Erik Visits a (Latin) American Grave, Part 2,214

This is the grave of Patricio Aylwin.

Born in 1918 in Viña del Mar, Chile, which is today the beach resort city of the nation, just up from Valparaiso, Aylwin grew up wealthy and did well for himself. He became a lawyer and then a law professor, teaching at the University of Chile from 1946 to 1967 while also having an appointment at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile from 1952 to 1960. Must have been hard getting double paid. He even got triple for awhile, teaching government and political economy at the National Institute, which is an elite high school in Santiago.

The real reason Aylwin did this is that he was also a prominent politician. In 1945, Aylwin joined the National Falange. Now, if you are me, that’s going to raise some red flags. Like, Francoism? Well, not really. There was some fascist symbolism in that party but that wasn’t really its politics. What it represented was a non-communist left that also hated the power of the Catholic Church. Part of the reason Franco and fascism generally was popular in so much of Latin America because of its ideas of order and its use of culture and nationalism more than the politics per se, so you see kinda sorta fascist movements across the region that don’t really share that much of the extremist far-right political aims, and in the case of the National Falange, was quite opposition to the core groups of Franco, the church and military.

Aylwin rose quickly in the FN, becoming its president in 1950 and doing that for about a year. Then, in 1957, the FN merged with the Social Christian Conservative Party (not in fact that conservative) to become the Christian Democratic Party. That became effectively the Chilean liberals. Aylwin was president of that party in 1958 and served seven terms in that role. This was also the party of Eduardo Frei, who is the most known member, but Aylwin was right there as the most powerful person with him. He was elected to the national senate in 1958 and in 1971 became president of the body.

Now, by 1971, the socialist Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile. This deeply disturbed just about everyone who was not a worker or an intellectual. The whole ruling class despised everything Allende was about and while men like Frei and Aylwin were liberals, they fundamentally believed more in rule by elite than they did a real socialist movement. Reminds me a lot of Bill Clinton types. Aylwin did not trust Allende at all. Moreover, Allende really was beholden to the miners and textile workers who elected him and those workers wanted socialism fast, not slow.

What this meant is that Aylwin began to side with the military. He hated communism more than he hated fascism. He was a moderate, relatively, but as Allende committed more toward Marxism, Aylwin began to consider other options. He demanded that Allende name a bunch of military officers to his cabinet, which Allende naturally refused.

So, when Augusto Pinochet and the military launched their infamous coup on Allende in 1973, with active support from Henry Kissinger and the CIA, Alywin was OK with it. He didn’t like it, not really. But he also stated that between “a Marxist dictatorship and a dictatorship of our military, I would choose the second.”

Now, this did not mean that Aylwin was thrilled with what happened after 1973. OK, they wanted to get rid of Allende. But he, Frei, and other liberals were shocked–shocked I tell you!!–to discover that Augusto Pinochet was a fascist and intended to rule for life. You mean when you, as a liberal, invite in the military to overthrow a democratically elected regime–one that was democratically elected on multiple occasions moreover–that they aren’t going to resort to your namby pamby liberalism after they succeed and hold all the cards? Well I will be damned.

Aylwin remained in charge of the Christian Democrats in the Senate and he started to move against Pinochet. He initially opposed the Pinochet constitution of 1980 but later accepted it as a possible way to return to democracy, when its problems could be dealt with. By 1988, when Pinochet, under international pressure, held his plebiscite to give him more power, Aylwin was the leader of the No movement that amazingly won. Pinochet wanted to ignore the result and launch more terror, but even the rest of the military was sick of his shit by that point and wouldn’t let him.

What this meant was that Aylwin was elected president of Chile in 1989, the first post-dictatorship ruler. He was the logical choice. The Pinochet constitution really limited his power, but he did good work to stabilize the nation and smooth the path toward a functioning democracy, which the nation remains today, more or less. What he could do was tax the wealthy and he did, expanding social program and reducing poverty effectively. This did a lot to push Chile into the global middle class. The minimum wage skyrocketed and was 36% higher in real pesos in 1993 than it was in 1990. He engaged in a massive home building program and threw tons of money into education. Labor law reforms brought meaningful unions back and principles of collective bargaining.

Overall, Aylwin really was a good president. Does that make up for his previous sins? Not really. But he made up for some of it. Importantly, he left office in 1994 without trying to stay around longer and subvert democracy. He also created the Report of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, which released its report in 1991 documenting the killings of Pinochet and the military. Mostly, his post-presidency was just that of the retired respected international leader–lots of paid speeches abroad, his own non-profit, lots of work on international democracy issues.

And again, this is all fine except that I just can’t forgive Aylwin welcoming the military coup in the first place.

Aylwin lived almost forever. He finally had a bad fall and whacked his head at home in 2015. But he then he lived for several months before dying in 2016. He was 97 years old.

Patricio Aylwin is buried in this somewhat unusual grave in Santiago General Cemetery, Santiago, Chile. I did not descend the steps. They look like entering something in a 70s sci fi movie.

If you would like this series to visit U.S. ambassadors to Chile, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Usually this has been something for career diplomats, but of course Trump’s is the head of the fucking Border Patrol union. Ugh. Anyway, James Theberge is in Arlington and so is George Landau. I guess any ambassador can get in there. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.