One Step Forward, One Step Back?

This week brought major developments from the southern half of South America.  In Argentina, efforts to try a former pilot for crimes committed during the military dictatorship were bolstered by Spain’s agreement to extradite the man.  Julio Alberto Poch is accused of piloting “death flights” for prisoners at ESMA, the infamous detention and torture center in Buenos Aires.  “Death flights” involved the transport of tranquilized prisoners over the ocean, where they were ejected from the plane.  Spain’s willingness to extradite is a continuation of its strong commitment to human rights and reflective of a heightened international effort to hold those responsible for major abuses.

Meanwhile, to the west, Chileans elected their new president, Sebastian Pinera.  Pinera is the country’s first democratically elected conservative to win the presidency in more than five decades. The immediate response was to see this as a major setback to the human rights movement.  It undeniably represents the failure of the left-center coalition to accomplish meaningful improvements.  The return of democracy has brought little of any improvement to the economic circumstances for most poor Chileans.  And, many left-leaning Chileans feel as though their leaders have betrayed them politically.  Their candidate in this election, former president Eduardo Frei, simply promised more of the same.  The situation is akin, in some ways, to the candidacy of John Kerry in the US elections in 2004 – an uninspiring figure leading a party that had lost its vision and purpose.

The country would certainly benefit from a multi-party democracy in which both the conservative and liberal parties maintained a strong commitment to human rights and a continued pursuit of justice for the crimes of the Pinochet years.  But does Pinera promise that, or will his administration whitewash those misdeeds?  Andres Oppenheimer offers reasons for optimism: “Pinera opposed former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet in the 1980s and has been pretty liberal on social issues. During the campaign, Pinera supported civil unions for gays.”

Time will tell, of course.  But, at the very least, the pendulum has not swung back to the 1980s.  Meanwhile, in a case of interesting timing, the NY Times ran a profile on Saturday on Ana Gonzalez, a long-standing voice for human rights in Chile and a participant in outgoing President Bachelet’s DNA-matching program.  It’s an excellent profile, a reminder of how much has been done, and a symbol of hope that the momentum will carry things forward over the next four years.