Letter to the Chileans, by Augusto Pinochet
- Letter to the Chileans
- Augusto Pinochet Ugarte
- London, December 1998
Unable to return to my country, and living the hardest and most unjust experience of my life, I would like to thank my compatriots for all the noble tokens of affection and support they have given me, without which these hours of trial and loneliness would be incomparably sadder for me and my family. I would like to express my gratitude with some reflections that have come to my mind in these painful days, which may help to discover the truth and justice of the history that is being judged.
The country knows that I never sought power. That is why when I exercised it I never clung to it and when the time came to hand it over, in accordance with our Constitution, I did so loyally. No historian, not even the most biased and unobjective, can or will be able tomorrow to sustain in good faith that my public actions responded to an alleged personal ambition or any other motive other than the good of Chile. On the contrary, I always thought that I should guide the call to serve my country, which was beating in my heart since I was a child, through my military career. I always knew that the oath I took one day before God and before our flag, when I was just a teenager, I was going to fulfill it. Precisely because of our solid moral formation, we soldiers learn to discover at an early age how much pain and irreparable losses wars cause. That is why, as a ruler, I have been indefatigable and unyielding in my eagerness to avoid armed conflicts, to seek peace for Chile at all times, even when all kinds of threats have hovered over us.
Faced with the dramatic crossroads in which our country was placed by the Popular Unity government, I was reluctant to act until the end, despite the clamor of citizens knocking on the doors of the barracks asking for our intervention. I waited not out of fear but out of a secret hope that that extreme situation of institutional crisis, which was denounced by the Honorable Supreme Court of Justice, the Honorable Chamber of Deputies and other organs of our institutionality, could be peacefully overcome. Nobody better than a soldier knows how uncontrollable armed confrontations are when they are not fought against a regular army. It was not possible to avoid it and, finally, we had to assume the leadership of the country on that historic September 11, but not before entrusting the success of our mission to God and to the Blessed Virgin of Carmen, Patroness of our country. to God and to the Blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel, Patroness of our Armed Forces and Queen of Chile. I have always had and will always have in the deepest part of my heart the memory and a feeling of gratitude and admiration towards that generation of soldiers, sailors, airmen and carabineros, who participated in that patriotic day and made so many heroic sacrifices.
About that heroic deed, only one reflection is worthwhile. The Armed Forces did not destroy an exemplary democracy, nor did they interrupt a process of development and welfare, nor was Chile at that time a model of freedom and justice. Everything had been destroyed and we men-at-arms acted as a moral reserve of a country that was disintegrating, in the hands of those who wanted to submit it to the Soviet orbit.
I firmly believe in the unity of the country. Everything I have done throughout my life has had no other reason than to bring about the reunion of Chileans with their common higher destiny. I am deeply convinced that countries have never had and will never have a future if they fail to discover the historic mission they are called to fulfill. I am certain that those nations that forget or deny their history have never been able to and will never be able to understand the challenges that the future holds for them. That peoples who are easily seduced by the preaching of hatred, revenge or division will never be happy or have a good future.
I am a man who belongs to a historical time and to very specific circumstances. The century that is coming to an end could well be defined as one of the cruelest that humanity has ever known. Two atrocious world wars and an ideological war that subjugated more than half of humanity have deeply marked it as two absolutely opposite visions confronted each other. The dilemma was: either the Western Christian conception of existence would prevail, so that respect for human dignity and the fundamental values of our civilization would prevail in the world; or the materialistic and atheistic vision of man and society would be imposed, with a system implacably oppressive of their freedoms and rights.
In the course of this century, the extermination of an entire nation was sought under the pretext of supposed ethnic ideals.
Communism, for its part, that true anti-religion, cost humanity the lives of millions of human beings throughout Europe, and of tens of millions of children, women and men in the different countries of Asia. In America, too, Marxism sowed death and destruction. Not only in its revolutionary attempts but also with the universal preaching of hatred and class struggle, and with the export of guerrilla warfare and terrorism. For that gigantic genocide, for the most brutal systems of oppression, the worst that humanity remembers, nobody asks for justice and probably there will never be any. On the contrary, those who provoked those evils, those who provided our countries with Soviet weapons and financing to carry them out, those who promoted and preached to our peoples the sinister ideology of Marxist socialism, are the ones who stand up today as my judges.
Everything I did as a soldier and as a ruler, I did it thinking of the freedom of Chileans, their welfare and national unity, higher objectives to the achievement of which those of us who acted on September 11 devoted all our efforts. We made no promises. We only proposed to transform Chile into a society of free and democratic men, where its citizens would be respected for their right to create and freely undertake their initiatives, so that they would become masters of their own destinies and not slaves of the State and less of other nations. We set out to make Chile a great nation and we firmly believe that we have contributed to achieving this, notwithstanding the fact that some countries in the world still do not value it, just as they do not value the fact that after a peaceful transition our country today has a true democratic regime, in which all its institutions are fully functional.
Times, however, have changed. Communism collapsed. The “real socialisms” were exposed and humanity was able to know a history of crimes, injustices, human exploitation, failures and lies as never even the most bitter adversary could have imagined. In Chile, the result of our history is that this unknown and distant country was able to successfully overcome the greatest test it has had to face in this century. In a true feat, which its agents will never forgive us for, we were able to demonstrate before anyone else that it was possible to defeat the powerful “empire of lies and hatred”. We secured our freedom and set out early and visionary on the arduous and difficult path of national reconstruction and the establishment of a modern and free society. In almost two decades, and thanks to the sacrifice of an entire people who regained faith in their ideals of progress and justice, a different country was built. No one today can deny that September 11 opened paths of hope and opportunities for all, and that it is up to Chileans to preserve them and make them fully fruitful over time.
Chile is today a different country from the one that the young people of many generations had to face when it had a dark, pessimistic and failed existence. With our government, the poor and the neglected began to have real opportunities to progress. We always knew that this social priority should be our main moral commitment. Today, I cannot hide the satisfaction it gives me to know that, in order to go back to the past, many generations would have to pass before Chileans return to being a losing, fatalistic, depressed and worthless people, as we became in the early seventies. Ideologically blinded people wanted to destroy our country. They could not succeed. They did not have the spiritual reserve and the natural dignity of a peaceful and welcoming people who, nevertheless, have never allowed themselves to be subdued or subjugated by anyone. I would be doing an injustice if in these lines I did not give special recognition, as a testimony of my greatest gratitude, to those who shared the epic of the country's reconstruction; to that generation of soldiers and civilians, men and women, who have ended up consecrating their lives to the service of the country and who daily give testimony of fidelity to their patriotic ideals; to the youth of Chile, who have inherited a strengthened country with a destiny of greatness that must continue to be built with will and true patriotic responsibility.
I also thank those who were not part of my government and, being even its adversaries, have known how to value at this time, above all differences, the defense of the sovereignty and dignity of the country.
It is likely that the mysterious paths that the Lord reserves for each people may lead many Chileans to delay in discovering the truth of what our country has lived through. I tell you that nothing can prevent that one day, perhaps not so far away, peace and sanity will return to those spirits that still remain blinded by passion, and in the serenity of other times, when history vindicates our common work, they will end up recognizing the value and merits of it. At that moment, it is likely that I will no longer be there. It will be, however, the hour of victory, the hour when the ideals that illuminated our dreams will end up being common to all Chileans.
Today, I feel that destiny has once again placed on my shoulders the enormous responsibility of contributing to sow the seeds of peace that will make possible the greatness and unity of my country. Beyond my pain and the wounds I bear in my soul for the unjust humiliations I have been subjected to, and the indignation I feel when I see my country attacked as a sovereign and independent state and not respected as it deserves, I want to point out that I accept this new cross, with the humility of a Christian and the courage of a soldier, if by doing so I render a service to Chile and the Chileans. I wish nothing more than to see the divisions and sterile rancor between us overcome.
At the end of my life, in spite of the fatigue and suffering that so many injustices and misunderstandings have caused me, I want to tell you that even if I still have to face greater adversities, my spirit will never feel defeated. Nothing will bend my convictions or my firm will to serve my country, as I swore the day I joined the Chilean Army. My deepest desire at this time is to prevent that in our beloved land there continue to be more victims, more pain than foreign ideologies have already caused in the Chilean family. I wish mine were the last sacrifice. If only my pain and the grievances of which I am the victim could satisfy the always insatiable feelings of revenge, and serve so that those who are still anchored to rancor could find peace for their consciences. If only they could stop living so disturbed, and never again be heard in our country the revolutionary preaching that sowed so much violence and division among Chileans.
Those of us who believe in forgiveness and true reconciliation must continue to work hard for the future. The day is not far off when a new generation of compatriots, looking at the history of their country, will discover the truth of the deed that allowed the construction of a society of free and dignified Chileans, of a better homeland for all and not for a sector or a party, as we were about to experience.
I have been the object of a political-judicial, artful and cowardly machination, which has no moral value whatsoever. While in this continent, and specifically in the countries that condemn me through spurious trials, communism has murdered many millions of human beings during this century, I am being persecuted for having defeated it in Chile, saving the country from a virtual civil war. That meant three thousand dead, of which almost a third are uniformed and civilians who fell victims of extremist terrorism. I am falsely judged in numerous European countries, in an operation directed by those who claim to be my enemies, without there being the remotest possibility that those who prejudge and condemn me will understand our history and the spirit of what we did. I am absolutely innocent of all the crimes and deeds that are irrationally imputed to me. However, I fear that those who do so were never and will never be willing to come to their senses and accept the truth.
In the face of such an aberration, and notwithstanding my suffering and helplessness, I would like to offer a word of encouragement to my compatriots. Never be discouraged and never give up in the face of adversity and misfortune. Never stop fighting for the greatness and power of Chile. May we soon overcome our present condition as a weak, small and distant country, so that never again will a Chilean, whatever his condition, suffer the humiliations and humiliations that I suffer today, precisely because we do not have the strength in the concert of nations to make ourselves respected. I will never give up. I have not done so in this difficult situation, nor have I ever done so throughout my life, when I have had to face other hours of trial; therefore, I wish to express to my comrades in uniform and in particular to those of the Army, my disposition, my confidence and deep appreciation for their way of acting in these difficult circumstances.
I keep intact my faith in God and in the principles that have guided my existence. I keep the firm hope that the Lord in his infinite mercy will apply my most intimate sufferings for those who died unjustly in those years of confrontation. Those who believe or maintain that the pain for the blood shed in our homeland is the monopoly of one side are mistaken. We have all suffered for the victims. I know that the suffering of those who did not provoke the confrontation is especially great, of those who did not seek it, much less wanted it, and ended up being its innocent victims. The soldier always seeks to protect his countrymen. I have never wished the death of anyone and I feel sincere pain for all the Chileans who have lost their lives in these years.
I have humbly asked God until the last second of my life to give me the conformity and lucidity to understand and accept this cross and that this pain that I carry in the depths of my spirit may become a good seed in the soul of the Chilean nation. If my suffering can put an end to the hatred that has been sown in our country, I want to tell you that I am ready to accept all the designs of destiny with the absolute confidence that God, in his infinite love, will know how to make fruitful this sacrifice that I offer Him so that peace may triumph, and at the dawn of the new century, Chileans will be a united and reconciled people like the one I have always dreamed of seeing.
I love Chile above all things and not even the most painful circumstances that I will have to face will prevent me, with all the strength of my spirit, from a distance, from repeating once and a thousand times, Viva Chile.
~~Augusto Pinochet Ugarte