About my husband and the general.

• Author: Barnes, Betsey
• Position: Harry G. Barnes, Jr. and Augusto Pinochet - Essay

Author's Forward:

To Harry's friends and family:

After Harry S death many friends asked if we would be holding a memorial for him in Washington. That is not feasible, nor is it anything he would have wanted. His written request was for a family gathering, and we have had that. It was very complete, with members coming from all over the country, from Canada and from England.

But I wanted something for those many friends who were not here.

From his thirty-eight years in the Foreign Service, I have chosen to tell about one particular overseas assignment. In his quiet way, Harry accomplished as much in all of his assignments, but his years in Chile happened, in addition, to tell a dramatic story.

TALES OF MY HUSBAND--A TESTAMENT TO HARRY BARNES PART ONE

Laska, my Siamese, and I were driving home from a morning appointment with her vet, and she had been quiet for almost two minutes. Grateful, I turned on the car radio. It was almost noon and I thought to catch the news.

There had been a coup. Laska began to wail again, and I turned up the volume.

A coup d'etat in Santiago, Chile. The military had bombarded the palace where the president was refusing to resign. I caught a name: Salvador Allende.

The continent was Latin America. I wasn't doing so well with the country. I could draw a map of Eastern Europe, of India, and the kingdoms of Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan riding the Himalayan massif to the north. But we'd never served south of the border. I'd check the atlas when we got home.

Bethesda, Maryland was where we lived when Harry had a Washington assignment at the Department of State. This coup in Chile wouldn't affect his area of work, but the Department would be buzzing and he'd know what was known.

On that eleventh day in September of 1973, the Chilean government's military had wrested power from President Salvador Allende, thus ending the country's one hundred years of constitutional government. Chile's coup was one of the bloodiest of Latin America's twentieth century, and yet the Nixon White House raised little protest, noting only that the Chilean press remained docile.

The U.S. press did take note of the violence, but then the story moved onto back pages--there were more tantalizing events taking place in our own capital. Richard Nixon and our media were heatedly invested in the Watergate drama.

And there were additional reasons for silence from the White House.

Salvador Allende had come to the presidency of Chile in 1970 as a socialist with radical ideas for the transformation of his government. His election had convinced Nixon and his closest advisor, Henry Kissinger, as well as many in Congress, that Allende was another Fidel Castro in monk's clothing.

Indeed, after a year of popular acceptance, Allende's pursuit of nationalization began to slow the nation's economy. Inflation in Chile had reached 150 percent. Allende had paid allegiance to that first commandment of the Manifesto: All industries and private properties belong to the workers. Adding insult to injury, he then took over the banks. And despite the country's natural blessings offertile land and a friendly climate, food production was failing.

In Washington tempers finally spiked when Allende nationalized two American copper firms.

"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people," said Henry Kissinger.

And we did not stand by.

President Nixon effected a blockade. Doing everything possible to "make the Chilean economy scream," he cut off financial aid and pressured international organizations to suspend loans. And, covertly, he saw to an increase in monies to Chile's military, which was frothing at the mouth for the overthrow of their "Communist" president.

Eighteen days before the coup, Allende had promoted his trusted commander of the Santiago garrison, Augusto Pinochet, to be his Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army. And it was General Pinochet who led the army in the coup that seized power that morning in September. When the general offered Allende a safe passage out of the country, his instant response was, "Up your ass."

But when the military stormed the presidential palace, they found Allende dead. And in June of1974 it was Augusto Jose Ramon Pinochet Ugarte who assumed full power as president of Chile.

Without delay he returned the nation to free-market principles. The country's industries were back in the hands of private owners, her currency was stabilized, and the rich soil of the land was not only producing enough for home consumption, but for export as well.

"My goal," said the new president, "is to make Chile not a nation ofproletarians, but a nation of entrepreneurs."

So center stage had been this "miracle of Chile " that scant attention was given to what was going on offstage: the brutal measures he was taking to silence his opposition.

Pinochet's immediate moves wiped out all democratic institutions. He suspended the Constitution, did away with Parliament and its political activists, eliminated voter registration rolls, banned trade unions, fired all liberal judges, drew a line in the sand for the press ...

Terrified of a government overthrow and his own assassination, Pinochet, in a paranoid frenzy, set out to destroy anyone not in step with his policies. Most essential would be to guarantee an unquestioning military--to silence with finality even a hint of dissent, and to create within the remaining ranks that atmosphere of fear so vital to control. This crusade would require a man whose temperament was absolutely assured, and he blessed General Sergio Arellano Stark with the command of what came to be known as "the Caravan of Death." The first step, the execution of close to 100 of Chile's questionable military, was accomplished between the 16th and the 19th of October, 1973. General Stark's further task was to eliminate, by whatever means available, all the leadership from Allende's Popular Unity party.

Still, there remained that other opposition. Thirty percent of the population stubbornly grieved for Allende, another forty percent were Christian Democrats. With 70 percent of the population in need of "persuasion," an edgy Pinochet fashioned the National Intelligence Directorate, the DINA, and to make it effective, he called upon his trusted old comrade, Colonel Manuel Contreras.

The DINA became Pinochet's arm of extermination, not only in Chile, but reaching beyond the country to shadow exiled Chileans.

At home Contreras served as Big Brother, "watching over " all aspects of life--churches, universities, businesses--creating, as Harry and I knew so personally in Eastern European dictatorships, that pervasive mistrust of neighbor for neighbor, even of parents for their school-indoctrinated children. Pinochet's survival relied on suspicion and terror.

For detention and torture, the city's soccer stadiums and military bases were taken over. When even more room was needed, construction of prisons began.

But for that most dangerous opposition, the colonel was taking no chances, and the disappearances began.

Santiago was becoming a city of fear. Contreras and his legion nurtured threats of leftist revolution. Fake ammunition storage was uncovered and its "discovery " widely broadcast. Curfews were issued, and citizens were encouraged to report suspicious behavior by those of "unstable " ideology. The news and radio, all now government controlled, daily broadcast their propaganda. Public squares were scenes of bonfires as all insurrectionary materials went up in flames.

When the first grumbles of civil-rights abuses filtered through to Washington, neither Nixon nor Kissinger was inclined to lecture our new ally.

But when those grumbles became visible protests, the U.S. press reacted. It was suddenly evident that this new ally was creating a police state.

And when fifty mothers of those "desaparecidos " marched through Santiago, we learned those mothers had been arrested. The trickle of departures from Chile became a stream, and from those exiled came more stories of concentration camps and the horrors so sickeningly familiar.

It is estimated that the Pinochet regime was responsible for the torture and internment of some 80,000; for countless deaths and disappearances, including women and children; and for close to 1500 banished into exile.

One of those banished was economist Orlando Letelier, who had served as both foreign and...