Chilean President Sebastian Piñera would not have imagined, upon his electoral victory in 2017, that he would have mangled his political career beyond redemption. The 2017 Chilean presidential elections were characterised by a low turnout of voters, which largely indicated the left-wing electorate’s disillusionment in terms of candidates, proposals and, most importantly, the inherent corruption across the Chilean political spectrum since the country’s transition to democracy.

Prior to the 2019 protests across Chile, it was difficult to imagine any form of transition out of dictator Augusto Pinochet’s legacy. As the clamour for Piñera’s ousting and the collective cry for a new constitution resonated throughout the country, the government took a leaf out of the dictatorship’s book, imposing a military curfew and unleashing widespread, state-sanctioned violence which many Chileans said was reminiscent of the Pinochet era. Detention, torture, killings and disappearances occurred all over again, in a supposedly democratic period in Chile.

While Piñera eventually yielded to the demand for a new constitution and attempted to frame the decision as that of a government listening to its people’s demands, social movements in Chile were not acquiescing anymore to the imposed narrative. The right-wing suffered yet another blow in the vote to choose the individuals tasked with writing the new constitution, with voters electing a majority of independent and left-wing candidates.

For Piñera, however, the 2019 protests sealed his legacy. Working alongside the former Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon who, in 1998, issued an international arrest warrant for Pinochet for crimes against humanity while the dictator was in London, Chilean human rights organisations filed a report with the International Criminal Court, asking for an investigation into the crimes against humanity committed by the Chilean government during the 2019 protests. The report called for Piñera’s prosecution, along with other officials responsible for the atrocities.

Establishing criminal culpability and accountability in the Chilean courts is fraught with the prevailing political impunity. To date, many dictatorship era crimes have gone unpunished, and it is up to human rights organisations to constantly uphold the struggle for justice. One of the main arguments brought forward by Garzon and the human rights organisations, in fact, is that 3,050 cases out of 6,568 have been archived by the prosecution -a clear indication of judicial impunity.

The more recent violations are no exception. While Chileans were being beaten and shot in the eyes by the military during the protests, and human rights organisations, including international bodies, were documenting the cases, Piñera was praising the military’s conduct, exhibiting a complete dissociation when it comes to the situation on the ground for Chileans.

According to the Justice Studies Centre of the Americas (JSCA), “there is a widespread breach of informality, opportunity and thoroughness in the investigations of severe human rights violations.” The JSCA also noted that Chile’s prosecutor does not have “a specialised unit focused on investigating human rights violations, unlike other Latin American countries.”

The violations inflicted upon Chileans by the military during the 2019 protests have been classified as common crimes in Chile – a deliberate move, the human rights organisations insisted, in order to delay justice and allow the government to provide amnesty for the individuals involved.

While the ICC’s decision regarding whether the filed complaint falls within its jurisdiction may take years, the action to access international justice points both towards the Chilean courts’ failure as a result of political bias, as well as the Chilean people’s steadfastness when it comes to accountability. For decades, Pinochet’s shadow loomed over, influencing the transition to democracy as democratically-elected governments refused to make a clean break with the dictatorship. The 2019 protests have ignited change in Chile, which the people are determined to bring to fruition.

Militarising the Araucania region has been a priority for Piñera. The region is rich in natural resources and the Mapuche are an obstacle to the neoliberal policies which have dominated Chile since the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship. The 1984 anti-terror laws, also part of the dictatorship legacy, have been applied against the Mapuche population in a bid to criminalise their resistance to exploitation and territorial plunder.

Since the coronavirus outbreak in Chile, the Mapuche have experienced a rapid deterioration in their lives. Access to education, health care and work opportunities are already scant, and the population lives in poverty. Mapuche political prisoners, already discriminated against politically, have now been further isolated from members of the community. Non-existent sanitary conditions as well as the prohibition of visits have exacerbated the political isolation.

Piñera has, on occasions, denied the existence of Mapuche political prisoners – the contention being the political connotation – which is in direct confrontation with the Chilean government’s narrative of alleged Mapuche terrorism.

In a statement to Chile’s Interior Minister Victor Perez, Mapuche spokesman for the Mapuche prisoners in Temuco prison, Juan Pichun, declared, “We want you to know that there are not only political prisoners here, there are also murders and torture going on against members of the Mapuche community.”

Perez, the newly-appointed interior minister, has a history of dictatorship links, including publicly defending the Nazi criminal and dictatorship collaborator, Paul Schafer. Schafer is known for the cult he created at Colonia Dignidad – the premises also served as a detention and torture centre during the Pinochet dictatorship.

Mapuche communities protested against Perez’s first visit in the Araucania region, leading to an increase in security measures in the region after Perez declared Mapuche people involved in resistance as “organised groups with financing and quite a lot of fire power,” while stating that the government must “isolate the violent people.” Several days after the visit, Mapuche protestors occupied the town hall of Curacautín in protest over the imprisonment of members of their community and were violently attacked by an armed mob. The attack sparked protests across Chile, some of which were violently dispersed by the Chilean police.

The UN has urged investigations into the recent state violence against the Mapuche people, noting the rise of racial violence by Chileans against the indigenous, as well as the excessive use of force meted out by the Chilean state.

UN calls for intervention however, are ineffective. The institution’s bureaucracy thrives upon human rights violations to sustain itself. In what is deemed yet another insult to the Mapuche population last June, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, now UN Human Rights Commissioner, claimed to have no knowledge of the Mapuche hunger strikes when faced by a Mapuche woman in Geneva, Switzerland. The reason given, as ludicrous as it sounds, was that in her spare time, Bachelet reads right-wing media El Mercurio, which she says published no such information.

Yet Bachelet herself was a strong advocate of the Pinochet-era anti-terror laws to be used against the Mapuche population. Having carried on the dictatorship legacy herself during both her presidential terms, despite her family and herself being tortured by Pinochet’s National Intelligence Directorate, is it so surprising that a right-wing government diligently following dictatorship neoliberal policies, would prioritise the criminalisation of Mapuche resistance?

However, the protests indicate a simmering anger over the ongoing ramifications of the neoliberal experiment unleashed upon Chile by the US-backed dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Decades after the democratic transition, the dictatorship constitution remains in place. A commodity for governments, be they right-wing or centre left, to entrench social divisions and provide the foundations upon which dictatorship practices can be implemented in a democracy, as Chile has experienced since Piñera imposed a curfew on the capital city, Santiago, which has now been extended across the country.

A photo of Piñera dining at an elite restaurant as Santiago erupted in protests and military violence contributed to the Chileans’ growing repudiation of the president’s authority. Some contrasted his stance with that of Salvador Allende, who kept his pledge to remain with the people until the end.

Piñera has framed the people’s uprising through a declaration of war. Eliminating reference to the people by using the metaphor of “the enemy who is willing to use limitless crime and violence”, the Chilean president justified the curfew, including the presence of the military on the streets, by stating that “democracy not only has the right, it has the obligation to defend itself.”

But what if Chile’s transition to democracy continues to prove it is merely a veneer for the dictatorship practices ushered in by Pinochet?

This is not the first time Chile has mobilised against government policies. In 2011, the student protests for free education and the assurance of education rights for Chile’s indigenous Mapuche also pointed towards the need to move away from the business model which privatised education. At the time, Piñera claimed that nationalising education would detract from quality and freedom. In 2011, the students were met with violent repression in the form of tear gas and rubber bullets.

The nationwide protests have triggered concerns among Chileans of a return to the dictatorship era. More than 10,000 military personnel have been deployed in Santiago. National Defence Chief Javier Iturriaga, who has family links to the dictatorship’s National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) declared the curfew a means of “protecting the people”. The government is calling upon people to stay in their homes, yet Chileans are defying the curfew and mobilising on the streets. To stay at home, on government’s orders, is an acquiescence which Chileans cannot afford. Even in their homes, however, Chileans aren’t safe from military violence.

Meanwhile, the first victim of military aggression has been announced – 25 year old José Miguel Uribe Antipani, who was shot in the chest during a demonstration in Curicó. Reports by Chile’s National Institute of Human Rights have confirmed the military’s use of excessive force, including beating of protestors, among them minors, torture and sexual harassment and abuse of women. More than 2,000 Chileans have been detained and the death toll is reported to have increased to 15.

The link between neoliberalism and violence must not be negated. Chile’s social inequalities have persisted and the country’s management since the democratic transition has prioritised keeping Pinochet’s legacy intact through privatisation, exploitation and the expectation that the people remain tethered to their subjugation in order to ensure the elite’s retention of privilege. Piñera understands the underlying causes of the current mobilisation, yet prefers to keep to a selective narrative in order to maintain his impunity. As organisations and workers across Chile call for the people’s demands to be met, the government can no longer hide behind the veneer of metro fare increases. As this façade crumbles, Piñera must be held accountable, yet the scrutiny of past governments and their loyalty to the dictatorship agenda must not be erased from memory.

Forty-six years since the US-backed military coup overthrew the democratically-elected, socialist government led by Salvador Allende, Chilean society remains fragmented and burdened with a legacy which all governments since the transition back to democracy have failed to challenge.

The neoliberal experiment unleashed upon Chile was violent – in 2011, the Chilean state recognised 40,018 people as victims of the Pinochet dictatorship, among them 3,065 who were killed and disappeared. The Chilean military’s pact of silence has hampered efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice, as well as forced Chileans to contend with gaps in their personal and collective memory.

Human rights lawyer and Communist Party deputy Carmen Hertz, whose husband Carlos Berger was one of the victims of the Calama Massacre in October 1973 – the last stop of the dictatorship operation known as the Caravan of Death, has also blamed the governments from the transition onwards for cultivating state impunity. Fragments of her husband’s remains were identified – together with the other Calama victims, Berger was mutilated, buried clandestinely and later exhumed for disposal into the ocean. The Chilean state, Hertz asserted, “has debt in truth, in justice, in reparation.”

The Chilean state, however, has no intention of facilitating the Chilean quest for justice and memory. Upholding impunity remains a prime concern for the government and the military. Oblivion, the act of forgetting which Pinochet insisted upon as the only means to move on from dictatorship crimes against humanity, is never far from Chileans’ consciousness. As a mechanism endorsed and implemented at state level, Chileans involved in memory and resistance activity are perpetually fighting against government efforts to erase remembrance.

Last Sunday, a march led by various human rights and memory group commemorating the victims of the Pinochet dictatorship in Santiago was violently disrupted by the Chilean police.

A recent cruel taunt by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro directed at former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, whose father was murdered by the dictatorship, was mildly reprimanded by Chilean President Sebastian Piñera who, while denouncing the comment as regards subject matter, downplayed its significance by describing Bolsonaro’s dictatorship admiration as “different opinions”.

Bachelet, herself a torture victim, failed to maintain her promise to close the luxury prison of Punta Peuco, where former dictatorship agents serving multiple sentences lead privileged lives in incarceration. During her presidential terms, Bachelet made use of the Pinochet-era anti-terror law to target Mapuche communities and individuals involved in resistance. Although by no means an exception in resorting to the legislation, its use was most widespread during her tenure.

As part of his electoral campaign, Piñera had vowed changes to make the legislation easier to implement against the Mapuche. In November 2018, Mapuche youth Camilo Catrillanca was murdered by the Comando Jungla – a special force trained by the US and Colombia. Evidence related to the killing was destroyed and the witness, a minor, was beaten by the police.

In August this year, it was revealed that the Chilean military was spying on the Chilean investigative journalist and author Mauricio Weibel in 2016.

In another bizarre case, a former DINA agent pressed criminal charges against Javier Rebolledo, a Chilean investigative writer. Rebolledo’s research revealed detailed accounts of torture and sexual abuse perpetrated by DINA agents, among them Raul Quintana Salazar, who sued the author for purported defamation.

State-endorsed oblivion in Chile has made a travesty out of justice. Yet it has also ensured a strengthening of memory. The latter, however, faces one main hurdle in the form of governments normalising dictatorship violence. If governments in Chile continue to uphold the dictatorship pacts of silence, Chile’s memory will, with time, remain tethered to narrations which do not make it beyond diluted versions of history.