The Day The General Died

The great split that carves through Chilean society is laid bare and brought to the surface in the documentary La Muerte de Pinochet (The Death of Pinochet), a film that shows the many reactions to the news of the general's death at 91 years old on 10th December 2006. From the crowds of pinochetistas who carried out a raucous vigilance outside the hospital where the old man lay dying to the spontaneous carnival that erupted on the Alameda to celebrate his death, the film portrays the various emotions unleashed that day and as such serves as a social portrait of the polarising effect that Pinochet continues to have to this day.

To many Pinochet was the brutal dictator who sewed terror and acquiescence throughout the population with repression and brutality, yet there is a sector of the Chilean populace which sees the dictator in a different light: namely as the leader who saved Chile from Marxism and heralded in an era of growth that today sees Chile as one of Latin America's strongest economies. It remains a topic of furious contention in Chile, a country where Pinochet is not a taboo topic as with Franco in Spain. Those who supported the dictatorship and felt the murder and torture of so many thousands of people was a price worth paying for economic development often remain unrepentant  in their attitudes.

The fanaticism of the Pinochetistas as they pay homage outside the hospital in Santiago where Pinochet takes his last breaths comes as a shock but highlights the quasi-idol status in which many revered him. Shouting and singing, there is a relentless zeal to the crowd, made up of young and old, and as death becomes inevitable an intense delirium envelops the throng, with a middle-aged woman screaming into the camera of her loyalty to the general. As one of the featured Chileans in the film,. she says she was put out of business, selling flowers in the Plaza de Armas, by the democratic government which closed her down due to her support for the regime. Her impassioned devotion on the pavement outside the hospital reaches almost hysterical proportions, highlighting the spell that Pinochet cast over his followers.

The other wild reaction to the death is seen on the Alameda by Plaza Italia as thousands of people take to the streets in a carnival atmosphere of jubilant celebration. With singing, dancing, leaping about and drinking the party takes on epic proportions and the revelers are again made up of various ages. These are raucous scenes although its hard to say if the presence of a camera encourages people, the majority of whom appear inebriated, to act over the top.

This is a film that, by allowing both sides a roughly equal amount of screen time, can claim to be offering an objective look at this heady day, yet I'm not so sure. Why, for example, does the film only focus on these groups? We see the loyal pinochetistas in a state of mourning that manifests itself in eccentric fanaticism and we see drunken men shoving and bellowing in disorderly ways as they party hard. I realise these two opposing groups probably make more watchable subjects for the film but I doubt they are representative of the general population on that day. What about the surely many millions of Chileans who would have gone about things in more refined ways? For example, the minority pinochetistas who would have grieved in private or those who rather than celebrate chaotically would have felt relief that a dark chapter in Chile's history was seemingly finally over. These people who must have existed and I suspect who formed the silent majority of Chileans are absent from the film, which gives the impression that the country witnessed two very contrasting reactions. It portrays Chilean society in a black and white context, while ignoring the vast grey area in between these two poles.

One other thing that I felt while watching this thing was this: was the death of Pinochet really something to celebrate even to the victims of torture or the families of the thousands of dead? When he passed away peacefully in his own bed, the final opportunity to gain justice for the atrocities of the dictatorship also went to the grave. It ensured that, while there have been numerous convictions over the abuses, the tyrant who lorded over the years of death and terror escaped justice until the very end. The death of General Pinochet granted him the eternal freedom that so many Chileans were denied under military rule. And, for me, that was and remains a tragedy for all those who were affected by the dictatorship. The day the general died was not only a sad day for his followers but also for those who he brutalised and oppressed for so long. In this sense the celebrations seem ill-suited to the day.