EDITORIAL
A Pinochet trial: first step toward naming the
sin
While the United States was busy chasing one elusive dictator in
the desert, it was far less interested in pressing the case against another
washed-up dictator already in custody.
The Clinton administration has been deafeningly silent on the
matter of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, former Chilean strongman who exercised
absolute rule for 17 years. Spain is seeking Pinochets extradition from
England, where he was undergoing medical treatment and is now under house
arrest. Authorities in Spain want to try him for murder, torture, hostage
taking and related counts in connection with the more than 3,000 people killed
or disappeared during the years he ruled Chile.
One might ask why Pinochet, and why now.
Most countries in Latin America that were formerly dictatorships
have slowly turned toward democratic rule without taking legal action against
former despots and military rulers however awful the bloodshed and torture they
authored. The rationale seems to be that an emerging democracy needs to focus
all its energy on achieving economic and political stability. Such
long-suppressed and abused societies need to move toward the future and allow
the past to fall away.
But there is another aspect to our coping with modern warfare and
inhumane violence that cannot be ignored. Regardless of what ultimately
transpires in the way of political stability and economic success, people will
not lightly release themselves from the duty to maintain the historic record
and ensure that the stories of official brutality are never allowed to slip
below the surface of national memory.
This takes us to Pinochets recent misfortunes. While many,
presumably the vast majority, of Chileans want to see a cruel tyrant brought to
justice, it now seems they are powerless to clean the national slate for all
time. The sequence of events since Pinochets arrest shows the government
that succeeded him in Chile chooses to be complicit in his crimes by doing
everything in its power to get the old dictator off the hook. The country still
has a long way to go to find national peace of mind.
It is, by contrast, to Spains great credit that it grasped
this thorny problem. That other countries seem prepared to follow suit in
pursuit of Pinochet may hint at a healthy international trend and a warning to
former dictators that though they may run with their bags of money they
cant hide.
Bishop Gregorio Rosá Chavez of El Salvador put both problem
and ideal in perspective in an interview in 1992 after the civil war had ended
in his country and a peace process was underway. The San Salvador archdiocese
had initiated a Year of Grace and Mercy, but this was not to be
cheap grace or cheap mercy. Part of the effort was to open offices where
information on past human rights abuses was gathered.
The need for grace and mercy, said Chavez, was tempered by the
need for justice. It was an insight owing to Catholic sacramental theology:
Sins cannot be forgiven until they are identified and someone is held
accountable.
So, with Pinochet, the intriguing prospect is that some manner of
international trial could set in motion the machinery that might pry loose the
historic record of that era, including presumably voluminous records of U.S.
involvement in the region at the time.
This in turn might start a series of actions against former
dictators and military bullies that would lay bare the record of those awful
times.
The prospect has apparently scared Washington into silence. No one
can expect to exact justice for the hundreds of thousands who were tortured and
killed throughout Latin America in those decades of unchecked cruelty. But the
possibility of filling out that record -- of finally naming the sin and the
sinners -- could well be worth a little financial disturbance and political
turmoil.
National Catholic Reporter, December 25,
1998
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