40 Years are Nothing: History and memory of the 1973 coups d’état in Uruguay and Chile Edited by Pablo Leighton and Fernando López 40 Years are Nothing: History and memory of the 1973 coups d’état in Uruguay and Chile Edited by Pablo Leighton and Fernando López This book first published 2015 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2015 by Pablo Leighton, Fernando López and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7642-9 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7642-1 CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................ ix Pablo Leighton and Fernando López Preface ...................................................................................................... xiii J Patrice McSherry Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1 Regional Cooperation and State Terrorism in South America Fernando López Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 17 On History and Memory: Some Reflections on the Process of Transitional Justice from the Experience of Uruguay (1985-2005) Pedro Teixeirense Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 33 The Gelman Case and the Legacy of Impunity in Uruguay Debbie Sharnak Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 57 The Celebration: Violence and Consent in the First Anniversary of the Chilean Coup Pablo Leighton Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 77 ASIS and ASIO in Chile: Transparency and Double Standards Four Decades after the Coup Florencia Melgar and Pablo Leighton Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 93 Politics of Memory and Human Rights in Chile: The Struggle for Memorials in the 21st Century Nicolás del Valle vi Contents Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 111 Moving Memories: Marches Remembering and Embodying the Chilean and Uruguayan Dictatorships Yael Zaliasnik Contributors ............................................................................................. 125 CHAPTER FOUR THE CELEBRATION: VIOLENCE AND CONSENT IN THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF THE CHILEAN COUP PABLO LEIGHTON This chapter is part of a larger work exploring a feature of cultural power developed during the Chilean dictatorship, particularly the ways by which audiovisual mass media helped in the rise and stability of that government and articulated its foundational discourses. This broader research contemplates the building of hegemony in Chile; in other words, the creation of politico-social consent by cultural forms of power, a notion inspired by the works of Antonio Gramsci (1971, 1977, 1983, 2000), Stuart Hall (1977a, b, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1985b, a, 1986, 1987, 1997), Ernesto Laclau (1979, Laclau and Mouffe 1987) and others. The study also conceives how the Chilean dictatorship remains, at the very least, a historiographical dispute. Its legacy involves a form of popular support which has been difficult to recognise—socially and academically―even though it was no less significant than the government’s political and economic despotism. Specifically, the research highlights the manifestation of popular support for the Chilean dictatorship and its dominance using nonrepressive means, at a singular period, 1973 to 1978, more universally associated with violent coercion. In order to observe and understand better that power equation―the will to govern by force without completely discarding consent―the observation of one of its cultural forms is crucial. An audiovisual culture both illustrates and assists in that holding of power in the most evocative manner during the most repressive stage of the dictatorship. A cultural history of a communication medium, which has the exceptional capacity to reproduce and build events, can reveal how the dictatorship from the very beginning uses both discourse and force indiscriminately. 58 Chapter Four One: Fascism Hernán Valdés, author of an influential book about his survival from a concentration and torture camp near Santiago, said in a 2003 interview: Let me tell you … a short anecdote. In Hamburg, in 1974, I was invited to give a talk [...] It was not, I said, only about the military, the right and the Yankees: a great part of the middle class had supported them. It was a scandal. ‘Provocateur!’, they yelled at me, ‘the Chilean people are not fascist!’, and they didn’t let me speak. They picked up the microphone and gave their own version by shouting [...] They tried to safeguard possible allies in the future, a middle class that might do a new turn in their favour. Seeing things today, maybe they were somewhat right (Hernán Valdés in Cárdenas 2003). The general lack of recognition and the disputes over the degree―always uncertain in any dictatorship―of popular support of the Chilean junta since the day of the coup in 1973 immediately creates a blind spot. Various authors have pointed to the most common misunderstanding born since the day of the coup: that it heralds the rise of a “fascist” dictatorship, a term that is used so “prematurely and importunately” under Salvador Allende’s presidency that by the time of the coup it is devoid of content (Valdés 1978, 208-209). For years, the “fascist” judgement acts as a “veil”, says Tomás Moulian (1997, 258). The meaning of the new regime is complex, in part because of a scientistic definition of “fascism” which is regularly applied to large political mass-mobilisations, or to a sole party regime. In absence of the latter feature, particularly, the Chilean dictatorship is assigned the “fascist” label automatically by the resistance and the hundreds of thousands of exiles and foreign critics. It is a “name” that is reduced to mean “malignant conspiracy” (Moulian 1983, 310). Whilst the term initially works abroad as condemnation, even disrupting the weapons supply for the dictatorship (see La Nación 2009, US Congress 1976, 1212), the strategic cost of that misinterpretation is high. According to Moulian, the “fascist” label implies the omnipotence of the new regime and pronounces a false death sentence on the dictatorship just for being an “abject” government. More importantly, the terrorist repression is seen as irrational, without purpose, Moulian suggests. For him, the “basic error”―the greatest of all misunderstandings in the end―is to undervalue the “organic” role of the dictatorship. The simplistic “liberal illusion” of the left is incapable of considering terror as arising from a “complex equation”; hence Moulian ultimately proposes discarding the notion of “fascism” in the case of Chile (1997, 258-263, 1983, 310-311). The Celebration 59 The “fascist” label is about an “enigma”, says Ernesto Laclau, an intricate agglomeration of contradictions made too simplistic, a tag applied equally to dictatorships from different continents and eras (1979, 82,88). The “fascist” assignation, nonetheless, manages to travel across the world, adapts itself and works in practice. Luz Arce, a Chilean left militant who became a State agent after her imprisonment, quotes what her torturer said to her to justify, describe and announce more of his horrendous violence: “Now you’ll know what fascism is, but not foreign fascism; this is Chilean fascism” (in Lazzara 2011, 98). Far from South America, Umberto Eco argues that “fascism” is a synecdoche, an interchangeable term for a political system devoid of an essence, which can change a couple of features and still be fascist. But “[l]ife is not that simple”, adds Eco (1995). Michel Foucault begins by discarding the classic Marxist definition of fascism (the “terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary faction of the bourgeoisie”) and points to the delegation of the role of repression and surveillance by the state to a considerable section of the masses. This freedom to repress, “repulsive” but “intoxicating”, denies liberty to the wider population, without eliminating the circulation of power and making the word “‘dictatorship’…real in general, and relatively false” (Foucault 1989, 128,130). Critically, that delegation of power and the articulation of discourses make fascism another hegemonic or “popular-democratic” interpellation, without which the term would be “incomprehensible” (Laclau 1979, 111,125). How modern despotism interpellates popularly can connect these ideas to Chile and to its dictatorship. In Chile, most of the repressed half of the population under dictatorship rationalises and emphasises only the “authoritarian character” of fascism, denying any connotation of a “mass regime”, as suggested by Laclau. This view focuses on brute force rather than “mobilisation” or even “ideological distortions” (Laclau 1979, 88174), such as the fervent anticommunism and neo-liberalism also operative in Chile. Ultimately, I emphasise the hegemonic desire of the dictatorship and I rework another notion about fascism to examine the civil-military regime in its early years. I refer to the chance that the government concedes to the masses to express themselves or, in the words of Benjamin, when an aesthetic is developed from politics (1978, 241). Two: Violence and culture If one only considers the numbers killed, the victims of the dictatorship would mean “little” mathematically in Chilean history, suggests Alfredo 60 Chapter Four Jocelyn-Holt. Nevertheless, such numbers would mean much more when one includes torture victims (Jocelyn-Holt 2000, 239). Certainly, for these surviving victims there is “the obscenity of interpretation” (Avelar 2001, 260). At the same time, the numbers of sufferers of this specific type of violence, the most difficult to represent, raise various interpretations from the Chilean State Truth reports. The total counted by the Chilean state, 38 years after the coup, was 38,254 victims of political imprisonment and torture (Comisión Valech 2011, 6-51). From the 27,255 persons counted in 2004 more than 5,000 are detained in just two days: 11 to 13 September 1973. The great majority, 67 per cent (more than 18,000), become victims between the coup and 31 December of the same year. The Valech Report’s historiographical division, which it admits is “arbitrary”, establishes that only 19 per cent of all victims are tortured in the 1974 to 1977 period and 13 per cent are from 1978 to the last day of the dictatorship, 10 March 1990. Such data confirms that the regime is initially a terrorist dictatorship, within the 1973–78 phase universally identified with DINA (Directorate of National Intelligence), the secret police. Nonetheless, during this first stage, the institution that is responsible for the largest number of detentions and torture cases is the Carabineros, the general police. The Valech Report shows other figures that reveal a type of subjectivity in the victims of this violent repression: almost a third of tortured victims do not have any political affiliation; over 63 per cent are militants who do not play any leading roles; and close to 58 per cent are less than 30 years old at the time of detention. Lastly, more than a third of all victims are tortured using electric shocks, a method that leaves no evident marks on the bodies and that is used from the day of the coup and throughout the whole of the dictatorship (Comisión Valech 2004, 208-478; 2011, 38-44). In the mid-80s, a Chilean judge who turns into a dissident as he witnesses the occurrence of torture is uncertain about the marks left on victims and about the symptoms they experience: “Electric shocks?”, García wonders (1990, 57). Without evident traces and for the short term, the “surplus of cruelty is a fundamental component of terror itself [...] without being excessive, obscene, absurd, terror is simply not terror”, says Avelar. In the longer term, “[t]he torturer’s great victory is to define the language in which the atrocity will be named” (Avelar 2004, 28-49). The undecipherable numbers of victims of state violence are still the subject of struggles over meaning in Chile, including the circumstances of their tabulation. The figures of 200,000 detainees and 400,000 exiled, which necessarily imply a systematic dictatorial domination (Stern 2004, xxi), have been officially reduced in the state counting. The number of persons that have claimed to be victims of imprisonment and torture is The Celebration 61 counted at 68,000 through the testimonies given before the state, but almost 30,000 of them were not recognised or compensated (Comisión Valech 2011, 1-51). Again, these accounts can become numberless and escape an expeditious representation (see Agamben 2002). Amid those included in the official accounts as victims, for example, are tortured people who turned later into victimisers (see El Mostrador 2011). Moreover, as Jocelyn-Holt points out, much of the impunity over these crimes has been promoted by eminent former dissidents who later became postdictatorship state authorities, even though many of them were tortured or imprisoned by the military (2000, 164). Among insightful evaluations of the dictatorship’s violence, BeasleyMurray says it is a mistake to qualify the regime as “simply repressive” instead of describing a government that would go beyond “persuasion” or “censorship” to rely on daily habits (2010, 193,211). At the same time, the long “peace” of the dictatorship between 1974 and 1983 (see BeasleyMurray 2010, 194–195) is still bewildering. Tomás Moulian historically categorises the repressive order and its tool, terror, as “the fundamental weapon of a minority revolution at the initial stages”, suggesting that the regime subsequently mutated. More importantly, he suggests the dictatorship is terrorist when it cannot convince the population or when it “persuades” people through the fear of violence. By supplementing the terrorist modes of control, the dictatorship secures “absolute governmentality” (Moulian 1997, 22,177). Despite all these perceptive accounts, how that power equation is executed remains difficult to visualise in academia and in Chile. José Brunner implies that beyond its “precarious ideological formulations” the dictatorship’s power equation is organic and that discipline has “creative” effects in a multiple process of “knowledge and information transmission”. He argues that culture manages to transform “force into meanings of order” (Brunner 1977, 9,95). The complex power equation of the dictatorship, applied firstly in a terrorist phase, soon includes the normative exercises of the law, the “knowledge over minds” and the power “over bodies” (Moulian 1997, 22). As a result and manifestation of that power equation, the creation of a subjectivity―a symptom of a culture―has been formulated to explain, for example, the weak opposition to DINA by all military ranks, due to a fear that strong opposition would damage “the image of Chile” (Comisión Rettig 1991, 40). In the broader population, the “self-perception of ‘appeasing and tolerant’ citizens” erases or justifies violence, in a process that is parallel to the first stage of “dobbing-in” fellow citizens (Brunner 1980, 16), in other words, the “generalised practice of smear and collaboration” 62 Chapter Four (Cavallo 2005). Crucially, this form of Chilean subjectivity is created by images and visualised discourses that overestimate a leftist culture, to which is attributed the act of “predicating” or “imagining” an armed revolution during the Allende years. State terror, the first official Chilean Truth Report implies, would be justified by a “civil propaganda, from one side or another [which] had convinced the military (because it was so endlessly iterated) that powerful and well-trained parallel armies were ready to battle” prior to the coup (Comisión Rettig 1991, 40). The Valech Report confirms that consensual elucidation, criticising both right and left for using “a bellicose rhetoric that favoured the validity of the use of violence”. Nonetheless, this report admits that the attempts to build a “parallel popular army” never happened (Comisión Valech 2004, 164165). In the end, the material enactment of the revolutionary discourse of violence was carried out by the dictatorship and its visual representation was later re-created by the same regime. The making of images of terror, which belong to a vast organic dominance, was then (and still is today) massively distributed. Those images have been scarcely questioned, much less so than the modes of brute force or the neoliberal economic revolution. In sum, the hegemonic desires of the Chilean despotic regime can be seen with the assistance of one the most efficient, illustrative and evocative discursive practices: audiovisual culture. Three: The most beautiful spectacle This research identifies a historical phase of the dictatorship (1973 to 1978) when the ruling method of coercion was supplemented by propaganda practices. At the same time, the initial pattern of discourses of the dictatorship, “impregnated with negativity” (Moulian 1997, 25), is soon broken by a more constructive proposal to “remain a long time in power”, based on a “multiple legitimisation strategy”: a new history, a new legality and a new economy (Huneeus 2005, 213,625). The image of Pinochet and an illustrated history of the Allende period are the first fully developed scripts, drafted from different poles. Pinochet does not have a history, so he receives pure positivity, and although Allende has a negative history it is based on rich visual archives. Unlike the very evident propaganda cover-ups of the state terror during this early period, these two first scripts purposely exploit images while avoiding a direct reference of the violent repression. These two sets of audiovisual practices are among the most cultivated foundational discourses of the dictatorship, although The Celebration 63 they still belong to the stage of “primitivism” of the Chilean state, when cultural endeavours are roughly sketched (see Gramsci 1983, 263-264). Once a more archaic and violent historical phase is left behind, the dictatorship becomes convinced of a need for a systemic change in conjunction with wider cultural strategies of national refoundation. In this endeavour to completely reshape state, country and society, audiovisual practices are mostly supportive, waiting for their greatest development and prominence in a later cultural phase of the dictatorship in the 1980s. However, during this propagandistic stage, the formats and techniques of the television medium enhance the legalistic, ceremonial and mass events of the refoundation. Their support for these state events, which progressively turn into media events, begin with the accumulation of qualified practices, such as the prominent figuration of Pinochet and the constant reference to the pre-coup past. Markedly, a good amount of the dictatorial refoundation exercises are events that, when televised, reach full meaning, especially through universal simulcasts. The initial deficiency of images and dictatorial discourse during the first months, after the coup’s widespread use of violence, quite soon demands a more persistent regenerative effort, an initiative that becomes even more urgent than a new constitution or a radical economic system. The dictatorship’s first refoundational endeavour is to see itself “being born”; in other words, to commemorate in an epic, festive and cultural way its date of birth, a fundamental discursive practice to reframe its violent coming to life. The manufacture of this rebirth is ritualistic and systematic. The birth of 11 September becomes an obsessive memory after 30 or 120 days, or after 6, 12 and 24 months from the original 11th and the last 11th already celebrated. The rebirth practices vary from improvisations in popular consent to rituals in spectacle format and journalistic routines. These experiences obtain much of their meaning through audiovisual mediation and are held much beyond this historical stage. The signs of the dictatorship’s nativity would not be actually disputed until 11 May 1983, in the first of many national protests, which are held on almost every 11th of the month for at least three years (see Charlin 1984). The first annual rebirth, 11 September 1974, is one of the biggest mass events in the dictatorship’s 17-year history. As said earlier, the “fascist” concept would be incompatible with the reluctance of the Chilean military to politicise the masses. But there is something missing in this argument which is that this same event involved a “technical feature” of “propagandistic importance”, in the words of Benjamin. A blind spot for Chilean memory and historiography comes from the reciprocity between the media’s “[m]ass reproduction” and “the reproduction of masses”, as 64 Chapter Four said by the same author. In these types of spectacle events and “monster rallies”, when “captured by camera and sound recordings, the masses are brought face to face with themselves”, Benjamin adds. Panoramic shots better amplify the “[m]ass movements” than does “the naked eye”, so to gather multitudes “particularly favours mechanical equipment” (Benjamin 1978, 251). Chilean academia has rarely considered that the dictatorship “displayed an acute awareness of ceremony and commemoration” (Stern 2006, 244). In the afternoon of 11 September 1974, the dictatorship goes much further than what is by then the common ritual: the “presidential” speech by Augusto Pinochet in front of selected guests at the Diego Portales building, the new government palace after the bombing of La Moneda (see Novitski 1974, TVN 1974a). For the first anniversary, that limited audience becomes the masses, with less discursive rigidity and more hegemonic appeal than the official state ceremony. Already on 27 August 1974, the dictatorship is promoting its first anniversary in the shape of a mass event with hegemonic connotations. In a televised and radio mandatory simulcast, the Minister of Interior, General César Benavides, communicates that the government “will allow ‘spontaneous’ popular observance” of the anniversary, as the United States (US) embassy ironically reports to the Department of State. The embassy emphasises that this televised authorisation, a media event in itself, is “to no one’s surprise”. The Minister of Interior remarks in the simulcast, benevolently, that the “permission requested by various civic and private organisations [was] granted by Chief of State Pinochet”. The “theme to be stressed, according to [the] publicity, is [the] joy of people at being freed from Marxist repression”, the US ambassador adds. He predicts: “There is plenty of circumstantial evidence that government officials will be working hard behind the scenes to insure massive attendance at rallies and this [is] to present a picture of broad and enthusiastic support” (US Embassy 1974b). On the afternoon of 11 September 1974, the multitude, gathered as a festive mass, enjoys a spectacle where they can see their own faces. In Bustamante Park, which is the meaningful frontier between the wealthy suburb of Providencia and dilapidated downtown Santiago, surrounded by trees and modern buildings, at least 150,000 people congregate (Stern 2006, 70-71), or 570,000 according to the police (Cavallo, Salazar, and Sepúlveda 1988, 48). The US embassy states that while other government sources estimate 750,000 people, the attendance is “three hundred thousand plus.” The embassy explains that it was not a holiday; the government ended that working day by 3pm, while the official starting The Celebration 65 time of the rally is 5pm. He notes that people begin to arrive much earlier and explains that the government was “gambling in scheduling [such a] large and potentially uncontrollable meeting [but] the gamble paid off” (US Embassy 1974a). All these numbers for a single mass event are the first disputed facts of an occurrence that can be seen as an image, “proof” or the overrepresentation of popular support for the dictatorship, a phenomenon that is difficult to recognise and discern (see Joignant 2007, 35-36). More importantly, the exact size of the crowd is less significant when any percentage of the population that attends is taken as a universal “audience”, thanks to a comprehensive televised simulcast. The population/audience is recreated by a live transmission led by TVN, whose developing “primitive” television technologies are not an obstacle for promoting the idea of audiovisual denotation. Quite to the contrary, the chaotic-looking multitude is integrated into a live montage, where improvisation in the television directing and the use of numerous camera angles (TVN 1974b) amplify the feelings of spontaneity and the naturalness of the event. The TVN program begins untitled, brusquely, without a central anchor. The journalists on the field sporadically narrate the event also without a written script, using their essential common sense and interviews to “let people talk”. Reporter Enrique Inostroza initiates his storytelling standing within the masses, asking for a first opinion from a Brazilian journalist, who is useful for legitimising the Chilean dictatorship internationally. The interviewed reporter gives the flattering feedback that now this “new country” has “discipline”, reminding the interviewer that Brazil was the first nation to recognise the Chilean government. This source, an information specialist, is complemented with another unplanned interview with three young women dressed in “a very special fashion”, according to a second TVN reporter. Despite their evident upper-class accents, the portrait accomplishes a connotation of widespread popularity. The TVN journalist claims to be confused: he does not know if the women are part of the spectacle “or if they [just] wanted to demonstrate their joy”. The women laugh and reply that they only wanted to express how “happy” they are. This prologue then opens up to people-made masses through panoramic pans across buildings, with people flying Chilean flags and throwing confetti into the street. The crowd listens to itself screaming: “Chile is and will be a country of liberty!” The journalists certify that it is a rainy day as proof of their festivity (TVN 1974b), a comment shared by the US embassy. It is reported that “although [the] weather turned miserable” this did not “dampen the spirits” and the rally becomes a 66 Chapter Four “considerable success” thanks to a “holiday football-crowd atmosphere”. Very importantly, the embassy also notes something that stamps the image of hegemonic support for the dictatorship: there is quite a “low key carabinero (national police) presence” and rather than being intimidating, “two helicopters made numerous passes over [the] crowd, each time drawing cheers and flag waving”. The embassy also reports on a new national-popular culture: “Chilean flags were everywhere [...] Completely lacking was the political sloganizing seen during Allende years” (US Embassy 1974a). The introduction of this broadcast is completed with an interview of the organiser and presenter of this live event, Germán Becker. The film, television and theatre director and producer, had designed the staging of the junta’s first 11 September national simulcast in 1973; a new backdrop for ceremonies at the Diego Portales auditorium; and the introduction of the second paragraph of the Chilean national anthem praising the “brave soldiers” (see Becker 2002, Canal 13 2008, Cavallo, Salazar and Sepúlveda 1988). Becker, dressed in a poncho, details to the TVN television reporter the entertainers about to perform. Becker announces that Los Quincheros―a traditional land-owner countryside music band―and other singers would deliver “their art…in this doubly patriotic month” (TVN 1974b). It is a reference to this first exploitation of the anniversary of the coup coinciding with Chile’s Independence week (18 and 19 September). Later, the reporter asks Becker if the junta would attend. Becker says he doesn’t know, but creates expectations as “it would be very beautiful if they see that the people are with them”. He crucially states that, even without the junta, “the most beautiful spectacle of all is the presence of the people of Chile”. The question of the number of people is inevitable. Becker replies again he doesn’t know, but his visual estimate is “gigantic”. TVN’s cameras help to illustrate Becker’s guess through various instant zooms that enlarge the multitude (TVN 1974b). The mass event turns further into national-popular spectacle as the presentation credits roll on. The iconic title, “SANTIAGO, SEPTEMBER 11” and a military march begin a celebration that exploits all meanings and takes all possible shapes. It is a hegemonic culture that does not want limits, transforming verbal content into visual emotion. While the first act on the stage is the fabrication of a national dance, cueca, by two dancers dressed according to the big landowner culture of the Chilean central valley, a television announcement is equally important: the main reporter soon announces that the junta is heading to the park, “led by its president and head of State”. They will go up to the 14th floor of a building next to the stage, above the “immense flag donated by Japan”. The broadcast cuts The Celebration 67 to a dramatic low angle shot displaying a monumental Chilean flag hanging down over many storeys of the building (TVN 1974b). Four: Let him come out Waiting for the main act, some routines further fix the cowboy/landowner identity as Chilean culture. The comic duet Los Perlas, dressed as rural peons, sing in a caricature of Chilean popular accent (TVN 1974b). However, neither the effort to change Chile’s urban worker identity into a “peasant physiognomy” (Joignant 2007, 39) nor the main stage are central here. The broadcast is much more interested in the masses as protagonists. TVN reporter Inostroza assures the viewing public that the same act is being held throughout Chile “by all Chileans, who fought the great battle against Marxism for three years”. This unseen image is embellished with numerous telephoto shots over the Santiago crowd obsessively saluting the camera, masses condensed by the lens’s depth of field; a multitude that knows it is being watched and wants to gaze at itself via television. Chilean common sense would say that the multitude, the young men and women, looking directly to the camera, mostly belong to the popular classes (TVN 1974b), an image that helps to create another representation of the dictatorship. El Mercurio would claim the next day that these multitudes of support “have nothing to do with social classes” (in Joignant 2007, 37), an analysis taken further by the US embassy. The ambassador reports that officers of the embassy note both in person and “via television” the attendance of an eclectic “crowd”, which consists mainly of segments of Chilean society which had opposed Allende and were drawn from the middle and lower middle classes [...] students, white collar workers, professional groups, government employees, small business operators, craftsmen [while] many parents brought children (US Embassy 1974a). The ambassador ends noting the attendance of “peasants”, concluding that the “mood of [the] crowd was good natured and very festive” (US Embassy 1974a). The climax of the rally is the “deliberately unscheduled” visit of the junta members 45 minutes after the act began, a presence that had been confirmed earlier by the press, says the US embassy. The ambassador reports that “many at [the] rally [were] completely unaware of [the] arrival” of the junta (US Embassy 1974a). Both the “spontaneous” visit and the multitude unprepared for the arrival of the junta are exploited by the televised broadcast, enhancing the hegemonic appeal. The cameras, without any warning from the reporters, alert the viewers to the arrival of 68 Chapter Four the junta on the 14th floor of the building next to the stage. The four military chiefs cannot be seen with total clarity on television, unlike the overexcited multitude that salutes them. Becker, the event presenter, does not even acknowledge the junta at this point. He gives more sense of spectacle to the event while showing some concern because of the rain and potential out-of-control masses: “It is such the number of people that…let’s avoid accidents in this day of joy, in this month of joy, in this year of joy!” Without official speeches, the ceremony continues with the intuitive mass singing of Libre―a popular romantic song appropriated by the dictatorship from 1973―by Los Quincheros and other performers dressed as cowboys. The chanting inspires the broadcast to apply diverse audiovisual effects, mostly image-dissolves that agglomerate singers, masses and the giant flag into one image. Becker is exhilarated and creates more expectation, prolonging the climax. Becker yells in order to introduce a singer of forceful operatic voice, Gloria Simonetti, warning finally that the mass is “in the presence of the honourable Government Junta!” (TVN 1974b). Simonetti sings one of the many nationalistic army anthems that come from an 1839 war against Perú and Bolivia (see Ejército de Chile 2014). Just before the political climax, the event completely aligns spectacle and dictatorship. The presenter of the main opposition radio station to Allende (see Cáceres 2008) is introduced by Becker: “Francisco ‘Gabito’ Hernández…famous Chilean announcer and a man of the greatest battles for democracy and freedom”. Hernández proposes an act of politicocultural discipline, which “any Chilean man must do facing his conscience”. In a close-up, the radio presenter formally demands: “People of Chile: I ask you…a moment of silence to make this pledge…to the world”. Hernández manages to silence the euphoric crowd. Many camera angles and dissolving effects merge the announcer and the masses. He recites: Citizens, considering that the people of Chile, here reunited, want to express before the world their firm will to belong to a free and sovereign nation [...] that facing the moral and material destruction produced by Marxism, which [caused] serious damage to our security, do you swear before God, the fatherland, and justice to fight to preserve freedom, order and social peace? To rebuild the nation and defend it from external and internal enemies, even with [your] lives if necessary?! (TVN 1974b). Over a perpetual image dissolve, a massive “Yes!” is heard. Hernández concludes: “If you do so, God, the fatherland and justice will demand it”. The national anthem climaxes at that moment and the dissolves are The Celebration 69 extended over a multitude of wavering flags and handkerchiefs. The camera is fixed on the face of an anonymous man who sings emotionally, set against the giant hanging flag. At last, Becker turns around towards the main building: “My General Pinochet, my General Pinochet! The people want to hear you”. The television setup can only provide two lateral camera angles and so is unable to offer a clear vision of Pinochet for many minutes. But that difficulty is productive. The military chief’s speech is alternately illustrated through many medium shots of women hailing him. In the soundtrack, Pinochet vociferously certifies this hegemonic mass event: “Never in the history of Chile has such a multitude gathered in such a spontaneous and generous manner as you have done it to celebrate, with your heart, the day of national liberation!” Pinochet, who abuses the formal Spanish conjugation to construct solemnity, declares: “It is what the fatherland asks from all of you!” The first frontal telephoto shot of the junta arrives many minutes later, although still out of focus and unstable. The passivity of the other three junta members and the lateness of the cameras emphasises further the improvisational aspect of the speech by Pinochet, in which nationalist and anticommunist epithets abound. His address is adjourned by the transition from a nasal to a guttural voice squealing: “Hail Chile!!!” (TVN 1974b). The US ambassador concludes that this “impressive display of support” for the government “exceeded [the] expectations of organizers and most observers”, as an “assemblage enjoying only full mass carnivaltype gathering in [the] past year [...] it seemed quite spontaneous” (US Embassy 1974a). Still, the closure of the event makes spectacle, hegemony and discipline clash, elements jointly evoked in this act of dictatorial rebirth. The junta leaves after Pinochet’s speech and does not come back despite the fervent yelling of women that comfortably conflates a mass cultural “idol” and a military chief: “Let him come out! Let him come out!” The rain keeps falling and Becker, more calmly, openly jokes about continuing the act until curfew, presenting that measure of mass discipline as something normal. The presenter also goes onto convince everybody that there is a hegemonic culture in the dictatorship. On the stage, he says, are “the immense majority of Chilean artists…the most renowned names”, such as the romantic singer José Fuentes, who provokes instant highpitched screaming. But with the junta gone, Becker announces much less euphorically that a last song would close the spectacle and that people must “slowly” leave the park to see the fireworks in the next block. That would be their “last commitment of this evening”. Once the last singer is finished, Becker is strict and impatient: “Good night, thanks a lot, OK, go home then”. He says it anxiously, insisting they leave “in order”. The 70 Chapter Four broadcast closes with fireworks accompanied by a military march from another 19th century war (TVN 1974b). Five: Sobriety The balance of dominance and assent by a government that does not manufacture elections until 1978 remains uneven after this 11 September 1974 event. Following this intoxicating and chaotic politico-cultural spectacle, rebirth events are scripted more strictly. On his 11 September 1975 speech, Pinochet labels once again the Allende government as the “most disastrous in our history” (in 1985, 14). The mass event that follows replaces the improvisation of 1974 by a more ritualistic act. The lighting of the “Flame of Liberty” attracts 300,000 people (Stern 2006, 70). Joignant argues that the dictatorial state guarantees attendance through social pressure (2007, 38). But more telling than the numbers is, again, the climax of this nocturnal ceremony: four persons assigned as iconic identities of Chilean society―a peasant, a construction worker, a student and a housewife―light torches, passing them to four military cadets and the latter ceding them to the four members of the junta to light the flame (Stern 2006, 70-71). The leaders are distinguished from the mass in enormous panoramic shots that show them geometrically arranged around a circle many metres in diameter. The “Flame of Liberty” is lit over a pyramidal altar in front of La Moneda, surrounded by a mass of people also carrying torches. The televised broadcast dramatises the ignition with a fast cut to a panoramic shot, from which the blaze appears monumental. Regardless of the effects, this political event of absolute aesthetics remains too scripted, devoid of more fluent consent. Instead of an emphasis on the “thousands of young people attending the ceremony, trusting in a future splendour”, the event is mainly evoked in 1982 by the state reporter, Ricardo Coya, as a rather rigid “symbol, which according to the words of the head of the state, should remain lit ‘for centuries of centuries’” (TVN 1975/1982). In 1976, occurs the last commemoration of this phase with openly hegemonic intentions. The mass parade of 11 September, including carnival floats, is televised for the first time in Chile from the air (TVN 1976). The three-hour march in front of the Diego Portales building comes after an “invitation-only audience” speech by Pinochet (Dinges 1976). From this point on, excessive solemnity diminishes the mass reunions, eliminating most of the spectacle and making the dictatorship more literal. The coup celebration recedes into mere memory, says Joignant. El Mercurio reports that “following clear presidential instructions”, 11 The Celebration 71 September 1977, has to be “sober”. The next year, the celebration is limited to a brief homage to Pinochet. He is, reports the same newspaper, “[d]ressed in an impeccable gala suit, with the presidential sash across his chest”, and he limits 11 September 1978 proceedings to a two-hour speech in Diego Portales and to the “[s]pontaneous support” from a few “thousands of people” in front of his private residence (in Joignant 2007, 42-61). The cultural power of the dictatorship is adjusting to its forceful ascendancy, still searching for ways to express hegemony. The rebirth events are still accrued as useful experiences. The acts of legitimisation, the spectacles on stage and the directed ceremonies would be fully coordinated when the dictatorship can project itself, in order to mutate from a terrorist/propagandistic stage to a constitutional/cultural one from 1978 and peaking in the 1980s. Six: Epilogue The most obsessive and extensive refoundational events that emerge in this period are the celebratory and ritualistic rebirths of the coup, most of them audiovisually supported. With them it becomes gradually more difficult to separate the reflection and the televised manufacture of events from what actually occurs. Many archives and memories barely distinguish between this self-authored history and its portrayal. Thus, the national refoundation of the dictatorship is also audiovisual. The audiovisual culture described here illustrates and elaborates in eloquent form the forging of consent from the beginning of the Chilean dictatorship and throughout its most violent and disciplinarian phase. Significantly, the government itself gives credit to that image, communicating to everyone that it does not invest all its power in repression. Chilean despotism wishes to look legalistic and popular. Consequently, to define where exactly the coincidence―and the intentions―between an audiovisual culture and Chilean despotism begins and ends is problematic. In the words of Jean-Luc Godard: “[t]here is not only the reality and then the mirror-camera” each as a perfectly distinct field. The focus is instead on “the reality of reflection”, a never pristine object, situated in between realities and images (in Youngblood 1998, 29). I have proposed that by historicising a culture one can observe that the paradigmatic Chilean dictatorship does not govern by pure force. Rather, even in this violent phase, steps are taken towards a “hegemony protected by the armour of coercion” (Gramsci 1983, 263). An audiovisual culture is the best illustration and greatly helps to manufacture an organic equation 72 Chapter Four of power, defined in its first stage by a propaganda that both represents and reaffirms the effects of force. The new system is revolutionary because it uses all means available. 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Washington: National Archives and Records 76 Chapter Four Administration & The WikiLeaks Public Library of US Diplomacy. www.search.wikileaks.org/plusd. Valdés, Hernán. 1978. Tejas Verdes. Diario de un campo de concentración en Chile. Barcelona: Laia. Youngblood, Gene. 1998. “Jean-Luc Godard: No Difference between Life and Cinema”. In Jean-Luc Godard: interviews, edited by David Sterritt. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi. CONTRIBUTORS Nicolás del Valle (nicolasdelvalle.o@gmail.com) is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Leiden University (Netherlands) and Universidad Diego Portales (Chile), and has a Master of Arts in Contemporary Thought and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. He is a visiting researcher at the Ibero-American Institute of Berlin, Germany, and a researcher at the Centre for Political Analysis and Research (CAIP) in Chile. He is also a visiting fellow at the School of Humanities and Languages, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. His current research areas are in philosophy, the social sciences, media under democracy, the politics of human rights, critical theory and biopolitics. The chapter in the present book was written as part of his research activities in the doctoral program in Philosophy at the Institute of Humanities, Universidad Diego Portales, Chile. Pablo Leighton (pabloleighton@gmail.com) researches the notion and practices of propaganda in XX century and current media, and specifically on the history of audio-visual culture in Chile and Latin America since the 1970s until today. He has taught at universities in Australia, United States, Chile and Honduras, and has worked as film director, screenwriter and editor in various fiction and documentary productions. He holds a PhD in Latin American studies from Universidad de Santiago de Chile, and in Media and Cultural Studies from Macquarie University, Sydney. He also has a Master of Fine Arts in Filmmaking from Massachusetts College of Art (Boston, US). He is co-director of the Latin American Research Group Australia (www.latitudesgroup.info) with Fernando López. Fernando López (f.lopez@unswalumni.com) holds a PhD in History from the University of New South Wales and a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in History from the same institution. Together with Dr Pablo Leighton, he co-directs Latitudes: Latin American Research Group Australia. His areas of research focus on contemporary Latin American History, the Cold War in Latin America and, especially, on how the military regimes of Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, Argentina and Bolivia agreed to formally launch Operation Condor in November 1975. 126 Contributors J Patrice McSherry (pmcsherr@liu.edu) is a professor of political science at Long Island University and author of numerous books and articles on Latin America. Her works include: “Cross-border terrorism: Operation Condor”, NACLA Report on the Americas 32(6): 34-35 (1999); “Operation Condor: Clandestine Inter-American System”, Social Justice 26(4): 144-174 (1999); “Operation Condor: New pieces of the puzzle”, NACLA Report on the Americas 34(6): 26 (2001); “Tracking the origins of a State Terror network: Operation Condor”, Latin American Perspectives 29(1): 38-60 (2002); “Predatory states: Operation Condor and covert war in Latin America”, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. (2005); “Death squads as parallel forces: Uruguay, Operation Condor and the United States”, Journal of Third World Studies 24(1): 13 (2007); and “Introduction to 'Shadows of State Terrorism: Impunity in Latin America” (with Raúl Molina Mejía), Social Justice 26(4): 1-12 (2007). Her most recent book is “Chilean New Song: The Political Power of Music, 1960s1973”, Philadelphia: Temple University Press (2015). She has been currently teaching at Alberto Hurtado University in Santiago, Chile. Florencia Melgar (florenciamelgar@gmail.com) is an investigative journalist and independent researcher. She produced “No Toquen Nada”, once the highest rating current affairs radio show in Uruguay. She coauthored the books “Las palabras que llegaron’ in 2009 and “Sabotaje a la verdad” in 2006. She has worked for SBS Radio and Online, the ABC, Instituto Cervantes and the website Latinhub.com.au that she directs and was finalist as Best Use of Online in New South Wales (NSW) Premier’s multicultural Media Awards 2014. Melgar was awarded the best investigative story of the year in NSW multicultural media for the multimedia report “The Other 9/11”. In 2011, she was nominated Latin Woman of the Year in Australia for the contribution of Latinhub.com.au to the Latin American community in Australia. She is a PhD candidate at RMIT University in Melbourne and the title of her thesis is: “The exemption of Australia´s intelligence agencies from the FOI Act and its impact in journalism and democracy”. Debbie Sharnak (sharnak@wisc.edu) is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (US) studying the history of human rights, transnational networks, and international relations. Her dissertation, "Uruguay and the Contested International History of Human Rights", examines the origins and evolution of human rights discourse in Uruguay, particularly during its transition back to democratic rule. The work addresses issues of transitional justice, the rise of the transnational 40 Years are Nothing 127 human rights movement, and the shifting terrain of human rights in the 1970s and 1980s. Her publications include: "Uruguay and the Reconceptualization of Transitional Justice," in Transitional Justice and Legacies of State Violence in Latin America, Marcia Esparza and Nina Schneider, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. (2015) (forthcoming); "Sovereignty and human rights: re-examining Carter’s foreign policy Towards the Third World," Diplomacy & Statecraft, 25(2): 303-330 (2014); “Moral Responsibility and the ICC: Child Soldiers in the DRC,” Eyes on the International Criminal Court, 4(1) (2007). Pedro Teixeirense (pedroteixeirense@gmail.com) is at PhD candidate at the University of Río de Janeiro. In 2014, Pedro worked as a researcher for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), serving as a Research Analyst with the Brazilian National Truth Commission (CNV) that investigated the human rights violations committed during the last dictatorship (1964-1985). His works include: “Justiça de transição e processos de transição: alguns aspectos históricos a partir da experiência uruguaia”, Revista Ars Historica, 8ª Edição: 23-40 (2014); “O que resta da ditadura, o que havia de nós: história e memória nos mecanismos de justiça de transição no Brasil”, Revista Cantareira (Dossiê Os legados das ditaduras Civis-militares), 20ª Edição (Jan-Jun): 6-15 (2014). Yael Zaliasnik (yzaliasnik@gmail.com) is a journalist and Master in Literature from Universidad Católica de Chile, and has a PhD in Latin American Studies from Universidad de Santiago de Chile. Some of her areas of academic interest are Cultural Studies, Theatricality, Art and Politics, and Memory. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Universidad de Santiago de Chile. She has published, among others, the articles “40 años de performances e intervenciones urbanas de Clemente Padín” (2010) and “Memoria en construcción: el debate sobre la Esma” (2011), e-misférica issues 7.2 and 8.1, The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, New York University.