Basically seems a growing trend in Latin America, of people wanting 'strong government' - folks tiring of the bedfellows of rampant inflation, increasing poverty and rising crime. Turns out you can live in a democracy and be more miserable than living under a dictator.
Although with the widespread income disparity it's commonly the hard right like Pinchet and his mates who are very wealthy, there have also been big numbers of left wing/socialist politicians who have corrupted the system to enrich themselves and their families. Of course at the same time campaigning to help the working class.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/a-half-century-after-pinochets-coup-some-chileans-remember-the-brutal-dictatorship-fondly
But as Chile marks the 50th anniversary next Monday of the coup that brought Pinochet to power for almost 17 years, many in the country don’t see it as a dark day. Amid a weak economy and a surge in violent crime, recent polls show that many Chileans don’t think human rights are as much of a priority.
Although with the widespread income disparity it's commonly the hard right like Pinchet and his mates who are very wealthy, there have also been big numbers of left wing/socialist politicians who have corrupted the system to enrich themselves and their families. Of course at the same time campaigning to help the working class.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/a-half-century-after-pinochets-coup-some-chileans-remember-the-brutal-dictatorship-fondly
But as Chile marks the 50th anniversary next Monday of the coup that brought Pinochet to power for almost 17 years, many in the country don’t see it as a dark day. Amid a weak economy and a surge in violent crime, recent polls show that many Chileans don’t think human rights are as much of a priority.
They are grappling with what they see as Pinochet’s complicated legacy at a time when a large number have told pollsters they are losing faith in democracy.
“Before, there wasn’t as much wickedness as there is now,” said Ana María Román Vera, 62, who sells lottery tickets. “You didn’t see as many robberies.”
A July poll by the Center for Public Studies, a Chile-based foundation, found that 66 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that rather than worry about the rights of individuals, the country needs a firm government. That is more than double the 32 percent who agreed with the statement fewer than four years ago.
In Chile, 9/11 was a landmark before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. because it was the date of the 1973 coup in the South American country. That significance, though, has been changing. Polling shows more than one-third of Chileans today justify the military takeover of a democratically elected government that went on to violate human rights, murder opponents, cancel elections, restrict the media, suppress labor unions and disband political parties.
“There should be an overwhelming majority of Chileans who denounce the dictatorship and the military coup and acknowledge that the military destroyed democracy,” said Marta Lagos, director of the regional polling firm Latinobarómetro and founder of pollster Mori Chile. “That would be the normal situation in a normal country. But that’s not the case.”
Late last month, leftist President Gabriel Boric unveiled what will effectively be the first state-sponsored plan to try to locate the approximately 1,162 victims of the dictatorship who remain missing.
Yet even as Boric’s government and human rights organizations plan events to mark the coup anniversary, many in Chile don’t appear to see the ousting of a democratically elected leader as wrong.
A poll earlier this year by Lagos’ firm found that 36 percent of Chileans believe the military “freed” Chile “from Marxism” when it deposed leftist democratically elected president Salvador Allende, who came into power in 1970 and killed himself the day of the coup. The poll found that 42 percent said the coup destroyed democracy, the lowest number since 1995.
Pinochet led the coup at a time when the country was mired in an economic crisis that included scarcity of food and galloping inflation that reached an annual rate of 600 percent. When the military took over it implemented a free-market economy that suddenly meant those with means could go on a consumerism binge even as the poverty rate soared.
Retired accountant Sergio Gómez Martínez, 72, said that “fortunately, Augusto Pinochet led the coup” against Allende’s socialist government. He argued that his economic wellbeing improved under the right-wing military government “because there was order, employment, and the countryside and industries began to produce.”
Almost four in 10 Chileans think Pinochet’s 1973-1990 rule modernized the country and 20 percent see the dictator as one of the best rulers of 20th-century Chile, according to the Mori survey.
Almost four in 10 Chileans think Pinochet’s 1973-1990 rule modernized the country and 20 percent see the dictator as one of the best rulers of 20th-century Chile, according to the Mori survey.
A regional survey by Latinobarómetro this year found that only 48 percent of Latin Americans think that democracy is preferable to any other form of government, which marks a 15-point drop from 2010.
“Chileans got used to living with Pinochet,” Lagos said. “Pinochet, I believe, is the only dictator in Western contemporary history, during this century and the last century, who, 50 years after his coup, is still appreciated by 30 or 40 percent of a country’s population.”
“Chileans got used to living with Pinochet,” Lagos said. “Pinochet, I believe, is the only dictator in Western contemporary history, during this century and the last century, who, 50 years after his coup, is still appreciated by 30 or 40 percent of a country’s population.”