to help provide financing and even munitions.
That same month, the Actas show, Chile was forced to postpone the purchase of two naval destroyers because of the U.S. Congress' hostility. A junta leader noted the postponement left the fleet of Chile "in a 1 to 3 disproportion with respect to Peru," which Chile regarded as a potential aggressor. In August 1975, the Air Force junta leader reported that the U.S. Air Force attaché in Chile received a cable from the Pentagon about a suspension of military aid. "It's very possible the United States is considering a total cut-off in military aid: not a cartridge, nothing. That, for my institution, would have an enormous transcendence, not only from a military point of view, but from a political point of view." Even if the dictatorship were to circumvent the cut-off by using Brazil as an intermediary -- as the Actas reveal Kissinger had suggested earlier -- the receipt of U.S. military supplies was of keen importance to the junta.
The dictatorship also considered its abandonment by the United States at the United Nations to be a major blow. The junta only seems to have begun paying close attention to the UN resolutions in 1975, when the United States changed from abstention to support of resolutions calling for human rights to be respected in Chile. For example, of the 1975 session, the Air Force junta leader said, "I believe that the destiny of Chile is in danger in this Assembly, the 30th Assembly." In short, U.S. support for UN condemnation of Chile made such condemnation matter.
During its first years, the dictatorship could not understand United States or global talk about human rights, dismissing it as a communist conspiracy. The Chilean ambassador to the United States expressed the typical view in a May 1974 meeting with the junta, saying: "In the United States, there is a series of groups now, inspired by Marxists, like the fair trial for Chilean prisoners, recovery of democratic rights for the population of Chile, humane treatment for prisoners, in summary, a series of movements, all interconnected and all directed and controlled by the Marxist party headquartered in New York." The regime underestimated the depth of U.S. public concern about human rights in Chile -- the ambassador to the United States in this same May 1974 appearance before the junta predicted it would last only a few months more -- no doubt because the Ford administration did not share that concern.
It was not until December 1974 that someone told the junta that U.S. concern for human rights was, in reality, about human rights. "There are certain limitations to human rights in Chile that make an American go through the following thought process," the economy minister reported after a trip to Washington. "He says, 'If [I] have power that in a particular moment I can exercise to force someone to respect the human rights of another, I feel obligated to use that power.' . . . There is no communist influence in this, in any way." And then returning toward the orthodoxy, he said, "Now, what happens is that the communists take advantage of this for their own campaign."
Tulio Halperin Donghi, a venerable historian of Latin America, has written: "Carter's foreign policy did have a beneficial effect on Latin America. A considerable number of Latin Americans probably owe their lives to his efforts -- something that cannot be said of any other U.S. president." U.S. efforts to promote human rights in Chile, the records show, contributed significantly to the paring back of repression. And the Actas reveal that the Chilean dictatorship was particularly sensitive to U.S. concerns. Consistent U.S. interest in human rights in Chile would have saved more lives or, rather, reduced the number of deaths and disappearances in which the United States was complicit because of its silence. What if the Ford administration -- in the early days of Pinochet's dictatorship, when politically motivated torture and execution were at their high point -- and, later, the Reagan administration had not been so compliant with the general? What if Kissinger had not privately dismissed his own statements about human rights?
Today, the United Status laudably criticizes human-rights abuses by allies and enemies alike in its country-by-country review -- a yearly ritual begun in 1976 in response to congressional anger about U.S. policy in Chile. In the 2001 reports, released in March 2002, the United States bluntly classified the human-rights records of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as "poor," noting that in Pakistan, "Police committed numerous extrajudicial killings," and that in Saudi Arabia, "Security forces continued to abuse detainees and prisoners, arbitrarily arrest and detain persons, and hold them in incommunicado detention." Egypt received a mixed review, with the United States reporting that Egypt's "record remained poor with respect to freedom of expression and its continued referral of citizens to trial in military or State Security Emergency courts, among other areas."
In announcing the reports, Secretary of State Colin Powell said, clearly referring to U.S. allies that abuse human rights, "The United States welcomes the help of any country or party that is genuinely prepared to work with us to eradicate terrorism. At the same time, we will not relax our commitment to advancing the cause of human rights and democracy." Forthrightly worded condemnation, however, is not the same as strong human-rights policy. In deciding whether to transform Powell's statement into tough, concrete policies or to let it languish as empty rhetoric, U.S. policy-makers would do well to think of Chile.
There are certainly important differences between our friends in the war on terrorism with questionable human-rights records and Chile under Pinochet. Many Muslim governments are reluctant allies in the battle against Islamic terrorism and also significant international powers, whereas Chile was zealously anti-communist under Pinochet but never more than a small country in what America saw as its own backyard. But the newly released records of the Chilean dictatorship show the human costs of keeping "quiet" on human rights. And they demonstrate how much influence American leaders can wield on such issues -- if only they decide to use it.
Jonathan Goldberg is a writer based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
