dictators and law
now always bad news
The United Nations General Assembly convenes this week, opening the door to many world leaders scheduling motorcades and bilats (bilateral meetings) across Manhattan this week. President Biden will meet with a number of counterparts both to showcase New York City as seat of the post-World War II multinational body and to conduct discussions on issues of mutual concern, among other reasons. It’s a busy week, to put it mildly, for all who attend.
Vlodomir Zelenskyy will attend, although a notable number are staying away this year. It earns credibility at home for many. Other leaders are not attending because they have issues at home, such as the president of France, but others have anxieties.
The other Vlad (assuming Vlodomir and Vladomir have linguistic roots together) is, of course, a pariah for many nations so he won’t appear for fear of ugliness and some sort of action to incarcerate him. Vlad the Impaler has friends like the North Korean and Chinese leaders who similarly have few allies. Vlad and these rulers also have a concern, albeit probably minor in their list of priorities.
Few global scoundrels ignore entirely the late Chilean General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte’s experience in 1998. The former long-running dictator faced arrest in London after a Spanish magistrate indicted him for crimes against humanity.
Pinochet Ugarte, as discussed only last week in ‘A Different 9/11 Memory’, seized power from the controversial Salvador Allende Gossens in September 1973. Pinochet Ugarte orchestrated a brutal, dark period in Chilean history as thousands of leftists, often labeled Socialists or Communists (though most of the world makes distinctions on these ideas), ‘were disappeared’ and tortured by their own government because the Armed Forces deemed them an existential threat to the nation’s soul.
This ‘guerra sucia’, or Dirty War, targeted those it deemed, with no due process, anti-Catholic, associated with Moscow and Cuba, and fundamentally incompatible with the nation. The militaries in four South American countries, Brasil, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina, conducted these ‘wars’ with impunity between 1964 and 1990.
Armed Forces throughout the region arrogated to themselves the responsibility for ‘protecting the patria’, any nation’s essence, blood, culture, and soul, of their nations in the face of Marxist-Leninism for several reasons. The Communist anti-religious bent offended many. Latin America’s Catholic roots remain firm today but the Church’s role was even stronger as recently as the 1960s and 70s. The militaries also feared they would lose their prerogatives and financial benefits in a new internal configuration which the left could unveil. Socialism and Communism were words engendering bad outcomes during the Cold War, smacking of ties to Moscow or Havana or Beijing.
Dismantling opposition groups by eradicating them had some popular support in each of the affected countries soon as the militaries seized power. The reason, in each case, was that the Armed Forces appeared positioned to reestablish stability in the face of social upheaval which had opened the door to the military power grabs.
A macabre comparison of the levels of torture and ‘disappearances’ is futile as each was horrifying on its own. The militaries carried out their actions without independent due process because they were the rulers of each of the affected societies, brooking no dissent at home or criticisms from abroad. Jimmy Carter’s administration, one long cited globally for raising the visibility of human rights protections in American foreign policy, was especially hated throughout these countries where Carter’s protests and condemnations of their actions yielded embarrassment but did not deter the disappearances.
In an additionally heinous action, the Argentine junta took children from pregnant women prior to being disappeared, then gave the infants to childless families rather than reunite them with other family members. The action intended to write off their existence in their birth families. The 1985 film, Official Story, is a gut-wrenching portrayal of one family’s sickening grasp of the facts.
The guerras sucias targeted the young, vulnerable, and the voices demanding rewrites of their nations’ social contracts. Some were disappeared because of their actions or views, some because of prior associations, and many because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Without due process, one can never know for certain why individuals were drowned in the Rio de la Plata near Buenos Aires or shoved into a huge national soccer stadium in Santiago. In sum, tens of thousands were affected across these countries.
Chile’s Pinochet Ugarte government lasted from 1973 through 1990 when the dictator surprisingly held to the effects of a massive miscalculation several years earlier. In trying to assure Chileans he was adhering to some sort of rule of law, Pinochet Ugarte offered a 1988 referendum that would have empowered him to remain in power for life. The general misjudged those repudiating his barbaric, if financially advantageous for some, rule. Defeating the referendum returned Chile to a genuinely democratic process with a notable exception.
The Armed Forces retain today designated, protected set of legislative seats and a percentage of the national copper revenues. Pinochet revisedthe constitution in 1980 for the military’s on-going role in the post-dictatorship. It remains in place as the nation’s political process failed to overturn it in a recent national vote.
Pinochet Ugarte was reviled but seemingly only a Cold War relic upon stepping down in 1990. He was in London in October 1998 for medical treatment when the Spanish Magistrate, Baltasar Garzón, issued a warrant for his arrest. The warrant cited attacks on Spanish citizens, torture, disappearances, and overall cruelty as part of crimes against humanity in Chile. Britain was still a member of the European Union at the time but the ill former dictator ultimately gained the right to return to Santiago rather than face a Spanish courtroom. He died in 2006, ostracised by the world yet free unlike those he victimised.
It is highly unlikely the Biden administration would allow an international incident similar to what the Thatcher government confronted twenty-five years ago. Dictators do not know for certain, however, a repeat can’t happen again as no one expected the drama in 1998. Certainly Putin with his preposterous war to beat down Ukraine or Xi Jinping with his already tenuous ties to Washington or condemnations over treatment of the Uighurs would fear this as reason to cancel their appearances before the internaitonal body. But, they little apparent gain from visits this year and a lot more danger of one sort or another.
Most Americans poo poo the value of the United Nations because the return on the investment of being the single largest contributor seems so distant. If deterring Putin or other dictators from flaunting their perverse behaviour is one additionally benefit, I am all the more for us retaining the body in New York.
Thank you for being a reader. Thank you especially when a paid subscriber. Please send me any thoughts.
Be well and be safe. FIN
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, ‘How Chile Won Back its Democracy’, TheAtlantic.com, 11 September 2023, retrieved at https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/09/chile-coup-democracy-1988-pinochet/675275/
Dan Merino, ‘General Pinochet arrest: 20 years on, here’s how it changed global justice’, theconversation.com,15 October 2018, retrieved at https://theconversation.com/general-pinochet-arrest-20-years-on-heres-how-it-changed-global-justice-104806
Catherine Osborn, ‘How Chile’s Constitutional Revolution Missed the Mark’, Foreignpolicy.com, 9 September 2022, retrieved at https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/09/chile-coup-democracy-1988-pinochet/675275/
Cynthia Watson, ‘A Different 9/11 Memory’, cynthiawatson.substack.com, 11 September 20203, retrieved at https://cynthiawatson.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/136950448?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts