LATIN AMERICA	MARCH 16, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 10
	Pinochet's Makeover Chile's strongman will take up a Senate seat--and throw the nation back into the pain of the past By TIM PADGETT or an entire generation of Chileans, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte has been an eternal but changing presence. He was the uniformed strongman who overthrew an elected Marxist government in 1973 in a rain of bullets and blood, and whose regime is blamed for the death, disappearance and torture of thousands of his countrymen. Then he was the cunning military politician who orchestrated a 1980 constitutional referendum that cloaked his government in parliamentary legitimacy and made him President for a decade. Even after a 1988 plebiscite obliged him to step down two years later in favor of civilian rule, Pinochet remained a highly visible army commander in chief, a power not far behind the scenes and a constant reminder of the risks of radical behavior. Through it all, he has also remained an unrepentant advocate of the force he came to symbolize, defiant as ever. "I don't feel guilty," he said recently. "It was civil war back then. If not for us, the communists would have been doing the killing." This week, at 82, a still vigorous Pinochet is poised for yet another incarnation, this time as Chile's authoritarian patriarch and guarantor of his conservative legacy. On March 10, after a military parade in Santiago, he will retire as army commander in chief. Then he will travel to the coastal city of Valparaiso, seat of Chile's Congress, where he will be sworn in as a nonelected Senator-for-life--a final perch he reserved for himself in his 1980 constitution. Civilian governments have tried three times since 1990 to eliminate the prerogative. Each time they were thwarted by the votes of the nine other designated Senators. Pinochet will thus become, with his peers, the arbiter in any constitutional measures in the delicately balanced legislature. As always when he is involved, this will be a ferociously polarizing transition. His latest makeover is likely to be greeted by the largest demonstrations of popular outrage in Chile in a decade. The group known as the Association of the Families of the Disappeared will demonstrate en masse at the Congress, in Santiago and elsewhere around the country. "To allow this specter into the Senate is the most primitive kind of impunity," says communist Congresswoman Gladys Marin, whose husband was tortured and disappeared. Says Association leader Sola Sierra, whose husband disappeared in 1976: "This just brings back an endless, permanent pain." Fistfights have broken out in Congress, and officials fear worse violence this week. Says an aide to President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle: "It's been a long time since we've seen the country this divided." Pinochet's legion of defenders will be in the streets as well. The National Chamber of Commerce, an unabashed Pinochet booster, argues fervently along with other supporters that Pinochet's coup not only thwarted communism but also turned Chile into a pioneering showcase of free-market prosperity. "He taught us back then how to live in the global economy we're living in today," says Santiago real estate magnate Hernan Guiloff. Once again, Chile and Latin America are about to confront their profound ambiguity about Pinochet's legacy. But the government seems to be doing more hand-wringing than soul-searching. Last week Frei said that while he personally opposes Pinochet's latest ascendancy, there is no way around it. "There are no shortcuts to a full democracy," he declared. His chief concern is putting a lid on the controversy before it overshadows Chilean democracy's coming-out party at the April 18-19 Summit of the Americas in Santiago. When they arrive, the summiteers will find a society that still bears Pinochet's strong imprint. In the new Senate that convenes on March 11, more than a fifth of the 40 members, including Pinochet, are designated by the armed forces and other institutions, such as the Supreme Court, per his constitution. Another 17 seats are held by elected conservatives who support his principles. The 17-member Supreme Court is packed with Pinochet appointees who sit for life and have often shielded him and the military from legal scrutiny. They have also upheld Pinochet-era codes like the "honor" laws that threaten citizens with jail for uttering the slightest public barb about high-ranking officials. A journalist who quipped in a magazine interview last year that a Supreme Court Justice had become "old and ugly" was jailed for two days before the case was dropped. Some of the old prohibitions, however, are crumbling. Two months ago, Congresswoman Marin filed formal charges against Pinochet for having allegedly ordered "homicide, genocide and illegal burial of bodies" during his rule. It was the first criminal lawsuit against Pinochet to be accepted by a Chilean court, and comes despite a 1978 amnesty law that absolves the general of human-rights abuses. Other suits have since been filed. Pinochet is being tried in absentia in Madrid for allegedly ordering the execution of leftist Spaniards living in Chile in the '70s. Meanwhile, even moderate Congressmen, including senior members of Frei's Christian Democrat Party, plan to put Pinochet on political trial as unworthy of a Senate seat. One tack they are taking is to argue that the constitution reserves lifetime Senate seats for former popularly elected Presidents; since Pinochet took power in a coup, they say, he is not eligible for the position. Pinochet is threatening to disclose embarrassing secret police files about the Congressmen if they try any such thing. Friends say he has put aside the writing of his memoirs to prepare for the parliamentary assault--stepping up his warrior's regimen of cold morning showers and gymnastics. But he needn't train too hard: his allies hold at least half the seats in the Senate, making any attempt to make him answer for the excesses of his regime an uphill battle. And there is also Pinochet's enduring public appeal to consider. In a recent nationwide survey, fewer than half of those polled said they actually wanted Pinochet to retire as army chief. Last week, middle-class housewives lined up in front of the Spanish embassy in Santiago to protest the Madrid trial by kissing Pinochet's portrait. Chile's school textbooks avoid unfavorable portrayals of Pinochet; they accommodate his argument that both sides committed atrocities in the '70s. Boosters like Guiloff are working hard to fashion a more grandfatherly image for their hero. The businessman heads up the newly created multimillion-dollar Pinochet Foundation, which funds scholarships for military families and is the general's most important p.r. tool. Its galas have become the hottest ticket for Chilean socialites, who crowd glittering tributes to Pinochet--like his epic birthday celebration last November, which was broadcast live on television. But Chile has also finally paid homage to those who suffered most grievously from Pinochet's earlier incarnations. Between 1974 and 1978, the secret police practiced untrammeled torture, ranging from prolonged electric shock to running over prisoners' legs with cars. Last year, with government funding, the site of one of their interrogation centers was landscaped into the first memorial to the dictatorship's victims. "To call what happened here bestiality is an insult to beasts," says survivor Pedro Matta, 49. "We have to teach better human values." Values are at the heart of the fight over the Senate seat--and why Pinochet is so determined to hold on to it. He knows that the uproar is "galvanizing a consensus" that his cherished constitution has to be reformed, says Guillermo Holzmann, a professor at the University of Chile's Political Science Institute in Santiago. A national plebiscite to do just that is gaining support, and blocking such a vote promises to be one of Pinochet's chief projects. But first he may have to master the weapons of persuasion that he has always scorned, despite the fact that he hopes to win the services of an armed-forces bodyguard who will accompany him in the Senate. Pinochet cannot count on the unqualified support of his successor, General Ricardo Izurieta, 54. Izurieta comes from a generation of officers who, military analysts say, is loyal to the institution rather than its patriarch. And sooner rather than later, Pinochet will no longer be able to intimidate opponents the way he could a quarter-century ago. "At the end of the day, he's 82 years old," says a former top aide. "He's had dizzy spells lately. From this point on, his threat begins to fade." Even so, the tough old general has made certain that the fadeout will be contentious, painful and lengthy as possible. --With Reporting by Elizabeth Love /Santiago
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