From CNN:
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) -- Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who overthrew Chile's democratically elected Marxist president in a bloody coup and ruled the Andean nation for 17 years, died Sunday, dashing hopes of victims of his regime's abuses that he would be brought to justice. He was 91.
Pinochet suffered a heart attack a week ago and underwent an angioplasty, and the brief announcement by the Santiago Military hospital said his condition worsened suddenly on Sunday.
Dr. Juan Ignacio Vergara, spokesman for the medical team that had been treating him, said his family was with him when he died.
Police ringed the hospital, but a small group of Pinochet supporters remained at the entrance, shouting insults at people in passing cars. The supporters, including some weeping women, repeatedly called out "Long Live Pinochet!" and sang Chile's national anthem.
As the mustachioed Pinochet crushed dissent during his 1973-90 rule, he left little doubt about who was in charge. "Not a leaf moves in this country if I'm not moving it," he once said.
Pinochet, born November 25, 1915, as the son of a customs official in the port of Valparaiso, was commander of the army at the time of the 1973 coup, appointed 19 days earlier by the president he toppled.
The CIA tried for months to destabilize the Allende government, including financing a truckers strike that paralyzed the delivery of goods across Chile, but Washington denied having anything to do with the coup.
In the days following Pinochet's seizure of power, soldiers carried out mass arrests of leftists. Tanks rumbled through the streets of the capital.
Many detainees, including Americans Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, were herded into the National Stadium, which became a torture and detention center. The Americans were among those executed by the Chilean military, their deaths chronicled in the 1982 film "Missing."
Other leftists were rounded up by a death squad known as the "Caravan of Death." Victims were buried in unmarked mass graves in the northern Atacama desert, in the coastal city of La Serena and in the southern city of Cauquenes.
Pinochet pledged to stay in power "only as long as circumstances demand it," but soon after seizing the presidency, he said he had "goals, not deadlines."
He disbanded Congress, banned political activity and started a harsh anti-leftist repression. At least 3,197 people were killed, more than 1,000 others are unaccounted for, and thousands more were arrested, tortured and forced into exile.
Within years, Chile and other South American countries with right-wing governments launched Operation Condor to eliminate leftist dissidents abroad. One of Operation Condor's victims was former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, who was killed along with his American aide, Ronni Moffitt, when a bomb shattered their car in Washington in 1976.
In May 2005, some of the strongest evidence against Pinochet emerged, when Gen. Manuel Contreras, the imprisoned head of the former dictatorship's secret police, gave Chile's Supreme Court a list describing the fate of more than 500 dissidents who disappeared after being arrested by the secret police. Most were killed, their bodies flung into the sea.
Contreras, who is serving a 12-year sentence for the disappearance of a young dissident in 1975, said Pinochet was responsible. Pinochet blamed all the abuses on subordinates.
"Justice has been too generous with Pinochet," said Viviana Diaz, whose father was among the disappeared. She said the fact that Pinochet was never punished "is the impotence that we have, and the reason for the fight we have waged all these years to eliminate impunity in our country."
Pinochet defended his authoritarian rule as a bulwark against communism -- and even claimed part of the credit for the collapse of communism. He repeatedly said he had nothing to ask forgiveness for.
"I see myself as a good angel," he told a Miami Spanish-language television station in 2004.
With his raspy voice, he often spoke in a lower-class vernacular that comedians delighted in mimicking. But his off-the-cuff comments sometimes got him into trouble.
Once, he embarrassed the government by saying that the German army was made up of "marijuana smokers, homosexuals, long-haired unionists." On another occasion, he drew criticism by saying the discovery of coffins that each contained the bodies of two victims of his regime's repression was a show of "a good cemetery space-saving measure."
Shrewd and firmly in command of his army, Pinochet saw himself as the leader of a crusade to build a society free of communism. Amid the upheaval in 1973, the economy was in near ruins, partly due to the CIA's covert destabilization efforts.
Pinochet launched a radical free-market economic program that, coupled with heavy foreign borrowing and an overvalued peso, triggered a financial collapse and unprecedented joblessness in the early 1980s. Eventually, the economy recovered and since 1984 Chile has posted growth averaging 5 percent to 7 percent a year.
Key to the economic recovery was a group of mostly young economists known as the "Chicago Boys" for their studies under University of Chicago professor and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman. They lifted most state controls over the economy, privatized many sectors and strongly encouraged foreign investment with tax and other guarantees.
Since the mid-1990s, Pinochet led a mostly secluded life between his heavily guarded Santiago mansion and his countryside residence. He rarely appeared in public other than for checkups at the Santiago army hospital.
He is survived by his wife, Lucia, who headed a volunteer women's organization dedicated to helping the poor, two sons and three daughters.
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Maybe most of the members of this forum lives in Arabia, Europe and all those countries very far of Chile. Well, since I born I heard about Pinochet and his regime. It's know by all the chileans he killed a lot of innocent people and some comunist and oppositors to his regime.
I even wasn't alive when this happened so I don't know if I can give a good point of wiew about this.
For me, Pinochet, was a man who take the power and "saved" Chile to turn the next Cuba thanks to the influence of USA (yeah, they always have to be in something) during the cold war. The problem of Pinochet was he violated a lot of human rights killing a lot of innocent people. As all the man with power he stoled.
Now all the communist are happy because he's dead, for me that's awful. Even the worst man on the Earth could death but you must have some respect, at leat, for his family. When Gladys Marin dead (leader of communism here in Chile) they wanted respect and as we're in a democratic country he deserved respect too.
more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinochet
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) -- Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who overthrew Chile's democratically elected Marxist president in a bloody coup and ruled the Andean nation for 17 years, died Sunday, dashing hopes of victims of his regime's abuses that he would be brought to justice. He was 91.
Pinochet suffered a heart attack a week ago and underwent an angioplasty, and the brief announcement by the Santiago Military hospital said his condition worsened suddenly on Sunday.
Dr. Juan Ignacio Vergara, spokesman for the medical team that had been treating him, said his family was with him when he died.
Police ringed the hospital, but a small group of Pinochet supporters remained at the entrance, shouting insults at people in passing cars. The supporters, including some weeping women, repeatedly called out "Long Live Pinochet!" and sang Chile's national anthem.
As the mustachioed Pinochet crushed dissent during his 1973-90 rule, he left little doubt about who was in charge. "Not a leaf moves in this country if I'm not moving it," he once said.
Pinochet, born November 25, 1915, as the son of a customs official in the port of Valparaiso, was commander of the army at the time of the 1973 coup, appointed 19 days earlier by the president he toppled.
The CIA tried for months to destabilize the Allende government, including financing a truckers strike that paralyzed the delivery of goods across Chile, but Washington denied having anything to do with the coup.
In the days following Pinochet's seizure of power, soldiers carried out mass arrests of leftists. Tanks rumbled through the streets of the capital.
Many detainees, including Americans Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, were herded into the National Stadium, which became a torture and detention center. The Americans were among those executed by the Chilean military, their deaths chronicled in the 1982 film "Missing."
Other leftists were rounded up by a death squad known as the "Caravan of Death." Victims were buried in unmarked mass graves in the northern Atacama desert, in the coastal city of La Serena and in the southern city of Cauquenes.
Pinochet pledged to stay in power "only as long as circumstances demand it," but soon after seizing the presidency, he said he had "goals, not deadlines."
He disbanded Congress, banned political activity and started a harsh anti-leftist repression. At least 3,197 people were killed, more than 1,000 others are unaccounted for, and thousands more were arrested, tortured and forced into exile.
Within years, Chile and other South American countries with right-wing governments launched Operation Condor to eliminate leftist dissidents abroad. One of Operation Condor's victims was former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, who was killed along with his American aide, Ronni Moffitt, when a bomb shattered their car in Washington in 1976.
In May 2005, some of the strongest evidence against Pinochet emerged, when Gen. Manuel Contreras, the imprisoned head of the former dictatorship's secret police, gave Chile's Supreme Court a list describing the fate of more than 500 dissidents who disappeared after being arrested by the secret police. Most were killed, their bodies flung into the sea.
Contreras, who is serving a 12-year sentence for the disappearance of a young dissident in 1975, said Pinochet was responsible. Pinochet blamed all the abuses on subordinates.
"Justice has been too generous with Pinochet," said Viviana Diaz, whose father was among the disappeared. She said the fact that Pinochet was never punished "is the impotence that we have, and the reason for the fight we have waged all these years to eliminate impunity in our country."
Pinochet defended his authoritarian rule as a bulwark against communism -- and even claimed part of the credit for the collapse of communism. He repeatedly said he had nothing to ask forgiveness for.
"I see myself as a good angel," he told a Miami Spanish-language television station in 2004.
With his raspy voice, he often spoke in a lower-class vernacular that comedians delighted in mimicking. But his off-the-cuff comments sometimes got him into trouble.
Once, he embarrassed the government by saying that the German army was made up of "marijuana smokers, homosexuals, long-haired unionists." On another occasion, he drew criticism by saying the discovery of coffins that each contained the bodies of two victims of his regime's repression was a show of "a good cemetery space-saving measure."
Shrewd and firmly in command of his army, Pinochet saw himself as the leader of a crusade to build a society free of communism. Amid the upheaval in 1973, the economy was in near ruins, partly due to the CIA's covert destabilization efforts.
Pinochet launched a radical free-market economic program that, coupled with heavy foreign borrowing and an overvalued peso, triggered a financial collapse and unprecedented joblessness in the early 1980s. Eventually, the economy recovered and since 1984 Chile has posted growth averaging 5 percent to 7 percent a year.
Key to the economic recovery was a group of mostly young economists known as the "Chicago Boys" for their studies under University of Chicago professor and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman. They lifted most state controls over the economy, privatized many sectors and strongly encouraged foreign investment with tax and other guarantees.
Since the mid-1990s, Pinochet led a mostly secluded life between his heavily guarded Santiago mansion and his countryside residence. He rarely appeared in public other than for checkups at the Santiago army hospital.
He is survived by his wife, Lucia, who headed a volunteer women's organization dedicated to helping the poor, two sons and three daughters.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maybe most of the members of this forum lives in Arabia, Europe and all those countries very far of Chile. Well, since I born I heard about Pinochet and his regime. It's know by all the chileans he killed a lot of innocent people and some comunist and oppositors to his regime.
I even wasn't alive when this happened so I don't know if I can give a good point of wiew about this.
For me, Pinochet, was a man who take the power and "saved" Chile to turn the next Cuba thanks to the influence of USA (yeah, they always have to be in something) during the cold war. The problem of Pinochet was he violated a lot of human rights killing a lot of innocent people. As all the man with power he stoled.
Now all the communist are happy because he's dead, for me that's awful. Even the worst man on the Earth could death but you must have some respect, at leat, for his family. When Gladys Marin dead (leader of communism here in Chile) they wanted respect and as we're in a democratic country he deserved respect too.
more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinochet
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