Has Chile Finally Gotten Rid of Pinochet’s Ghost?

Date: 20 December 2021 - 21:29

News ID: ۹۷۹۹۳

By:Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

The victory of Gabriel Boric in the presidential elections is not only a triumph of people’s power in Chile but for all Latin Americans who have begun to hail the 35-year old former student leader as the person to rid the region of US hegemony and the brutal legacy of the murderous dictator Augusto Pinochet Ugarte.
In fact, the death on December 16 in Santiago of General Pinochet’s 99 year old widow Lucia Hirrart, who never had any words of regret for her husband’s repressive rule that decimated tens of thousands of Chileans during the 17 years he was in power after overthrowing the democratically elected Salvadaor Allende in 1973 in the CIA engineered coup, is a positive portent in view of Boric’s words to jubilant masses of his intention to bury forever Washington’s influence on Chile.
Congratulatory messages are already pouring in for the president-elect from all over Latin America, with Bolivian President Luis Arce, saying Boric represents “the triumph of the Chilean people” and the “strengthening of Latin American democracy.”
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who is a constant target of the US and its policy of economic-political terrorism, praised Gabriel Boric on his win, calling it an “overwhelming victory over fascism.”
Peru’s President Pedro Castillo in his congratulatory cable to the Chilean president-elect, said: “The victory you have achieved is that of the Chilean people and the Latin American people who want to live with freedom, peace, justice, and dignity share it.”
Others who wasted no time in felicitating Boric were Uruguay’s President Luis Lacalle Pou, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández, and his deputy Cristina de Kirchner, who said “the people always come back.”
The former president of Latin America’s largest country, Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – a victim of the US plot against the Brazilian people – also hailed Gabriel Boric’s victory, while the US-backed President Jair Bolsonaro, a former military chief who is an unabashed admirer of Pinochet’s ruthless dictatorship, was shocked and kept his mum.
However, the rightwing presidents of Colombia and Ecuador, Ivan Duque and Guillermo Lasso respectively, obviously sensing their own precarious US-backed hold on countries seething with resentment against Washington’s hegemony, felt it expedient to congratulate the leftwing president-elect of Chile.
They and others still in the dwindling US camp seem to have realized that sooner or later people’s power will sweep all over Latin America.
Gabriel Boric, who favours financial assistance to Chile’s poorest populations afflicted by the Coronavirus pandemic, should be on guard against the plots of the US through CIA and the mercenaries amongst the country’s industrialists and politicians, who fear their era of exploitation of the masses is over.
He should not succumb to the irrational view of some of his supporters who seem to be openly aligned with the communists or favour such unnatural gender relations, since this would eradicate his popularity in his predominantly Catholic homeland.
His political platform is attractive, especially to the indigenous non-European population of Chile whose rights and welfare he espouses, including proposals for a more inclusive public health system, to cancel student debt, to raise taxes for the super wealthy and a revision of the state’s private pension system -- which was inherited from Pinochet’s military regime.
To sum up, the next four years will be crucial for Boric and his future, which depends on his careful management of a country of 19 million people and rich in natural resources, which the exploitative and oppressive US will be loath to leave alone.