A horse-drawn carriage with a flag-draped coffin rolled through Santiago on Tuesday for a dictatorship’s final and most public caravan of death: it was Augusto Pinochet’s turn to supply the body.
Thousands of mourners in bright sunshine bowed their heads in a mass show of grief for Chile’s late leader, one of the 20th century’s more divisive leaders, while in another part of the capital protesters denounced his crimes.
Three cannons boomed and soldiers saluted as the cortège wound its way towards a helicopter. It ferried the coffin out of the city, towards the Pacific coast, and beyond vengeance.
The cargo was offloaded for cremation at a cemetery at Concon and the ashes were due to be taken to the Pinochet family ranch at Los Boldos, safe from those who, given the chance, would desecrate the tomb of a man who used helicopters to dump murdered opponents into the same strip of sea — a terror campaign known as the caravan of death.
The 91-year-old retired despot met his end in a hospital bed last Sunday, succumbing to heart complications while surrounded by doctors and family. Tuesday’s send-off revealed to what extent he remains revered and reviled.
President Michelle Bachelet, who was herself tortured during the general’s 1973-1990 rule, vetoed a state funeral, with officials saying it was inappropriate for a man who seized power in a coup by bombing the presidential palace.
The government agreed to a military funeral, a concession which failed to appease the general’s supporters. More than 50 000 streamed into the Bernardo O’Higgins military school to view and caress the coffin, with some youths giving a stiff-armed Nazi salute.
”Without Pinochet we would have been another Cuba, maybe even worse,” said Horacio Correa (38), a civil engineer.
By overthrowing the Marxist president Salvador Allende and laying the foundations for a successful market economy the general had averted a communist take-over, and the price — 3 000 opponents killed, thousands more tortured — was worth it. ”It was necessary. How many more would have died in a civil war? Think of Spain.”
Marcella Arias (48), a hairdresser, spent a night-long vigil with her family. Her mood was defiant. ”He was a liberator, this man,” she said, pointing to a poster of Pinochet walking in a field with children. And the atrocities? ”Lies. All lies.”
A hawker selling the posters and other memorabilia winked when asked if he supported Pinochet. ”No. My family is socialist. They killed my uncle in 1978. But business is business.”
The military school displayed its best pomp on Tuesday: flags at half-mast, a brass band, cadets in gleaming uniforms standing behind rows of seated guests, an A-list of the upper middle class that formed the core of Pinochet’s support.
Allegations that he and his family spirited away millions into foreign bank accounts were forgotten amid their grief and resentment that the rest of Chile — the political establishment, the media and most voters, according to opinion polls — loathed their hero.
The Defence Minister and sole government representative, Vivianne Blanlot, was jeered. ”Go home,” they shouted. In contrast, a glimpse of leading members of the former regime — which gave way to democracy in 1990 — prompted cheers.
”Did Hitler arrive?” muttered one photographer, after a loud roar. Not for the first time since Sunday, mourners turned on the media. A TV crew was pelted with coins and dragged down a staircase until soldiers intervened.
The crowd exulted in the fact that Pinochet died without any of the more than 200 human rights abuses and financial fraud cases against him reaching conclusion. ”Never convicted, never convicted,” they chanted.
Speaking from the podium the army chief, General Oscar Izurieta, asked Chileans ”to let history make a balanced and fair judgement” of a soldier who loved his fatherland.
His words fell flat across town where more than 3 000 people had gathered to pay tribute to Allende, who died during the 1973 coup, and those relatives who were killed under Pinochet.
There is expectation that his death will galvanise prosecutors to accelerate criminal cases pending against his aides. For many Chileans, however, the dictator’s era is fast fading into irrelevance. Construction workers on skyscrapers rising over the military school — evidence of the booming economy — paused only briefly to gaze down at the ceremony.
The national stadium into which opponents were herded for torture and execution in 1973 will on Wednesday pit Colo Colo, a Santiago football team, against Mexico’s Pachuca club.
Though their passion surprised some observers, the Pinochet supporters who spilled from the funeral on Tuesday were quickly swallowed by a city of shoppers and motorists who carried on as normal. Having lived to a ripe age, a fate denied many of his opponents, the dictator was peacefully disappearing. — Guardian Unlimited Â