The Dictator's Shadow: Life Under Augusto Pinochet

360 Pages·2008·1.17 MB·English

by  Heraldo Munoz

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THE DICTATOR’S
SHADOW
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THE
DICTATOR’S
SHADOW
L U A P
IFE NDER UGUSTO INOCHET
(cid:2)
HERALDO MUÑOZ
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
New York
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Copyright © 2008 by Heraldo Muñoz
Published by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in
the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For informa-
tion, address Basic Books, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-8810.
Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases
in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more
information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books
Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call
[phone], ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Muñoz, Heraldo.
The dictator’s shadow : life under Augusto Pinochet / Heraldo Muñoz.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-465-00250-4
1. Pinochet Ugarte, Augusto. 2. Chile—History—Coup d’état, 1973. 3. Chile—
History—1973-1988. 4. Chile—History—1988- I. Title.
F3100.M863 2008
983.06’5—dc22
2008015654
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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To Pamela
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CONTENTS
Preface ix
1. A Different 9/11 1
2. The Two Pinochets 22
3. The Power to Dictate 60
4. Pinochet’s Global Reach 81
5. Regime on the Ropes 120
6. To Kill Pinochet or Defeat
Him with a Pencil 160
7. Governing with the Enemy 209
8. Lost in London 242
9. Reversals of Fortune 274
10. Pinochet’s Long Shadow 299
Acknowledgments 315
Sources 317
Index 327
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PREFACE
GENERALAUGUSTOPINOCHETISONEof the world’s most recognizable
Latin American political figures. Whether Chileans like it or not, the
name of their former dictator is remembered from Asia and Africa to
the Americas and Europe, by taxi drivers, ambassadors, salesmen, and
presidents. Pinochet is in a class with Francisco Franco, Joseph Stalin,
Ferdinand Marcos, and the Shah of Iran.
The dictator’s name did not recede into obscurity with his death
in December 2006. In October 2007, about a hundred students who
staged a demonstration at Tehran University against President Mah-
moud Ahmadinejad, demanding the release of detained fellow stu-
dents, chanted, “Ahmadinejad is Pinochet. Iran will not become
Chile!” When the former chess champion Gary Kasparov competed
in the 2008 Russian presidential elections, he accused Vladimir Putin
of being Russia’s Pinochet and sought advice from former Chilean
dissidents. The former dictator of Chad, Hissene Habré, was widely
known as “the African Pinochet.”
Many of today’s world leaders were inspired to enter politics pre-
cisely in order to rally to the cause of Chilean democracy. Chile’s
struggle against Pinochet became an international cause célèbre. To-
day’s global human rights movement emerged from the worldwide
protests and denunciations of the Pinochet dictatorship, spearheaded
by Amnesty International and numerous other human rights NGOs.
Pinochet’s overthrow of Socialist president Salvador Allende in
1973 led Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev to reverse a long-standing
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