Pinochet justifies 1973 Chile coup in posthumous letter
In a posthumous letter to Chileans made public today, General Augusto Pinochet wished he had not needed to stage the bloody 1973 coup in which he took power, describing his destiny as one of banishment and unimagined loneliness.
The former dictator, who died on December 10 of heart failure at the age of 91, insisted the military takeover avoided civil war and a Marxist dictatorship, and that his 1973-90 regime never had "an institutional plan" to abuse human rights.
"But it was necessary to act with maximum rigour to avoid a widening of the conflict," Pinochet wrote.
According to an official report, 3,197 people were killed for political reasons in the 17 years after Pinochet overthrew elected Marxist President Salvador Allende in the September 11, 1973 coup. Tens of thousands were illegally imprisoned, tortured and forced into exile. Allende committed suicide rather than surrender during the coup.
Pinochet's "message to all my compatriots to be published after my death" was made public by the Pinochet Foundation, a group of former aides and followers. Its president, Hernan Guiloff, said he received the text from Pinochet in 2004 and decided to make it public "on this day of peace" - Christmas Eve.
In the six-page text, Pinochet told Chileans: "I have left no room for hatred in my heart.
"My destiny is a kind of banishment and loneliness that I would have never imagined, much less wanted," Pinochet confided.
When he died, Pinochet was facing charges for human rights abuses under his dictatorship and for tax evasion in connection with secret multimillion-dollar foreign bank accounts.
Many who endorsed his firm hand against communism turned against him after learning that his family allegedly spirited (€21m) into overseas accounts.
Pinochet noted that the coup against Allende occurred in the context of the Cold War and that the army felt it was its duty to act because the alternatives were "a civil war ... the imposition of a so-called dictatorship of the proletariat, Marxist-Leninist, with total loss of political freedom and of the state of law."
"How I wish the September 11, 1973 military action had not been necessary!" Pinochet wrote. "How I wish the Marxist-Leninist ideology had not entered our fatherland!"
He insisted the human rights violation under his government were inevitable because "as part of the characteristics of our rivals, it was necessary to implement certain procedures of military control, such as temporary imprisonment, authorised exile, executions by firing squad after military trials".
If his government had not acted like that, he added, "the military action would have ended in a fiasco, and that would have resulted in many years of negative, extremely painful consequences for the people".
"As long as ideological and armed fanaticism continued to endanger stability, we could not lower our arms," he said.
Of those killed for political reasons under Pinochet, more than 1,000 were never found. Pinochet said in his letter that the circumstances of many of the deaths and disappearances would never be known.
"I state that I am proud of the huge action that we had to undertake to prevent Marxism-Leninism from reaching total power," Pinochet wrote.
But he added: "If the experience was to repeat itself, I wish I had a greater wisdom."
