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Pinochet: from General to Senator Clashing Visions On March 11, 1998, the National Congress in Valparaiso became the setting for another clash between the antagonistic visions which constitute modern day Chile. For the first time in the country’s history, a former military dictator was sworn in not only as senator, but as lifetime senator, senador vitalicio . Pinochet claimed his permanent seat in the same democratic institution he closed down years before, alongside supporters and well-wishers, but also alongside some of the very political leaders whose exile and persecution he ordered in the past.
In the weeks preceding the new legislative period beginning March 11, 1998, different groups of Concertacion legislators had mounted legal challenges to the lifetime Senate seat, but to no avail. They argued, among other things, that General Pinochet had never been elected president. In the end, the general's opponents were powerless: the Concertacion coalition, which accepted the Senate seat in 1990 as a condition of the transition to democracy, stuck to the bargain.
A Conflictive Ceremony Pinochet was sworn in at a conflictive ceremony which was echoed outside by thousands of protesters expressing their indignation against perhaps the most strife-ridden development in Chilean politics during the "transition" years. While outside on the streets in front of Congress anti-Pinochet protesters and Carabineros police exchanged volleys of rocks and tear gas, senators and deputies from the ruling Concertacion alliance paraded within Congress, carrying photographs of people executed or made to disappear during the 17 years of military rule headed by Pinochet. The photographs included images of diplomat Orlando Letelier and former Army Commander- in-Chief Carlos Prats, both assassinated by agents of the DINA secret service under Pinochet, as well as a photograph of Allende. In the Senate chamber, the life-long senator-to-be remained silent and stoic, waiting for the ceremony to begin. The unusual activity in the Senate chamber escalated when Concertacion deputy Jorge Soria attempted to approach Pinochet with one of the photographs only to be punched in the face by hard-right Independent Democratic Union Deputy Sergio Correa. There was also occasional shouting and heckling from the non-legislature guests in the gallery, both for and against Pinochet. Likewise, next door in the Chamber of Deputies, opposing groups shouted at each other alternately, "Long Live Pinochet!" and "Murderer!" Of the senators from the Concertacion, only three approached the general to shake his hand during the ceremony. These were former Aylwin minister Edgardo Boeninger, now a designated senator, and Christian Democrat senators Juan Hamilton and Andres Zaldivar, who almost 20 years ago, was exiled by Pinochet’s regime.
The Session Is Not Open The swearing-in ceremony was delayed for at least 15 minutes as Senate President Sergio Romero, member of the rightist Renovacion Nacional party, refused to open the session until the Concertacion senators removed the photographs of their dead comrades from display. (The following is an excerpt from the dialogues that took place in the interval before the session was opened.)
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On that day, over 500 people were arrested and 34 wounded in Chile’s main cities in the course of protests against Pinochet. As in the past, Carabineros police responded to the marchers with tear gas, high pressure water cannons and other types of physical violence. For the residents of some of the working-class neighborhoods of Santiago, nighttime also brought back recent memories, as was the case of Villa Francia, where Armed Police from the Special Forces marched into the streets and tanks rolled into the avenues. The next day, it was back to Chile’s unusual normality.
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The 1980 Constitution enacted by the military regime of
former Army head Augusto Pinochet affords a lifetime senate position to any past president
who has served a term of at least six years. On March 11, 1998, the only candidate
eligible for the post was Pinochet. Former President Patricio Aylwin had served only a
four-year term, in line with the agreements reached between the regime and some
democratic sectors during the final years of the dictatorship. The last
democratically-elected president before Aylwin, Salvador Allende, died in the presidential
palace of La Moneda on September 11, 1973, before the end of his mandate, amidst the
bombing and shooting which paved the way for the military regime.