Hugh O'Shaughnessy was in Chile on September 11th, 1973, when the military, under the command of General Augusto Pinochet, overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of President Salvador Allende. O'Shaughnessy said some years later that the image he retained from that warm spring day was not that of death and bloodshed, but of celebration and fear.
Death, bloodshed and fear would last a further 17 years as the celebration turned to despair. In his book, Pinochet: the Politics of Torture, O'Shaughnessy describes in great detail the events that led to the coup, and the brutality that followed. The opening and final chapters deal with the arrest of Pinochet in London in October 1998. Unfortunately the author fails to comment on many of the changes that have occurred in Chile during the enforced absence of the life-long senator. Considering the volatility of much that has happened since - and continues to happen - this is undoubtedly a serious flaw in this book.
It is a terrifying story of intrigue and betrayal by "a rather grey" army general, and the refusal of the United States to allow a socialist government in its own "back yard". The coup, backed by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissenger and bankrolled by the CIA, is well documented by a superb journalist who has reported from this continent for almost four decades.
His chapters on Chile's secret police, DINA, make for grim reading. The DINA controlled the detention and torture centres throughout Chile and was under the command of General Manuel Contreras, who answered only to Pinochet. It also carried out the assassinations of prominent Chilean exiles in Buenos Aires and Washington DC.
O'Shaughnessy mentions that General Arellano Stark was on a list of 38 people whom the government cautioned in June of last year against travelling abroad. Arellano had travelled by helicopter, in the first few weeks of the coup, to various provincial towns with written orders from Pinochet to "expedite war tribunals".
This so-called "Caravan of Death" resulted in the execution of 72 political prisoners. Many of those left dead in the wake of his visits remain "disappeared" to this day. Arellano and various other members of the Caravan of Death entourage were indicted early last year by Judge Juan Guzman under the novel charge of "aggravated kidnapping", an ongoing crime, thus circumventing the 1978 Amnesty Law that until then had shielded military-junta era human rights violators from prosecution. Since that verdict five other generals have been indicted on similar charges.
Inexplicably, neither the name of the judge nor these historic judgements receive a mention in the book. Equally disappointing is the absent of any reference to the 1.4 million indigenous people of Southern Chile. A report from a United Nations ad Hoc committee as far back as 1978 stated "on the day of the coup the big land owners, military and carabineros started a great manhunt against the Mapuche who had struggled and got their land back". The Mapuche have been in open rebellion against the authorities during this past year.
O'Shaughnessy is on firmer ground when he comments on the deep divisions within the Catholic Church in Chile during the 17year military dictatorship, "On the one hand there were bishops like Silva, trying to protect his people from the worst actions of a military regime, and on the other, Vatican diplomats like Sodano, charged with maintaining the Holy See's relations with that same regime."
Pinochet, a devout Catholic, remains an evil and complex man. Perhaps the answer to his personality lies in the final sentence of the book. Speaking to a Chilean journalist following his arrest in London, the former dictator commented "In this world they also betrayed Christ."
John Kavanagh has travelled extensively in Latin America and writes on that continent for The Irish Times