A Truly Open Letter to General Pinochet.

• Author: Dorfman, Ariel
• Position: Excerpt - Augusto Pinochet - Brief Article

Trust me, General: This is the best thing that could have happened to you.

I understand that it is not pleasant to be arrested without warning, not to be allowed to go out and stroll through the streets of Chelsea at your leisure, not to know what future awaits you. Without going any further, you could ask the many Chileans whom you yourself deprived of their liberty, under far less pleasant conditions than those provided at a five-star London clinic.

But if you are afraid and feel lonely, and if you feel knifed in the back, General, consider that destiny has furnished you in this final chapter of your life, a providential opportunity to save your soul. Since the 1973 coup, you have been living a lie, a meticulous self-aggrandizement, an evasion of your conduct that you built precisely as a result of the outrageous and intolerable murder of Salvador Allende, the man who appointed you to your post and whom you betrayed. That first betrayal was followed by an inevitable avalanche of others, as the original crime must always be covered with more crimes; dictators aspire to absolute power to flee the demons that they have unchained. In hopes of silencing their ghosts, they insist on being surrounded by a flattering wall of mirrors and yes-men who assure you that yes, you are the best and most beautiful, you are the wisest.

And you ended up believing it, General.

You defended what you had done, what you were doing, behind a wall of invincibility, which no one would ever call you on. There was one law for you and another for your fellow citizens. When the Chilean people rejected you in 1988 and forced you to give up the presidency in 1990, you were able to bind, with incredible astuteness, the entire country in a transition in which you would never have to answer for anything you said or did, a transition in which you were the only one truly free to say and do as you pleased, afforded reckless abandon, as you yourself reiterated craftily, while your countrymen always had to watch their tongues and the words that flowed from them. We couldn't, under that necessary transition--the pact--allow ourselves to be taken with emotion for fear that you would throw a fit because you didn't like our latest move: a checkmate to which we had no right. In fact, General, you thought that you could continue to enjoy the impunity of a dictator amidst an otherwise democratic process.

And you confused your country with the world. You thought you could travel to...