Chile News and Culture

Yesterday's Lunar Eclipse

2008-02-21T15:54:00.002-03:00

On February 20, 2008, starting at about 10PM an impressive eclipse of the moon was witnessed in both northern and southern hemispheres. People in Chile were lucky to see this year's lunar eclipse in its entirety. View a photo of yesterday's lunar eclipse.

Massive Earthquake Hits Northern Chile

2007-11-14T15:05:00.000-03:00

Sparking fears of a tsunami, and setting off warnings in Hawaii, an explosive 7.8 earthquake struck leagues below the earth's surface near Calama, a bleak mining town in Northern Chile. No casualties have been reported.

Santiago Times.

Chile Earthquake, Tsunami Warning.

South America earthquake report.

Chile Telephony and Tech Roundup

2007-11-07T15:32:00.000-03:00

Telecommunications is one of the fastest growing sectors in Chile, and is making strides in anti-trust legal reform as well as innovative services, and the evangeliation of telephone, cellular, VoIP and broadband services. Business news Americas reports summarizes a long list of challenges and successes facing Chile's rapidly growing telecommunications market

How does this affect foreign investors? Interestingly, while many are connected through high tech mobile devices, many expats doing business in Chile also rely on cheap prepaid international phone cards or calling cards, as do their colleagues and family members, when trying to contact them in Chile.

Ethical Wage Debate Continues

2007-09-20T11:19:00.000-04:00

There a revival in the debate about ethical wage in Chile, since when did the establishment really care about the poor?

Blogs in Chile

2007-08-22T12:00:00.000-04:00

Some persnickety scoundrels, not satisfied with the reporting at Santiago Times, and apparently unable to understand Spanish, have created a list of English language blogs in Chile. But rather than just creating a list - what's wrong with a list? - these presumptuous wannabe pundits have the audacity to review these blogs about Chile. Furthermore, this Chile blog review site is all about English language blogs, for the time being.

Dumb Terrorist Bombs Embassy in Santiago, Chile

2007-07-16T15:18:00.001-04:00

Rule Number 1: you don't plant a home-made bomb on a national holiday, unless you're a half-assed terrorist, who didn't really want to hurt anybody, but just wanted to make a statement.

Rule Number 2: Have a statement. Did you bomb the British embassy, or were you aiming for the Israeli embassy? What's your problem with Britain, anyway? If you read the news, you might be aware that Britain is leaning away from Bush. Are you trying to speed up that process, or are you pro-Bush? In addition to your cylindrical device filled with gunpowder, why don't you throw us a bone?

Man, this is like highschool, that time I felt the earth shake and ears rang because some dimwit detonated a small bomb in the quad. No one was hurt, and he got caught and sobbed in principals office.

Dumb terrorist, you hardly even deserve the title, "terrorist".

Chile Fusses About Water Rights

2007-06-28T00:31:00.000-04:00

A lot of huss and fuss about water rights in Chile, the libs might call this some sort of environmental catastrophe. Look West libs, that's where your water is!

It's About Time

2007-06-26T04:01:00.000-04:00

Our conservative columnist is back to straighten up the ranks. I was skiing all summer in the northern hemisphere and upon returning, expecting the worst, I came back to Chile pleasantly surprised that Chile's 2% rich are flaunting their wealth and the poor are getting poorer.

Viva Chile!

Pinochet Dies in Santiago, Chile

2006-12-12T13:05:00.000-03:00

Two days after the death of former dictator Augusto Pinochet, tens of thousands continue to line up to see his body located at Santiago's military academy Escuela Militar.

Elsewhere, in the poor outskirts of Santiago, people celebrated the death of Pinochet .

Auspiciously, Pinochet died on the UN international day of human rights.

The Invisible President

2006-07-13T18:20:00.000-04:00

It seems that President Michelle Bachelet is everywhere these days. Everywhere, that is, except where she is needed.

Firstly, an agreement between Argentina and Bolivia will likely force gas prices through the roof in Chile. Bachelet, where were you when that happened? Why didn’t you hold back Kirchner’s hand before he signed the deal? (ST, July 14)

In response to higher gas prices the southern truck drivers’ union announced earlier this week they would prolong their strike indefinitely (ST, July 13), claiming the government has failed to listen to their concerns. Once again, Bachelet, why were you in the Capitol dealing with flooding and politics instead of fanning the tempers of 15,000 angry truck drivers?

And last but not least, the heavy rains. Disgruntled residents of Santiago’s more nether regions were unhappy that Bachelet didn’t arrive sooner to witness the damage to their homes and streets. I wonder, however, why she didn’t just put an end to the rain once and for all. Or kayak down the Mapocho to personally acknowledge the suffering of all those affected by the weather. Isn’t that what we hire politicians to do?

I know that Bachelet has been in office for only a few months, but it’s clearly her fault that Chilean children are obese, teenagers are using marijuana, truck drivers are pissed about high gas prices and rain is flooding the streets. I want to see action NOW.

With all the commissions she’s formed to solve the nation’s problems, Bachelet may need another to tell her what the people, and her advisers, are saying. And a personal jet, so she can be there when I complain about my leaky roof, and still make it in time to meet with Congress…

(Venezuela’s Chavez, though my ideological adversary, could teach Bachelet a thing or two. During the last episode of his show “Hello Presidente” Chavez granted my neighbors' wish for three more chickens… That’s what I call responsive… )

Don't be a Buzzkill, Bachelet

2006-07-08T12:13:00.000-04:00

This Tuesday Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet held an informal breakfast with the National Press Association, fielding questions from 34 reporters about her time thus far in office.

When prompted to comment on the recent “crime wave” of juvenile delinquency, Bachelet said media coverage has created a “sensational environment of fear,” and further criticized the news for not discussing the underlying causes of crime.

Thank you Bachelet, you've proved my point: a "nice" and "compassionate" single mother is just not presidential material. What's next!? Time-out corner and a mother’s kind words of wisdom for a raging robber?

Sure, Bachelet, you support dialogue, you want to reduce poverty, bla bla bla. But I’ll hear none of it. We’ve got bigger fish to fry. I count my self proudly among the 86.7 percent of Chileans who fear being a victim of crime.

So the liberals tell us that crime’s gone down from 43 percent in 2003 to 38 percent in 2005. Fact schmact. So what if these lazy delinquents are getting lazier. I could have told you that!

But let's give an accolade to those who really deserve it. Indeed, it's nice to know that at least someone’s been getting to work on time; the news media – they clock in every day and do their job well. They haven't missed a beat. They've got me scared shitless.

If I wasn’t barraged with constant images of car chases, burglaries and shootings, then I might actually listen to what the president is saying. Then where’d we be!

No, that’s not the intellectually dishonest path I'd like to go down. The one that says crime is caused by social factors like poverty. It also says we won't solve anything by hyping it up in the media. That's a bad line of thinking, because it's just no fun.

Me, I like mystery. I like the thought of arming myself against this mystery. When I go home to watch TV in Chile, I never know what to expect. An assualt? A burglary? A stabbing? Each day it’s different -- it's so exciting!

Where's my gun!

Thanks to the media devoting half their airtime to delinquency, we residents Santiago and all of Chile would wholeheartedly welcome a law enforcement crackdown á la Rudy Giuliani. My one request, though: keep the crime coverage coming. (I just can't get enough of that stuff).

Again, Ms. Buzzkill would have us entertain some wishy-washy sociological debate over causes of crime and constructive means to a positive end.

Schmend.

Don't listen to her, Chilean press, just let the good times role. Adelante!

Greenpeace in Chile? Problem Solved.

2006-06-30T16:39:00.000-04:00

Chile's purchase of ten F-16 fighter jets from the United States has deep political implications, one could speculate. Such as maintaining a balance of power with Venezuela, the first nation in South America to buy an F-16. Or, perhaps, a closening of ties with United States. These are all great ideas, but they just don't go far enough. I propose that the Chilean government jack up its military capabilities in order to deal with a different set of troubles much closer to home.

The first national security threat—a deeply unsettling trend within the borders of Chile—was brought to our attention a few days ago by Interior Minister Andrés Zaldivar: bannner-wielding, radical environmentalists from neighboring countries affiliated with a terrorist organization that identifies itself as "Greenpeace."

Yes, concerned readers, Argentinean and Brazilian Greenpeace members have stormed Chile in ones and two's to block access to the corporation Celco, a cellulose manufacturer whose motto, I believe, is "Clean Rivers, Happy Swans."

Responding to the protests against Celco in a nationally broadcast appearance on TVN, Zaldivar warned that any foreigners entering the country on a tourist visa who disrupt public order will be immediately asked to leave the country. Bold words, Zaldivar, but not bold enough.

See, I respect you because you're a guy who knows how to use his resources. You're a "resource guy" - you cut down trees. So take a look at this brand new resource you've got at your command -- 10 F-16's. Just put in a call to the Air Force, they'll take care of the rest. Greenpeace? Problem solved.

You're a busy guy, but let me bring your attention to something that -- and I speak for the Chilean people here -- bothers us. Juvenile Delinquents. It has gotten to the point where shoot-outs take place in the middle of a crowded mall. Leave it up to the liberals, and we'd spend the next 50 years talking about the roots of delinquency and the need for social and economic reform.

Ha! We didn't just dish out US$600 million to talk about the unequal distribution of wealth, the lack of opportunities given to kids growing up in bad neighborhoods, bla bla bla. We spend good money to take care of business. In purchasing these fighter jets the government is making a bold but necessary statement to the thugs: we won't take this kind of behavior lying down. There.

Thank you Chile for finding effective policy alternatives to social crises. Use your resources, and start with those vegan activists. Bachelet, take a cue from Bush. Ask him to be a champ and throw in a few dog kennels from gitmo, we got some terrorists of our own down here...

Caravan of Death - Really that Bad?

2006-04-17T19:43:00.000-04:00

Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch. Sometimes it seems like that's all you liberals do. And in the meantime, you miss out on the real point of the the story: turns out that Pinochet's Gen. Sergio Arellano Stark didn't really do it! Thanks to an honest judge doing his job, an old general can finally go home to his loving family, with clean hands.

Ah, but no. You're still not happy -- you liberals, once again, have found something to complain about.

What did you call it again? A "Caravan of Death?" Heh, whoa! That's heavy! Heh, who invited you to the party? Heh.

But seriously, it wasn't a caravan. It was a helicopter. And big deal, anyway! So like 70 political prisoners disappeared in the north of Chile in 1973, right after Pinochet saved Chile, and you whiny liberals like to say that Gen. Sergio Arellano Stark ordered the killings. Bla bla bla.

Too bad for you guys, that story just became untrue last week. So ha! Take that!

And Thank God. After nearly 20 years of liberal kvetching fogging up the truth, it's good to know that a spark of clarity remains from that veritable belle epoque that was Chile under Pinochet.

The good work of Judge Victor Montiglio has finally set the record straight. Fact: Gen. Arellano didn't show up in the north of Chile until two days after these "killings" took place. Therefore, he couldn't possibly have ordered any killings. Right?

Right. That's what the judge said, and that's good enough for me.

Sex in Chile - Too Much?

2006-04-05T19:20:00.000-04:00

Shocked, enraged, defiled -- however you may feel about this breaking news, it's a fact. The Future Foundation reports that a general violation of wholesomeness is running rampant in Chile.

Now, it's sort of an open secret that the right-wing Future Foundation is a highly respected think tank among the staff here at CHIP. That's why we're listening up when they say that they've just come out with a report about SEX IN CHILE, and it's no good news.

Apparently, Chile's recent tide of liberal godlessness is not only giving power to women,health care to the elderly, and better pay to military grunts, but these sinful citizens are actually reverting to the free love "hippy" nonsense of the 1960's. And to make matters worse, they're talking about it!

Now, whenever the Foundation publishes anything, we drop everything and call together a series of emergency meetings and discussion groups. The concerned staff at The Santiago Times also joins in, as we chart the course to how to most faithfully mirror the policies and punditry of the Foundation.

This time, we had reason to be fairly shocked and enraged. Embarrassed, too. Turns out we kept a less-than-keen eye on the decadence in Chile, a country that, for the latter part of the 20th century, was a wholesome symbol of traditional Catholic values, conservatism, going to Church on Sunday and getting to bed on time.

We dropped the ball. Future Foundation, People of Chile, we apologize. We deeply regret this egregious error, and will do our best to reverse the wicked trends that have beset themselves upon this nation--in no small part due to our journalistic negligence.

We know that the damage has already been done, and it's only going to get worse. But in time, if we are vigilant, we can reverse this nation's wayward course and steer our people towards calmer, wholesomer waters. It's with this solemn promise that we bid you adieu, that we may bow our heads and return to what we do best: report.

Chile News Archives 2005

2005-12-31T10:00:00.000-03:00

Here's a roundup of Chile news stories from 2005 -- both interesting and obscure.

CZECHS TO HELP REBUILD BURNED PARK
Czechs Rally to Compensate for Countryman’s Negligence In Torres Del Paine

(March 4, 2005) The Czech National Conservation Union will launch a campaign next week to raise money for the regeneration of fire-damaged forests in the Torres del Paine National Park, Region XII.

“The idea is to support the regeneration of Torres del Paine as the fire has damaged part of its infrastructure. We think the funds could be used to rebuild pathways, but it’s up to the people at the National Forestry Corporation (CONAF),” said Lad Ptacek, President of the International Relations Committee at the Czech National Conservation Union.

The broadcast media in the Czech Republic are helping to publicize the launch of the nationwide campaign. Prague-based dailies have been closely following the news of the fires in Torres del Paine, which were “a worry and a matter of great regret for the Czech government and people,” according to a statement issued by the Czech Embassy in Santiago.

The news of the campaign came as Czech government officials Vladimir Zavázal and Eduard Janota arrived Thursday in Chile to discuss the possibility of offering logistical and financial aid in the aftermath of the Torres del Paine fires, which were caused by the negligence of one of their countrymen.

Janota and Zavázal met with Chilean government officials at 5 p.m. Thursday to finalize their schedule and discuss the resources they can offer to rectify the fire damage.

The Czech ministers will meet with the regional governor of Punta Arenas (Region XII) at midday on Saturday before touring the fire-damaged areas of the park around Laguna Amarga.

The fires have now destroyed about 16,000 hectares of woodland, thicket and grassland in Torres del Paine, which was declared a World Biosphere Reserve by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1978. Around 3 percent of this area is made up of native trees that only grow in Torres del Paine.

CONAF is currently working on a project to artificially regenerate the native woodland that has been lost, while also examining how to replant other, more common species and return animals to their native habitat. CONAF announced Monday the regeneration plan would be ready by April 14.

A team of academics and forestry specialists from the United States will arrive later this month to lend their expertise in planning the regeneration project.

The Chilean government is likely to solicit international help to raise the US$2.4 billion that it estimates will be needed to regenerate the area. So far, there are no indicators of how big the Czech contribution will be.

“It’s difficult to know how much money we will collect,” Ptacek said.

Meanwhile, it was feared that tourism would suffer as a result of the fires, following the closure of one of the park’s exits and the evacuation of dozens of campers (ST, Feb. 28).

The National Tourism Service (SERNATUR) has responded to the crisis. SERNATUR Director Oscar Santelices announced a “campaign to re-brand Torres del Paine because more damage has been done to the park’s image than to its fauna.”

The fires started Feb. 17 when Czech tourist Jiri Smitak accidentally knocked over a gas stove in an area of the park where fires are prohibited (ST, Feb. 28).

The flames raged for 10 days as 800 firefighters battled to bring them under control. As well as destroying about 5 percent of the park’s total area, putting out the fires has cost the Chilean government US$1.4 million.

SOURCE: LA TERCERA, EL MERCURIO,
By Emily Byrne (editor@santiagotimes.cl)

US HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT ASSESSES CONDITIONS IN CHILE
Insulza Incensed by Superpower’s Appraisal

(March 3, 2005) The United States criticized Chile’s human rights record, prisons and social shortcomings in its annual Human Rights Country Reports released this week.

Interior Minister José Miguel Insulza, a candidate to become the Organization of American States’ secretary general, was outraged by the report’s criticisms. He questioned whether the United States should be making moral evaluations of other nations.

“We have our problems and they have theirs too. The only thing is, there was no evaluation of the United States in the report,” Insulza said.

The United States is in no position to judge, said Dep. Gabriel Ascencio, the president of the Chamber of Deputies.

“If we were to evaluate what the (United States) does in the world, it would be a devastating report,” Ascencio told Radio Cooperativa.

The U.S. Embassy in Santiago refused to comment on Chilean reactions to the report.

The U.S. State Department’s report scrutinizes Chile’s “overcrowded and antiquated” prisons because some detention centers that were designed to hold 23,025 prisoners now accommodate as many as 37,000 inmates. The majority of prisoners live in “sub-standard sanitary conditions,” while prison food only meets “minimal nutritional needs.” There were also isolated cases where prison guards were accused of abusing prisoners.

Insulza rebuffed the accusations that Chilean prisons are substandard.

“We are building a great number of detention centers that will be opened in the coming months,” he said.

Domestic violence against women and the ill treatment of children were also highlighted as serious problems in Chile. The report quotes a 2001 Universidad de Chile study that revealed that over 50 percent of Chilean women had experienced violence in their relationships with their partners. The National Service for the Protection of Minors (SENAME) also provided statistics to substantiate the report’s claims.

In October, violent clashes between the indigenous Mapuche groups and local landowners, logging companies and government authorities occurred in Region IX. The U.S. report denounced the prosecution of 10 Mapuche protesters under anti-terrorism laws, harking back to the military government’s rule. Since the ruling, Chilean human rights organizations have been protesting the law, and the nongovernmental organization Human Rights Watch labeled it “unacceptable in a democratic society” (ST, Oct. 29, 2004).

The U.S. report also praised some of the country’s human rights policies. For example, Chile was lauded for making human rights courses a core requirement of police and military academies’ curriculums. The report also recognized that Chile’s censored media is a thing of the past, and today’s broadcast media is “free of direct government influence.”The report recognizes that Chile has made progress in the courtroom, applauding the Chilean judicial system for overcoming legal and institutional bureaucracy to lift ex-dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s immunity and indict other former military-government officials.

The report says Chile’s human rights policies are largely satisfactory, but the report is “not very different from the previous year’s,” said Sebastián Brett, head of the Chilean branch of Human Rights Watch.

Chile failed to make significant progress in 2004 because it has a tendency to regard human rights issues as a thing of the past, Brett said.

“Human rights should be a constant issue in every country,” he said. The report evaluated human rights conditions in 196 countries worldwide.

Cuba and Venezuela are the worst human rights offenders in Latin America according to the report. Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, China and Sudan were also denounced for breaches of human rights, including instances of torture and organized assassinations.

This year’s Human Rights Country Reports have been labelled part of President George W. Bush’s new National Security Strategy, a policy “based on the principle that promoting political and economic freedom and respect for human dignity will build a safer and better world.”

“The survival of liberty in our land depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world,” Bush said in his second inaugural address on Jan. 20.

Brett questioned Bush’s authority on human rights issues.

“If the country writing this report had a reputation as a promoter and protector of human rights, it could have a positive effect. But the abuses and tortures we have seen in 2004 in Abu Ghraib in Iraq, in Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan take away any credibility (the United States) may have had,” Brett said.

The U.S. anti-terrorism policies and the CIA’s detention and rendition policies have caused controversy in recent months. A Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, and Australian-born Mamdouh Habib both claim to have been victims of the U.S. government’s torture and disappearance practices (ST, Feb. 28). Arar has filed a lawsuit against the government, which will bring the United States’ own human rights policies under scrutiny.

Chile was not alone in its indignation. Government officials in Mexico, China and South Africa also spoke out to defend their country’s human rights situation following the report’s release.

SOURCE: RADIO COOPERATIVA, LA NACIÓN, EL MERCURIO
By Emily Byrne (editor@santiagotimes.cl)

SEX TRIAL DECISION PENDING FOR CHILE SENATOR
Private Meeting Between Lavandero And Public Prosecutor Criticized

(March 1, 2005) The Supreme Court is expected to rule on Sen. Jorge Lavandero’s immunity from prosecution within two weeks, a decision that could lead to a trial on charges that he sexually abused four children.

Lavandero has maintained his innocence and blamed mining companies and political rivals of conspiring against him to destroy his career. In January, he appealed a decision by the Appeals Court of Temuco, Region IX, that stripped him of the immunity he enjoys as member of Congress (ST, Jan. 28).

The senator’s protestations notwithstanding, the investigation conducted by Public Prosecutor Xavier Armendáriz has gone steadily forward and it appears as though Lavandero will most likely face trial.

In related developments, commentators and politicians were stunned by revelations of a Nov. 20 meeting between National Public Prosecutor Guillermo Piedrabuena and Lavandero. News of the meeting was first published in a Feb. 20 interview in La Tercera and served to undermine public confidence in the independence of the National Prosecutor’s office and the way in which the Lavandero investigation had been conducted.

The original prosecutor in the Lavandero case, Region IX Public Prosecutor Esmirna Vidal, was dismissed from her position by Piedrabuena for allegedly failing to properly pursue complaints against Lavandero. She was replaced by a public prosecutor sent from Santiago - Xavier Armendáriz.

But Vidal has fought her dismissal, claiming she was a scapegoat and that her boss Piedrabuena had been fully informed of the status of her less-than-enthusiastic investigation of Lavandero, a powerful Christian Democratic Party senator.

Vidal and Piedrabuena were in the midst of mutual recriminations when the news of Piedrabuena’s meeting with Lavandero came to light and the revelation did not serve to enhance Piedrabuena’s standing in the dispute.

During the 15-minute interview between the nation’s foremost public prosecutor and the senator, Lavandero supposedly told Piedrabuena he was innocent of all charges. Piedrabuena supposedly told the senator that such matters had to be discussed with Prosecutor Armendáriz, who is in charge of the case and was aware of the interview.

Defending himself after news of the meeting became public, Piedrabuena said, “I think it’s an obligation to accept any request that comes from a senator, because at that time he wasn’t being investigated nor had he lost his immunity, so I thought that it has to do with public relations and I didn’t commit myself to anything.”

Interior Minister José Miguel Insulza criticized the meeting, but he said the matter will be handled by the public prosecutor’s office and the Supreme Court, and the government will not intervene. “Considering the way the public prosecutor has performed, I don’t think the meeting had any effect at all,” Insulza said.

Soledad Alvear, a Christian Democratic Party presidential precandidate for the Concertación coalition, declined to comment at any length on the meeting, saying only, “I wouldn’t have done it.”

But the president of the Supreme Court, Marcos Libedinsky, who also met with Lavandero, defended Piedrabuena, saying, “All authorities have open doors to anyone who, in certain circumstances, wants to talk with them.”

Libedinsky denied that his meeting with Lavandero had to do with sex abuse charges against the senator, and insisted they talked only about the proposed royalty tax on copper.

While waiting for the Supreme Court’s decision, Lavandero has sheltered himself in one of his properties in Carahue, near Temuco, after having had to leave his former property in Metrenco, also in Region IX, which he sold to José Albornoz last month. After learning about the sale of the Metrenco property, a court in Temuco ordered Lavandero to refrain from selling any other property held in his name (ST, Feb. 3).

PINOCHET-ERA INTERIOR MINISTER INDICTED IN CHILE
Action Against UDI Sen. Sergio Fernández Under Consideration

(Feb. 28, 2005) Two former interior ministers – retired Gens. Enrique Montero Marx and César Raúl Benavides – were indicted last week by investigative Judge Juan Guzmán as alleged accomplices to forced disappearances that occurred in Chile during the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

The indictments represent a major expansion of Guzmán’s investigation into Pinochet-era human rights abuses, aimed now at the top military and political commanders who allegedly planned and ordered disappearances, or worked to cover them up. Heretofore Guzmán’s investigations had centered on the secret police networks and agents who did the dirty work.

More than 1,200 people disappeared during the Pinochet regime and at least 27,000 people were tortured, according to official government reports.

Guzmán is also weighing a plaintiff’s request to indict a former civilian interior minister during the Pinochet regime, Sergio Fernández, who is currently an elected senator for the rightist Independent Democratic Union (UDI) party. Guzmán is expected to decide on this request Monday.

The expansion of Guzmán’s investigation has political overtones that may well impact this year’s presidential election, where the UDI’s Joaquín Lavín will challenge a candidate from the governing Concertación coalition, an alliance of center-left political parties that has ruled Chile since Pinochet stepped down as head of state in 1990. Lavín – who during the military regime was an editor for El Mercurio newsgroup – and other UDI leaders have loudly denounced Guzmán’s indictments against the former top military officials and have rushed to the defense of Fernández.

Guzmán’s indictment of Montero is especially revealing, inasmuch as Montero has been working the past 22 years as the right-hand man to Agustín Edwards, owner of El Mercurio newsgroup and patriarch of Chile’s conservative media establishment.

Montero, who was second in command at Chile’s Interior Ministry from under Benavides, Interior Minister between 1973 and 1978, and was himself Interior Minister between 1982 and 1983, began working for Edwards just after retiring from the Army in 1983. Montero has an office immediately adjacent to Edwards’ on the third floor of the El Mercurio newspaper building on Avenida Santa Maria, and the two are reportedly inseparable friends.

Montero and Benavides are accused by Guzmán of being accomplices in the disappearance of victims in the so-called Operation Colombo, and Guzmán last week openly condemned El Mercurio for its collaboration with the Pinochet military regime and its “disinformation” campaigns in that era.

The Operation Colombo affair was an especially complex disinformation campaign aimed at convincing the Chilean public that 119 individuals “disappeared” by the military regime had, in fact, left Chile and killed one another in various shoot-outs in Brazil and Argentina.

Family members of each of the 119 victims had presented habeas corpus actions before Chilean courts, alleging the individuals had been illegally detained by the state’s secret police. The courts then asked government authorities – in this case Montero and Benavides – who affirmed that the individuals had not been arrested by state personnel.

In bringing his indictment against the two former military junta leaders, Judge Guzmán alleges that men in their positions “could not have been ignorant of the privation of liberties that was occurring.” Specifically, Montero is charged with complicity in the disappearance of five individuals, and Benavides with the disappearance of 15 individuals.

The Edwards family-owned media – the morning daily El Mercurio and the afternoon tabloid dailies La Segunda and Las Últimas Noticias – allegedly played a key role is promoting the Pinochet regime’s disinformation campaign about the 119 disappeared individuals. An analysis from Sunday’s La Nación put it thusly:

“Operation Colombo was nothing other than an outrageous communications campaign led by the occupants of La Moneda with the intention of covering up the massive human rights violations that were going on, most especially with respect to the disappearance of people. The press of that era played its part impeccably. Thousands of Chileans still have vivid memories of the headline that appeared in the Edwards family’s afternoon daily on July 26, 1975. ‘They died like rats,’ said La Segunda, referring to the 119 individuals that had supposedly killed one another in different internecine power struggles.”

The sophisticated disinformation campaign counted on an international cast of media, including a specially created magazine from Argentina reporting about the deaths of 60 of the disappeared, and Chile’s diplomatic representative in Rio de Janeiro giving Brazilian media another list of 59 individuals who had also supposedly killed one another. These reports from Argentina and Brazil were meticulously reproduced by the Edwards-owned media in Chile – no questions asked.

SOURCE: EL MERCURIO, LA NACIÓN, DIARIO SIETE, LA TERCERA
By Steve Anderson (editor@santiagotimes.cl)

PEHUENCHES TO HELP WITH SENDERO IN CHILE
Chile Indigenous Community Will Oversee 26 km Of Path

(Feb. 11, 2005) Indigenous Pehuenches will be in charge of a 26 km section of the Sendero de Chile (Path of Chile).

Twenty Pehuenches will work at a national reserve in southern Region VIII to open a new route that they hope will attract tourism. The route will be called Rgpagcherrue (“path of the man of the winds” in the indigenous language).

This path has been used by Pehuenche communities for generations, and it goes through the native Araucaria forest and Ralco River waterfalls, said Juan Purrán, one of the leaders of the Pehuenche community.

“This section is very important, and it will remain for the future generations. The good thing is that it will bring some income to the local families,” he said.

Sendero de Chile is an ambitious project announced by President Ricardo Lagos during his first address to the nation in 2000. It aims to open the country’s many rural areas to commercial tourism. The path will stretch 8,000 km and be completed in time for the country’s bicentenary in 2010.

Sendero de Chile intends to promote the protection of natural resources and facilitate access to nature. The project will respect the environmental characteristics of the territory so the people who use it can establish new relationships with nature.

Working together with local communities was more than just a goal of the project, it was a requirement, said Esteban Delgado, general coordinator of Sendero de Chile, in an interview with The Santiago Times.

So far he has worked with Aymaras and Atacameños in Region I, agricultural communities in Region IV and V, and Mapuches in Region VIII and in other southern regions.

This year, the constructors will work in the north in Region II and IV, in the center in the Metropolitan Region and Region VII, and in the south in Regions VIII, IX, XI and XII. Beyond opening new sections, they want to improve the current conditions of those that are ready to be visited by the public.

Delgado said they will focus on achieving standard quality conditions, such as adequate infrastructure and environmental education, to give real options for ecotourism in Chile.

The path not only will cover continental Chile but also the Juan Fernández archipelago.

Robison Crusoe Island includes a submarine section, which provides a place to learn about the value of sea resources. It is rich in sea fauna, and it is also suitable for diving and snorkelling.

The National Environmental Commission (CONAMA), in charge of coordinating the project, has financed seven projects aimed at providing training for local tour guides in English, arts and crafts and environmental issues.

Delgado said the project will encompass Easter Island as well, but the requirements of the Rapa Nui community are different from those of the natives of Robison Crusoe island in the archipelago.

“They are more complex compared to other communities … they have shown interest in doing a submarine section, but they want to gain experience on the terrestrial part of the sendero first,” he said.

Sendero de Chile intends to include local communities, especially indigenous ones, which have been ignored and repressed by the Chilean government for years. The conflict between authorities and the Mapuche communities is among Chile’s oldest and most divisive problems.

The Mapuches, the country’s largest indigenous community, have struggled to recuperate their ancestral land that has been lost in the first days of the Spanish colonization. Governments have consistently repressed the Mapuches, especially through the application of the antiterrorist law, which has caused alarm in many international human rights organizations.

It is hoped that nitiatives such as Sendero de Chile, in which the indigenous communities are allowed to manage their ancestral lands, will go some way towards solving the conflict by acknowledging indigenous peoples as the owners of the disputed land.

SOURCE: EL MERCURIO
By Cristina Cifuentes (editor@santiagotimes.cl)

GUZMAN ISSUES MURDER CHARGES OVER CHILE'S CARAVAN OF DEATH

Eighteen To Face Trial Over 1973 Massacre; Cheyre Hits Back At El Mercurio

(Feb. 10, 2005) Judge Juan Guzmán has brought charges including murder and kidnapping against 18 military officers and officials involved in the “Caravan of Death,” the execution squad that roamed Chile in the wake of the September 1973 coup.

Seven years after initiating the investigation, Guzmán wrapped up the preliminary stage on Tuesday and submitted his summary to the judiciary.

“I am very satisfied,” the judge told reporters. “This investigation has been very efficient (and) has produced far-reaching insight into the matter.”

The Caravan of Death, allegedly personally authorized by Gen. Augusto Pinochet after he swept to power, comprised a group of senior officers that traversed the country in Puma helicopters during September and October 1973, carrying out summary executions of detained supporters of Salvador Allende’s ousted socialist government.

Guzmán now has 20 days to notify the members of that group of the 94 counts of human rights violations he has brought against them.

Human rights lawyer Carmen Hertz, whose husband, lawyer and journalist Carlos Berger, was among the murder squad’s victims, hailed the indictments for “one of the most atrocious massacres of the military regime.”

It was this case that led to the first human rights charges brought against Pinochet in Chile, where he returned after two years under house arrest in Britain. Between August 2000 and January 2001, the ex-dictator was stripped of immunity from prosecution, charged and detained for 57 counts of murder and 19 of aggravated kidnapping.

But the case was scuppered when the Supreme Court ruled in July 2001 that the octogenarian general was mentally unfit to stand trial.

Among the accused are former National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) agent Armando Fernández Larios, the mastermind behind the 1976 assassination in Washington, D.C., of Allende’s Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, Carlos López Tapia, Guzmán’s cousin, and agent Col. Marcelo Moren Brito, already serving a 10-year sentence at the Cordillera Prison for abduction.

Retired Gen. Sergio Arellano Stark was indicted as the caravan’s chief.

“The judge should be sanctioned,” said Sergio Arellano Iturriga, the general’s son, alleging that Guzmán, a veteran of the human rights circuit, was “incompetent and slanted.” He said the judge had refused to supply documents to the defense and had hurriedly wound up the investigation.

Guzmán had good reason to hasten the end of the preliminary stage.

Last month, the Supreme Court issued a controversial order that all pending human rights cases stemming from the military’s 17-year rule must be brought to fruition or be dismissed within six months (ST, Jan. 26).

That decision, vilified by victims’ families as an effective amnesty for many abusers, has nonetheless prompted a swathe of submissions in human rights cases.

Most recently, prosecutors filed Monday for Pinochet to be stripped of his immunity to answer for the massacre of 119 dissidents in 1975 as part of Operation Colombo (ST, Feb. 8). On Tuesday, Guzmán, who also heads that investigation, accepted attorney Hernán Quezada’s request. The Santiago Appeals court will shortly decide whether to uphold his decision.

Speaking to journalists on Tuesday, Guzmán thanked the Chilean Army for its cooperation in his investigations, fueling the vitriol of those on the Chilean right who say the military has abandoned its former sons.

The principle target for such criticism has been the Army’s commander in chief, Gen. Juan Emilio Cheyre.

In a letter to El Mercurio published Tuesday, Cheyre hit back at an editorial in which the paper opined that the armed forces “have ended up seeing history the way it is written by their adversaries and have, for reasons of convenience or pusillanimity, switched sides.”

The paper mocked the Army’s “lukewarm reaction” to the recent conviction of five former senior officers – including DINA chief Gen. Manuel Contreras – who were pelted with eggs and coins as they arrived at court to hear their sentences (ST, Jan. 31).

“How would El Mercurio wish the Army of Chile to act?” asked Cheyre in his letter. “To endorse the disrespecting of judicial decisions? To act as a pressure group against the state and other authorities? To use the Army, entrusted by society with the defense of Chile, in actions of force of whatever grade or nature?”

His duty as chief of staff, he wrote, was to ensure that “every Chilean has the security of counting on an Army committed to upholding constitutional order.”

SOURCE: LA TERCERA, EL MERCURIO, LA NACIÓN, RADIO COOPERATIVA
By Tom Burgis (editor@santiagotimes.cl)

CHILE FORESTRY GIANT STUNG BY CONTINUED CLOSURE OF ITS US$1.5 BILLION PLANT

Greenpeace Hails Further ‘Victory For Citizenry’

(Feb. 9, 2005) Celulosa Valdivia, the flagship plant of Chile’s largest forestry corporation, will remain closed after authorities in Region X found it had failed to rectify numerous breeches of environmental regulations.

The executive committee of the Regional Environmental Commission (COREMA) rejected an application from the plant’s management to have the closure order lifted. The order was handed down Jan. 18 and is costing the company US$1 million a day in lost revenue (ST, Jan. 19).

The report filed by the company last week did not contain sufficient guarantees that the plant would comply with norms in the future, said Jorge Vives, the president of COREMA, at a press conference Tuesday evening.

An inspection by the Operative Regulation Committee (COF) also found that the plant had not done enough to correct the 19 operational breeches detected in an earlier inspection on Jan. 13 that led to the closure order.

“This is fantastic news,” said Gonzalo Villarino, head of Greenpeace Chile, one of the member organizations of the Coordination for the Protection of the River Cruces Nature Sanctuary.

“The government is finally upholding the rule of law. This is a victory for the citizenry, which forced the government to act. It is a victory for the future,” Villarino told The Santiago Times.

The Coordination and Valdivian citizens groups stung the government into action with a series of protests against the US$1.2 billion plant in Valdivia and Santiago (ST, Jan. 14). It claims waste from the plant is responsible for the devastation of rare black-necked swans in the Carlos Andwanter Nature Sanctuary 10 km from the plant. Independent research also found that 400 people in nearby San José de la Mariquina had symptoms of chemical contamination, 100 of whom were critically ill.

But a preliminary study by the Universidad Austral found no causal link between the plant’s dumping of waste water in the Cruces River and the contamination of the waterways.

COREMA’s inspectors did find that the plant, which makes wood pulp for paper, was exceeding production limits by about 60 percent and that it was using an illegally fitted waste duct.

Vives said more concrete measures were now needed to ensure that the plant, which has been closed twice and fined four times in its year of operation, begins to comply with the rubrics of the Resolution on Environmental Qualification (RCA).

The plant will not be allowed to reopen until a team of external auditors is in place to monitor its compliance with regulations, a clear procedure to deal with further breeches of norms is drawn up, and a duct illegally used to extract subterranean water is removed.

Daily and monthly production quotas will replace the current annual quota of 550,000 tons.

A statement issued by COREMA suggests that its patience with the serially offending plant is wearing thin:

“In relation to the subterranean waters (illegally used by the plant), the company promised not to use them and to become certified by way of an audit. But, in the opinion of the authorities, a more effective guarantee is required.”

Alejandro Peréz, the general manager at Celulosa Arauco y Constitución (Celco), declined to comment Tuesday night.

Dep. Alejandro Navarro, the head of the Chamber of Deputies’ Environmental Commission, has repeatedly called on Peréz to resign for “betraying public trust” (ST, Jan. 20).

The prolonged closure may assuage environmentalists’ fears that the initial sanction was no more than a publicity stunt orchestrated in the face of increasingly hostile public opinion at home and abroad.

There was outrage when it emerged that Anacleto Angelini, the billionaire owner of Celco and a beneficiary of the shotgun privatizations of the Pinochet military government, had been privately informed of the closure in advance by President Ricardo Lagos.

It seems Angelini’s clout – he is a major political backer and the kingpin of Chilean forestry – has proved insufficient, especially with the government facing stern tests of its environmental resolve by observers from the Organization of Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD), a club of 30 of the world’s richest nations to which Chile aspires.

No date has yet been set for COREMA’s next discussion on Celulosa Valdivia’s fate, but green groups say the fight is far from over.

“We will go on campaigning until the plant is closed once and for all,” Villarino said.

By Tom Burgis (editor@santiagotimes.cl)Victor Henriquez-->

(Feb. 8, 2005) Chile’s economy performed even better than the high expectations set for it – it grew 5.9 percent in 2004, the highest rate since 1997, according to figures released Monday by the Central Bank.

The country’s rapid growth is mostly based on China’s enduring demand for copper, Chile’s largest and most important export. China bought so much copper in 2004 that it depleted worldwide supplies of the metal and drove up its price on metal markets.

Those high prices meant copper companies here could make much more money for the same product they’ve been selling all along. Copper prices surged 26 percent last year, boosting profits to private mining companies and state-run Codelco.

And the growth is not showing any sign of slowing down.

In December, the economy grew by 7.7 percent compared to the same month in 2003, which exceeds the predictions of 7.4 percent expected by analysts, according to the Monthly Economic Activity Index (Imacec). November’s growth was 7.5 percent.

“Everything seems to indicate that the pace of growth we have will be maintained,” said Budget Director Mario Marcel.

The Central Bank said last month that 2005’s growth could reach 6.25 percent. Growth was only 3.3 percent in 2003.

Exports in January rose 37 percent to US$2.97 billion, up from US$2.17 billion the year before. On the year, exports jumped 52 percent to US$32 billion from US$21 billion in 2003, according to the Central Bank (ST, Jan. 10).

Chile will likely outpace the rest of Latin America, which is expected to expand at an average rate of 4 percent in 2005, the United Nations said in December.

“We are going to see another increase at the close of 2005, given all the positive predictions we have in so many distinct sectors,” said economist Michelle Labbé.

But Labbé warned that the country still faces many challenges, such as diversifying its economy so it has greater flexibility and reducing the unemployment rate.

“Nothing has changed. There was nothing done in the way of labor flexibility, and the results are being seen: the unemployment rate continues to be high,” Labbé said.

Chile’s present may be bright, but it needs to expand into other industries to prepare for a future when it can’t depend on copper for most of its revenues, economists say.

Overall copper exports to China, the world’s biggest buyer of copper, skyrocketed 70 percent to US$3.2 billion in 2004. Copper made up 44.8 percent of Chile’s total exports last year, compared to 35.6 percent in 2003, according to the Central Bank (ST, Jan. 27).

The price of copper is expected to fluctuate between US$1.16 and US$1.20 per pound this year after averaging US$1.31 a pound in 2004, according to the Chilean Copper Commission (ST, Feb. 1).

But some officials say the economy isn’t solely dependent on copper exports. Industries such as construction, commercial sales and manufacturing also did well in 2004.

“All the sectors of the economy are increasing and not just exports,” said Marcel. “There is no risk of overheating the economy. Inflation is under control and I don’t see any important warnings of disequilibrium in any part of economic activity.”

The good news on the economy was expected since December, but no one knew exactly how good it would be. In the beginning of January, Finance Minister Nicolás Eyzaguirre proclaimed that Chile’s hard economic times are over, and the country is entering a new age of prosperity (ST, Jan. 3).

A deputy spokesman for the Chilean government, Patricio Santamaría, echoed Eyzaguirre in comparing the growing economy to the Old Testament story of seven years of hardship and “skinny cows” followed by seven years of prosperity.

“The sense is that this is the end of the period of skinny cows. Also, the sum of a series of other indexes that have shown that internal demand … has also increased gives us confidence in businesses. We believe that we are going in a very good direction,” Santamaría said.

Another recent survey by English consulting company Consensus Economics predicts that Chile will be the fastest growing economy in Latin America in 2006 with a 5.1 percent growth rate (ST, Jan. 25). The study, based on a survey of 21 financial agents in Chile and abroad, also said the country’s growth will exceed the average growth of countries in Europe, North America and Asia.

Economist Franco Farisi said the rising growth figures will help bring investment and additional business to the country.

“This is very good news, and it is explained especially by the strong recovery that we have had in internal demand, that is to say that we are consuming all that is produced by Chileans,” he said.

SOURCE: RADIO COOPERATIVA, LA NACIÓN, EL MERCURIO, BLOOMBERG
By Mark Niesse (editor@santiagotimes.cl)

CHILE ECONOMY BEATS FORECASTS
No End In Sight For Growth

(Feb. 8, 2005) Chile’s economy performed even better than the high expectations set for it – it grew 5.9 percent in 2004, the highest rate since 1997, according to figures released Monday by the Central Bank.

The country’s rapid growth is mostly based on China’s enduring demand for copper, Chile’s largest and most important export. China bought so much copper in 2004 that it depleted worldwide supplies of the metal and drove up its price on metal markets.

Those high prices meant copper companies here could make much more money for the same product they’ve been selling all along. Copper prices surged 26 percent last year, boosting profits to private mining companies and state-run Codelco.

And the growth is not showing any sign of slowing down.

In December, the economy grew by 7.7 percent compared to the same month in 2003, which exceeds the predictions of 7.4 percent expected by analysts, according to the Monthly Economic Activity Index (Imacec). November’s growth was 7.5 percent.

“Everything seems to indicate that the pace of growth we have will be maintained,” said Budget Director Mario Marcel.

The Central Bank said last month that 2005’s growth could reach 6.25 percent. Growth was only 3.3 percent in 2003.

Exports in January rose 37 percent to US$2.97 billion, up from US$2.17 billion the year before. On the year, exports jumped 52 percent to US$32 billion from US$21 billion in 2003, according to the Central Bank (ST, Jan. 10).

Chile will likely outpace the rest of Latin America, which is expected to expand at an average rate of 4 percent in 2005, the United Nations said in December.

“We are going to see another increase at the close of 2005, given all the positive predictions we have in so many distinct sectors,” said economist Michelle Labbé.

But Labbé warned that the country still faces many challenges, such as diversifying its economy so it has greater flexibility and reducing the unemployment rate.

“Nothing has changed. There was nothing done in the way of labor flexibility, and the results are being seen: the unemployment rate continues to be high,” Labbé said.

Chile’s present may be bright, but it needs to expand into other industries to prepare for a future when it can’t depend on copper for most of its revenues, economists say.

Overall copper exports to China, the world’s biggest buyer of copper, skyrocketed 70 percent to US$3.2 billion in 2004. Copper made up 44.8 percent of Chile’s total exports last year, compared to 35.6 percent in 2003, according to the Central Bank (ST, Jan. 27).

The price of copper is expected to fluctuate between US$1.16 and US$1.20 per pound this year after averaging US$1.31 a pound in 2004, according to the Chilean Copper Commission (ST, Feb. 1).

But some officials say the economy isn’t solely dependent on copper exports. Industries such as construction, commercial sales and manufacturing also did well in 2004.

“All the sectors of the economy are increasing and not just exports,” said Marcel. “There is no risk of overheating the economy. Inflation is under control and I don’t see any important warnings of disequilibrium in any part of economic activity.”

The good news on the economy was expected since December, but no one knew exactly how good it would be. In the beginning of January, Finance Minister Nicolás Eyzaguirre proclaimed that Chile’s hard economic times are over, and the country is entering a new age of prosperity (ST, Jan. 3).

A deputy spokesman for the Chilean government, Patricio Santamaría, echoed Eyzaguirre in comparing the growing economy to the Old Testament story of seven years of hardship and “skinny cows” followed by seven years of prosperity.

“The sense is that this is the end of the period of skinny cows. Also, the sum of a series of other indexes that have shown that internal demand … has also increased gives us confidence in businesses. We believe that we are going in a very good direction,” Santamaría said.

Another recent survey by English consulting company Consensus Economics predicts that Chile will be the fastest growing economy in Latin America in 2006 with a 5.1 percent growth rate (ST, Jan. 25). The study, based on a survey of 21 financial agents in Chile and abroad, also said the country’s growth will exceed the average growth of countries in Europe, North America and Asia.

Economist Franco Farisi said the rising growth figures will help bring investment and additional business to the country.

“This is very good news, and it is explained especially by the strong recovery that we have had in internal demand, that is to say that we are consuming all that is produced by Chileans,” he said.

SOURCE: RADIO COOPERATIVA, LA NACIÓN, EL MERCURIO, BLOOMBERG
By Mark Niesse (editor@santiagotimes.cl)

PINOCHET OFFERS HIDDEN MILLIONS TO REPAY CHILE TREASURY

President Of Banco De Chile Steps Down

(Feb. 7, 2005) Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s defense is seeking permission to use money from his notorious Riggs Bank accounts to repay US$5 million to the Chilean Tax Service (SII).

Fernando Barros, one of the ex-dictator’s defense lawyers, met with SII executives Thursday to discuss repayments of around US$5 million owed by the ex-senator in unpaid taxes, interest and fines, La Tercera reported.

SII sources, quoted by Radio Cooperativa, vigorously denied the claims, insisting that no deal had been struck.

A criminal complaint filed by the SII on Sept. 30 against Pinochet and his executor, Oscar Aitken, claimed they dodged around US$4 million in taxes from 1998 to 2003 (ST, Oct. 4, 2004).

In July, following the discovery of Pinochet’s secret accounts held at Washington, D.C.-based bank Riggs, Pinochet’s defense, family and supporters unanimously denied that the ex-president had hidden the extent of his fortune from the SII to avoid tax payments.

But now it has been revealed that the money in his Riggs Bank accounts, which at one point amounted to around US$8 million, was never included in his annual tax declarations.

Judge Sergio Muñoz – who has temporarily relinquished his handling of the case to substitute Judge Dobra Lusic – is investigating the SII’s allegations. As part of the inquiry into the general’s private finances, Muñoz is also investigating charges of money laundering and misuse of public funds.

If Pinochet’s defense team comes to an agreement with the SII and successfully makes the payments, they will have effectively quashed Muñoz’s principal line of enquiry because the other allegations of money laundering and misuse of public funds are proving harder to substantiate.

Furthermore, if Pinochet repays the money he owes to the state in full, it would be viewed as a “goodwill gesture” and could result in a reduced sentence.

In repaying the tax, Pinochet would simply be exercising his legal rights. According to Chilean law, “every citizen can demand that their tax declarations be revised,” a statement confirmed recently by the SII.

“The SII filed a criminal complaint for tax evasion, and like any other person in Chile that this happens to, (Pinochet) can make a repayment whenever convenient,” one of Pinochet’s family members anonymously told La Tercera.

But the central issue in this investigation is that Pinochet does not have access to the US$6.5 million from his Riggs accounts. Before Pinochet can repay his taxes, Muñoz has to lift the embargo on the general’s funds that have been under judicial control since the case began.

A lawyer from the State Defense Council (CDE) told La Tercera it is unlikely that Muñoz will accept the agreement because the judge “can’t participate in the (repayment) negotiations, they don’t contribute anything to his investigation, and he would lose control of the money that he has been safeguarding.”

Muñoz would also have to investigate where the money came from to establish if it is the product of criminal activity. “While this is not clear, he can’t free up Pinochet’s funds,” the same source said.

Some have doubts that Pinochet’s savings will be sufficient to repay the SII. On top of the US$4 million owed in retroactive tax, Pinochet owes around US$300,000 in interest. In addition, fines could be anything “between 50 percent to 300 percent of the amount due,” according to the Tributary Code.

What’s more, if Muñoz lifts the embargo, Pinochet “would also be liable for further taxes due on new revenue,” said a source related to the case.

Nevertheless, Pinochet’s defense requested that Muñoz lift the embargo on the general’s funds in December. The petition was denied by the judge and is now being reconsidered by the Santiago Appeals Court.

Sources say that Pinochet’s lawyers are confident the Appeals Court will allow the retroactive tax payments. If this does not happen, the matter will be decided by the Supreme Court.

If Pinochet’s funds are made available to him so he can pay his tax debts, it will mark a first in Chilean legal history.

In a similar case in 1997, Mario Silva Leiva, or “Cabro Carrera” – the supposed head of Chile’s largest ever narcotics trafficking and money laundering ring – also sought to have his assets reinstated so he could pay back taxes. But his appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court.

While negotiations between Pinochet’s defense and the SII continue, Muñoz is also investigating whether Pinochet used his Banco de Chile accounts to transfer up to US$16 million when he closed his Riggs Bank accounts in 2002 (ST, Jan. 24).

The bank is being investigated in the U.S. for not having complied with the Patriot Act, which demands that banks keep a list of accounts held by politically exposed persons and report any suspicious activity.

Bank executives claim they were unaware that the accounts belonged to Pinochet because they were held under pseudonyms. Despite the closure of Pinochet’s accounts, both in the United States and Chile, the ex-generalissimo’s finances continue to cause problems at the bank (ST, Feb. 3).

Following the dismissal of Hernán Donoso Lira, the general manager of Banco de Chile’s New York branch, Segismundo Schulin-Zeuthen, the bank’s president, has announced he will not stand for another term.

The president, who will relinquish his role March 17, has been involved with the bank for nearly 20 years.

“It was always agreed that I would cease to be president in March 2005,” said Schulin-Zeuthen.

But some believe that he is leaving due to the recent scandal, as it is surprising that he should choose to step down after the bank obtained record results last year.

It is likely that Fernando Cañas, former general manager of Banco O’Higgins and Banco Santiago, will be elected as president in March.

Banco de Chile is awaiting the ruling of a U.S. regulatory board to see if it will be fined.

SOURCE: EL MERCURIO, LA TERCERA, RADIO COOPERATIVA By Emily Byrne (editor@santiagotimes.cl)

SHARP INCREASE IN CHILE PESTICIDE POISONINGS
Pesticide Poisonings Could Threaten Agriculture Exports

(Feb. 4, 2005) There were 285 victims of pesticide-related poisoning in November and December of 2004, nearly three times as many as in 2003, according to the Health Ministry.

The 132 poisonings recorded in December more than tripled World Health Organization (WHO) estimates and more than doubled the Health Ministry’s most pessimistic forecasts.

Dep. Adriana Muñoz of the Party for Democracy (PPD) denounced the number of pesticide accidents in 2004, saying the two fatalities and 568 intoxications were unacceptable. Although January’s statistics have not yet been released, specialists predict that the worrying trend will continue.

The sharp rise in the number of known cases is partly due to new regulations, which took effect in October, making it compulsory to notify the Health Ministry of pesticide-related poisonings within 48 hours.

The ministry suspects some employers were concealing cases of chemical poisoning prior to the ruling, given the high number of temporary workers, the majority of whom have no employment contract and some of whom may be working illegally.

A joint Agricultural and Labor Ministry initiative hopes to put an end to such practices. “Job Done, Contract Signed,” launched last month, aims to encourage informal workers to refuse to do jobs where they will not be protected by an employment contract.

“The important issue is to implement better standards and working conditions more quickly, with particular focus on the health of agricultural workers,” said Labor Minister Ricardo Solari.

About 5,200 agricultural workplaces will be subjected to a Labor Ministry inspection before the end of 2005 to ascertain whether safety standards are being met. In addition, the Heath Ministry will carry out 2,000 inspections to ensure agricultural workers’ health is not being jeopardized.

It is hoped that the findings of the inspections will push the government to introduce new legislation regulating the use of herbicides and pesticides.

Muñoz said any such law should also restrict where fumigation can take place to avoid repeats of a 2003 incident where 30 children suffered chemical poisoning after an aerial fumigation near their school (ST, Oct. 29, 2003).

But the real battle is to persuade agricultural firms and pesticide producers to adhere to any new government initiatives.
“The frequency of these pesticide accidents show that (companies) are not complying with any of the current laws because fines are very low,” said María Elena Rozas, regional coordinator of the Latin American Network for Action to find Alternatives to Pesticides (RAP-AL).

Given that the 10 main producers of agricultural materials control 84 percent of the world market and saw total sales of around US$3 billion in 2000, small fines are not a big enough threat.

Confronted with the economic power that these multinationals wield, the pesticide problem has become a development issue. Poorer nations forced to relax regulations governing the use of pesticides and choose cheaper but are potentially harmful products.

The three most-used pesticides in Chile – Folpet, Linuron and Carbaril – are banned in Malaysia, Norway and Jordan respectively. Three other pesticides, Aclonifen, Metidation and Teflutrina, are only classified as moderately harmful substances in Chile, despite their WHO classification as highly dangerous.

Given lax regulation of pesticide use in the developing world, it is not surprising that statisticians from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization found that 99 percent of cases of pesticide-related poisoning occur in developing countries.
Rozas said Chilean authorities should ensure tighter controls on the use of pesticides that can cause health problems.

“Many products can affect the reproductive system, while others, such as teratogenic pesticides that are still being used, can cause cancer or congenital deformities,” she said.

Rozas added that Chile should be especially cautious because of its important agricultural export market.

Chile’s agricultural exports have been put under international scrutiny twice in recent years when traces of pesticides were found on Chilean-exported apples and grapes. The levels of pesticides found on the fruits, which had been exported to Germany, exceeded European Union limits.

Chile’s potential export market has grown enormously in past months after trade agreements were signed with India, Japan and Italy. But if Chile’s agricultural industry is to take advantage of this expansion, pesticide regulations will have to be improved to comply with international standards.

But the main concern for the moment is the safety of Chile’s agricultural workers. Agricultural Minister Jaime Campos is optimistic that agricultural firms will begin to address safety issues soon.

“Every day farmers are realizing that to sustain the agricultural industry, they must take note of social and environmental concerns and not only financial issues,” he said.

SOURCE: LA NACIóN By Emily Byrne (editor@santiagotimes.cl)

CONTRERAS PENS WILL, LAWYERS ATTACK CHILE JUDGE

Secret Will Of Gun-Toting Mamo Exposed

(Feb. 3, 2005) Manuel Contreras, the military government’s secret police chief, made secret arrangements to dispose of his wealth prior to his transfer to the Cordillera Prison to begin a 12-year term, La Nación revealed. In an exclusive, the state-owned daily reported the contents of a copy of a letter it had obtained signed by Contreras, in which the retired general and convicted murderer instructed Julio Tapia Falk, a former colonel and adviser to Augusto Pinochet’s junta, to take charge of his finances in the event of his death. The will, dated Jan. 25, three days before Contreras began his sentence for the 1975 kidnapping of leftist activist Miguel Ángel Sandoval, requests that Tapia divide his assets – 21,400,000 pesos (US$35,000) and a further US$35,000 – between his wife, Nélida Gutiérrez Rivera, and his daughter and son from a previous marriage. The document adds fuel to the notion that Contreras, who pulled a gun when detectives arrived at his house to take him to his notification hearing on Friday, thought that day might be his last. Adding to the ever-lengthening charge sheet against him, the Group of Families of the Politically Executed (AFEP) filed a criminal suit that the gun – a registered Walther 7 mm, James Bond’s weapon of choice – constitutes an offensive weapon in the hands of the man convicted of the 1976 car bomb murder of former Foreign Affairs Minister Orlando Letelier. Lawyers for the AFEP submitted the suit to the 27th Bench of the Criminal Court of Santiago, citing a psychiatric report that detected in the general “a strong subjugation of ethical and moral limits to the desired end, an overweening ego by which he considers those beneath him as mere instruments, and other characteristics that demonstrate his dangerousness and readiness to use violence illegally.” The government has hit back at claims in a leaked letter from senior Army officers claiming that security surrounding the notification hearings for convicted DINA agents was lax. The letter, which appeared in evening daily La Segunda hours before it was delivered to the defense minister, questioned why crowds were able to get close enough to Contreras to pelt him with eggs, tomatoes, coins and insults as he was rushed into Santiago’s central court. The government “does not enjoy finding out the opinion of an Army commander through the press,” said a clearly displeased Francisco Vidal, the government spokesman. He was at pains to clarify that the letter, signed by Chief Commandant Javier Urbina, was not a formal complaint but a recommendation that, in the future, the block surrounding the court should be sealed off. Such a measure would prevent scenes such as those seen Friday, when demonstrators thronged to denounce as “assassins” Gen. Contreras, Brig. Miguel Krassnoff, Col. Marcelo Moren Brito, Lt. Col. Gerardo Godoy of the Carabineros and Brig. Fernando Laureani. The five men were brought to the court under heavy police escort to hear sentences of between five and 12 years from Judge Alejandro Solís for the kidnapping of 26-year-old dissident Sandoval two years after the putsch in which Pinochet seized power (ST, Jan. 31). All five were members of DINA, the bulldog of the Pinochet dictatorship. The letter suggests vacillation on the part of Uribe and Army high command, which only a day earlier had distanced themselves from Contreras, 75, a retired general who has been out of favor in military circles since 1980. Over the weekend, the Army issued a statement in which it described Contreras’ repeated allegations of treachery against Army chief Gen. Juan Emilio Cheyre, Urbina and Col. Maurice Laree as “absolutely unjust and offensive.” What friends that Contreras – once the most feared man in Chile and known as “Mamo” – still had after his fifth human rights conviction, he is losing rapidly. Other senior officers called his attempts to shift blame onto Pinochet “weak.” Contreras’ lawyer hit back with two further complaints against Solís. Having already asked the Supreme Court to examine the procedure by which the judge ordered his client’s detention, Juan Carlos Manns filed two motions Tuesday – one to the Supreme Court, the other to the Santiago Appeals Court – arguing that the decision to order the “frail” Contreras to appear in person despite the mass protests at the court endangered his health. Manns requested that Solís be relieved of the several high-profile human rights cases he is handling. Among those cases is the assassination in Buenos Aires in 1974 of Carlos Prats, Pinochet’s predecessor as chief-of-staff, and his wife, Sofía Cuthbert. Solís is currently in the United States gathering evidence for a prosecution of the DINA agents believed to have carried out the attack (ST, Feb. 2). Should his efforts come to fruition, Contreras could find himself in the dock again, possibly accompanied by Pinochet, to whom he was once an invaluable ally but who he now accuses of “deserting” him. SOURCE: LA NACIÓN, EL MERCURIO, LA TERCERA, LA SEGUNDABy Tom Burgis (editor@santiagotimes.cl)

CHILE'S INSULA BIDS FOR OAS THRONE

(Feb. 2, 2005) Chile’s Interior Minister José Miguel Insulza has embarked on a trip to gather support for his candidacy for the top job at the Organization of American States (OAS).

Insulza addressed the OAS permanent council Tuesday in Washington, D.C., and presented his platform to lead the organization. He stressed the importance of the promotion of democracy, human rights, development and security across the Americas, and said the 34 OAS countries have to be driven by the common desire to rise to the challenges of the globalized world.

“If we extensively discuss the present and future of the OAS and create consensus that will help overcome a mistaken sense of irrelevance that damages our hemispheric effort, we can transform this crisis into an opportunity,” said Insulza, referring to the temporary lack of leadership of the OAS.

Since Miguel Ángel Rodríguez resigned as secretary-general in October amid allegations of corruption during his 1998-2002 presidential term in Costa Rica (ST, Oct. 14, 2004), Assistant Secretary General Luigi Einaudi, from the United States, has held the fort.

Insulza pointed out that the OAS can play an important role within the region only if its member states and its leaders are capable of tuning in to the new reality surrounding the organization.

“We have to recognize realistically that at times we set our agenda on themes that are not the most urgent for our peoples,” he said. “We have to continue giving priority to democracy, human rights, security and development, but we also have to tackle the concrete problems that our peoples have been suffering from for decades and that we haven’t been able to solve yet.”

During his 30-minute speech, Insulza also voiced his concern regarding the deterioration of support for democracy shown by a 2004 report by the Latinobarometro organization (ST, Aug. 16, 2004).“The Achilles’ heel of democracy is in governability,” he said. “The OAS has to stay on the alert for any attempts to subvert or bring down the democratic order of any of its member states.”

The Chilean interior minister also referred to his experience in foreign affairs, saying he wished to dedicate himself to the OAS, “an organization that has a calling for the realization of the shared values in the hemisphere and the negotiation of the rules that will lead the world in the future.”

Insulza, who is called “La Moneda’s panzer” by the Chilean press, worked as political adviser to the foreign affairs ministry in Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government and foreign affairs minister under Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (1994-1999). He has been interior minister since March 2000.

He is the only South American running for the OAS; his opponents are Mexican Foreign Affairs Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez and El Salvador’s former President Francisco Flores. The United States has backed Flores, saying that the leadership should remain within Central America.

Insulza, who on Monday gave a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center think-tank, rehearsed parts of his OAS platform and said that if he were to win, there would be no trouble with the United States.“The United States, like any other country, has to vote for someone,” he said in an interview with CNN. “I hope that this (the backing of Flores) does not mean a rejection of my candidacy … on the contrary, I have been guaranteed cooperation should I be elected.”

The White House is also pushing for elections to take place by the end of the month. If this were the case, Insulza would not have enough support. A candidate must receive 18 votes to be elected, but the Chilean has so far only received support from Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and Uruguay’s President elect Tabaré Vazquéz, who will start his term on March 1.“I don’t think it would be good to anticipate the elections, since the Caribbean hasn’t made up its mind yet,” Insulza said.

Insulza and other Chilean officials are concentrating their efforts in the Caribbean. The 14 members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) have not yet chosen who to support.

On Tuesday, the Chilean panzer met for lunch with the 14 CARICOM ambassadors to the OAS before flying to Jamaica, the first of eight Caribbean nations he will visit in the coming days.

Meanwhile, Chilean Education Minister Sergio Bitar is in Haiti and on Tuesday met with the prime minister of the interim government, Gerard Latortue, to lobby for Insulza’s candidacy.Chile has been one of the most active countries in the peacekeeping efforts on the troubled island state since March 2004, when former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected head-of-state, left the country and went into exile after months of violent unrest (ST, March 3, 2004).

Chilean President Ricardo Lagos is also expected to travel to the Caribbean later this month to lobby for Insulza at a meeting of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to be held in Guyana Feb. 19.

Chile News Archives 2004

2004-12-31T10:00:00.000-03:00

Here's a roundup of Chile news stories from 2004 -- both interesting and obscure.

FAMILIES OF VICTIMS FLY TO CHILE DEMANDING COLONIA DIGNIDAD RELEASE

400 Sign Open Letter To Lagos, Including U.S. Legislators

(Nov. 25, 2004) The families of Boris Weisfeiler and Maarten Visser will deliver an open letter to President Ricardo Lagos today, calling for an investigation into Colonia Dignidad. They believe their relatives, who disappeared in 1985, were detained at the German enclave in southern Chile.

Among the 400 signatories from 16 countries are parliamentarians, academics, human rights campaigners including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Ethical Commission Against Torture, captains of industry and former colonists.

“We demand the Chilean government take and promote energetic and definitive action with regard to human rights violations in the former Colonia Dignidad, freeing its inhabitants, granting them the help they need and pursuing those found to be responsible,” the letter says.

Sergio Laurenti, executive director of Amnesty International Chile, told The Santiago Times the letter “will put pressure on the government and those responsible to talk. It cannot do too much but it demonstrates the concerns of 400 people. We hope that the government will listen.”

Colonia Dignidad was founded in 1961 by Paul Schaefer as a 17,000-hectare farming community for fellow expatriates near the Argentine border in Region VIII, with the ostensible aim of providing health care and education for the rural poor of the area. Schaefer had fled child molestation charges in his native Germany.

Colonia Dignidad was used as an intelligence and detention center by agents of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s military government and its leaders became all but untouchable, despite reports they were abducting and abusing local children. Escapees told of sexual abuse, forced labor and abduction.

In 1998, Schaefer went underground after a warrant was issued for his arrest. Since then he has been a fugitive and the colony, now known as Villa Baviera, has been in decline (ST, Oct. 6).

Olga Weisfeiler, the sister of one of the foreigners believed to have been held at Colonia Dignidad, also presented personal letters to Lagos, one signed by U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, another by Rep. Barney Frank, pressing Chilean authorities to seek a resolution to her brother’s case.

“I would like to help put more pressure on the government to open up all Chile, all the human rights cases,” Olga told The Santiago Times.

She is sure that Colonia Dignidad will be mentioned in the soon to be published Valech Report into torture during the1973-1990 dictatorship.

On Jan. 4, 1985, Boris Weisfeiler, a Russian-born Jew and naturalized U.S. citizen, was taking a 10-day walking holiday in southern Chile when he vanished. After a cursory investigation, the Chilean authorities concluded he had drowned in the Nuble River in Region VIII.

But U.S. State Department documents declassified later revealed that in 1987 a man known only as “Daniel,” an agent working for Pinochet’s secret police, informed the U.S. Embassy in Santiago that he had been part of the team that arrested Weisfeiler and took him to Colonia Dignidad, claiming that he was a “Jewish spy.”

According to the Embassy’s memo on the meeting with Daniel, “The only explanation of these unusual practices his (Daniel’s) superiors offered him is that Colonia Dignidad is a good ally.”

In 2000, a rare inspection of Colonia Dignidad, now officially renamed Villa Bavaria, found a thin folder labeled “Boris Weisfeiler.”

Olga has made visited Chile four times since Boris’ disappearance, for an investigation into her brother’s disappearance. She believes, as she stated in an earlier letter to Lagos in 2000, that the solution to the riddle of her brother’s whereabouts lies in Colonia Dignidad: “Only unrestricted access to its territory would solve numerous crimes that took place there and help its residents to gain freedom” (ST, March 8).

The upshot of Olga’s lobbying was a recent letter from Edward Kennedy to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, asking that the matter be put on the agenda for President George W. Bush’s meeting with Lagos in July. When the two leaders met, Weisfeiler’s case was raised. U.S. officials assured the Weisfeiler family that the White House “will continue handling this matter with the Chilean government, both in Washington and in Santiago.” (ST, Oct. 6)

Shortly after his return from Washington, Lagos asked the Ministry of the Interior to provide a report on Weisfeiler and Colonia Dignidad.

POWELL LAUDS CHILE, PUSHES FREE TRADE AGENDA

(Nov. 22, 2004) In one of his last public appearances as U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell said the United States has a “very friendly relationship” with Chile, and praised the Chilean government’s “great contribution to free trade and democracy in Latin America and around the world.”

Powell, who was in Santiago for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, described Chile and the United States’ efforts to fight corruption, thanking Chile for its “regional leadership.”

Reducing corruption is among APEC’s priorities, as set out in the Leaders’ Declaration issued Sunday. Corruption is seen as a deterrent to investment and a threat to good governance.

Powell, who announced his retirement earlier this month, said he and Chilean Foreign Minister Ignacio Walker had discussed the U.S.-Chilean Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which went into effect Jan. 1. “Both security and trade have increased in less than a year, benefiting both nations,” Powell said.

Powell, 67, said President George W. Bush remains keen on a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), an arrangement that would remove trade barriers in the Western Hemisphere.

But attention was not focused solely on the Americas. Powell fielded questions on nuclear weapons programs in Iran and North Korea, though he was reluctant to preempt the results of negotiations by the European Union Three in Iran and the U.S.-led Group of Six in North Korea.

Asked whether the U.S. is prepared to work with leftist governments in Latin America – a veiled reference to strained relations between Washington and Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s controversial president – Powell said, “The United States is prepared to work with any democratic country, provided full and fair elections have shown the will of the people.”

Chávez won a referendum on his mandate in August and said he hopes to improve his country’s relationship with the Unites States, to whom it is a major exporter of oil (ST, Aug. 17).

Walker is holding his first round of bilateral meetings since replacing Soledad Alvear as Foreign Affairs Minister in October (ST, Sept. 30). Earlier, a press official was unable to contain his amusement when a Korean journalist asked him where the Chilean Foreign Minister, Johnnie Walker, was to be found.

Walker commended Powell on his four years as secretary of state.

Powell is known for his diplomacy and tact and for being the lone dove in the Bush administration before the invasion of Iraq. Walker will shortly begin to build a relationship with Powell’s successor at the State Department, Condoleezza Rice, a hardliner among the neo-Conservatives of Capitol Hill, whom Powell reportedly described as “fucking crazies.”

The next major international forum to be held in Chile will be the meeting of the Community of Democracies in May 2005.

By Tom Burgis

CHILE'S APEC SUMMIT ENDS WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS WARNING

(Nov. 22, 2004) Boosting trade and improving counterterrorism measures emerged as top priorities for the leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) who gathered in Santiago at the weekend.

While Chile’s President Ricardo Lagos emphasized the economic relevance of the APEC summit, his U.S. counterpart George W. Bush took advantage of the first international meeting after his reelection to rally support for his campaign to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons.

During bilateral meetings before the opening of the summit on Saturday, the U.S. president focused his efforts on lobbying leaders from Japan, China, South Korea and Russia to press North Korea to eliminate its nuclear weapons programs.

“The will is strong, the effort is united, and the message is clear to Mr. Kim Jong Il: Get rid of your nuclear weapons programs,” Bush said Saturday afternoon while addressing the CEO summit at CasaPiedra.

Allegations that North Korea possesses nuclear weapons and a uranium-enrichment program won the totalitarian state a place on Bush’s “axis of evil” list in 2002. That pressure eased as the United States focused on Iraq, but this weekend’s declarations indicate that the North Korean issue has regained ground as a top issue on the U.S. agenda.

But Lagos, the host of the event, focused on the economic side of the APEC meeting and voiced his concern that a rise in security measures might slow down trade.

“If you have increased security, that means increasing the cost of transportation of goods,” he said Saturday.

“We can’t allow security measures to get in the way of free trade flows, because less trade means less exports and less employment,” Lagos added.

The final declaration of the 12th APEC leaders’ summit – dubbed The Santiago Declaration – also affirmed the primacy of trade and investment liberalization and supported the implementation of the 2001 World Trade Organization recommendations (See today’s Business Briefs).

The Santiago Declaration mentioned the enhancement of human security – together with the promotion of transparency and knowledge-based society – as the latest APEC priorities, second only to the economic policies to be implemented by next year’s APEC meeting in South Korea.

“We expect to review progress on our commitments to dismantle transnational terrorist groups, eliminate the danger posed by proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, their delivery systems and related items, and confront other direct threats to the security of our region in the future,” said the declaration released Sunday after the leaders’ final meeting.

Despite the U.S. pressure on the North Korea issue, Lagos and Bush agreed on the good state of their countries’ bilateral relations.

During a meeting Sunday night, Bush praised Chile’s economic performance and expressed his hope that the countries will develop “relations that are always stronger.”

“Chile is an incredible country. Chileans are good-hearted people that treasure their freedom. They are dedicated to democracy. People in this country understand the importance of economic freedom,” Bush said in La Moneda.

The two heads-of-state pointed out that since the Chilean-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) went into effect last Jan. 1, exports have increased notably, producing economic growth in both countries.

“The success of our trade agreement is an example for other countries. Exports have increased dramatically in both countries and both Chilean and U.S. citizens have benefited from it,” Bush said.

Sunday night’s meeting between Lagos and Bush is part of the U.S. president’s official visit to Chile after the closure of the APEC meeting. As a result of a dispute between U.S. and Chilean security officials, the Chilean presidency had to cancel an official dinner planned for last night.

The gala planned for over 200 guests was replaced by a “working dinner” after Chilean security officials refused to accept the U.S. Secret Service’s request that Chilean guests go through metal detectors before dining with the presidents, a standard U.S. security practice.

Another incident Saturday night – when Bush had to break up a skirmish between his lead Secret Service agent and a Chilean policeman – led the U.S. press to criticize the authoritarian attitude of the Chilean Carabineros.

The Chilean government assigned more than 5,000 police to APEC, in what is the largest security display since the 1987 papal visit, but The New York Times pointed out that “by presidential standards the security has not been particularly noticeable.”

50,000 PROTEST IN SANTIAGO AS CHILE SAYS NO TO APEC

189 Arrested As Police And Demonstrators Clash Throughout Capital

(Nov. 22, 2004) Santiaguinos returned to work today after three days of mass protests and violence in the Chilean capital that saw 189 arrests and numerous injuries.

On Friday, hours before some of the world’s most powerful leaders – including U.S. President George W. Bush, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao of China – arrived for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, 50,000 people took to the streets for a march organized by the Chilean Social Forum under the slogans “another world is possible” and “Santiago is ours.”

The protesters walked along a predetermined route lined with Carabineros from Parque Almagro to a rally in Parque Bustamante.

The march turned violent when a small group of protesters began to throw rocks and glass bottles at police. Organizers called for calm but, as the park filled with gas from helicopters, marchers fled onto the surrounding streets and into Plaza Italia, where masked demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails, smashed shop fronts and tore up benches, and police in riot gear responded with water cannon and baton charges.

One man was taken to hospital after being hit in the face with a bottle.

According to police, 189 people were arrested, including five foreigners – three Germans and two students from the United States. The foreigners were later released but will face charges of criminal damage at a hearing on Dec. 9.

Several protesters and 23 carabineros were injured. Two offices received gunshot wounds in further clashes in the La Victoria and Villa Francia suburbs, where there were 11 more arrests.

Cristián Labbé, the mayor of Providencia, said the cleanup operation will cost 100 million pesos (US$170,000) and slammed the governor of the Metropolitan Region, Marcelo Trivelli, for authorizing the march.

President Ricardo Lagos said the violent protesters were not representative of Chile. “They do not represent a single significant sector of the country,” he told journalists Saturday, insisting that only peaceful demonstrations are legitimate forms of protest.

Hundreds of protesters have been arrested throughout Chile over the past week, and thousands of additional police were on duty in the Chilean capital in the largest security operation since the papal visit in 1987.

Chileans are angered by the willingness of the country’s socialist President Lagos to adopt U.S.-sponsored economic models and foster Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). Marchers called for APEC delegates to turn their attention from the superrich to global poverty and achieving sustainable development in the Third World.

A member of the Chilean communist party known as Manuel attacked Lagos for betraying the party of Chile’s iconic president, Salvador Allende. Allende became the world’s first elected socialist head of state in 1970 and died in the 1973 coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power.

“Salvador Allende was a revolutionary socialist. Lagos is a capitalist. We need to change Chile and to change Latin America,” Manuel said.

The poet Raúl Zurita, an active member of the political resistance during Pinochet’s military government, said, “We are here against Bush, against APEC, against the dictatorship of the rich.”

Aside from discontent with Chile’s proliferating FTAs and the injustices of globalization, demonstrators voiced their outrage at the Bush’s policy of preemptive war. Banners denounced the U.S. president as “terrorist number one” and the loudest chant was “no to war, yes to peace.”

Among the diverse crowd were student and political groups, monks and members of Chile’s indigenous Mapuche.

The president of the Council of all Lands of Chile indigenous rights group, Aucán Huilcamán, later presented an open letter addressed to the APEC leaders, making “an urgent call to the members of APEC to include the indigenous issue in their agenda and to establish mechanisms for the full and effective participation of indigenous peoples as a way to guarantee and assure our cultural projection and the respect of indigenous peoples’ human rights.”

The Mapuche are angered by the presence of multinational forestry and farming corporations in the areas of southern Chile they regard as their homeland.

Muslim marchers protested the Russian presence in Chechnya and called for an independent Palestine.

Abdul Gafari, a Chilean Muslim, told The Santiago Times, “We are here against the terrorists Bush and Putin. We don’t want to see more Muslims killed – not just Muslims, all the innocent people who are being killed. The powerful can just do what they like, that’s the problem.”

At 500,000, the Palestinian community in Chile is the largest outside the Middle East.

Behind the Muslim group marched a contingent of Franciscan monks.

“We are here to protest the dehumanization that goes hand-in-hand with globalization … to promote the value of the human being,” said Brother Julio.

Further protests, peaceful and otherwise, took place throughout the city. A series of events organized by the Chilean Social Forum explored the alternatives to neoliberalism; outside the Espacio Riesco center, where APEC delegates convened Saturday, a group of Falun Dafa practitioners denounced human rights abuses in China and what they describe as the persecution of their fellow practitioners by the Chinese military.

Inside the conference centers, the voices of dissent were few.

Peruvian economist and development expert Hernando de Soto told a meeting of businessmen that 65 percent of the 21 APEC economies’ populations are excluded from the benefits of globalization, giving the lie to the “trickle down” theory of free trade economics.

“Of the 2,600 million people in the APEC countries, 1,700 million have not managed to join the international market and are not globalized. It doesn’t matter how much talk there is about the World Trade Organization and the Doha Round Table … We’re talking about two thirds of the population – as much as 80 percent in some countries. This is the problem,” De Soto said.

Despite the violent end to its march, the Chilean Social Forum will continue its work, said Luis Sepúlveda, the Chilean writer and one of the Forum’s leaders

Asked whether a mass demonstration could influence the APEC leaders, Sepúlveda was not optimistic. He told The Santiago Times:

“This won’t change anything. It’s the political climate in Chile that has to change. The people marching are calling for the country to take a different route, for leaders to take them into account when taking the big decisions. Chileans want a Latin American vocation, and the majority wants to see better relations with the other countries of the region before free marketeering with the economic superpowers.

“We will carry on our work after today. This is a process that will shape the actions of the political class of tomorrow. All the young people who are here – they’re going to decide the future.”

By Tom Burgis

WOULD'BE PINOCHET ASSASSIN SECRETLY BACK IN CHILE

WOULD-BE ASSASSIN PULLS WOOL OVER POLICE...And Everyone Else, For 16 Years, reports La Nacion (Nov. 17, 2004)

César Bunster Ariztía, a leading figure in the Sept. 7, 1986 assassination attempt against former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, has been secretly living and working in the country for the last 16 years, according to a report in last Sunday’s state-owned daily La Nacion.

A member of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR), Bunster rented the house and the vehicles that were critical components in the assassination attempt, which took place on a mountain road in the Cajon del Maipo a few kilometers outside of Santiago. When authorities discovered his name on the rental papers following the attack, they launched a no-holds-barred search for Bunster, who was wanted dead or alive.

The military government’s frustration was so great that it unleashed an assault on ‘suspected’ accomplices to the assassination attempt, leaving four civilians dead. The event also prompted the military government to declare a state of emergency and to jail numerous well-known opponents to Gen. Pinochet, including a political leader named Ricardo Lagos, today the president of the country.

But Bunster had fled to Cuba after the attempt, and his whereabouts remained unknown to the general public until the article in Sunday’s La Nacion. The media now report that Bunster returned to Chile in 1988 and assumed the identity of his step-brother, Enrique Mirial, a permanent resident of Europe. During the past 16 years the ‘Chilean Mirial’ has developed an excellent reputation as a Spanish-English translator in the political and diplomatic communities of Santiago – apparently enjoying a high risk game that his new identity allowed him.

Bunster has worked for the British, U.S, Canadian, and Australian embassies in Chile as well as the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defense. During Pinochet’s detention in London in 1998, Bunster handled some of the documents exchanged between the British and Chilean authorities. And in 2000, Bunster served as a translator for Norman Lamont, the former British Chancellor of the Exchequer and Pinochet’s defense lawyer in the United Kingdom.

Earlier this year, Bunster’s lawyer, Hugo Gutiérrez, appealed for and received a dismissal of the case that had been brought against his client in San Miguel Court of Appeals. The lawyer invokes a statute of limitations in Chilean law permitting dismissal of cases that aren’t brought to trial after 15 years.

Murder or attempted murder charges, of course, do not have this statute of limitations. But Bunster’s attorney had kept those charges at bay by successfully arguing that his client was part of an opposition ‘cell’ unit, and as such did not have knowledge about the purpose of the house and car rentals that he had carried out. Outlawed cells operate in such fashion to lessen the dangers resulting from detection of one unit.

As a result of the recent court decision, Bunster is now legally permitted to live in Chile and has freely decided to assume his former identity. And his story has come out.

The revelation that one of the nation’s top translators was, in fact, a fugitive from justice has created quite a stir in Chilean diplomatic and government circles. “Only last July, Miriel told us (his true identity) directly,” a British embassy representative told The Associated Press.

César Bunster is the son of Alvaro Bunster Briceño, who served as the Chilean ambassador to the United Kingdom during the Salvador Allende government of 1970-1973. Though Alvaro lost his position as ambassador after the 1973 military coup, he and his family continued to hold diplomatic status in the United Kingdom, where Bunster spent 12 years and graduated from Birmingham University in 1982. He then moved to Mexico in 1983.

Leaders of two of the political parties that were most brutalized by the Pinochet dictatorship – the Socialist Party and the Communist Party - were quick to express their opinion that Bunster’s case was emblematic of the situation faced by thousands of Chileans.

Dep. Jaime Naranjo, president of Commission of Human Rights, said the case supports his belief that Chilean citizens who committed crimes in their struggle against the dictatorship should be allowed to reenter and reintegrate themselves into Chilean society today. The La Nación article “reveals the difficulties that many people face who participated in crimes during the dictatorship and who have not been able to become a part of Chilean society,” Naranjo said.

A similar assessment was made by Communist Party secretary general Guillermo Teillier, who urged the government to pass a law allowing Chileans in hiding to reintegrate themselves into Chile’s society. “Many people don’t have citizens’ rights; others can’t return to the country; others continue to live in hiding and just wait for time to pass,” Teillier said.

Teiller added that he was left with a strong impression of César Bunster. “He seems to me like a great fighter for democracy and freedom in Chile and, as the report revealed, he is an intelligent and able person,” said Teiller. At the same time, Teiller expressed misgivings about the way in which the story came into the public domain. “I don’t know if articles of this nature are very ethical, nor do I know if he (Bunster) gave his consent, but this is a very delicate issue,” he said.

“This revelation makes one better understand the reality that thousands of Chileans face, people who have been forced into hiding and whose judicial problems persist today,” said human rights attorney Gutiérrez.

But Carmen Hertz, human rights lawyer and co-author of a book about the Pinochet assassination attempt called “Operation 20th Century,” told The Santiago Times that she found the article “scandalous,” a “form of attack,” and that it showed a general lack of respect for Bunster’s personal privacy.

Gutiérrez said his client is trying to live a normal life and that he would like others “to respect his private life.”

SOURCE: EL PAIS, LA NACIÓN, EL MERCURIO, ASSOCIATED PRESS By Katie Reilly

LESBIANS! CHILE STUDENTS EXPELLED

Sexual Discrimination Still The Norm In Chilean Schools?

(Nov. 5, 2004) Chile’s public debate about the sexual preferences of its student population was back in the headlines this week, with two more schools taking disciplinary action against young women for their alleged lesbianism.

L.F.L., 13, and M.R.D., 15, were expelled last week from the Escuela de Niñas España in Concepción, Region VIII, for their alleged lesbian conduct, while four girls in Valdivia, Region X, were told they won’t be readmitted to classes in 2005 because of a picture that shows them kissing. These two cases come on the heels of two other highly publicized cases that received national attention earlier this year.

In Concepción, a school inspector caught L.F.L. and M.R.D. coming out of a bathroom together and reported this to the general inspector, Patricia Navarro, who decided to expel the students until the end of the year.

Schoolmates allegedly saw the two girls kissing in the bathroom. But L.F.L., an eighth grade student, says she is not a lesbian, and that she had gone to the toilet to cry after having broken a mirror in class. She was initially on her own, but she randomly bumped into M.R.D., a friend of hers.

“She (Navarro) treated us really badly. She called us lesbians and told us she would kick us out,” the girl said.La Tercera reports that, according to family members, the two girl students had been previously forbidden to be together on the school grounds because of their alleged lesbianism.

Marcela, L.F.L.’s mother, says that Principal Ana Krum Ahumada had been discriminating against the two girls since the beginning of the year, because of their rumored lesbianism.

“Really, the two of them are just shy and very close,” the woman told La Tercera.When the younger girl’s family contacted the school to ask for an explanation, the principal didn’t clarify what the girls were doing in the bathroom and didn’t explain why they had been expelled.

In response, the girl’s parents contacted the Municipal Directorate of Education (DEP), the director of which, Héctor Mardones, went to the school Wednesday to discuss the issue with principal Ahumada.“She acted very rashly,” said the DEP director.Following Mardones’ intervention and a demonstration held on school grounds by L.F.L.’s classmates Wednesday morning, Ahumada agreed to readmit the students to class.

The parents also brought the episode to the Carabineros police, which reported the school’s “psychological mistreatment” of the two girls to Concepción’s Juvenile Court.Notwithstanding the readmission of the girls to the school, the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation (MOVIHL), which has been closely following cases of sexual discrimination in Chilean schools, denounced the situation to the Education Ministry (MINEDUC).

“We talked with Mardones, with the police that reported the case to the juvenile court and with the head inspector of the school, Patricia Navarro, and we came to the conclusion that the pupils were unjustly expelled,” MOVIHL President Rolando Jímenez told The Santiago Times.Jímenez explained that MOVIHL made an appointment with the undersecretary to the government Francisco Vidal, MINEDUC’s Departmental Secretary Harold Correa and the head of Unidad 600, Alexis Ramírez, for next Tuesday.

Unidad 600, the MINEDUC agency in charge of promoting and protecting equal rights, was last June in charge of the case of Gabriela, the lesbian student expelled from Santiago’s Centro Politecnico San Ramón (ST, June 23), and of D.F. and F.G., the two gay students expelled from Santiago’s Liceo Metropolitano last September (ST, Sept. 15).

At Tuesday’s meeting, MOVIHL plans to discuss the implementation of a national plan to fight sexual discrimination in schools, as well as the creation of a circular – to be sent to schools nationwide – in which the MINEDUC declares sexual discrimination on school grounds unacceptable.

“Our aim is make the government finally takes a political stand on the topic, so that we can avoid new arbitrary expulsions based on sexual discrimination,” said Jímenez. “We always manage to get the students back to class, but we’re tired of dowsing fires,” he added, remembering the cases of the Centro Politecnico San Ramón and of the Liceo Metropolitano, where expelled students were eventually readmitted after MOVIHL’s intervention.

Jímenez pointed out that MOVIHL has made several proposals to MINEDUC this year, such as organizing meetings about the topic of homosexuality in schools throughout the country. So far, the only answer has come from Unidad 600, which has officially incorporated the topic of homosexuality among the list of issues to tackle next year.

The other episode of discrimination took place in Valdivia’s Colegio Inmaculada Concepción, where the director decided Wednesday not to readmit the four students for the 2005 school year after seeing a picture of the girls – published on the Internet – showing at leat two of them kissing, reports Radio Cooperativa.

The radio station’s Region X correspondent, Barbara Cox, told The Santiago Times that the families of the girls are now seeking an attorney to get the girls back to school. According to the mother of one of the students, the picture was taken as a joke last April, when the girls were taking part in a debate about lesbianism. The case is currently being examined by Valdivia’s DEP, and Jímenez says MOVIHL will be contacting the institutions as soon as possible.

SOURCE: LA TERCERA By Irene Caselli (editor@santiagotimes.cl)