Chilean transition to democracy
The military dictatorship of Chile led by General Augusto Pinochet ended on 11 March 1990 and was replaced by a democratically elected government. The transition period lasted roughly two years, although some aspects of the process lasted significantly longer. Unlike most democratic transitions, led by either the elite or the people, Chile's democratic transition process is known as an intermediate transition – a transition involving both the regime and the civil society. Throughout the transition, though the regime increased repressive violence, it simultaneously supported liberalization – progressively strengthening democratic institutions and gradually weakening those of the military.
Three factors contributed to the rise of democracy: the economy, the role of the military, and domestic politics. Rapid economic growth, a decline in dictatorship, and the decision of political parties to come together became the main motivation for a broad ideological coalition to be created in an effort to defeat Pinochet and his military rule. Chile was previously a democracy during the Presidential Republic.
Preparation for the transition began within the dictatorship itself, when a constitution establishing a transition process was approved in a plebiscite. From 11 March 1981 to March 1990, several organic constitutional laws were approved, intended to lead to the restoration of democracy. After the 1988 plebiscite, the 1980 Constitution was amended to ease provisions for future amendments to the constitution, create more seats in the senate, diminish the role of the National Security Council, and equalize the number of civilian and military members.
Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin served from 1990 to 1994 and was succeeded by another Christian Democrat, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, leading the same coalition for a further six-year term. Ricardo Lagos Escobar of the Socialist Party and the Party for Democracy led the Concertacion to a narrower victory in the 2000 presidential election. His term ended on 11 March 2006, when Michelle Bachelet of the Socialist Party took office. Center-right businessman Sebastián Piñera, of National Renewal, assumed the presidency on 11 March 2010, after Bachelet's term expired. Bachelet returned to office on 11 March 2014, and was succeeded by Piñera in the following term.
1988 plebiscite and reform of the Constitution
The Chilean constitution was passed under tight military control in 1980, and was designed to lead to a plebiscite in which the Chilean people would ratify a candidate proposed by the Chief of Staff of the Chilean Armed Forces and by the General Director of the Carabineros, the national police force, and who would become the President of Chile for an eight-year term. In 1980, this meant that the Chilean people were supposed to approve Augusto Pinochet's candidacy, assuring him of popular legitimacy and the sanction of a vote. If the people refused the junta's chosen candidate, the military would relinquish political control to the civilians, leading to presidential and parliamentary democratic elections the following year, putting an end to the military government.In 1987, Pinochet's government passed a law allowing the creation of political parties and another law allowing the opening of national registers of voters. If a majority of the people voted "yes" to Pinochet's plebiscite, he would have remained in power for the next eight years. Instead, Congress was elected and installed on 11 March 1990.
Context and causes of Pinochet's decision to follow the Constitution
Various factors led to Pinochet's decision to follow this procedure, including the situation in the Soviet Union, where Mikhail Gorbachev had initiated the glasnost and the perestroika democratic reforms. Those reforms led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and to the official end of the Cold War, which was an important factor.The Cold War had important consequences in South America, considered by the United States to be a full part of the Western Bloc, in contrast with the Eastern Bloc, a division born with the end of World War II and the Yalta Conference. Following the 1959 Cuban Revolution and the local implementation in several countries of Che Guevara's foco theory, the US waged a campaign in South America against the "Communist subversives." In a few years, all of South America was covered by similar military dictatorships, called juntas. In Paraguay, Alfredo Stroessner had been in power since 1954; in Brazil, left-wing President João Goulart was overthrown by a military coup in 1964; in Bolivia, General Hugo Banzer overthrew leftist General Juan José Torres in 1971; in Uruguay, considered the "Switzerland" of South America, Juan María Bordaberry seized power in the 27 June 1973 coup. A "Dirty War" was waged all over the continent, culminating with Operation Condor, an agreement between security services of the Southern Cone, other South American countries, and US government bodies, which provided training to repress and assassinate domestic political opponents. In 1976, militaries seized power in Argentina and supported the 1980 "Cocaine Coup" of Luis García Meza Tejada in Bolivia, before training the Contras in Nicaragua where the Sandinista National Liberation Front, headed by Daniel Ortega, had taken power in 1979. Similar military coups took place in Guatemala and in El Salvador. In the 1980s, however, the situation progressively evolved in the world as in South America, despite a renewal of the Cold War from 1979 to 1985, the year during which Gorbachev replaced Konstantin Chernenko as leader of the USSR.
Another alleged reason for Pinochet's decision to call for elections was Pope John Paul II's April 1987 visit to Chile: he visited Santiago, Viña del Mar, Valparaíso, Temuco, Punta Arenas, Puerto Montt and Antofagasta. Before his pilgrimage to Latin America, the pontiff criticized Pinochet's regime as "dictatorial" while speaking with reporters. According to The New York Times, he was "using unusually strong language" to criticize Pinochet and told the journalists that the Church in Chile must not only pray, but actively fight for the restoration of democracy in Chile. During his 1987 Chilean visit, the Polish pope asked Chile's 31 Catholic bishops to campaign for free elections in the country. According to George Weigel, the Pope held a meeting with Pinochet during which they discussed the topic of the return to democracy. John Paul II allegedly pushed Pinochet to accept a democratic opening of the regime, and even called for his resignation. In 2007, Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, acting as Pope John Paul II's secretary, confirmed that the Pope asked Pinochet to step down and transfer power over to civilian authorities during his visit. John Paul II also supported the Vicariate of Solidarity during his visit, which was a Church-led pro-democracy, anti-Pinochet organization. John Paul II visited the Vicariate of Solidarity's offices, spoke with its workers, and "called upon them to continue their work, emphasizing that the Gospel consistently urges respect for human rights." Some have erroneously accused John Paul II of affirming Pinochet's regime by appearing with the Chilean ruler on his balcony. However, Cardinal Roberto Tucci, organizer of John Paul II's pilgrimages, revealed that Pinochet tricked the pontiff by telling him he would take him to his living room, while in reality, he took him to his balcony. Tucci claims that the pontiff was "furious."
Whatever the case, political advertising was legalized on 5 September 1987, and became a key element of the "NO" campaign for the referendum, which countered the official campaign that proposed a return to a Popular Unity government in case of Pinochet's defeat. Finally, the "NO" to Pinochet won with 55.99% of the votes, against 44.01% of the votes. As a result, presidential and legislative elections were called for the following year.
In July 1989, a constitutional referendum took place after long negotiations between the government and the opposition. 54 constitutional reforms were proposed, among which was reform of the way that the Constitution itself could be reformed, the restriction of state of emergency declarations, the affirmation of political pluralism, and the strengthening of constitutional rights, as well as of the democratic principle and of participation in political life. All parties in the political spectrum supported the reforms, with the exception of the small right-wing Avanzada Nacional and other minor parties. Reforms were passed with 91.25% of the vote.
Aylwin administration
The Concertación coalition, which supported the return to democracy, gathered the Christian Democrat Party, the Socialist Party, the Party for Democracy and the Social Democrat Radical Party. Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin won a sweeping victory in the December 1989 elections, the first democratic elections since the 1970 election won by Salvador Allende. Patricio Aylwin had gathered 3,850,023 votes, while the center-right supermarket tycoon Francisco Javier Errázuriz Talavera from the UCCP party managed to take 15.05% of the vote, whose main effect was lowering right-wing candidate Hernán Büchi's votes to 29.40%.The Concertación coalition dominated Chilean politics for much of the next two decades. In February 1991, it established the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, releasing the Rettig Report on human rights violations during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. This report, contested by human rights NGOs and associations of political prisoners, counted only 2,279 cases of "disappearances" that could be proved and recorded. Of course, the very nature of "disappearances" made such investigations very difficult, while many victims were still intimidated by the authorities and did not dare go to the local police center to register themselves on lists, since the police officers were the same as during the dictatorship.
Several years later, the same problem arose with the 2004 Valech Report, which counted almost 30,000 victims of torture, among testimony from 35,000 people. However, the Rettig Report did list important detention and torture centers, such as the Esmeralda ship, the Víctor Jara Stadium, Villa Grimaldi, etc. Registration of victims of the dictatorship, and the following trials in the 2000s of military personnel for human rights violations, dominated the struggle by human rights NGOs and associations of political prisoners, many of whom resided in exile, for the recognition of crimes committed during the dictatorship.
Besides implementing the Rettig Commission, Aylwin's government established a Comisión Especial de Pueblos indígenas, whose report provided the intellectual framework of the "Indigenous Law" or law n° 19 253. The law went into effect on 28 September 1993 and recognized the Mapuche people as an inherent part of the Chilean nation. Other indigenous people officially recognized included Aymaras, Atacameñas, Collas, Quechuas, Rapa-Nui, Yámanas and Kawashkars. Despite this state proclamation of indigenous rights, conflicts brought by land-occupations and Mapuche claims led to state repression and the use of anti-terrorist laws enacted by the military junta against Mapuche activists.