ESSAY - The Chilean Dictatorship and the Judiciary
California Western International Law Journal
THE CHILEAN DICTATORSHIP AND THE JUDICIARY
JUDGE JUAN GUzM
I. THE CHILEAN DICTATORSHIP
A. What had the Political
Economic
Social Situation been after Allende's Election?
Socialist President Salvador Allende was elected in Chile on September 4, 1970, with a little over 30 percent of the vote; therefore, the Senate, according to the Chilean Constitution, was called to decide who the Chilean President would be between the two candidates that had obtained the highest majorities. The Senate then elected Dr. Salvador Allende to be President of Chile from 1970 to 1976, but he only ruled in that position until September 11, 1973, when a violent military coup d'6tat withdrew him from office.
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B. Preparingfor the Coup
The hard right wing never accepted the idea of having a socialist
as president of the country. Parts of the hard right wing and the armed
forces began to prepare this coup many months before it was
perpetrated. Extreme right wing activists exploded bombs, destroyed
electric posts and other objects, producing panic. Meanwhile, the
United States government was collaborating with Chilean armed
forces in order to reinstate the president and to sabotage industry and
commerce, increasing the economic and social chaos.
C. Chile'sForm and Characteristics
Chile's geography makes it vulnerable to paralysis. If its main
bridges are cut or bombed; the main high roads would be interrupted,
and that would cut the country into many pieces. As all the rivers flow
from the Andes Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, cutting the country
into many pieces would be a very easy task to undertake. With that
strategy, the truck owners and drivers, important allies of the military,
blocked the most important bridges, which paralyzed the roads and the
country.
A few days before the coup, U.S. vessels were spread in front of
some important ports, ready to support the coup d'6tat. But once the
coup had begun, in a matter of three days all the country was under
military control and all resistance activity was useless. A military
junta was created, and that junta declared a "state of war," applied
court martial, and established a very strict curfew.
D. THE MAIN PURPOSE OF THE COUP
The main purpose of the coup was to get President Allende out of
the way, because he was considered to be a permanent threat to
democracy. On the other hand, he presided over a government that
was incompetent, and increased the growing economic, political and
social chaos. The military junta that was appointed would put order in
the country and reestablish social security. Meanwhile, the National
Congress was suspended and the junta would rule through
decreelaws.
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A. DuringAllende's Government (from 1970-1973)
The government interfered with the jurisdictional decisions,
impeding them from being enforced. A new requirement was
established when President Allende's government considered that
certain decisions would produce harmful social consequences, and in
these cases, the government impeded their effects. For example, if a
tenant would not pay his rent and was judicially dispossessed from the
property he rented, the government would not permit this
dispossession because of the social harm that it would produce. This
factor provoked great animosity between the judiciary and the
government, and newspaper headlines helped enormously to
encourage the verbal combat that was generated between these
authorities.
It is important to remember that in a dictatorship, all or most of
the state power is concentrated in the hands of one person or one
group. In Chile, the military junta performed the tasks of both the
executive and legislative powers, and the judicial power ruled
according to the interests of the military system. Thus, it is absolutely
fair to consider that the power was concentrated in the hands of only
one group of people. This way, Pinochet, the military junta, and the
judiciary gave form to a totalitarian government.
During the dictatorship, some groups that belonged to the
armed forces, as well as other state agents, committed more than 3,100
assassinations, more than 1,200 forced disappearances, the torturing of
an undetermined number of people, and numerous other sorts of civil
rights violations. The assassinations took all sorts of forms: by
shooting the victims with a firing squad, by killing them during
torture, and by utilizing lethal injection.
The disappearances were utilized to conceal the different forms of
torture that were applied or to systematically produce state terrorism.
It was common to use lethal injection. The bodies were then put in
aircrafts and thrown into the ocean. Torture was systematically
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employed by utilizing methods imported from the United States,
Brazil, France, and other places.
1. How Didthe JudiciaryCollaboratein the Perpetrationof
These Crimes?
During the first five years after the coup, tens of thousands of
people were ta (...truncated)